Let the past go or else

I'm so sick of being blamed for crap that happened years ago before I was even a twinkle in my daddy's eye.  I don't care what color I am.  I am NOT responsible for slavery.  I am NOT responsible for Jim Crow.  I owe you NOTHING.

Every African American I've ever come across seems to think the white man owes them.  That everything wrong in their life is white people's fault.  Not only is that stupidly wrong, it's incredibly detrimental.  Why?  Because scapegoating doesn't address the REAL issues.

Blaming white people may feel good.  It may make you feel better about yourself.  Go ahead, burn down your own neighborhood if it helps you feel important.  But it doesn't do a damn thing.  Blaming white people doesn't CHANGE anything.

Black folks have had plenty of opportunities to change their lives for the better and didn't take them.  They won the right to vote and didn't use it.  They won the right to an education and still have the highest drop out rate in the country.  They can be doctors, lawyers, politicians, teachers, cops.  Whatever they want to be.  All they have to do is work for it.

And a lot of them understand this.  They made something of themselves.  Kudos.

But a hell of a lot more are sitting in the hood, smoking their weed, gang banging with their pants falling off their asses, rap music blaring, living off welfare, unable to use proper grammar complaining about how oppressed they are instead of doing anything about it.  And I don't mean burning down the hood because that's stupid.  YOU LIVE THERE.

No, what I mean is they aren't interested in getting an education.  They want to be ballers, rap stars.  They may take honest jobs to pay the bills, but that's it.  McDonald's is as far as their expectations go.  Like the Civil Rights movement was a giant waste of time.

For the record, my ancestors were poor Italian and Irish immigrants who came to this country years after slavery ended. They never owned slaves.  Know something else? They were discriminated against.  Ever see an Irish person?  They're white.

If you're not going to take responsibility for your actions, it's not my fault.  Stop making excuses. Stop assuming my family owned slaves.  In fact, stop rubbing my face in slavery period.  I never owned slaves. You never were a slave.  We don't forget the past, but we can't live in it.  It keeps us from moving forward and if we don't move forward, we die.  Cuz life only moves forward.

Time to stop blaming everyone else for your own shortcomings and do something to improve you life. Only you can improve your life.  But first, you have to let go of the past.