I wanted to gather these images together and give them context.    I wanted to use these images to show exactly what we are NOT.  I feature images that do not represent our community well and juxtapose them with images that do.

 Changing our image begins with us.    Although many dont like to admit it, these photos are indicia of much larger and complex issues in our communities.  Issues that only we can resolve.  The government cant legislate pride in ourselves.  We cant picket for appropriate standards of behavior in our communities. Boycotts and letter-writing campaigns will not stop  our young men and women from going to proms dressed like pimps and prostitutes.  A congressional hearing wont make men be fathers and wont make women be more responsible in their decision to have children and who with.  The blame game/reactionary/hysteria/white-people-save-us-from-ourselves mode of social change is so tired. 

 
If we dont stand up and say certain destructive behaviors are unacceptable,  your tittay balls hanging out at prom is unacceptable, spending more money on clothes and cars than a home is unacceptable, having two or three kids with two or three people is unacceptable, not stressing education in your home is unacceptable, certain songs on the radio are unacceptable, not raising your kids is unacceptable, stepping over the trash in front of your door instead of picking that shit up is unacceptable, not being able to say a sentence without splitting a verb is unacceptable....then who will?

 
All we got is us, and if we dont love each other enough to give tough love, to call each other out, and to challenge ourselves to do better than we're doing, then who will?  You gotta call a spade a spade and sometimes you gotta call a hot ghetto mess, a hot ghetto mess.  I leave the  positivity and sunshine and light to Essence and Oprah and Black Enterprise.

 
This is but one voice in the pantheon of approaches to social change.  Its not the solution but its part of it.  I challenge all the visitors of the site to think about how you can do better in your lives, in your community and in the lives of our children.  Because at the end of the day, when we all finish laughing, too often, the joke is on us.  And too many people sacrificed their lives for us to fuck it up.

 

I love y'all because y'all mine.  But we got to do better.

 

Jam Donaldson