Is the saying “you can take a person out the hood but you can’t take the hood out the person” true? There are many interpretations of this saying by those who either feel that a person can better themselves by pulling up their bootstraps and making it by hard work and determination or just by taking the easy way out and not do anything and try to get by in life and take their environment with them. Well a person do not have to “take” the hood with them if they don’t want to but there are those that choose to, why, some people don’t know.
Here is my personal feelings on the matter as to why this occurs, although there are some generalities and stereotypes that exist for a reason. A person is born and raised in a certain way. Throughout the formative years a person is taught to live a certain way, as well as work, act, comprehend and do things that are suppose to be normal. How a person does all of that is seen through the lens of taught behavior. Most people in a certain area tend to congregate together based on values that are shared (perceptions are changed from area to area). The ones that do not fall in line with the social norms presented to them act rebellious in nature and are quite uncommon. You would hear about it in a negative way, “Oh such and such is a very sweet boy (or girl) and he/she is hanging with the wrong crowd that is up to no good on the bad side of town” . When a person’s culture is seen as “hood culture” , and you just don’t want to go study and be successful then you are being rebellious. That person just happens to be rebelling against his or her friends and family and this is seen as not being right. I believe that a lot of this is just pure social engineering. It’s very difficult to simply ignore the formative years of your life simply because you’re in a new location. It is probably why people of one race live in an area that would either be for example predominately white or black or any other ethnicity and are sometimes referred to as “racially brainwashed”.
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