Second Hand Smoke

You see that? More than likely you don't see the remnants of smoke lingering in the air as you walk to your car, stand on the corner, or maybe even walk into a room in your house after a smoker has been present. Do you smell it? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Either way, chances are at some point you inhale secondary smoke. If you're a nonsmoker although it may be irritating, you somehow get used to it.

Cancer seems to be spreading like wildfire. However, because many smokers could care less, innocent bystanders suffer harsher consequences. According to an ABC news study, second hand smoke is just as dangerous smoking, and sometimes even more so. Secondhand smoke is "classified as a known carcinogen, (Cancer causing agent)," as it contains 4,000 chemical compounds, with more than 60 of which are known or suspected of causing cancer.

This study reminds me of many people of this generation in our communities. Sometimes I wonder how we got into the mind state in which we are. I was surprised to find out on a recent date that a young black, college-educated, Master's degree holding 29-year old woman knew very little about Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, or the Civil Rights Movement.

Going a bit further, I am continuously astonished and amazed at some of our brothers who do not know these things, but also have absolutely no goals in life, end up on the corners selling drugs, going to jail, or barely making a living on nearly minimum wage job while making as many babies as they can. I wonder how it is possible that a fine young lady could continuously be attracted to that type of brother as well. I also wonder what happened to the music I listened to as a child and still love as an adult. I am not only speaking of hip-hop, but just urban music, soul music. Why is it that every song is about the same thing: sex, money, and violence? What happened? I'll tell you what happened. It’s something I see as another form of second hand smoke.

The same way a smoker nonchalantly puffs smoke in the air around you as if it's OK, we've had a generation of parents that didn't teach their kids anything of worth after they came home from school. These parents just blew their kids a lot of hot air that got them nowhere.

Therefore, if all the public school system taught our children about Black history were a few days of Martin Luther King, that’s all that our children grew up knowing about their own history. Some of them barely even got that...very little about Africa, little to nothing about any controversial black figures like Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and Nat Turner, nothing at all about Black Wall Street and the disaster of what really took place in the 1920’s in Tulsa OK. Like Malcolm X said in the 60's, "if you grow up thinking your people haven't done anything, you will have no desire to be anything."

As a result, what happened then and now is the kids come home and are raised by reality TV, music videos, and whatever is going on in their neighborhoods along with the little they get from their parent or parents, directly or indirectly. Many of these same parents had them as teenagers, drank liquor in front of them, used all types of profanity, ran the streets at night, had numerous children out of wedlock, used drugs, sold drugs, and only went to church on Easter Sunday, if then.

This is how many children are raised. This is what's considered normal living in their eyes; therefore, this is considered right and normal. Some even managed to make all A's and B's in school. Many of those end up being what I call a smart dummy because they have book sense, but still lack the moral training.

This generation of children grew up with no guidance, listening to nonsense on the radio and watching nonsense in videos. Therefore, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, John Coltrane, and Run DMC not only make no sense to them, but they also are seen as corny.

This generation has been clouded by second hand smoke.

Researchers have found that continine, a by-product of nicotine found in tobacco smoke, can be found in higher amounts in the bloodstream of nonsmokers than smokers, giving them a greater risk of heart attacks.

In my opinion, we now have a generation that has ignorance pumping through their veins. They don't know a number of these things I mentioned and have no desire to know. Why should they? In their everyday living, it doesn't seem to be needed. So the cycle continues. Each generation suffers a little more than the previous because they grow up in even more oblivion than the last.

In both cases, in the long run, our communities really suffer from such second hand smoke/ignorance.

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