In this blog YO! Content Producer Jazmyne Young, 20, writes about the new teen version of MTV’s Cribs, and compares it to gentrification in her community.

So as I was web-surfing I discovered mtv’s “new” show, “Teen Cribs”.  I’m not sure how new it is being that I don’t have cable at home, but all I know is that now instead of watching your favorite celebrities show you, how good it is to be them and how bad it is to be you, you can now see their spoiled, privileged offspring flaunt their riches for all to see.

I actually came across this find when I was on Shamelesshype.com and saw a blog about “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” star, Kim Zolciak.  For anyone interested, the blog revealed that the kids featured in an episode of MTV’s Teen Cribs are actually the children of Kim’s long under-wraps sugar daddy who she refers to as “Big Poppa”. 

The story interested me enough to click the link and put an end to the mystery of ‘Who is Big Poppa?’  That was a mistake.  I wasn’t prepared to be subjected to a bootleg, adolescent version of MTV Cribs.  The only difference is this show takes the full half-hour to feature just one house instead of the original show that usually features up to 3 cribs.  

I hate this show for the same reason I detest gentrification: it’s not the luxury, the modernity, the nice cars or the beautiful homes that annoy me.  It’s that it doesn’t serve me to see the possibilities of how PHAT I could be living in comparison with the reality that I currently live in the basement apartment of a run-down Victorian house in West Oakland with a hole in the roof and an ant-infestation because my 97-year-old, African-American landlord, can only afford to hire the local ill-legitimate fix-it man.

Meanwhile the house next door was recently sold by it’s original black inhabitants for the past 30 years or so and purchased by a happy interracial (white & asian) couple that had the thing remodeled and furnished in no time flat; complete with an extra garage for their matching Toyota Prius-es.  And the same story gets told about fifteen times over within a four-block radius of my Helen St. residence.   

Aargh!  This is definitely one of my soft spots, not in a warm and affectionate sentiment, more like the bruised section of a banana, it just takes me to an ugly place.  I know life isn’t fair but it’s just not fair! 

The stability that comes with owning a home, of having parents (BOTH a mom and a dad) considerate enough to create a home for their children is a blessing.  So it pisses me off a little when I see people, particularly children, born into a lifestyle they take for-granted, un-necessarily flaunt their riches without any care or consideration for the privilege that they have been awarded by pure chance and the miracle of pro-creation. 

When I get over  resenting that I didn’t get to live the good life straight out the womb, I will work to attain the same status and stability as my neighbors.  After all, it’s not a race thing, it’s a class thing; which usually turns into a race thing anyway so at the end of the day it all goes back to black.  I think what would really soothe my bitterness would be the fulfillment of my starry-eyed dream that all the poor-black-children who grew up like me or less fortunate than I, will one-day become stellar, culturally-conscious adults that can afford to buy all the white people out of the houses our Great-Great-Grandparents slaved to buy but were forced to sell.  Then we’ll all get together and have a neighborhood block party where we do the electric slide to the theme song from “The Jeffersons”. Ya’ll down?