5 Feet of Fury

‘A black female friend and I once discussed how our historically unemployed (lazy) relatives often claimed that we were rich simply because we had things that they did not’

Actual black woman Patricia L. Dickson pens an EPIC MUST-READ:

A female relative of mine came to live with me for a short time. One day when I came home from work, she asked me where everyone in the neighborhood was. She said that during the day, she would go outdoors looking for someone to talk to and no one was around.

I told her that they were at work, and I asked her how she thought the neighbors could pay for their homes if they did not go to work (just as I was going to work every day). She looked at me with a confused look on her face.

Up until that point (she was nearly sixty years old), she had lived in neighborhoods where everyone (including her) received some kind of government check and therefore did not work. She always had someone to shuck and jive with because everyone was at home all day long. She told me that she was bored living in my (middleclass working) neighborhood.