AWAKENING ADOS | SHE CALLS HERSELF BLACK
I grew up in New Brunswick, NJ, during a time when our community was not a melting pot—it was a mix of Black and white families with a few Hispanic families sprinkled in between. The only familiarity I had with Asians came from news stories about Vietnam. As I got older, I noticed that fewer and fewer white families remained in our neighborhood. Our home was a three-story apartment building that stretched half a block, with three sets of apartments on each side. It was a close-knit community, but things began to change when I was around nine or ten years old.
Where I grew up
One Fourth of July night, one of my childhood friends’ father lost control and violently attacked the father of the last remaining white family in our neighborhood. I remember that night so clearly because the celebration turned into a nightmare. The dark sky was lit by fireworks and police lights, and the air was filled with the sounds of explosions and sirens. That night marked a significant turning point for our community. The white family, understandably shaken, moved out shortly after. Although the father survived, the fear of living in a place where they could be attacked so unexpectedly was too much for them to bear. What happened to the man who attacked him remains unknown—I never saw him again, and his family remained silent.
As I grew up, I watched the neighborhood evolve—an evolution that meant different things for different people. What once signified new beginnings turned into old stories, and the composition of the community shifted from Black and white to predominantly Black, eventually becoming a mix of Black, Hispanic, African, and Caribbean families. Looking back, I realize that my generation represents a shift from being solely defined by our ADOS roots to embracing a broader American identity.
My generation grew up witnessing the impact of drug abuse on everyone in some way. It could be your mother, father, uncle, or that woman who sat in the dark corner of The Dog House, nodding off from another heroin binge. Prison and prison visits became part of our world—whether it was the anxious anticipation of being scrutinized by guards, deciding whether to wear shoelaces, stretch pants, or long sleeves, or enduring the indignity of pat-downs, metal detectors, and sitting in a gym with strangers, all waiting for a glimpse of a loved one who was locked away. This was our reality.
The ADOS community consists of individuals born in America long before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This Act, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, fundamentally changed U.S. immigration policy by eliminating the quota system that heavily favored European immigrants. This shift opened the door to a significant increase in Black immigrants from non-European countries, including African and Caribbean nations.
The conflation of ADOS with Black immigrants is a significant mistake made by U.S. policymakers, one that has been strategically exploited by immigrant groups who benefit from policies meant to address the historical injustices faced by ADOS. The legacy of an African who immigrated to this country does not align with the legacy of an American Black descendant of slaves. Our history can be traced back to slavery and includes Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, the herion and crack epidemic, and mass incarceration. We are the descendants of severed roots, cut off and replanted on foreign soil. My generation represents the last fruits of a lineage of individuals who were treated as animals by those who called themselves believers in God. We represent the darkness that stepped into the light. We represent the ADOS community, but this generation is starting to fade.
For far too many within the ADOS community, subsidized housing and Section 8 have become a generational way of life, passed down from mothers to daughters like an inheritance of despair. Mothers raise their children in the same cramped 2-3 bedroom apartments where they themselves grew up, navigating the dehumanizing gauntlet of disinterested and overwhelmed bureaucrats. This persistent cycle stifles upward mobility, as limited access to quality education, healthcare, and job opportunities keeps families trapped in poverty. In this environment, young men, seeing no viable paths to success, often turn to drug dealing and street violence as their only means of survival. The tragic irony is that they end up selling poison to their own community, deepening the very wounds they seek to escape. Meanwhile, women are forced to depend on a system that keeps them imprisoned and impoverished.
The ongoing YSL trial exemplifies what happens when systemic neglect and a lack of opportunity lead young Black men to seek out criminal enterprises as their only escape from the cycle of poverty. The flashy image of the rap industry, often intertwined with criminal activity, becomes a lure for those who feel they have no other options. Yet, as we see in the trial, the consequences are devastating: incarceration can rob twenty-eight black men of their freedom because an American black DA wants to prover herself to be tough on crime. The unjust incarceration of these men threatens to destroy their futures and could potentially leave another generation of children growing up without fathers, further entrenching the cycle of poverty and despair.
This cycle is exacerbated by Democratic policies that, while well-intentioned, have too often focused on providing just enough to get by rather than truly empowering the ADOS community to break free from systemic poverty. Policies that perpetuate reliance on government assistance without addressing the root causes of economic disenfranchisement have left many in the ADOS community feeling abandoned, with few viable avenues for genuine advancement.
There is currently a clarion call that the Democratic Party and its elite supporters are missing, and it has become necessary as the ADOS community assimilates. Clearly, the transition of my generation won’t happen overnight. It’s akin to the shift from Moses to Joshua; our generation has grown up and is starting to pass the baton to the next, but not too hastily. Before our legacy fades, the ADOS community is realizing that we don’t want our heritage to endure the same struggles our ancestors faced.
