Last night, an enclave of us decided to liveblog the last debate between John McCain and Barack Obama at Hofstra University. While so much of the liveblogging was entertaining (while the debate often droned on), we noticed a few things of particular interest to us:

1) John McCain looks like a hard-pressed thumb
2) Both of their educational positions blow (as a teacher, I got particularly fired up about that)
3) There was no mention of Asians, even in passing.
4) The Latino community really got smacked around from both candidates.

The last one was of particular interest to me because of the implications that that carries for the issues most pertinent to Latinos today, including (but not exclusively) immigration, education, health care, and unemployment. The four main bloggers on last night’s debate immediately screamed immigration when we heard Schiffer mention the “last question,” but to no avail.

My girlfriend mentioned something about Barack Obama that has rung in my ears to this day: as liberal as he is, he still hadn’t talked to the Latino community until he needed votes from us. We also don’t really seem to know what he’s going to do for those Latino interests, especially in volatile places like California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida. He bypassed the Latino community throughout much of his campaign, and unfortunately, we see the product of that last night, where he implicitly lambasted countries like Venezuela and Colombia, countries of rich heritage and an even prouder people.

It’s bad enough that just the very image of the word “alien” doesn’t evoke the little green weirdos but a brown-skinned, black-haired man with indigenous features and a Mexican accent, or a dark man with scruffy clothing and a almost-French but more Creole accent. Some people expect Latinos to keep selling oranges on the roadside, to stay behind the hot kitchens of their favorite restaurants, to stay as servants (in some cases locked in the closet so they wouldn’t leave their “master’s” homes). Their language, even when seemingly polite, invites discussion of the foreign, the unfamiliar, the extraterrestrial … something that I for one thought Barack could relate to.

Yet, and contradictorily, they’ll call la migra on them, and people will yell out how these immigrants, whether legal or not, don’t deserve those very jobs that they’re having them do, that they’re scums of the earth when they’re cleaning up your scum, that they shouldn’t have children in this country even as they’re taking care of theirs, and that their language needn’t be so damn pervasive, when all English has ever done for so many of America’s citizens is bar them from really dining in the same table. And of course, if the keymasters in this society say they’re vermin, everyone follows suit, as evidenced by the treatment I’ve seen from people of all colors to our immigrant community.

But here we are in 2008, raids all over the nation, children in classrooms where the teacher hasn’t been trained to teach those who speak more than one language, older folks dismissing those kids listening to reggaeton and neglecting their intelligences, and hipsters appropriating Tex-Mex and calling it as authentic as “El Paso,” whatever that means. I’m struggling with this idea of united Latinos, but I’m struggling even more with the oppressive nature of these politricks. And while I may understand that people in the US may have their beefs with Colombia and Venezuela, but if that’s what any presidential nominee wants to concentrate their efforts on in this time of critical change in this American population, then frankly, fuck it.

Yes, I said it. Fuck that. It’s time for people to rise up.

jose, standing opposite the mainstream thought …

What do you believe in?

This question always comes to me whenever I hit historical sites like Ellis Island, an island that symbolizes the immigration of millions of people’s hopes and dreams but also desperation and pain. I couldn’t overlook the trials they had to endure before they even arrived here, having to raise money just to get on that boat, followed by a 2-week journey from Europe to the United States, followed by their interrogations, investigations, proddings, and mental and physical examinations. I’m not someone who strictly about one form of oppression over another, and it’s with that understanding that I went into Ellis Island.

Of course, we got to see the statistics upon statistics of the people who came through Ellis Island through immigration. Left and right, we saw artifacts and relics of the past and present of one of the most famous islands in the world. But the one part of the museum that struck me read like this:

“I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, found out three things: First, the streets weren’t paved with gold; second, they weren’t paved at all: and third, I was expected to pave them.”

Wow. The cynicism. The reality. The ability to simplistically tell the tale of so many people who come here with a vision. Yet, it’s also a big sigh and a “Let’s get to work,” one that always gives me hope in the altruism of people. I believe strongly in people and their ability to rise. My idealism, though tempered by my critical eye, still remains, and even through the hardships and scrutiny, they still did what other immigrants to this country had to do: work their butt off.

Yes, there are degrees of help that certain people were given depending on the top 1% ’s needs and wants, but people more than anything needed hope. For all the complaints people had about this country, these immigrants preferred this over their previous country.

