Pain

Pain, something that I didnt know that I knew about. All I felt was something like a wound. In disbelief I stared at it for awhile, not believing what I was seeing. Finally I poked at it to tell if it was real. Tears, infection, and the pain all flushed out at once and I tried to cradle and protect myself from doing it again. I hugged my arms close around my chest and rocked.
Pain is pretty painful

Unlearn

Apparently I've been neglecting my blog. i will probably post about recent happenings and thought later but for now, here is a poem i wrote and performed.

Unlearn

Drawing crooked and indistinct lines in the sand between what I’ve known and what I’ve been told. Community, Humor, Family: all of it the romance that I’ve been told that my black skin is supposed to offer. Black survival and my survival are one in the same and yet are two opposing forces that I narrowly walk inbetween, always falling over one side or the other. The elements of this survival are jarring and change it's meaning everytime I think I get closer.

Community: Is it cold spaghetti at a barbeque or block parties with a broken fire hydrant?
Humor: Is humor making something so foul and stifling into a joke, so that it can unravel the bindings holding you prisoner to it?
Family: Is family the people who are the only ones who will defend you from anything and anyone?

The ante-bellum and "old time" stories detailing these attributes weave throughout 5th grade novels and primetime on BET but rarely get to a place where I can recognize them, save for the few that I have experienced first hand.

Instead of drawing from the same stale well of what I’m told that blackness means, I recall and regurgitate how these “givens” of blackness show themselves to me.

Community was exclusive; a club that only the ones who had "made it" could be in to show off our status. It was an isolated bubble of protection from the dangerous darkies that inhabited the outside world and werent fit to dine on the delights that our community consume with the quickness. We comforted ourselves with the insulation of how they weren’t like us anyway, that they needed to get jobs, get lighter, get Jesus, and get “educated” because hey, that’s how we did it.

Humor was a self-righteous exercise as we laughed our way over uncomfortable feelings of the holes we had dug in ourselves to be filled with other people's projections. Humor was a quick pill to ease the constant ache of sitting on people who we were and weren’t a part of.

Family was a badge of honor that we used to flash at people to let them know how much we were worth. Our kids were properly mixed with good hair and even better elocution. We were kids that went to good schools, good programs, and received even better scholarships.

And even as i look at these implications, I feel the love from my family and our commitments to making each other happy. I still feel the good times filled with laughter, I still feel the comforting presence of being within my community. My home.

We are kids that need to unlearn the poison of a double-edge security that has supported us and injured us for so long.

Passin me by

let me carve a place of loneliness for myself, where I'll sit and watch life pass. I'll wave occasionally of course. i will even convince ppl im about to get up. but i never will, will i?

forgotten post

Sometimes I look at a guy and think "man he is such a Hyde Park Cutie". you know, the intelligent, slightly pompous, usually light-skinned boys who listen to more punk rock and Jazz than gangsta rap. *sigh* I miss home sometimes.

Bullet Point Summary of 2009

I am trying to find out whether this year was a good one or not...

-Winter Semester was pretty cool
- Had my own room
- Met my now good friends
- learned Bachata
- NCORE (definitely one of the amazing parts)
- Twittering with awesome ppl
- NCORE (because it was two awesome :D haha im punny...not really)
- Cut my hair
- Got into Graphic Design program
- So far, I've been able to keep my standards when going out
- Summer job at my old elementary school as a camp counselor
- BEAUTIFUL summer period
- picnic with my sister included
- Went to Phantom Ranch and sat in a meadow while reading and watching bumblebees
- roomed with a decent roommate
- failed epically at any attempt to establish a relationship with a man (as per usual). mostly due to a combination of fear and shallowness
- discovered twitter
- resulting from NCORE, started going on blogs and websites one race and pop culture.
- learned for the the first time about Elon James White, TWIB, and iLL-Literacy
- Started to really invest in hip-hop
- got closer to my neosoul roots (lookin at you erykah badu)
- started writing poetry again
- got appendicitis and spent 2 weeks in the hospital
- had stomach pain for the remainder of the year
- VP of Hapkido but only being able to go for the first 3 months
- learned bachata
- learned from my NCORE class and from my awesome teachers
- changed for the better

hold on, my mom says its time to go out so i will finish later

General Going-Ons

As I wait for the 100th episode of bleach to load and stream on my computer, I guess I can take some time just to write. It's been a little while since i last decided to write something (besides this morning). In all honesty, i miss it. I still have the journals that I used to write in when I was younger. It's always interesting to see where my mind was at 1, 3, 5, even 10 years ago.

