The speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. constantly remind me why we need to find peace, even to this day. Barack Obama’s latest speech on race invoked those sort of images from past civil rights leaders (and probably planned in many ways), while even Condoleeza Rice, a woman I’ve been very critical of, spoke up about issues of race in this country and how the legacy of this bias continues to divide us. People like Lou Dobbs and Jason Whitlock who say that race is no longer a conversation or is a conversation that no longer matters these days usually misspeak and confound even themselves, proving just how entrenched these biases are. We even get some people who call educated and well-versed Blacks and Latinos “articulate,” most of whom mean well, but a few of them who say that word with a bit of surprise, as if we’re part of some group of savages.

And MLK wasn’t the first to address these issues, nor the first to address racial inequalities, or the first to protest and preach non-violence ever. But he was the truest embodiment of the double consciousness that Blacks in this country, the understanding that we are all Americans, but within the United States, Blacks are second-class citizens bonded together by a common experience. Unlike his brethren in the struggle, he didn’t want to divide America, or make a separate Black nation, undeniably speaking out on issues of national concern for all. But his primary objective was to address the racial inequalities in this country. He didn’t just want us to hold hands in a circle and sing “Kumbaya”; he wanted institutional restitution and true integration.

Fast-forward to today, and while we have a day off for the man, we still go into war needlessly. We speak up about issues, but fear our government to the point where many of us won’t protest on a local, state, or national level against these injustices. We still find ourselves enamored with King, but some of us hold our bags and purses tightly to ourselves when a Black person walks by, and find every excuse in the book to not hire someone whose background is different from ours because we don’t want to sound racist. King helped the government realize that we need racial integration in this country in different institutions, but we still see the segregation in our schools, in our homes, and in many of the statistics dealing with poverty, employment, college matriculation, infant mortality, hospital quality, immigration, and the prison industrial complex.

While I do think that many underrepresented people have made huge strides in fields where we had no one to represent us, the general populace tends to fall into the trap of visual synecdoche, where one person or a small group of people represent the whole of the population from whence they came. For example, people see Jay-Z, Barack Obama, or Oprah Winfrey and think “See? Racial equality is here. No more need to discuss it.” Yet, that’s really a subtle way of saying “OK, no more. I can’t take any more of them on the screen.”

It’s disgraceful really. For all my discussions of racial inequality, I also fall somewhere in the spectrum of the racial integration arguments. I don’t believe in assimilation, but I also see the potential for much greater unity amongst everyone here. Yet, the institution set in place often hinders said progress. The subtleness of suggesting for instance that affirmative action has no place in America anymore is ludicrous since it was that set of policies that forcibly encouraged America to hire people regardless of our perceived divisions.

America, we have a long way to go. Let’s find the solutions to these inequalities and, then, let’s be the solution. Let’s make dreams into realities. 40 years ago, MLK died, calling America to task on its many indiscretions. 40 years from now, what will that generation think of how we responded?

jose, who reminisces over you, my G_d …

p.s. - Tomorrow, I’ll have a little inspirational post and answer some of your questions.

To interpolate Jeremiah Wright Jr., I’ve had too many cabs whiz by me and not pick me up.

Over the last 8 months, just by informal observation, I’ve been passed over by an NYC yellow taxi cab 60% of the time (9 times out of 15, more or less). Of course, I’m basing this on knowing that a cab is on duty when their number is highlighted above their cars, they have no passengers, and, in a couple of cases, the cab stops and keeps bobbing his head. As a matter of fact, I’ve actually had a cabbie wave at me while he passed by. I’ve had witnesses of all backgrounds come up to me after observing a passing and say “That’s fucked up.” I even had one cabbie who, after I saw him stopped at a light, shake his head after I opened his door (before I even gave him my address).

But this isn’t anything new. I’m sure it’s been happening since a public cab service became available in New York City, yet one might believe that, because of the diversity that exists amongst the driving corp of that company, we’d see less discrimination based on color, or whatever they perceive as such. After all, I’m just as brown as any African, dark Latino, or Indian, but I suppose what we think we see is more important. The biggest complaint of said discrimination came from Danny Glover, who in 1999 filed a complaint against New York taxi drivers, and prompted Rudolph Giuliani to create a task force specifically for this and other forms of discrimination in this livery service.

Naturally, because the ex-mayor went overboard, the city had to pay back millions in dollars over wrongful suspensions of these taxi drivers’ licenses. There was also a finding that only 15% of the drivers involved race, and the issue was more destination. Yet, my only concern about that is: NYC polarizes people by their destinations, and thus much of it involves race after all. Fast-forward to today, and the jokes about certain people not catching a cab have become as commonplace as Whoopi Goldberg having no eyebrows or GW Bush not being an effective president. Actually, it’s more commonplace than dental appointments and only a little less commonplace than people checking their e-mails. (Don’t ask for research.)

So naturally, I have every right to be at least perplexed by this lack of courtesy. I thought Danny Glover’s message way back in ‘99 when he sent a letter regarding this matter would discourage cab drivers from practicing such overt racial prejudice, but no. Some might even feel more emboldened because of the latest lawsuits’ outcomes. And to some degree, I understand some of the taxi drivers’ trepidations: there are a few of us who engage in robbery, abusive talk, and just ignorant behavior that often scares anyone, maybe even someone who just immigrated into the country.

