Thread by @ChunkyTWshngtn

I am providing a totally different life for my kids from how I grew up.

This is how it should be.

Even though I can be vulgar and crack jokes my support for conservatism comes from the fact that christian conservatism is how I was able to turn my life into what it is now.

I have extremely mixed feelings about solutions for the black community and our more dangerous communities.

I escaped that along with many others. My situation was not as worse as it is for others but I wouldn’t wish any type of struggle like that on my enemies.

My mother married a drug dealer turned crack addict. When I was growing up the colors of the faces of the people who scared me were white and brown.

I watched many family members give into crack and cocaine.

I had to hide electronics or any cool things I had of value to keep them from being stolen.

I went to high school with the kids who sold drugs to my stepfather.

Sometimes they would exchange his car for crack and drive it to school while I rode the bus.

It was humiliating.

By the time I was 16 I didn’t give a fuck. I was failing at school. And provided an awful example to my little brother who is now in jail on two armed robbery charges.

I was basically on the street from the age of 16-18.

My mother did leave my step father and we moved into an apartment in my senior year in high school.

But she ended up back with him and I lived there alone for the most part partying and drinking and smoking also.

When I was 17 I caught a felony in Manhattan driving a stolen vehicle that a friend said we could sell for drugs in Harlem.

I plead guilty to that even though I didn’t steal the car. But I was driving and thought that is what the code of the streets called for.

After that I slowed down but my friend continued on that path until he got locked up for 20 years. He recently got out on work release. I wrote a thread on that earlier this year.

Even though I continued to screw up I tried to attend a community college for a path to a degree in residential architecture.

That lasted a few months.

From 18-21 I just smoked weed and drank St. Ides and 2020 Mad Dog.

People of my age know what that is.

I got a job loading trucks at night and spent the days high.

I ended up getting fired and my boss left me with these words,

“You ain’t got no direction boy”!

That hurt because it was true. This was my first experience in self reflection.

Shortly after that I got dumped by a girl who would end up being my first wife.

I took a bunch of pills and ended up falling asleep and hit a car sitting at a red light.

I was not hurt. And remarkably the people in the care weren’t either.

Call it a blessing.

After that I got a temp job helping put furniture in a new jail.

Remembering that I had “no direction” I started to take things more serious.

The company that used the temp service offered me a job and I took it.

The flip side of my life is that my biological fathers side of the family did well.

My grandfather died a 3 star general that was appointed by President Reagan as the adjutant general of the DC National Guard and the commanding general of US national guard of the Virgin Islands

My father was a Lt. Colonel in the army and a West Point graduate. I have his Mug from 1976.

I think he felt so bad about the things I went through among other things that he took his life as I was trying to get to know him.

After my fathers suicide I had another tough bout of self reflection.

This time I thought about what will I Be when I die.
I didn’t care where I went after I died. Just what would I be.

Will I be known for failure or being a good man.

I was pretty damn good at my job.

Sadly the white guys used me because I worked my ass off and my black co-workers swore I was an idiot for working so hard for the white man.

I was told that the white man would never like me because he was a devil.

My attitude at my job was that I was part of the team and that regardless of what the other people on my team did I would make sure we reached our goals.

I was the sell out. The black guy that was always chosen for work. They even started training me for managing projects.

I noticed that my focused yielded more work and opportunity.

It wasn’t about what color I was an asset.

Customers noticed and requested me.

Jealousy from my coworkers exploded.

I went from sleeping in my car to being a foreman.

Eventually the company that hired me closed shop and I got a nice position with a company started by some of the people I worked under.

After. Year or to there a customer approached me and said “you need to do your own thing.”

At 23 years old I was a business partner in a contracting company setting up commercial interiors.

At one point we had 20 employees.

We sucked at running a business but we’re good at what we did.

My hard work and focus led me to that point.

Having employees and payroll is a rude awakening.

Taxes are a whole nother animal.

I gained a respect for business and people who thrive.

THAT SHIT IS HARD WORK PEOPLE.

One thing that you learn if you run a business is how to read people.