Anyways, a lot has been happening. Back in New York with the extended family. It's weird how everything has changed but if I dont think about it, I can transform (only temporarily though) back into the person i was only a few years ago. By that I mean when I hang with my cousins. I can, for a few moments, knock out the awareness that i have been trying to arouse, and enjoy my cousins jokes, silly antics and such. Sometimes it's okay because we really are just silly. however there is always a word or a phrase that wakes me up again like "wait, did she just say that?". before i used to rant, rave, and scream about it but all that got me was silent treatments and a really terrible time in new york. i dont just want to get by though by being silent. i dont do silent. but my cousins are in love with their ignorance. try to tell them that something is wrong, they shut down. there really is no talking to them about stuff that matters. so like a good little uncle tom, I sit and ignore their ignorance because when I try to say something, it only shuts them down. so im not sure what to do about it.

anyways i am having fun. especially when just watching silly videos on youtube.
...
-Oh great, I had been wondering whether my mother could still punish me if im no longer a teenager. i've been arguing with my parents alot more lately. especially my mother. i admit that i have been a lot more self-interested since i got home. being away at college has really spoiled me. no waiting for other people to get stuff done, my schedule being up to me and no one else, not having to put up with habits and bickering from my sister and parents. of course i've missed my family but i never really missed living with them. I've missed my house and cat but i didnt miss being stuck in the house with chores to do that arent things i have done myself. especially doing everbody else's dishes. definitely havent missed that. it's not necessarily that i am just lazy and hate doing work. it's more about the fact that my parents groan about cleaning up after ourselves, yet when messes are made by them, they expect me and my sister, but mostly me, to cleam up, telling us that it is our chore. i ask to have like a specific idea of what they want me too do around the house but it gets changed up so much that times that i thought i was done, they come up with more stuff to do

and i know im ungrateful and spoiled but really mom cant you carry up your own damn suitcase? you are not needy nor weak. groceries i understand, cleaning up the family dishes when i've used my share, fine, but cleaning up a room that i havent seen in 3+ months just because my sister can keep her stuff clean?

and yes, i totally own up to the fact that im a selfish, spoiled brat. but damn, there are some things that i think people should be able to take care of themselves.

right now my mom is mad at me for not answering her when she was calling me. thing is that i had my headphones on at the times so i couldnt hear her (i had turned them up to tune out my little sister. also she is mad at me for not helping move the table when i have been moving it my own damn self for that past 4 days.

so i am choosing to let them go to my cousins house without me because a little space to think is appreciated. and also im kind of tired of relatives at the moment

Yet Another Argument

So, as I have written before, I have an interesting relationship with my Sociology class and the people who teach it. What happened about two weeks ago was another argument about race and it's place in the perspectives that this class teaches. Unlike last time however, this argument was with the TA, whom I dont talk to all that much since he usually teaches the Supplemental Instruction.

Anyway, many times in the class, the main professor has said repeatedly that classes on race or gender are okay as side ventures but you cant grasp the full perspective of economy, capitalism, and government unless you take a course like his that focuses on class...so modest.

This phrase i have thought about a lot all semester. My opinion about it stays the same, that you cant grasp the full perspective of economy, capitalism, and government without investigating the intersections of race, class, and gender, because that is what the U.S. system is based on.

So, picture this: I am at a study session for the final, which is being taught by the TA I previously mentioned. After the session is over, I chat with the TA, along with a few other students. The topics were about Capitalist systems of government and the effect of alienation on it's citizens to keep capitalist labor running. Students start to leave and there is only me, the TA (white), and another student (also white). As we talk about the Sociology class in general, the TA mentions again the benefit of having this sort of "general" class. I responded with the fact that what was taught in class I had previously started to learn already through the courses and programs on race and it's intersectionality with class, gender, government, etc. He, at first, tried to get me to deny that i had learned such things from a "race class". And then he started talking about how issues of class, capitalism, and government cant be solved through learning about race. Race was more or less, a side business that would get solved later when issues of class were solved...yeah.

I tried to explain to him how my perception of class is one that can not be seperated from race or gender. he didnt get it. Instead he repeated how because of my "preoccupation" with race, I could see the bigger picture. In fact, because I was black, I was in fact, biased. I attempted to point out how neither of us were unbiased in this argument. Him being a white male was just as much a bias. (the student who was listening to this argument wasnt happy with this inference either)

And then he pulled the "I'm part Irish and the Irish werent white" trick. Key term in that phrase "werent". The I basically countered with how Irish and Irish Americans are very different and although Irish isnt white, Irish American certainly is. I tried bringing up the book "How the Irish Became White" but he switched back to the original subject.

He started to focus on specific arguments to prove that class was independent of race. like how is your black, you are not necessarily poor, but if you're poor, your poor... Which basically was his entire argument.

I tried to explain to him again, how i believe in the theory of intersectionality and how a "solution" to class inequality could not come without dealing with race because they are part and parcel of the same big picture. it was this perspective that i dont think he ever grasped. he kept saying how class and race were seperate. (and then accusing me of saying that race was the most important aspect when i say no such thing. I just didnt discount it as some "side accessory" to be dealt with later. which means never)

I even attempted a metaphor because at this point, I wasnt trying to change his opinion. I was just trying to get him to see my point. whether he agreed or not. but he refused to see it. I used Gumbo as a metaphor (i know, i know, but i was really hungry at that point. it was like 8pm and i hadnt had dinner yet.) Basically Gumbo or class, isnt gumbo unless it has all the ingrediants that make it gumbo in the first place. Class isnt just on category, it's a label meant to identify certain experiences and elements that does not exclude race or gender.

but eventually i gave up. he wasnt hearing me.