One lady in a video remarked how skyscrapers weren’t oppressive but beautiful. I admit I was taken aback at the irony of that. I instantly recognized the irony of such beautiful structures like The Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building, and the Chrysler Building, truly sites to behold. Yet, I also couldn’t help but think how many people built those edifices of capitalism on minimum wage or less, how many died making those structures, and how the bosses house their multimillion dollar corporations in there while the same workers can hardly make the rent.

But the streets weren’t paved with gold, and we’re paved until immigrants and low-class workers came into do that ground work, and that’s pretty much the American dream. That’s their dream, and ours, too. Not to be hundreds of dollars richer, but to see to it that our progeny never have to suffer the way they did.

Interestingly, this never shows up as a definition of ‘liberty’. Maybe it should.

jose, whose theme for the week is work …

It bothers me that the children of immigrants can so blatantly show disrespect to present day immigrants.

Let me give a little backdrop. I was in a car once with a group of young women, and one of them said, “I have very strong views on immigration.” I said, “I do, too.” (wink) She went on to talk about immigrants as if they’re that much different from us. Another young lady went on to talk about how they should be made to speak English if they’re going to be part of this country. Naturally, I’m looking at them, and the other young lady present, wondering how anyone could agree to these sentiments knowing the history of this country, and their own families.

For one, this country, the country that people love / fear and want to hold up right next to G_d, is in fact, a country of immigrants. Unfortunately, the indigenous people of this country were ripped and raped off / of their homelands, and had to settle in lands that these new immigrants made for them when they developed a system of colonization from sea to shining sea. And the definition of who was considered “immigrant” and “foreign” changed depending on who these higher-ups wanted coming in the country and who they sought to benefit from.

Nowadays, the descendants of these immigrants, the presidents, land owners, business executives, and billionaires publicly set an agenda of anti-immigration to instill a sense of nationalism in the rest of us. And what’s worse, we’re eating it up, even when many of us are treated like second-class citizens. What’s the difference between the trailer park and the barrio? The hood and the run-down suburb? Believe it or not, not much, but we continue to segregate ourselves because we have a misconstrued view of the class system here.

So, knowing all that, we now see that people who do come to this country, whether by visa or by more clandestine methods, come because they want a better life. When people see the word “immigrant,” they’ve been taught to think “uncouth,” “Mexican,” “tons of kids,” and “Spanish-speaking” by the images on television, newspapers, and their own government. Yet, there’s a group of “illegal” Irish immigrants working off Long Island right now, wishing they were home but thankful for making a little more money than they were back at home. There are Haitians in Miami who are locked into closets and kitchens for days on end like they’re attached to their brooms and pans just because they “have no rights” here in this country.

There are Dominican immigrants, Chinese immigrants, Indian immigrants, and all sorts of people just trying to stay alive in these hard times, but we want to chastise them because they’re trying to make money just like we are. We want them to speak English, when some of us have a hard time with the English language ourselves. We want them to follow the laws of this country when their only “crime” is standing on the so-called hallowed ground you do with a different colored card than we do. We want them to follow our customs, but if we have the nerve to criticize others for the lack of diversity in different arenas. We want them to stop taking our jobs, but too many well-to-do families pick them up from the corner and make them do menial jobs for slave wages. We want them to get the hell out of this country, but when these same well-to-do families have no need for them, they suddenly find la migra busting through their doors and they never find a means of naturalization.

And this is a bigger issue than I can tackle on my own here (though I could keep going, honest), but I think back to my own parents, both immigrants from their respective countries, and how they worked their way to where they’re at now. And more recently, I think of my older brother on my father’s side, who was considered for all intents and purposes a Haitian immigrant. He fought for 10 years to obtain citizenship, which we take for granted, but for him is the difference between a certain and an uncertain future, for the difference between being deported and just getting a ticket or two paid off if anything ever happened to him. When he became a citizen, he was practically in tears, because it was a culmination of all the struggles he’d gone through in this country.

Yet, even people related to him support anti-immigration policies. Thank goodness those opinions can’t be transfused in my blood …

jose, who doesn’t hate people, but has an aversion to half-baked ideas …

p.s. - There’s nothing illegal about any human. Let’s fix that.