Or better yet how to read irresponsible people.

We didn’t survive but a year or two after 9/11 so I took a job at a local dealership that sold commercial interiors as a lead.

During those years in business we primarily employed young black men. Some with no skills. Some in and out of jail.

Some to this day still carry on the trade and even call me for opportunities.

Some stole from us. Some couldn’t leave the street life.
So just had no drive.

I never found myself caught up in the white vs black dichotomy.

I just thought that being a good person and treating others like I wanted to be treated was goal.

Boy was I wrong.

I was supposed to be oppressed.
I was supposed to be mad at the system.

But I was not mad at the system.

I wanted to exploit it as I had so far.

In the 80's I learned color was not supposed to matter watching movies and TV shows.

In my mid twenties all that seemed to matter was COLOR!

I hated that.

Here I was among the highest paid installers in the city but I could not tell my brothers how I got there because they saw it as a threat to their blackness.

It is crazy but this is where I discovered the "principle of imperfectability."

Conservatives know this world will never be perfect. And trying to make it perfect is futile.

Man can not do that.

Christian conservatives also know that not everyone will be called to be Christians.

I have to be an example regardless of the world around me.

It ain't easy.

During the Bush years politics came into my life.

After 9/11 and Katrina it was unavoidable.

You hated Bush, you hated republicans.

Black radio stations crucified republicans and Bush day in and day out.

I din't care for Bush but damn. I did not hate the man.

Around 2005 I started going to school for to be an RN. M wife was pregnant with our second child.

I worked full time and went to school while she worked a few part time jobs.

By the time our 3rd son was born in 2007 I could no longer do school, work and family.

I tried to move up at the company I worked for into selling contract furnishings.

They told me that I was not a good fit for that.

This was probably my one and only experience of being told that I was not cut out for what many saw as a white mans world.

Boy did I hear it.

Luckily an acquaintance from my past still impressed with my work ethic said I will hire you.

I owned a company before so I have sales experience because I sold my services. TRUE!

This was a white couple.

So I was turned down by "whites" and hired by "whites".

Some system.

This "white" man taught me how to plan and sell contract furnishings all because he saw potential in me.

He passed some of his high profile accounts to me.

This was a significant game change for me.

I was a rough installer type trying to sell high priced furniture.

Why was this significant?

The only barrier that separated me from my competition was the fact that I had no higher education.

I couldn't hang with customers during happy hour and compare frat stories or the college days experience.

How could I relate?

I learned to relate by just doing what I did to get me to that point.

I did a damn good job. My success rate if I got in front of a customer was in the 80%'s.

I was a beast.

There were still some circles I could not break.

Those circles I could not break were honestly more about friendships and relationships vs. my color.

I would still try though.

By 2008 the people that hired me went out of business do to a bad deal by another salesman.

IT was a really bad deal.

During that time I did build a solid relationship with a manufacturers rep. He introduced me to a company that would allow me to sell furniture as a private contractor.

No salary. Just commission when I sold something.

Again. No steady paycheck unless I sold product.

Here I was. 3 kids 18 months apart. Just bought a house. No job but a commission on sales gig.

Once again my reputation and work ethic took front and center.

For 8 months I made $80 from that job. But my skills at assembling furniture paid the bills.

We did end up losing that house in foreclosure. It was a really rough time.

Right around the housing crisis of 2007-8.

I don't miss that house at all. As a matter of fact a friend of mines ended up buying it and they love it.

I never gave up as my customer base grew. I think it was meant for me to lose that house.

The following year my pay crept up to near 6 figures.

Again. I was not a color but an asset.

My principles of prudence, morality and imperfection guided me through a very rough patch.

Now around 2007-8 a phenomenon hit the world.

That phenomenon was Barrack Obama.

2007 was the last year of my life where politics were not on my mind every day.

In 2008 after listening to Obama I discovered that I was a conservative.

Some what social but very staunch.

In 2008 Obama told Joe the plumber that we needed to spread the wealth around.

I thought to myself:

What in the +*^% was he talking about?

Who do you take the money from?