But there’s just as equal an amount of citizens in this city who vomit all over the back of the taxi after an inebriated and really blurry night with their equally disingenuous partners, businessmen who just scream and holler at the taxi drivers while on their Bluetooths, rude customers who roll their eyes at any taxi driver who has even a hint of an accent when asking for directions, or even those ditzes who have no idea where they’re going as soon as they get in the taxi and change their minds 4 different times but still expect the taxi to charge them for the first trip … and won’t even tip at the end of it all.

I wish I could say it’s my fault, like I didn’t look professional enough, I wasn’t wearing obvious clothing, or I looked menacing and stood on the wrong side of the street, but none of this is true. To wit, most nights, I’m wearing jeans, a peacoat, and a winter cap i.e. average NY male 25-35 wear. I’m probably one of the better tippers they encounter in the night, and I even know how to navigate to where I live from wherever I am. In other words, I’m a good customer, and there are good customers just like me out there, wondering why they’re not getting picked up. Yet, I’ve witnessed cabs actually stop traffic and hit reverse when they missed a White person’s wave.

Enough! BASTA! Ya!

From now on, I’m going to start doc’ing these taxis. I’ll be writing down their numbers, and calling their offices promptly. I’ll even write what street corner, what I was wearing, and how long I had to wait in order to catch a cab. Then, at the end of the year, I’ll list all their numbers in a letter, and mail it directly to Bloomberg himself. I’m no celebrity, but it’s time for a change, and I’m tired of sitting on my ass and not doing anything about it. I have a voice, and I’m going to use it to make changes happen. Except for their IDs, I’ll also be logging these incidents here on my blog too, probably as a separate entry.

The one thing I won’t do, though, is base my reports on race, because I wouldn’t want to engage in the same sort of profiling many of these violating taxi drivers do. To their credit, though, the 6 people who have picked me up were of various backgrounds. After one particular ride, as I was calming down from my seething rage, I thanked him for picking me up, and questioned why his fellow taxi drivers weren’t as good to customers as he was, he replied in broken English:

“No worries. Everyone the same, every body a customer. Thank you …”

And that was that. I was dropped off at home. That’s really all I need …

jose, who wonders why we still only count our troops as part of the death total …

p.s. - I’m not trying to pit people against one another, but let’s have some honest discussion …

It isn’t that I’m a hater, because I am, but sometimes I observe things that I would just love to point out.

1. I hate when someone calls themselves The Black [insert cultural icon here]. The Black Barbie, Madonna, Al Pacino, Brad Pitt, Joe Schmoe, or whoever the hell else everyone wants to emulate really annoys the shizzel out of me. As prevalent as imitators are out there, we need to start investing in the idea of self. Even if these people are only doing it for promotional purposes or maybe as self-aggrandizing, it never works out. Ask the NBA how well marketing Kobe as the next Michael Jordan worked. Mattafac, ask them why MJ himself criticized the league for always trying to make comparisons of the new players with the old ones, and why it’s hurting their new stars’ images.

2. I’m not feeling all these ripoffs of Stuff White People Like. I might be the only Black (or Latino) blogger with a substantial readership who hasn’t mentioned SWPL, and here’s why: it’s already too pop. The Internet’s a funny thing in that, as soon as something gets hot, it gets hotter than things ordinarily should. And I ain’t mad at SWPL at all; to the contrary, I think it’s a sarcastic and self-deprecating on the part of the originator. Yet, I think the types of white people he’s talking about are also the types who find something cool about the Lower East Side now, but 10 years wouldn’t be caught dead or alive in the area, so I’m sure you see what I mean. :: puts on suspect face::

3. I just watched Malcolm X, the movie with Denzel Washington in his should-have-been-Oscar-winning Oscar-nominated role as Malcolm. I always find myself marveling at the power of that movie, and the message it still holds for us decades later. What bothers me is that many people (especially our own) found too many inaccuracies in the film for them to enjoy the film. After tearing up at the end of the movie for a good 5 minutes, I thought to myself, “If not Spike Lee, then who? If not Denzel, then who? If not this film, then what?” If people want the real facts, they can read the autobiography; it’s that simple. I thought it was very well done.

4. During my post-observation, the administrator mentioned how the kids idolize me and think of me as a father figure. I keep telling you all how humbled I am about this kind of reaction because I never had a consistent enough father to know what a father’s supposed to do, but now I’m learning. My role as an inspiration to some of these kids 0ften makes me look at the rest of the world with a critical and discerning eye. I can especially see that with my gentlemen. Just from my general observations, and being around their neighborhood long enough, they don’t see many younger men doing anything besides advertising parties, playing some sport, playing some girl, and / or hustlin’. Hence, I take my role as a teacher a little more seriously than most. More on this later on in the week.

