Column: When keeping it real goes wrong: Gangbanging in college

By George Ploss

I would like to pose a question.

How do you be a thug and simultaneously major in broadcast communications? How do you keep it ‘hood when you swipe your I-Card to get into the dining hall at late night? Do you really have to wear a white tee, doo rag, keep a cell phone on the highest and most ignorant of all ring tones during class and then pick it up? How does an unprofessional image propagate a positive figure of black men?

“I’m just keeping real” is a phrase I hear a lot. However, being “from the hood” isn’t an excuse to act a fool. It is disturbing to me because once you enter the realm of higher learning, “you ain’t hood no more.” And by retreating to that fictitious mind set of what some few may think is real, you just remain to be psychologically shackled by an environment that was created to kill you.

But now that you’ve escaped that horrid place, the first thing you do is throw up what set you’re from. By doing this, you are not being more black, or more real – just detrimental to an already fading demographic, the black college student. And those of you privileged, suburban kids trying to re-create an image you may think is cool, stay in your sweater vests and pink polos, and do not subscribe to a new identity because you are in a new environment.

Being from the ‘hood is a mind set, first and foremost, that you can formulate positively toward college. You know those themes that got you here: striving in the face of adversity, being on your grind with everything and everyone and everything working against you, being an academic hustler, not shucking and jiving on the Quad. You are part of the supposed Talented Tenth and that should mean more to you than what set you are from.

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There is a mentality that is floated thick in the mainstream of America that this is who we are as young black college students. It is a social constraint that we feed into because we think it builds our cultural character but, in fact, it nibbles away at the foundation of our integrity.

That is why Bill Cosby speaks about our community the way he does. I cannot defend him, but he sees us acting the way we are and he gets frustrated and annoyed because we are disrespecting our legacy.

An alum, Raymond Tolbert, class of 1984, said, “Keeping it real has nothing to do with reflecting this ghetto culture of gangsters and hoes, it only represents a small percentage of the black community, the worst, and should not be used as the standard of blackness, we have great black tradition of builders and scholars and people of kindness and culture.”

Why is it that when we go out on the weekends, people go out of their way to avoid black functions and establishments? We jump through extra hoops for approval and funding for events. We pay extra for security to sponsor parties. Have you noticed that some establishments do not even host any more functions for the black community?

We need to be conscious about this. With all the aspects of the African American, the one that remains the most prevalent in our hip-hop generation is this small minority of who we are that is continually bit into by those of us who think that it is a large part of us.

But really, the ghetto is a facet of our culture that we subconsciously shun. Do any of us want the Robert Taylor Homes to be rebuilt?

To make claim that you once lived there is a feat in itself, because you made it out alive. The war-torn soldier doesn’t want to relive the battle they survived, especially if they are still fighting the war. One Love.