Background

It is hard to escape the lifestyle that you are raised around and is predominant in your childhood. There are children out there raised in the ghetto, around gangs, violence, drugs. They see it so much that it just becomes a regular part of their life, it grows on them. They grow up to join gangs, and hurt others, and sell drugs. Is it really that innocent child’s fault? Things need to change so that children are not raised in such hostile environments so that they can escape that lifestyle and see the other ways to live their life. It is our responsibility, those grateful enough to have been raised in a loving and caring environment, to help the less fortunate.


These children are raised in poor standards; they hardly have enough money to get by. Imagine how bad there schools must be, if education is the main key to getting ahead in life, how will they stand a chance if they are bad schools? If the teachers are barely getting paid then they might not even care and the students therefore will not either. As well as the education, if the community can not offer recreational sports leagues and programs then it’s not giving children much to do to stay out of trouble, they need some healthy hobbies to keep them safe and teach them some discipline while having fun.

These children could possibly also have relatives or parents that are very bad influences on them. Often people living in the ghetto use and abuse drugs, mainly one of the reason how they could have ended up there in the first place. When kids grow up having drug addict parents they don’t know any better. Their parents don’t teach them how to act properly and the children won’t learn to do anything but catch their parent’s bad habits. Children need somebody that they can look up to in life and learn from, someone that will show them how to live a life without drugs and violence.

Most importantly when these children do not find love within their family, they find another type of love or bond; in gangs. It makes them feel wanted and secure, part of something were they have each other’s back and will help each other out. Unfortunately gangs are always up to no good, teenagers join gangs at young ages and learn to shoot guns and take drugs before they’re even out of high school. They are brainwashed with gang rivalry, over things as silly as a color. And revenge and money is what fuels everything, if these people might have had some more money they might not seek such extreme measure to get some to buy decent things for themselves.

The oppressors could be a wide range of people. It all starts at the top of the structure, people with power, that keep these people in the ghetto by not helping them live in a better environment. Then it’s the parents, relatives and friends; they all have major influences on a person life, and if they can’t save that person from falling into that certain lifestyle then they most likely contributed to it. Children look up to certain people in their life’s, and if it turns out to be a drug addict or gang member then they will hope to pursue that person’s footsteps.

There are several social systems involved. It can be the upper, middle and lower class involved. They all effect each other, and If the higher classes could help the lower then children wouldn’t be raised in such harsh environments; leading to a major decrease in gang involvement in the community. Then the Police is another system involved, they deal with gangs a lot. The problem is that the media makes it too difficult to for the general public to see the problem. Although the deeds and actions gangs commit are horrible and even unforgivable, it’s not totally their fault. It is a very hard concept to accept because people do have the freedom of choice, but the thing is that these people do not know any better. Their mentality has developed to be in a certain way because of the way they were raised, and their state of mind most often is hard to change. I know that people can make it out of the ghetto with a civilized state of mind, but that’s a one in a million chance. Not everybody has the same motivation and determination. You can blame it on the people for making their own choices, but they are innocent inside, since they were little they weren’t showed what was right from wrong, and the peer pressure in environments like that is tremendous. That is why as a community we need to rise up and help those in need to show them right from wrong, spread the love, give them a real chance to do better in life and escape the gang life which most often they are born into.

The world does not see this problem so clearly, I know my perspective dramatically changed after reading my book and doing some research. People see it as that everyone decided how they want to live their life and if they want to get involved in gangs then that is their own problem and they will suffer the consequences. In a way it is definitely true, but God would want us to help our fellow brothers in sisters, they need us, they don’t know they do but if were able to help some people escape that life style they will appreciate it for their whole life. It is impossible to steer everyone away from living that way, but even if its only one persons life that you change, you saved a person form suffering and made it possible for him or her to raise a family in a stable environment.

Wouldn’t you like to save someone from the being blinded by that lifestyle, not seeing other ways they could live life? Save that person from being shot, becoming a drug addict or even hurting someone else? It is an injustice for children to be raised in harsh neighborhoods and ghetto environments. Their fate is being unfairly determined, they deserve a chance like everyone else to succeed in life and fall to the hands of a gang lifestyle. What if you were born in that environment, and didn’t know what you know now? You would only know how to live a ghetto/gang lifestyle. Wouldn’t you want someone to help you know another way, the way you live now?