A Quote by Tyler Perry
I was a very poor young black boy in New Orleans, just a face without a name, swimming in a sea of poverty trying to survive.
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I took many trips down to New Orleans trying to experience the city as deeply as possible. I'm from Detroit so New Orleans seemed very exotic to me.
There's also the tradition of voodoo, the Haitian magic arts, in New Orleans. And because New Orleans is below sea level, when they bury people in New Orleans, it's mostly above ground. So you have this idea that the spirits are more accessible and can access you more easily because they're not even buried.
Poverty is everyone's problem. It cuts across any line you can name: age, race, social, geographic or religious. Whether you are black or white; rich, middle-class or poor, we are ALL touched by poverty.
Economic justice is not just something blacks are crying out for; whites are desperate for it, too. But in the public imagination, the face of poverty is black. In all actuality, the face of poverty is white.
There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun, and it's been the ruin of many a poor boy and God I know I'm one.
When we were very, very young, I was actually better than Cate was at swimming, and I was not very humble and thought I was the greatest thing ever and rubbed it in her face a bit, and then she started trying really hard and started beating me.
The fact that more than half of the young black men in any large American city are currently under the control of the criminal justice system (or saddled with criminal records) is not - as many argue - just a symptom of poverty or poor choices, but rather evidence of a new racial caste system at work.
When I got to college, the fake ID thing wasn't that important, since pretty much everyone could get away with drinking in New Orleans. But the drugs, well, that was a different story altogether, because drugs are every bit as illegal in New Orleans as anywhere else--at least, if you're black and poor, and have the misfortune of doing your drugs somewhere other than the dorms at Tulane University. But if you are lucky enough to be living at Tulane, which is a pretty white place, especially contrasted with the city where it's located, which is 65 percent black, then you are absolutely set.
Part of what I am dealing with, with this blackness, is asking the question, "Where are those black people, who are as dark as the description of a young black boy that Solomon Northup gives in 12 Years A Slave?" He describes the young black 14-year-old boy as "blacker than any crow." You have to question if he is using that metaphorically or as a descriptive?
Yes, you have people shouting racist abuse and throwing bananas on the field, and there are issues regarding the number of black coaches and managers in the game, but which other industry allows a young black boy the exact same opportunity as a young white boy?
It's shocking to me still, that children - just because of where they're born - are born into a life of extreme poverty and hunger. Humans, we can survive without a lot of luxuries we are lucky to live with. But the thing we need most is healthy food and clean water. Without that we can't survive and we can't thrive.
I'd advise you to visit New Orleans before you pass away. I really would. Because if you die without seeing New Orleans, you wasted half your life.
One of the most special things about the city of New Orleans is how diverse a people we really are. There's been a new generation of individuals that have all grown up together, so I don't really see myself as a White mayor. I've never seen New Orleans as a Black city.
When you're young, you don't really know quite what you're aiming at. You're very impulsive and acting on impulse, which is very important and valuable. But you're kind of swimming in a blind sea. When you get older, you have more of a sense of direction.
The gateway to freedom...was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'.
New Orleans reminds me of Romania because New Orleans is very corrupt politically.
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