Rerock by Michael L. Farr

Author:Michael L. Farr [Farr, Michael L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General
ISBN: 9781645443865
Google: e_zHDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
Published: 2020-01-05T04:18:42+00:00

ELEMENT III

Youngsters

I have to be honest to those reading this book, this is by far the hardest element for me to address because it’s so broad. I’m really speaking to the age group that’s from twenty-five years old and down. Those few short years of life contain so many changes it’s hard to speak to this age group as a whole. At seventeen and under, you’re a juvenile, but there’s a big difference in a twelve-year-old’s mind compared to a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old. At the age of eighteen, by law, you are considered an adult, but you still can’t buy liquor legally nor can you get into adult clubs unless you are over twenty-one years old. At age twenty-five years old, you have been twenty-one for a few years and still you’re just hitting the age where you realize you need to be getting things together. Even at that age, the youngster in you can still take over sometimes, and you do some immature things. Either way though my youngsters are the most important element of the hood because they are the future, they hold the keys to change.

Let’s start this conversation by me asking some questions and visiting the past. If I asked you (my youngsters) the question about things white people do—like climbing mountains or climbing rocks without a harness, jumping out of airplanes, cliff diving or the one that gets me, climbing very tall buildings, or getting to a very dangerous spot and taking a selfie—the answer that I would get would be “Are they crazy? I would never do something like that. They trying to kill themselves?” The crazy thing is that a lot of you are doing or willing to do the same thing by joining gangs or by choosing to live the street life. You’re risking your life for a cheap thrill. How about if I asked you about the time of slavery. Would you live like that or could anyone tell you where you could eat, drink, sleep, sit, or go to school? I know what the answers would be, I can hear you now, “Hell no, I wouldn’t live like that. I would fight back. They got me messed up,” I would’ve done whatever I wanted to do, and they couldn’t tell me nothing. That sounds all good, tough, and courageous, but your actions say another thing.

See it took some brave youngsters to change things—a young woman who chose to sit where she wanted and not get up, a group of young children walking into Central High School in Alabama and getting the job done the right way by putting their brains to use, the group of young human beings that decided they were going to be served a meal with the white people or simply not move. We also had that great, young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King that stood, marched, and fought for just about everything, and things did change. Back then, it took youngsters to fight for something and youngsters to change it to what we have today.

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