Lessons Learned from Tony Montana

I was singing to myself the old Ice-T song about being a hustler, and I begin to think to myself, Why are we (especially afro-americans) so fascinated with the "Hustler Image"? Especially Tony Montana. BET televises the plight of the "American Gangester, The Biography Channel airs the program "Mobsters" and theree is always a gangster movie coming out every now and again. . To me there is nothing appealing about being someone who has to live his life in constant paranoia, always under scrutiney from police, the FBI and his rivals. He has to worry about when and willl he be next and, of course many of them never live to see a ripe old age. Now there are some good attributes to the hustler story such as coming up from nothing to something, but of course thats about all that you can say that is worth while. I love it when they display the sign that Tony had in his office 'The World is Mine." Now in his mind the world may be his because he has money and some influence. But for us, what do we own? What power or influence do we have? Besides having a black president, what do we in the local communities actually own and can claim as being ours. Now the good part is that we can own land, have power and influence and the world can literally be ours. But it doesn't have to be all the time in an illegal fashion. We can be executives on Wall Street aand not just cashiers at Wal-Mart. We can be Doctors and Lawyers, instead of needing them all the time because we have been shot or we are in jail. We can be Community Leaders leading our people to greater things, instead of being drug dealers guiding them to the gutter with illegal substances. Now I know many of you always say, "Yea all that sounds good but to me it seems that the only ones that can achieve those goals are white people. Well I can tell you that you are no closer to the truth, as black people you can accomplish these goals and be a success professionally and earn lots of money, the thing is that you have to get up off the couch and off the corner and go to your local libraries and use the computers or your own to research all this information to get what you want. Nobody is gonna deliver a newspaper to you with a brochure in it that says $200,000 jobs right here today. No, you may have to put in a lil time at school, or in a training program, but in the end its worth going through. But to be honest, we dont want that. We want instant gratification, or microwave success. But sometimes things don't work out that way. You may have to put in a lil blood sweat and tears. That is how some of the major players did it. You think Bill Gates became a billionaire over night. Nope. It took him years and when he got into college he found his niche and went for it. Arlen Sanders the KFC man didn't get his success with chicken till he was 65, even though he spent years with other businesses that were successes, but it wasn't until he put together his 11 herbs and spices that he found his stride. Simply put, it is going to take some work. Now the lesson of Tony Montana is this. You can come up from something to nothing, but for him, look at the price he had to pay. He lost his family, his friends, and ultimetely his own life. He didn't even get to enjoy the fruits of his labor at a ripe old age. It's not worth it, get it real and get it right....