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black maybe

Me Sube La Bilirrubina (It Raises My Bilirubin)

by Jose on July 25, 2008 · 11 comments

in life

I’m honestly not that arrogant. I just like to call madness out for what it is. Eddie Griffin might be right: I’m insane, and that’s something to be congratulated.

Watching Black in America over the last 2 days, at the encouragement ad nauseum of practically everyone in my Facebook, Twitter, etc., I’ve been somewhat reintroduced to the idea of Blackness and how applicable my own experience is to the ideas brought on by the segments of the show. For one, if we work under the presumption that I’m strictly Black (and not a Black-Latino, or ethnically, a Dominican-Haitian-American), then people who talk to me usually lay a foundation out for my discourse, my actions, and my dress code out of ill-wrought stereotypes. Statistically and upon first review, I’m already a victim of the same discrimination that keeps a million Black men in prison, a million more from attaining the jobs or the promotion that they want, and everyone else from achieving first-class citizenry with those who consider themselves White. We are not a monolith yes, but even in our own dialogues, we tend to indicate otherwise.

The experiences I’ve had, negative and positive in this country, have led me to understand my position as a Black man. Then there are times when my skin textures, color, and facial features are not enough to validate my authenticity as a Black person. That comes from the second level of recognition of a person i.e. my culture. Everything in my exterior might suggest one thing, but the way I speak, the languages I use, the area I decided to teach at, and even my name have always come into contention. On the one end, I can’t be mad; I love gauging the reactions of everyone when I tell them what I’m called, who I date, and my usual dinner (rice and beans, if you must know). On the other hand, it’s a little unnerving to know that, no matter how the dominant culture perceives me, I neither have absolute residence in either camp.

Not that I haven’t written about this before, but someone added a new dimension to that when they asked me the following:

Are you happy with the amount of attention your blog receives?

My response: This isn’t my full time job, so yes, I’m pretty happy with my blog’s successes thus far. Could I use a little more readership? Sure. But I won’t sacrifice why I write for that.

Well, why do you think you may not receive as much attention as some of the more mainstream bloggers?

That’s hard to say, but it could be multiple reasons. It could be because of the aforementioned limits in time, having a job and such. It could be because I discuss education and not always politics or popular culture. Oftentimes, the topic of education becomes marginalized even when I believe it should be at the forefront of our discussions. Most of my commenters are educators on some level themselves. But a small part of me, the same part of me that wonders why I won’t get nominated for certain blog awards because I’m either too Black / Latino or not Black / Latino enough, thinks that it’s because of the identity I’ve undertaken and the way I’ve chosen to express that i.e. I’m Black / Latino, I’m proud, and I’m not going to pigeonhole anyone else strictly based on one part of their being, even if we stand at opposing ends of a topic’s spectrum. Thus, even in cyberspace, we mirror the real world.

Because G_d forbid you’re told by a group of Blacks that you’re only good enough for them when they need the numbers, and not good enough when you’re trying to run your own organization. Heaven knows some group of Latinos is only good when making other Latinos look good, but not very Latino when he or she’s not out in the club or when they don’t fit a certain mold. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been looked at during high school to rap or, in more recent times, slam and speak in staccato. Yet, I can’t unstrap myself from the identities I’ve chosen either. I love my dance, my food, my language, and my people.

We have a hard time looking at ourselves (and I mean all of us), and saying, “What are our prejudices?” Imagine if we asked ourselves questions like, “Why do I use some of the prejudiced statements I do?,” “How am I holding another man or woman back from succeeding in their own right?,” and “How does my presence in my community benefit how my community does?” Sometimes, the answers to those questions shocked me, and I had no one to answer but to myself. The astounding prejudice we face in this country can only be remedied once we look at ourselves and create cogent and logical arguments for why we feel the way we do. Then, we need to let go of some of our prejudices while developing pro-peace and pro-community dialogue and not develop an ego in the process.

But a series on the world’s news leader won’t reveal that. We can go over the problems and quandaries in the Black community as much as we want to, much the way we shuffle cards on a table. We can lay them all out as many times as we want in a million different combinations. Yet, the cards are still there, and we haven’t done a damn thing to take them off. Does it make us comfortable to know that the cards are still there? Even if we somehow push the card to the brink of the table, does it satiate us to just keep the card out of play than actually taking it off completely? I’m not sure, and CNN doesn’t have the answers. Neither do we just yet.

But who’ll be insane enough to work towards it? Who? I guess that’s up to you and your reflection …

jose, who understands as a math teacher why solutions are important …

p.s. – I would link you to the referring Juan Luis Guerra song, but … OK, no excuse. Here it is (“La Bilirrubina“) …

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La Medicina

by Jose on February 22, 2008 · 5 comments

in Uncategorized

Miami

Big props to everyone who visited my site yesterday. A link in the New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer and Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, for a good 300 hits, (best day total) ever didn’t hurt either.

