Neighborhood Violence Quotes

When people look at Bermuda, they see the beautiful beaches, the golf courses, the fishing, and that's what they should see. That's Bermuda. What they don't see is the almost predominant black-on-black violence that is unfortunately pervasive throughout the local neighborhoods.

I grew up in New York, in a rough neighborhood where our biggest concern was not getting beat up. I was always far from the center of the Big Apple.

I was born in West Baltimore, lived in a situation in which violence was everywhere.

Growing up in Flint, Michigan, I saw so many kids from my school end up in jail or unemployed, and gangs would hang out and cause trouble in my neighborhood. I had to learn how to protect myself, because it didn't feel like anyone else was protecting me.

Faced with the way the system does you in the 'hood sometimes, if you don't literally get out, your chances are slim. You'll definitely die mentally. You'll pretty much die physically.

Where I come from, once word gets out that you've cooperated with the police, that only makes you a bigger target of criminal violence. That is a dark reality in so many neighborhoods like mine across America. I'm not saying its right, but it's reality.

When you get frisked by the police at the age of 10, and they empty your schoolbag out in the street and kick your books around and calling you names because of where you live, you just get an anger towards everyone who is outside of your neighborhood.

I'm an only child and grew up in a bad neighborhood. My parents weren't well-off, but they would save up to get me video games. Games were something I did because I couldn't really go outside where bad things were going on.

It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.

I wasn't a bad kid. I was a good kid. But I had gotten in a lot of fights 'cause in the neighborhood I grew up in, that wasn't equated with bad behavior almost. I mean, we'd fought like it was another game. 'You wanna play stick ball today?' 'Nah, let's go fight.'

My own perception of cops was that they came into your neighborhood, they roughed up people that you loved for no reason and took them away. As a child you saw that.

My childhood was pretty colorful; I like to use the word turbulent. But it was a great time to grow up, the '70s and '80s in Brooklyn, East Flatbush. It was culturally diverse: You had Italian culture, American culture, the Caribbean West Indian culture, the Hasidic Jewish culture. Everything was kind of like right there in your face. A lot of violence, you know, especially toward the '80s the neighborhood got really violent, but it made me who I am, it made me strong.

I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.

I grew up in a tough neighborhood where a lot of kids were older than me. The older kids decided to pick me on me starting when I was about 6 and it didn't take me long to take a stand for myself.

I came from a real tough neighborhood. Why, every time I shut the window I hurt somebody's fingers.

Growing up in bad neighborhoods, you see and experience a lot.

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 was an only child, a hard-case kid, in a rough neighborhood. But I always fought my battles.

I grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. At the time I was growing up with my father - before it was gentrified - it was a very rough neighborhood. He felt that if I got into or started embracing the rap culture, I would be one step closer to being on the streets.

I grew up in somewhat of a war zone in West Philadelphia in 1985, '86. It wasn't as extreme as someone coming in the classroom and just unloading on a class, but I knew to take the scenic route to go to the grocery store to avoid certain elements.