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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Those assholes can’t seem to care about being offensive, so why should I give a damn about being agreeable?”
It didn’t matter what he did. Staying focused didn’t give Quan any control at all.
Dude had all these obstacles he couldn’t seem to get past no matter how hard he tried, and it was almost as though falling into the life of crime everybody expected from him was (sorta) unavoidable?
So your son is a grown man by Jewish standards, yet still gets treated like a kid. Meanwhile ain’t no ceremonies for kids like us, but if we get in trouble we get treated like adults.”
Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.
The reason I joined the Black Jihad: I needed backup. Support without judgment. People who hadn’t—and wouldn’t—give up on me. I needed a family.
And we found SOME of it in one another, but we couldn’t really give each other no type of encouragement to do nothing GOOD because nobody was really giving US any. Matter fact, we typically got the opposite. People telling us how “bad” we were. Constantly looking at us like they expected only the worst. How the hell’s a person supposed to give something they ain’t never had?
So he went looking for a new family. Like a lot of us do.
And that’s what it comes down to. We find the families we were desperate for and learn different ways of going about things. Ways that sometimes land us in places/positions we don’t really wanna be in.
jason jason grind and grit don’t forget you’re not alone for everywhere is where you fit and everyone feels just the same
It is also unlikely (unfortunately) that Quan would have such a solid team of people—friend, caseworker, therapist, teacher, and attorney—rallying around him.
Which was the hardest thing of all about telling this story: knowing the most fictional part is the support Quan receives.
Sometimes all it takes to bring about a shift in direction is knowing there’s someone out there who believes you’re valuable. That you have something positive to offer the world.
A listening ear can make a day, and an “I believe in you” could completely change a trajectory.