What is obvious about the ADOS community is that we have evolved, changed direction, fought, regrouped, but we have won and done these things—despite obstacles. If we consider the way American Blacks have dominated in entertainment, education, and sports, and although less obvious, American Blacks have excelled even in corporate America despite known and unknown challenges. It’s clear we've made significant strides. However, we have often been stagnated, and our economic growth has been stunted as if our ankles are shackled, leaving us clamoring for more handouts. There’s nothing inherently wrong with receiving assistance, but when your mindset is, "Why work—it’s easier to go down to a shabby government facility once a year and get the benefits you need for free. So what if the people are nasty and disrespectful— the monthly stipend, the food stamps, the free housing, and medical care is all that matters.
It’s as simple as wasting a single day of irritation for a year’s worth of getting by. While we all may need help at times, a handout is no longer beneficial if it comes at the cost of our own quest for self-preservation. In that case, a handout becomes a stumbling block.
Still, 50 years later, many refuse to see the impact these types of policies have had on our community. The Democratic Party is once again asking the ADOS community to support them, offering the continuation of rental housing, access to abortions, and the reduction of prescription drug costs—all of which our community is told we need to survive. They encourage abortions, Food Stamps, and taking away guns from our sons.
Yet, the conversation about reparations and the theft that has stolen away our legacy is conspicuously absent. Instead, the discussion of systemic racism is somehow reserved for the Republican community.
For the last thirty years, my community has voted for Democrats. We got this way because of all the sentiment following JFK’s death and the Civil Rights Movement. A documentary about JFK, MLK, and Robert Kennedy was played on television every year that I can remember growing up in the '70s. I remember my mother telling the stories of the days John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated. Every time she’d say, “Those were sad times.” I remember men going to Vietnam as a regular norm. I remember my uncles going into the military in blue uniforms, only to return home addicted and dejected, wearing green jumpers.
The idea that Kamala Harris emerges from our community is a blatant, deceptive lie. Harris, along with other American Blacks like Rich Smiley and Roland Martin, is misappropriating the ADOS community. Her experience was not like mine. Heck, I would have loved to make clay pots as a child or travel the world as a young lady, but instead, I was in America fighting the cycle of oppression. Harris’s stories of rags to riches, working at McDonald’s while in college, and attending a lowly HBCU don’t resonate with my own. Her exploitation of our truth disregards what women like myself endured—growing up poor, eating sugar sandwiches, and standing in line for cans of peanut butter and blocks of cheese. Yet Kamala Harris lies and pretends that was her life.
Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes in life, you are forced to lie—but lying for votes is just plain insulting. The Democrats created the momentum in 2005-2006 to get President Obama elected in 2008. When President Obama spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the ADOS community saw one of our own on the world stage, assuming the highest position. He may not have been ADOS, but he had an ADOS wife, and that was close enough—or so we thought.
Hope and change for the American Black community rolled Obama into the White House—but when he got there, he gave us free cellphones, Obamacare complete with a $75 healthcare fee if you refused to sign up—this was later overturned by the Supreme Court, as how are you going to charge the poorest in the community for not signing up for a benefit?—but he tried it.
For more than fifty years, I can attest that the Democratic Party has begged and pleaded for the ADOS community to follow them. And like pigs headed for the slaughter, we followed along, hoping we’d find that elusive path to justice and righteousness. They threw crumbs in the form of free housing, food stamps, healthcare clinics, and the promise of education. In return, our reward has been Section 8 or USDA housing in apartment complexes that were once pristine but have since deteriorated. Planned Parenthood clinics have sprouted up to address sexual diseases and offer abortions, effectively terminating our babies and our legacy.
These are the same policies Kamala Harris touts as she talks about making America affordable for the middle class by going after corporations that practice price gouging. She proclaims that she’s done it before, citing a lawsuit she co-sponsored with other governors to target companies inflating prices on consumer goods like televisions. Now, we’re supposed to ignore her other policies and focus on the one that claims to control pricing for the middle-class.
American Blacks continue to align with a party whose only priority is keeping just enough of us in allegiance for voting day. In exchange, the Black community supports a platform whose highest hope and only economic policy they can run on is reproductive health—convincing our community that we don’t need reparations because we have the right to terminate our own legacy in exchange for the American dream.
It’s a sad state of affairs that many American Blacks remain unaware of what’s happening in our community, even when it’s right before our eyes. The prevalence of a black markets driven by sex, drugs, and violence has become so ingrained that it’s difficult to imagine a world without those things—all a direct result of oppressive Democratic policies. As we approach the Democratic National Convention, the party will gather en masse to persuade the ADOS community to rally behind Kamala Harris, despite the fact that the same policies she champions continue to devastate our communities all because she calls herself “black.”
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