I read somewhere…oh yeah on myspace that you know it’s true love when “it’s complicated”. Compton IS a complicated city. I’m sure you’ve heard of it?
Various stories, news reports flashed on television, interwoven with the lyrics of gansta rappers like EZ-E, Dr. Dre and The Game. Surely you’ve bobbed your head to their beats? The tales these rappers and news reports tell are not make-believe stories but they make folks believe what’s only half true and the other half folks fabricate on their own cause folks just don’t know no betta'.
COMPTON!
Did your mind conjure up something all tingly and California-sun warm? There are tales that people tell tales I have to hear whether I’m checking in at a small inn in Santa Fe, New Mexico or taking a tour through the Polynesian Cultural Center in Oahu, Hawaii. I hear the tales of my city. “Is it as bad as they say,” asks the Miami transplant now residing in a slower paced Santa Fe and working in Guest Services at the small inn. He hands me the key to my room I give him a blank stare. “Compton?” He says as he points at the address on my driver’s license when I don’t answer his question. I didn’t know what to say. I was dumbstruck and got doubly-dumbstruck cause I can’t believe this question still dumbstruck me. I hear it all the time.
Cut.
Flash forward a few months after New Mexico.
Scene: the beautiful island of Ohau:
Compton. It’s the place where drive-bys occur, where every one of my middle school years is marked with memories of racial riots among Black and Latino Compton High youth trying to annihilate each other. Black on brown violence, no title on the line, no million dollar award- shit not even the pride of bragging rights. Just plain ignorance-laden poverty-driven violence. I never understood why they did it nor how my sisters, all three of them, managed to study in those conditions. I knew I didn’t want to go through it and I fled, found a different rout towards my high school dimploma. On a big bumble bee of a bus that chauffeured my ass to C.A.M.S (the California Academy of Mathematics and Science).
“What do you mean?” I asked in my most mean-mugging face.
“Well, you know, you live in Compton and, you know, there’s a lot of gang ware fare there.”
“Oh, I said. Yeah I hear you but my vest is in the cleaners today and my glock is in the shop.” I’ll spare you the details of how the rest of the conversation went down, just know that no, he didn’t get a beat down just an angry lecture. Compton = gangs? I’ll admit to that but there’s so much more. There is also poverty and underserved communities. As I mentioned before I attended high school at C.A.M.S, which by the way, Los Angeles Magazine ranked as the 4th best high school in Los Angeles this year. I would say 95% of the students who attended got bused in from their respective districts and all the students were at the top of their class in their respective middle school. I rode on the Compton and South L.A. bus. Just to tell you, in order to remain a student at C.A.M.S you had to maintain a certain GPA which I don’t recall at the moment nor could I find said information on their website. If you didn’t maintain that GPA then you were placed on academic probation. My first semester, which also happened to be the first semester ever at C.A.M.S, was the school's first semester and practically everyone from the Compton/ South LA bus was placed on academic probation and required to take a tutoring class, which we all affectionately called the “dummy class”. I think the administration was surprised but obviously ready and willing to address the problem. This was my first experience seeing the inequality in the quality of education I received in Compton and what other students in other districts like Palos Verdes, Long Beach, Torrance etc. had received. I was one of the lucky ones though because I had been tracked as a gifted and talented student, which meant I got the opportunity to learn from the best teachers at my Compton schools.
Compton. The Williams sisters first learned their game here, at the imperial tennis courts to be exact. But not even their fame and winnings would spare them from later learning that their sister, Yutende Price, got shot down in a drive by. Compton. It’s quite a distance from here to Beijing, China the destination of the 2008 Olympics where Tayshaun Prince and Lisa Leslie got their necks looped with gold medals for being the best basketball team in the world. For Lisa this would be her fourth, Mr. Prince is also a member of the 2004-05 NBA championship team the Detroit Pistons.
Compton home to 100,000 inhabitants 51% of those are Latinos, no longer a chocolate city. But the change in racial composition is not the only change that Compton has undergone. After receiving a State Enterprise Zone program, Compton has experienced a lot of business and industrial expansion (we got our own Best Buy and a Magic Johnson 24hr Fitness, ya’ll!) new houses have been built AND a new senior center is in the works. My city even has it’s own district comprised of 24 elementary schools, eight middle schools, three high schools, and one adult school, which also serves as an alternative school. The district maintains five alternative learning schools unfortunately our schools have not yet reaped the benefits of the State Enterprise Zone program at least not from what I’ve seen and read in the papers. The sad thing, I would say downright heartbreaking thing, is that across the nation, the world, things are so financially hurting that a few shops at Compton’s new shopping plaza have already closed down. We’ll see if Best Buy is a best bet in this city at this time.
As far as I can remember the educational system in Compton has always left one wanting more. Sadly enough in 1993, my junior year of high school, Compton Unified got taken over by the California Department of Education due to gross, funky ass mismanagement of the dirty presidents. In 2004 Compton Community College lost it’s accreditation again for mismanagement and fraud. FUCK people, when can we stop fucking ourselves over?
I want to say that I am leaving but I’m already gone. Writing from my new place, new home full of pine smell and homie feel. But still want to share what I felt as I arrived to here.
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Part of me is afraid to leave mostly because I have to change my route to achieving my dream, changes and very unexpected surprises and leaps in personality. Just another way of saying that I feel like I’ve grown. It’s not so much just the moving part, the literal move from one space to the other, I feel that I’m trying to be present and aware of her…my love. Give a relationship 5 years, that’s sort of like the rule of thumb, huh? I didn’t really believe it until that day when I heard it twice in one day. It was one of many things that I experienced in 1 day- it was a deja vou day, I suppose.
I heard that twice in one day and once from my own mouth. So I can’t stay in one place, marry my dreams to a site. They come with me- they are my part; a part of me. I say this as I’ve packed up most of my shit in preparation to bounce from the CPT. I want to work with the youth here, in this city, I want to have the talented ones, the expressive ones, the accomplished to the 10th degree, the motivated one. Yes it sounds elitist but the truth is that they can all be…
Accomplished, expressive, talented, motivated
I just want to say that it’s about over coming challenges. Hopefully the students
Will see it too
It must be true. I have a riddle for you…
“Cual de los dos amantes sufre mas pena? El que se va o el que se queda
Answer: El que se queda, se queda llorando
Y el que se va, se va suspirando.”