A few notes:

1. Ironman was really good. Better than SpiderMan 1 and X-Men 1, but not better than the second part of either series. It stayed true to the original comic book for the most part, and more than anything, it was made more for adults than children (which makes me wonder why children were present in the theatre. A couple of people doubted whether Robert Downey Jr. was the right guy for the role, but even watching the trailers, there’s no other person on Earth more qualified for the role. Directly after, I have to download the original Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”

2. Yes, I did show up on NY1 because of the immigration protest on May 1st. I knew it would happen since the camera usually finds me one way or another, but it wasn’t about me. It was about the message we were sending to the rest of the world, and that’s important. The strangest part about the whole protest was the observers on the sides of Broadway. They were all so shocked and in awe of the protest that they decided to just look at us. There was neither encouragement nor anger, just people watching, taking pictures with their cell phones, mouth agape, as if they’d never seen a protest before. Pictures and video coming soon.

3. Kobe Bryant wins MVP, and all is right with the world.

4. I’m due for a complete main site redesign this summer. Not so much the blog, but everything else here. Same goes for my MySpaces, but I can put that off. I’m still trying to get some ideas for how I want my redesign to look like, but that’s the beauty of being one’s own web designer; I don’t have any artistic limitations really.

5. Digsby has officially taken over all my old IM clients, and even let me rediscover my old ones, and it’s taken much less RAM than those heavy programs do. I now have my 3 AIMs, MSN, GMail, and recently added Facebook Chat all under one umbrella, plus checking my MSN, Yahoo, and GMail e-mails. It’s been a world of difference as far as clutter is concerned.

6. Going to the gym makes me feel good. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll go do that. Got a lot on my plate. Peace …

jose, who will actually write a report on his 3rd year of teaching soon …

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Black, Latino, Both” sponsored by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (of which I am now a card carrying member) and el Museo del Barrio, and it took place at Harlem’s Schomburg Center. The panel featured Howard Jordan, Clarence Lusane, Yvette Modestin, Angela Perez, and Silvio Torres-Saillant, who I know from my Syracuse days. While I’m not inclined to discuss exactly who said what, I do have some notes I’d like to share on a rather excellent panel meeting. I’ll definitely have to go over some of these topics again during the week, but for now, these are only some of the great sub-discussions we had at the panel. (I’m trying to take a 2-hour discussion about a topic spanning 500 years into a few paragraphs. Fun.)

- Anyone who’s read my blog for a while or even took a look at my name can pretty much gather what my identity is. Yet, that’s a challenge if you’re simply taking me at face value. Honestly, people don’t know how to act when I reveal my ethnic make-up, and that works two ways: I have an identity I’ve self-developed and people have their own perceptions of what I am. Those are not mutually exclusive of each other. To the contrary, that’s the essence of understanding the race logic: race isn’t about what you see, it’s about what you think you see. And I’ll never be “Black” or “Latino” enough until people really understand what those terms truly mean.

- Arturo Schomburg. Carlos Cooks. Felipe Luciano. Men who most people would associate with either Black or Latino, but in actuality, were Black Latinos like myself. I only knew of Felipe back in freshman year of college when I first got to meet him, and the rest of them I didn’t find out until yesterday. Unfortunately, that’s what happens when both communities fail to address AfroLatinos. The names of so many other AfroLatinos who fought for their communities were obscured by their own people, and that’s unfortunate. I know a Black Latino college student-activist back in the day who could have used those role models for community activism.

- People within a certain race are not a monolith. Definitions of what it means to be part of a race change vastly depending on place and time. For instance, Jews and Italians weren’t even considered to be White until decades after coming into this country. In the same way, Blacks and Latinos don’t just have one ideology, one perspective, or one religion. There are certain trends and connections amongst many of these groups, but we don’t all have the same interests at heart, either.

- A crucial point of discussion was the evolution of the ethnic make-up of baseball players. For the last decade or two, baseball has become an increasingly Latino sport, though it’s still marketed America’s favorite pastime. Gary Sheffield once said that, despite Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby’s efforts, there are more Latin players than Black players in baseball now because Latin players are easier to control. He elaborated by saying Latino players will get sent back to their countries if they don’t comply, so they have much more to lose. Of course, I agreed with the premise of the argument, as did many of his Latino teammates (those of whom already have their citizenships and paid the Republican Party some dues).

