Continuing my previous article, there are five rules of what you should not believe if you do not want to become poor. I found the video by Chinkee Tan by searching Youtube, the second most popular search engine, for "Why people don't succeed." I avoided the video at first because I didn't like the aesthetic, but, just like so many other videos, I found that it was top notch and of great quality. This is the ultimate internet. Finding videos that make you think, that make you want to succeed.
So, I went through the first and second points he made in his video. The first was that poor people believe that success comes overnight. That really hit me hard. The second point was that poor people believe that other people can give them success.
The third point he made was closely related to the second point, which is that poor people believe that someone else is at fault for what happened in their lives. It's really hard not to believe that as a black man, especially as a victim of abuse. If somebody does something directly to you and that action that they take against you has an effect, it's hard to turn around and say that nothing happened. But truth be told, I don't judge black men anymore, because I know how the game is played. If you felt that you were dealt a bad hand, you probably were.
But I also believe that there are many, many avenues toward success. You can be successful in life if you apply yourself. I haven't been able to make it for myself, but I'm glad to say that I'm motivated to try. More importantly, I understand that I was ultimately responsible for what got me in this situation. The entire world deceived me into believing that the only way to survive was to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a worthless piece of paper, without even a handshake, and I ended up trapped in an abusive situation because I wouldn't just walk out the front door and cut my losses.
The problem with that narrative is that if I had just walked out and "cut my losses," I would have been living on the street without the possibility of getting a job. I could've gotten hypothermia, beaten, bitten, killed, framed or all of the above. I guess that what I'm saying is that it's not so much that I don't blame anybody for where I'm at. It's that I'm satisfied that I made the best choice given my options. I guess that for me it's the equivalent of saying that "Nobody got me here but me."
But how do we eliminate all criminal records for black men in America? I can't even begin to fathom the answer to that question. Just being more lenient on crime and not reporting would result in a spike. Increasing prosecutions would result in a cycle. Maybe if we treated it like a sport, like basketball or football, that would get the young minds excited about beeing "Free and Clear." That's all that I can think of.