5. I was walking through Union Square with a friend of mine, when we saw a huge pile of garbage in front of a local supermarket. A month or two before, I saw some Freegans, who rummage through the garbage to protest the economic food cycle or whatever have you, all up in the garbage. After explaining this to Kika, my friend, I quipped “The only logical next step is cannibalism. If we’re going to kill people senselessly, let’s at least use them for food resources.” We have a sick sense of humor. We kept going at it, ’till I said, “And they’ll complain about how much land we could be saving by eating people instead.”

She replies, ” … Yeah, it’s the funeral industrial complex! Holding us down!”

Insane laughter through 14th St. ensues.

5. Dude, David Patterson is the new governor of New York. I won’t make light of the more socially ostensible parts of his person (his Blackness and blindness), but I gotta say that there couldn’t have been a better script written. This is almost like Guess Who’s Coming To Govern? I saw his first speech since Spitzer resigned, and this looks promising, but here’s hoping the huge deficit facing this state isn’t attributed to him, and that people don’t hold his rather liberal politics against him too much. We’ll see how it plays out.

jose, who didn’t know Michael Jordan (who likes to stay apolitical) and a slew of other Black celebrities helped sponsor the movie Malcolm X, and is also happy that Kobe Bryant and Greg Oden are speaking up politically …

Before I continue, I’d like to thank Tia (not sure who she is, but she likes my blog) for nominating me for the Best Education Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards. If you’d like to drop by and hit the little plus button next to her comment, that’d be dope. If not, keep reading anyways. The best is yet to come.

The best way to turn me off from any argument is to magically introduce some mental condition. Ever since I was in college, I found myself very critical of the increasing amount of mental / developmental disorders, especially in an age where the more conditions you can come up with, the more money you can get for your “exclusive” research.

Studies have shown that there’s been a huge increase of mental disorders and chronic diseases in the United States, and the first two factors commonly associated with this are 1) the ability to see the symptoms and treat them early on and 2) the higher risk behaviors people are taking on at a much younger age. Of course, it also stems from the other, and more understood factors like birth conditions, environment, dietary habits, family situations, and genetics.

But the not-so-secret secret for these treatments has a lot to do with people’s self-interest. If you can make someone’s adjustments to society’s ills into a mental disease, then you can look like you’re doing something about it.

Case 1:

When inner-city teachers who have detrimental classroom management or have a negative outlook on the children they teach get fed up with their most extreme cases of misbehavior, they turn to the psychiatrists in the building and say “He / she’s got ADHD, and I can’t take it anymore!” I personally have referred a few children here and there, with much reluctance and after serious discussions with them and their parents. I don’t pull the trigger unless I know something is severely wrong or the kid asks me to refer him. Yet some teachers just want to point and scream ADHD like it’s a witch hunt. I mean, with some of the living conditions these kids have, it’s no wonder why they would go crazy.

Case 2:

The drug market is at an all-time high. There’s a pill for any and every disease, condition, problem, and quandary. Drug companies profit off of commercials that exacerbate the problems in your life (Do you feel depressed? Lonely? Out of sorts?). People in America are working harder than ever at lesser wages with less sleep, less family time, and everything from gas and food to health care and housing become more expensive. So when we sit down to watch our favorite TV shows, go on the Web, or read our afternoon paper, we see these ads telling us how their drug will miraculously cure us of what ails us. Then, they give the drug a fancy new name so it sells better because a name with all those x’s, y’s, and h’s won’t do well. What’s more, many of the drugs that we end up intaking actually have chemicals that keep us dependent on them, so what does that say? Mind control through chemicals isn’t far fetched …

Case 3:

Understanding Case 1 and 2, we can see how people are quick to find new ways to disorder and prognosticate our entire realities. If you’re having problems with math, it’s not that you haven’t been shown how to do it, it’s that you have a mental disease called Mathematical Anxiety Disorder (MAD). If you’ve experienced a series of oppressive events and still live in a rather dismal existence, the policies that keep that sort of environment together isn’t the problem, it’s a mental condition called Poverty Induced Trauma (PIT). If you have an inordinate prejudice against someone else because of a combination of culture, ethnicity, and skin color, then you’re not a racist. You have a mental condition called Ridiculous Assumptions Causing Extremism (RACE).

And I hate to be the one to point these things out, because I’d be offending those who believe something different than me (ha), but everything we’ve done since the dawn of our existence has been about translating our realities for our own minds. We have the opportunity to redefine our existences, but we also have to outline the obstacles and act upon the forces preventing us from making those changes.

When we happened upon this Earth, everything we understood and felt about the world was told to us. Blue was blue, and there was no denying that. 1+1=2 and that was that. We accept a lot of things as fact and the rationales we assume come from the many experts and authorities we have in our lives, yet when we grow up, we start to see the cracks in the authorities’ assumptions and make our own wedges within them. Contrary to what some of you believe, ADHD isn’t endemic to Black and Latino children, poverty does affect the supposed opportunities we have, and race exists, and a big of its existence is mental, something we can’t undermine.

Like Dr. Carter G. Woodson, one of the greatest authors I’ve ever read, said in his seminal work The Mis-Education of the Negro,

“When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.”

jose, who might be crazy himself …

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?)