Finding a job in PONTIAC

I remember there was a time we had big name stores in the city.  There were McDonald's, Burger Kings and  k-Mart that sat right in the heart of the city.  There was a striving business sector right in this city.  So what happen?  Crack that's what happened!  Don't get me wrong, if you want to use drugs...Do you, Boo-Boo.  I'm just saying pay for it with your own money, and don't steal from your job to get high.  Black folk always had the feeling that White folk owe them something, and that a company is so big and rich that they can afford a couple of hundred dollars a week.  To all the folk working them drive-thru windows in our neighboring cities and some here in the city...I see you.  I know you ain't ringing up half those orders that come through that drive-thru.  You might not have a GED, but you know how much a Whopper combo and a pie cost off the top of your head.
I use to be you, believe me.  Me and my friends were experts at counting an order down to the very last penny.  This is the problem, and we need to begin to realize.  Because those people are rich they don't owe you anything and they don't have to pay for your habit.  When it comes time to cut a store or franchise, they will pick the one in the ghetto first.  My mind is still puzzled by how that Popeyes on East Blvd. (Martin Luther King) has stayed open as long as it has.  The food make you sick, if you get dark meat.  Looking at the staff, I know they are robbing them blind.  What's up with them staying open...Hit me up with the answer; please!!!
Don't get me wrong, but White folk steal more than Black folk.  The only thing is that they get away with it.  Most of them don't care about us, and only hold on to those of us who wrap our fingers around their neck until they can't breathe.  That means those of us who are just as dirty, if not dirtier than them.  At Sears, their are Black folk who have been stealing out of there for 20 years.  That let's you know that at one time that was a booming enterprise of expertise in stealing.  They would pull big moving trucks up to the pick-up door and load it with all kinds of electronics and major appliances.  This is the same group hooked into the Pontiac Police, Waterford Police and Oakland County Sheriff's Department.  It was a ring of them that traveled up North and to Canada at one point selling their stolen goods.  Back in 1996, a woman who worked there husband opened a small Sears Hardware Store, I believe that's the place they were selling most of the goods. When in the mood though, they mostly hit trade shows and flea markets.  One of the cities biggest sports reporters is in up to his neck.  The last time I was out there, nothing had changed...He had on his gloves in the stock room getting his goods together in order to steal them.  None of it is his to take, but I believe it's an addiction that he can't get control of.  Like drug dealers it becomes a lifestyle and you develop a comradary with the men and women you are stealing with.
Pontiac suffers from the same type of addiction...In my opinion it lacks luster and intelligence, but it's still a complex and crooked organization.  Once drugs became a huge issue and those who use crack there is just a certain amount of time you can hold of that craving.  It's mental and getting that next hit is crucial to your mind "getting right".  If your working, you see your job as one big rock that you are ready to sell and smoke up!  That's just the jest of it.  The City of Pontiac is full of it, and people who forget that not only do the people you hire have to get high and steal, but they also have to be capable of doing the job at hand.  Since the people doing th jobs here were friends and relatives of the administration, their girlfriends and smoking buddies the city suffered for a lack of expertise.
What we fail to realize is that we are Black.  We get the short end of every stick and therefore, should strive to be better.  When the bottom drops out of the economy, we feel it first.  When the jobs must be cut, we are cut first.  We must understand that and do better.  K-Mart moved out of Pontiac in a swift motion, stayed open in Waterford and opened a store in Bloomfield Hills.  They didn't want to give us the pleasure of even stealing from them and having the convience of shopping in a store close to home.  They are stealing from K-Mart in Waterford and in Bloomfield Hills, but they make us have to drive to get to them now.  Why?  They at least have the protection of a police department that will care if they are robbed or under attack.  Pontiac Police with all their "ghetto ways" didn't care.  All the snitches probably gave them half of their take or was stealing to sell to them.
When the Wal-Mart was up on the hill a block from Pontiac it got robbed.  I heard that it was a bunch of guys who had been fired there a few weeks back.  they knew the layout and the protocol.  It was a piece of cake all they had to do is get the block and a half into Pontiac, before Auburn Hills Police got there.  That was easy!  *SMH*
Now we have to travel eight miles up the road to Rochester Hills, and they didn't want us out there.  We don't know how to act, and look scary to them.  I love my people, but if I was a White person and saw somebody walking towards me with a big blond ponytail and a scarf wrapped around my head, pants too small, stomach hanging out with a glitter coat that looks like you picked it up off the floor just as you walked out the door; I would be scared of you, too.  I know who you are and I know where you are coming from and although I don't agree, I feel you!  Honestly, I really do, because I grew up with people like you.  Those White folk out there have not, however, and find you strange to look at.
Assimilation is the point I think I'm trying to make.  People are most comfortable around them who are like them.  Likewise, they want to help their own race and do not think that it is their job to except those who aren't like them.  They feel that those people should make a place for themselves, around people like them and not muddle up the world with their finny hair and sparkling jewelery.  They are wrong, but this is how they feel.  If the economy is bad, why would they step outside of themselves and give a job to people who don't look like them, have anything in common with them and who they are afraid will get angry and beat them half to death.  Why?  They won't and they don't.
These are the reasons we don't don't have any jobs.  People, White people live on a code and this code is to stay 100% with each other.  This way they have a greater chance at preserving their way of life.  Let the Blacks in and it all goes to hell in their opinion.  They will take care of one another even when they are stealing from them.  Up until it gets to be too much to handle like at Sears.  Although some of the petty people are still holding on to whatever they can get their hands on.  They won't do that for us and when tough times like these come along, we are the first to feel the crunch and the last to feel the results of the recovery.  That's why in this city we have to have rent control, support local businesses, clean up our yards and fix up our homes and stop all the stealing and be able to produce something other than a bunch of trouble.  Seem as if we care for ourselves so that other can care for us.  Love our children and see that they are getting a sound education and not just send them to school for a babysitter or to get a much needed break.  Attend to the things that are under your area of control.  that includes your family, your home, your city and most importantly yourself.  It might not be able to get you a job with the people who come here and steal from us and live elsewhere.  That includes our fire and police officers.
But always remember that god is watching and he sees all of your efforts, because he helps those who help themselves.  That doesn't include just you, but Blacks in America as a whole.  You are just a part of a puzzle larger than you could ever imagine.  You fit in it perfectly when you work towards good and not evil.  We aren't worse than them, and we aren't lower than the Hispanic community, but they except them before they do us.  Why?  Work ethic, a raw hunger and complexion.  We have to strive not to be lighter, but better.  By the mid 2050's they will be the minority, but that will not mean they will be out of power.  South Africa showed us that.  If they continue to break our spirit and we continue to fall victim to ignorance, drugs and sin they will control us, and the Asian and Hispanic sectors of society will pass us in riches.  Do you want that?  Work on doing the right thing...I'll be over here working on a whole other race of people...