It's Hard in the Hood
Dear Detective Strode,
I am writing to you after my escape from the hood to justify my actions in the past. My girls, Frankie, Cleo, and T.T (R.I.P.) and I have been screwed by the system. We struggle as African American Women in a society which does not accept us. I am not stating that robbing banks is okay, but I am saying that it was our only option to get out of the struggle. Frankie was fired for not pressing an emergency button at work. T.T.’s baby was taken away because he was hurt at her job. My brother was killed because the 5-0, including you, thought that he was involved in a crime. To you these actions may seem validated but let me explain OUR situation.
Frankie could not press the button because she knew the robber. This didn’t mean that she was helping the cause. She pleaded with him to not rob the bank but he did anyway. She worked hard to try making something better for her life. Tisean couldn’t afford daycare. She had no choice but to bring her child to work so she could pay her bills. The lack of assistance where we live is gruesome and her only option was this. It’s hard to understand how Tisean working a job to provide for her child makes her a bad mother and not able to keep her baby. As for my brother, he was our only hopes for a bright future. He was going to be the first in our neighborhood to go to college. He was smart and going to do big things in life. Because he had a friend who was a criminal, you shot him. After these things, my girls and I realized that we needed to do something to get out. We needed to do something to escape.
You see, in our neighborhood, it’s hard to get out. You either have to sell drugs, sell your body, or rob banks. We barely make enough money to get by, so trying to save to get a car and leave is impossible. It’s a vicious circle Detective Strode and we were just trying to do what’s best for us. I knew that robbing those banks wasn’t smart, but I didn’t have a choice. I stuck with my girls to try to save our lives from poverty forever. In the end, everyone was killed.
It’s the system that led us to do what we did. Being a black, underprivileged woman is hard. Every time I got a step ahead, the system would push me back down. There is no room in the system’s world people like us. It seems that the only way I could attempt to start a new life was to do what I did. So I robbed the banks. I took the money to save my life. My girls and I did it to get out of the hood. We did it to get what deserved back. In the end, all my girls died. I guess it was a risk we were willing to take to get out of our poverty stricken lives. I guess it is true that the only breaks you get are the ones you take.
-Stony
P.S. In the future, think about the other side. Try to understand why people do the things they do. Are they robbing banks, killing people, and selling drugs because they are greedy, money hungry individuals? Or are they doing these things because it’s the only way for them to survive? Think about that the next time you point your gun at a “criminal”.
P.P.S. Thanks for letting me go. I am now living the life I dreamed of, for the four of us.