The Marathon Continues...

Dedicated to Ermias Asghedom “Nipsey Hussle”. Recently I was thinking about how many black men strive to be rappers and athletes. If you have the talent and its something you dream about then by all means go for it. But I feel that we have enough athletes and rappers within our community as black people. I don’t think we have enough of us in other careers.

Nipsey Hussle saw hope in where he came from and knew that he could rise above it all. He made it out as a rapper but knew there was more to him than just that. He knew his purpose was to help his community and the youth to be more than their environment. He wanted his community to see that they are capable of so much more if they held each other up instead of tearing each other down. You could see how much he loved his people and the impact he had on so many lives. His passing hurt a lot of communities like his own because we saw the love he had for his people. He just wanted us to see what he saw. He wanted to educate us on how to invest and how we can help our own communities.

In 2017 for the #WeNeedMore campaign, Lebron James said on his Instagram post “We don’t need more LeBron’s, we need more physical therapists, scientists, police officers, teachers, doctors, professors, physicists, computer engineers, etc!! I want every kid to know there is absolutely NO LIMIT to what you can be. Your dreams are there for you to EARN. The teacher/accountant/scientist/dr/etc is just as talented as any athlete, if not more.” I was happy that someone like Lebron was speaking on this because he is such a big influence on young kids that look like him.

I do understand that some people in our community may feel that’s it’s the only way out because of the circumstances a lot of them grew up in. They think that it may be the answer to take care of their families and have an easier and better chance at life. That may be the case a lot of the times, and you’ll hear certain athletes say they don’t want their kids playing sports because for them sports was their only way to get out the ‘hood” but for their children the educational obstacles are not the same. Their children attend schools that have better curriculums and programs, and technology and tools than they had. Rappers will say they just rapped to make it out, which was their way of hustling to create a better future for their kids and families because of the lack of resources they had when they were growing up.

In the generation I’m growing up in I don’t think being an athlete and rapping is the easy way out in most cases. Some of us do have the technology in our schools and resources to do more. We have an opportunity to add color to those other fields of work. Like being a doctor, lawyer, business owner, engineers, the list goes on. You can be the one behind the scenes helping that artist or athlete. We need to be in other fields other than entertainment. The easy way out may be what you’re talented at and possibly your gift. Work hard to find your purpose in the world. Expand your horizons beyond what you think you are capable of because we are capable of so much more than we think.

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