Bamboozled.

It has come to my conclusion that my people have been bamboozled.Apparently, we have forgotten the value of an education, the importance of a culture and the fragileness of life. We have been bamboozled not by "the white man" any longer, but by each other. We fool each other into thinking its "cool" to skip school and sleep around,canonize those who wear the trendiest clothes and humiliate those who don't. There was a time when it was beautiful to be black and everyday we were reminded not only in home but out of home by our peers, not everything was perfect but it worked and there was a sense of purpose in the black community. We were happy with our kinky,curly,and wavy hair and we exalted each other because of the amount of melanin in our skin. But now its gone, we have been tricked by the TV screens,magazines, and each other about what is beautiful. What happened to our culture? We fool each other into thinking its cool to skip school and just "kick it". Furthermore,some of our black educators have no faith in our students and honestly it is so sad to know that they have set the standards so low and just wait for time to pass to move on the next group of children. Sometimes I wonder, do these children think the civil rights movement never happened? Do they think that the enslavement of our ancestors was a mythological story to get them appreciate their lives? Do they not understand that people have been hung and killed,raped,spat upon,talked down to ,tortured and treated as if they are useless,soulless, bodies all because they felt they had something to stand up for. They believed that education and life should be equal to all. We must have forgotten that education is more than just school but what we learn throughout our lives. Have we done so many useless things in our life that has caused us to learn nothing? What happened to our education? We've lost our sense of togetherness, we let the small things bother us and we hold onto tho emotions. We taint our bodies when we feel anger and revenge. We think confrontation is the answer and forget that death can happen to anyone. We fight without thinking and shoot without caring. A wise preacher told me "death has no age barrier". Have we forgotten how fragile life is? It saddens me to say that answer to all of these questions are the same in some type of way. We have been bamboozled by each other. We follow each others footsteps and sadly enough some of paths are either graveyards or jail.My people, not all but some, have bamboozled by each other.