"It's Like That"

1983...Years before I was even thought about, Run DMC released a song titled "It's Like That." This song was ranked number 40 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop. Imagine that...A song that talks about real world problems being one of the greatest Hip Hop songs...Hmmm. Check the lyrics for a minute.

Click link for video
Click here to see lyrics

So anyway the lyrics in the song are so relevant to what is going on today, in 2011. 28 years later, blacks still dealing with the same ish and hmm, apparently that's the way it is. But hold up, hold up. Why hasn't something been done about these issues plaguing the black community. The first verse talks about unemployment rates at record highs, hmmm, thats a problem today. Jobs are going and people can't work, people can't work, welp thats more crime to deal with, more issues of idle hands and we all know where idle hands lead. Crazy thing though, with all of the ideas of progression this government sells to us every single day, why have blacks been the bottom of the barrel with certain issues for as long as blacks have been in this country. Talk about the "American Dream." Well apparently, that is just for specific skin tones and the darker ones ain't it.

28 years later. The major problems in the black community are not just from society, if we could only get past the societal woes and pick ourselves up by the boot straps, I know we can all rise from what is plaguing the black community these days. Too much money out there for people to go back to school but no one wants to commit to four years to get a degree...We won't do that but we will go out and complain about being underpaid, not being able to change jobs because the money was good at one point. Like these lyrics say,
"You should have gone to school, you could've learned a trade
But you laid in the bed where the bums have laid
Now all the time you're crying that you're underpaid
It's like that (what?) and that's the way it is
Huh!"
Man, if we don't take advantage of this little thing called education, we aren't going to keep up with this moving economy and we will surely stay at the bottom. Regardless of what people think about getting a degree, that is one of the few things that will keep us recession free. Blacks have to make the move to keep up because otherwise, when those poverty reports come out, it will have Blacks with the most poverty because we aren't doing what we need to do to rise to the occasion. Yes, it is hard out there but if it was easy, there would be no reason to go for because everybody would have it. Go for your dreams. Shoot for the stars...Otherwise, people who do not have our best interest at heart will be out there, making our decisions for us...

"It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time—for we are bound by that—but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time"
- T.S Eliot

Make it happen because it starts with YOU.