Who do you give it to?

What happens when the people you give the money to screw it up?

The conservative principle of imperfectionality kicked in.

The only true way to control who is rich or poor or control poverty is to take total control.

Nope! I didn’t want any part of that.

And my journey to conservatism began.

What lead Obama to feel this way.

It is noble to want everyone to prosper. But it can’t be done.

It could only be done through control and violence.

We weren’t sent here to control each other like that.

I started to listen more and more to both sides. I listen to talk show host from both viewpoints and read as much as I could.

The first thing I noticed is that there was much history about the African American experience that I did not know.

I won’t get into all of that but I learned that I come from a line of resilient self sufficient people that don’t work well in idle environments.

I learned that Booker T Washington made it from a situation that no one I know of today had to experience.

He also stressed that we learn trades to create a niche for ourselves in society.

If you’ve read up to this point you know I could relate to that.

I learned that we fought for the rights established by the founders of America and still fight for some today.

I see people who exploit our plight to get rid of rights they don’t like.

My principles are rooted in customs, convention and continuity.

Some customs have to die.

I don’t need to explain all the customs that need to die.

Our constitution created a custom. Our bill of rights created a custom.

I realized those customs didn’t translate to favor everyone. But to me it wasn’t the constitution or the bill of rights that was flawed. It was the people that claimed to protect them that failed.

I’m not upset that those rights didn’t reach everyone ...yet.

And I realized if we torn down those customs because those rights failed to reach everyone then no one would have any rights at all.

Why would I vote for Obama or McCain for that matter.

I remember after Obama won Rush Limbaugh saying he hoped he would fail.

As harsh as it sounded I could not get past “we need to spread the wealth around”!

I could see what fundamentally changing the country looked like.

...and hell no.

I was one of the black folks who ran around screaming other blacks were on the plantation!

I was screaming republicans freed us!

Democrats created the KKK!

Etc. Etc.

I was bumping more heads then I was connecting with.

I am more calm now about politics. Even though pure ignorance can trigger me.

As much as I hate to admit it is see that both sides of the political spectrum offer pieces we can use to make us a better country.

More from the conservative side IMHO.

I am a small government guy.

I believe whenever we cut taxes we should cut government.

I believe that the government should not take our money to use as charity.

I don’t believe in entitlements either.

Now back to what I think needs to happen in African American communities.

1. We need to chase out the criminal element in our neighborhoods.

We need to call the police and snitch.

Forgive me but growing up with a drug addict has made me hate drugs and drug dealers.

These are the people who keep the police in our communities 24/7.

These are the people who scare our neighbors into keeping quiet as they terrorize our communities.

I’ve seen it.

2. We need to leverage our voting block for REAL change.

I don’t want black folks to become republicans. I don’t expect everyone to change parties.

We just need to say to politicians that our votes have a price.

The price is “Representation”!

This thread is in part inspired by the situation in Baltimore.

And there are Baltimore’s all across this nation.

They have been like that a long time.

Democrats don’t seem to have an incentive to change them.

Republicans think working for the votes are useless.

Sometimes I think to myself can these places be fixed.

I think they can. We haven’t been conditioned for complacency as evidence by the videos that sparked this debate.

3. I think we have to move past the racial/ identity politics from both sides.

We can’t politicians use our color or plight to fight against ideas they don’t like.....
Honestly, a lot of these politicians are using race to remain in power and stay wealthy.

The democrats in charge of our districts are rich. There is no other way to put it. A good majority of them are not living like those they claim to serve.

When they feel threatened or challenged they use race as a shield. And many of us fall in line.

Republicans do it too. We all see the facade where they use us but no real action is taken to reach out.

The voters in these places do need to reach out to other ideas but the party needs to reach out regardless of the reaction.

Another reason I wrote this thread is because I got tired of being told I was promoting white supremacy.

Everything I say on here I lived it.

From what I went through growing up to finally moving past my anger.

I’ve built a great relationship with my stepfather.

He has been clean for over 25 years.

My mother hung in there. She showed me what the meaning of vows were and how to forgive.