Oakland has been put on blast again, but the saddest part of such a dishonor is that many view it as quite the opposite- as an honor- including myself sometimes. We have some obsession with our hardness. Find some depressing pride in our pain. Look to the guns and roses as badges of honor. In Oakland we determine our level of neighborhood pride on the number of street shrines, vigils and RIP hoodies, the number of blockheads huggin heat in winter and the number of scrapers smashing down the ave with 12s in trunks and turfs out windows.
There is a reason why folks rep Bushrod and not Rockridge despite their close proximity. Rest assured if the ladder was known as The Rock due to its violence, drug dealing and skyrocketing murder rate, more young folks would cop to living there. The saddest part is that no one should ever feel ashamed to grow up in a good neighborhood. It’s just our Oakland state of mind that twists us. Creates a new rubric. Redefines bad as good and worthy.
To me the ideal would be to determine our level of pride based on our positive control of the block. At present we think we run the street, but standing on a corner and holding no one accountable to any standard of behavior is not control. We find some distorted sense of power in swallowing information, testimonies and killers and then raising our families on the same soiled soils. Do we not value our families? In the words of Thizz Ent’s Vellquan, “If we run the block, how come it ain’t safe for our kids?” Do we really value our veneers of hardness over the well being of our children? Is that the legacy we want Oakland to carry forward into the future?
Outside of Oakland we wear these crime rates and the reputation that precede it as some sort of passport of authenticity. Like can’t no hood in the world touch us, cuz we were born and raised in The Town. That allure is why you meet folks everywhere you go who say they’re from Oakland when they are in fact from Santa Rosa, Pleasanton, Piedmont or Moraga. Yes, they could just be mentioning Oakland thinking that the person they’re talking to won’t know of the suburb they hail from, but San Francisco is a better choice for that endeavor. Lets face it; people want to be from Oakland, but too often it’s for all the wrong reasons. It’s for the authenticity, the struggle, the beauty of the beast, the positives of the negatives that us Oakland natives tend to wax poetic about.
Maybe it’s the allure of coming from nothing- even if that shoe doesn’t fit us. So young Oakland too often values rags over riches, the hood-life over the good-life, the gutter over butter. Its not that Oakland isn’t a rough city, it’s that we too often appropriate its hood grandeur to inflate our egos. We could diffuse people’s negative assumptions when they hear we are from Oakland, but all too often we let it ride or fan the flames.
I’m not saying Oakland isn’t worth repping, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I am one of the most Oakland-centric cats you’ll meet, I’m just saying that Oakland has positives to trumpet too.
We could talk about the diverse meccas these avenues are on summer afternoons, the aroma of great food that drifts from East Oakland’s taco trucks, the North’s gourmet ghettos, or Uptown’s culinary rebirth. We could turn folks on to our local art scene, our activism, our revolutionary history, the Raider Nation, the lake, Fairyland our great park system, even scraper bikes. Why do we see the horrors of our national crime rankings as some form of validation? The aforementioned positives have more to do with Oakland being the wonderful place it is, than our high murder rate and rise in violent crime.
Granted, the squalor and the splendor are all part of Oakland, but we need to understand that being the 5th worst city in a national crime study is not an honor. It may not be wholly accurate, but we all know Oakland ain’t exactly Disneyland. I for one will pledge to voice the positive in addition to documenting the negative. I will be honest about the struggle but won’t romanticize it. I will try to make my block reputable by making it safe and sturdy and organize my neighbors to be close and cohesive.
I love Oakland, and soon I hope to love it for all the right reasons. I have attached a recording of a poem I wrote a few years back touching upon some of these issues.
