Other essays on this theme

Essay: "On the Edge"

by Porcha Sweeney
I would like to write this on a serious and non-racial mind...but I can't! I'm seeking to offend no one but by chance if I do...who doesn't?

Yes, I'm of "Motherland" (African) ancestry and was born and raised in a true "hell" we call the ghetto! I'm sure you've seen glimpses of it on the news or in a wider spectrum the Hollywood movies. So with this being said and understood; by destiny I was born on the edge!! `You think not?

Cool. But check my life card. At the age of four my father passed of a heart attack (some say he O.D ed). Losing her lover and confidant, my mother continued his reckless style of booze and drugs to the extreme. What's more deranged is that she tried to find my father in every man she courted. Not just in style and habit man but also in LOOKS!! This created a monster in me from a child to a grown up to look at life through unmerciful and gloomy eyes.

Then before I could learn to pee straight I found out that society/America had a problem with the pigment of my skin! Yeah (smile) the pigment of my skin. Not old enough to understand the politics and manipulation of the "skin game" I switched it around. Reverse racism. Was I wrong? Darken your skin for weeks and experience the "skin game" live and in color!

Now what's really strange is when I learned that my own race despised each other more than any non-black!! Light skin against dark skin, neighborhood against neighborhood, posse against posse, gang against gang, and poor against ALL who are doing better. And I, the short skinny villain, was deep in the middle of it (laugh).

Mr./MR. Reader being black in this uncertain society keeps one on the edge. I ain't saying we are the only ones that are catching serious abhorrence (NO) but if it was really, really possible for any non0-black to slip on our shoes and tip toe through our path... I put my life on it you would do your best to burn those shoes to a crisp (laugh)!!

It's just a part of life and a way of nature. Just as animals in the jungle have to stay on the edge in concern of their life from lions, leopards, hyenas, etc. the same applies with the human species.

So see it as you want because as long as I'm human, alive and aware I choose to stay on the edge. Live up!