when things fall apart

so my gurl Nikki started it off w/her ghetto post (don't know how to add a link to text yet) and then i started talking to one of my nieces and she got me to thinking, classism really sucks esp. when you from the ghetto.



so she about to turn 15 and has already had over 13 partners, smokes weed w/ her parents, has only been to school um...20 times this semester and thinks that doing hair is going to get her by enough so that she will survive until she die. she also has the responsibility of looking after her 12 brothers and sisters...yes, twelve...(and that's from my sista, all by the same dude, he has five others kids outside of his 12 w/ my sister) and she is having problems w/ her 13 yr old sister whom their mother has allowed to live w/ her 24 yr old boyfriend. (i wish i was lying, or exaggerating or playing an april fool's day joke) so the questions that immediately comes to my mind are:


why/how do you find it comfortable enough to get high with your child?
what does a 24 yr old have in common with a 13yr old? becuz i don't think there's that much maturity in the world. and age is much more than a number when one of the numbers makes them jailbait.
can the cycle really be broken when you have no help? i say this becuz my sis moved out when she was 13 to live w/ her boyfriend whom she eventually married who was 26 at the time. she used to get high all of the time with him. she dropped out of school at 15 and so did most of her friends. my niece the one that i spoke about in the beginning, she doesn't agree w/ how her parents allow them to do what they want. she likes getting high but she doesn't like that fact that they allow her lil sis to stay out all hours of the night and live with a man almost twice her age. but she feels that there is nothin she can do because that is what everyone is doing in her neighborhood. letting their kids get high, sell drugs, have sex, steal cars, do whatever their little hearts desire. she just wants to move out to a place up the street, still in the hood.







then i think abt my ex's niece who is like my niece who is abt to turn 15 the day after xmas who is in the top 5% of her class, has never been high, never had sex and her biggest responsibility is taking care of her 5 yr old sister when her mama can not get a babysitter. my niece has lived in a middle class neighborhood all of her life. she has a savings account where she puts all of her allowance and the money from her summer jobs. she wts to save up to buy her some fancy car that she can spot when she goes to college. she wants to live in some posh neighborhood in Maryland. all of her friends are school and goal-oriented. out of the 18 girls in her class, only 2 have had sex. her mom and dad aren't married but they live together. even though her father gets high, she doesn't know it and has never seen him high.




so what's the difference? both girls are abt to be 15 but they have lived two different lives which has impacted them in two totally different ways. one niece never, ever considered college as an option and the other never, ever considered college not to be an option. and in my opinion, they both have the potential to achieve whatever it is that they want to, the only thing is, CLASSISM is holding one of them back, and that really sucks in my opinion.