A Quote by Jada Pinkett Smith

I grew up in a neighborhood in Baltimore that was like a war zone, so I never learned to trust that there were people who could help me. — © Jada Pinkett Smith
I grew up in a neighborhood in Baltimore that was like a war zone, so I never learned to trust that there were people who could help me.
I grew up playing war. We threw dirt and rocks at each other. We'd lead attacks. We'd break up into squads. It became a neighborhood thing for a while, our neighborhood against the other neighborhood. There was always a war breaking out somewhere.
When I grew up, I lived in a neighborhood that had social clubs. It's never delightful to glamorize one's youth. My neighborhood was poor. But people felt part of the neighborhood. This was in Rockaway Beach, Long Island.
I'm a good little middle-class boy. I live in Gloucestershire or Kensington. I don't exist in the war zone, but it's certainly not far away. I grew up in an area where it is a war zone - south London.
I grew up in Baltimore, which is, you know, a city of extremes certainly, but my parents were very conservative. But they made me feel safe, and even though they were mortified at what I was doing, they encouraged it. I think because they thought, what else could I do?
I grew up in a time when I could play and bike in the neighborhood, largely because my parents assumed that if I ever needed help, I could ask a nearby adult.
In my house, education was the paramount value. And if you grew up in a neighborhood like mine, you were forced to decide early on what you stood for in life, because there were a lot of peer pressures that could take you the wrong way.
Where I grew up, it was all people who were black and Latino, people who look like me. Now I live in a neighborhood where very, very few people look like me.
When I grew up, I had everything you could ask for, and I kind of didn't appreciate it. Because it was a given for me. Everybody that grew up in my neighborhood was going to have an opportunity to go to college. I took that for granted. I always regret that.
One thing that I noticed is having met some former Taliban is even they, as children, grew up being indoctrinated. They grew up in violence. They grew up in war. They were taught to hate. They were, they grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn't learn about the outside world.
Once the war began, the government could do anything 'necessary' to win it; so it was with the 'final solution of the Jewish problem,' which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its 'necessities' gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it.
People who, like me, grew up in the 1950s and 1960s after World War II, grew up with cars.
I mean, I've always felt like a lot of people's misconceptions of me have to do with how I grew up. I grew up poor, and I grew up rich. I think some people who have never met me have a misconception that when I was living with my father when he was successful, that I was somehow adversely affected by his success or the money he had and was making at the time.
It's been rough for me trying to find my position in the struggle and where my voice is needed and helpful. You know, I grew up in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has a really rough police-brutality history. I grew up in a neighborhood where it was very clear that the police were "them" and we were "us".
I grew up playing games like 'War Zone' and the old 'Smackdown,' so I'm very excited to see myself in a game.
I was never a 'bad' kid, but I did get into minor juvenile trouble. Look, I grew up in Brooklyn. This was the '60s, and the neighborhood was rapidly changing and not without its problems. All the kids of the neighborhood 'did their thing,' breaking windows and the like. I was no different.
When I was growing up in Baltimore, the Colts were not just a team that played in the city. It was part of the city. Football players didn't make close to the money they make today and most took jobs in the off-season. Some were mechanics, others worked at furniture stores, and you could find them drinking at a neighborhood watering hole.
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