- In connection to that point, there was also a mention of Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz, and Manny Ramirez, men who in this country, most would identify as Black men, but when asked, they identify as Dominicans … strictly. While some people may take issue with their identification, I completely understand what these players are talking about. If you’re coming from a completely different racial paradigm than the country you’re visiting, then of course you’re going to strictly identify with your nation. As someone mentioned on the panel, it’s really easy for someone who identifies as a certain group to tell someone else what their race is, without even knowing where that person’s coming from. And that’s not always a good thing.

- Then there’s the issue of immigration, and how it relates to the American workforce. Vicente Fox once sad that Mexicans will take the jobs that Blacks don’t in this country. This is with the premise that either Blacks are lazy, incompetent, or acting too good for a broom and mop. The point disturbed me for a multitude of reasons. The government instills policies for migrant workers that makes them into nothing but rotating slaves. Corporations never have to worry about minimum wage, health benefits, pensions, or anything of that nature for workers who don’t have any rights in this country. Plus, the very people bringing those migrant workers here have agents working to tell working class communities here that immigrants from all around the world are here to take their jobs, so of course on the surface, it’s easy to diminish migrant workers as sub-human.

- Lastly, the one solution for many of our social ills is not through developing some sort of hegemony. Rather, change will come from a multicultural group of concerned citizens. I try to build those coalitions wherever I go, and the results have usually been nothing but positive.

jose, who loves to hear everyone’s opinions on these topics, not just my black or latino brethren …

The problem / blessing with being a blogger of “color” is that, because of our natural tendency to discuss politics, we’re instantly labeled and constricted to a certain type of writing i.e. we’re looked at as racial polemicists. I suppose that’s fitting seeing as how I’ve been doing this type of writing since 2K4, but on the same end, I don’t necessarily feel the need to discuss it. The Afrospear Bloggers seem to do a pretty good job of it already, but more importantly, it’s because the world has so much more to offer than racial discussion.

If I was in college at this point and time, I might have gone into the Jena 6 discussion more thoroughly. I might have told you how excited I am that Mychal Bell isn’t getting tried as an adult, and how atrocious this judicial system is that it almost turned a blind eye to the whole situation (if not for the hard work of the thousands out there). I might also have told you how much of a dimwit Jason Whitlock is for his views on the Jena 6, and how quickly he shuffles his feet and claps his hands for people above him. I’d also comment on how I’ll definitely be wearing Black on September 20th with the rest of the (eclectic and united) group of men and women who will protest the Jena 6 madness.

I might also talk about how O.J.’s a disgrace to people of color, and how there’s no way anyone who he once considered his “people” should support him. I might say how, because the denominator representing us is much smaller, when one person messes up, the fraction (or infraction) is that much bigger (math jokes tickle me). I wonder how much OJ Simpson’s memorabilia even costs, as I imagine that the value of his stuff has to cost much less than that of a steroid-abusing black baseball player. I might even say that, unless Johnnie Cochran rolls up out of his grave in a black and white pinstriped suit, there’s no way in hell Simpson gets away with this.

I might even discuss this whole “Read a Book” madness, because I would have supported it back in my college days support the spirit behind it. G_d forbid that we actually pick up a good read from excellent authors, as there’s a plethora of hot trash that people confuse for intelligent Black literature. The fact that BET finally did something right by putting that video up for the masses is ironic in that over the last decade, it’s deteriorated into a very small snippet of what it means to be Black in this country.

I might go into how the blogosphere outside of maybe Guanabee and The Unapologetic Mexican dropped the ball as far as reporting on Elvira Arrelano, the Mexican immigrant who was quickly deported from the United States after speaking out against the government’s immigration policies in a church in a Los Angeles church. I would then react by speaking on the weird relationship with Blacks and Latinos that the outrage for the the Arrelano story wasn’t nearly as big  as the Jena 6 incidents (or in some cases, not even mentioned). There’s a lot of factors in that, but it still makes me wonder.

Then again, the first thing I noticed when I started to circle the blogosphere is the lack of blogs that at least generally fit my experience. I got it in snippets here and there, but in general, I couldn’t just find a blog that discussed a Black Latino’s life. I know enough of them, and there’s a growing faction of them in the media and such, but in the blogosphere? Not exactly.

So I’m usually focused on everything else, because I see value in discussing it all. Hmm …

jose, who has 4 artists on heavy rotation: common, talib kweli, kanye, and chuck mangione (which of these is not like the other?)