Anyways, I’m in Miami, FL, now, and so far it’s been interesting. I partied a little bit last night with my family and their friends at a star-studded party (Dwayne Wade, Shawn Marion, Cee-Lo, Clinton Portis, etc.). I wasn’t really interested in much of the fan-fare outside of giving a couple of these dudes dap. I was more into just having fun and laughing at how many girls really thought they were going to get close to the dudes mentioned.

Whenever I come to Miami, I always have these revelatory conversations with my brothers, sisters, and cousins on my father’s side. It’s interesting coming to a place with such a high density of both Dominicans and Haitians. On the one hand, we enjoy each other’s company, throwing barbs at each other endlessly and ranking who amongst us is the most cocky (not surprisingly, I come in next to last). On the other hand, I always wonder what my family members are saying in their fluent Creole, the language I don’t speak despite my Haitian background.

This probably came up because one of my cousins has a ringtone for “Zouk La,” a really popular Haitian song. It struck me as odd because I had been listening to this song for years under the name “La Medicina” by Wilfredo Vargas. Holy crap, it’s more evidence that Dominicans and Haitians aren’t that far apart from each other (if at all). I let my brother and cousin listen to it on the iPod and even they seemed impressed by this interesting instant research.

But even in those actions, I still find myself having to answer to statements and questions I thought I long resolved. My answers are usually:

  • No, I’m not prissy because I use big words.
  • I have a good 50% chance of learning Creole if I live in Haiti for a few months, but otherwise, it looks closer to 10%.
  • I don’t hold “the people” to a different standard than I do White people.
  • I’m not giving anyone any leeway if they’re arguing for Bill O’Reilly.
  • Just because I don’t care much for BET, Popeye’s Chicken, or Tyler Perry movies doesn’t make me any less Black than the rest of you.

Of course, those were just ideas that popped into my head. I would like to think that my actions as a teacher, poet, activist, and writer speak for themselves. The questions will continue to follow me so long as I live. There aren’t any books out there that detail my experience, or blogs I can turn to so I can discuss this dichotomy. Unfortunately, many of my AfroLatino brethren would rather choose a side than embrace their being as a whole.

And I understand that, because I couldn’t even come to terms with my Blackness because of my father’s past, but after the while, the truth seeps in. It reminds me of the first couple of chapters in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which I’m reading now. All it takes is a little simple deception and narrowing our frame of reference, thus dividing and conquering us, and pitting us against each other even within our families.

But as the merengue keeps playing in my iPod, I still find myself looking for la medicina that might cure us of our ills …

jose, who doesn’t normally post on friday …

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U, Black Maybe

by Jose on August 2, 2007 · 12 comments

in life

Common’s “Finding Forever”What I omitted about my latest Rock the Bells concert situation was when the same Canadian went up to my girl and said, “And you’re 1/2 White and 1/2 Black?”

“Why do you say that?” she replied in her usual inquisitive voice.

“Because of your nose.”

I let out a hearty laugh, because as it turns out, she’s Colombian and Ecuadorian, yet because of her mind state, she never gets offended by people confusing what she might or might not be.

I guess in his mind, though, there’s no doubt as to what I am. Suffice it to say, people immediately peg me as “Black.” That’s fine; there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s unfortunate, though, is how limiting these labels become. What does it mean to be Black in this country? And does it allow for people who don’t necessarily fit right in that slot?

After all, practically all my life, I never quite fit into the “Black experience” in America. As a Dominican-Haitian-American, I didn’t have the big family reunions in the park, the knowledge of Haitian Creole that I would have liked to, or even the pride in my country that these groups are respectively known for. For the most part, I’ve been waltzing through the four cultures (Dominican, Haitian, Black-American, American) just sampling each, and feeling rejection at various points from all. When people ask me for my background, I tell them “Dominican-Haitian, or Black will do” because that’s what the question entails, but sometimes I wish “Planet Earth” sufficed. (I sometimes wonder about that, too.)

So when I go to Santo Domingo, the capital of Dominican Republic, I see a sea of Africans who’ve made their homes there. I’ve seen very few people who were fair-skinned in the barrio I come from. Yet, when I go there, I’m outcast twice: for being Haitian and American. I tried to fit in, but eventually, the truth about my upbringing comes through.

The same dynamic happens when I’m with my Haitian relatives: while I can still hang with them, eat the foods, and read as much history about Haiti as humanly possible, I still feel that disconnect because I can’t communicate with them in Creole, so I can’t understand the jokes, the music, or what that particular thing is called that this person’s asking me to get for her. Even to this day, this has often brought people to question whether I’m even a real Vilson.

I attribute these sentiments to a father who wasn’t consistently there, a mother who loves me but didn’t teach me Dominican history, and a society so disturbed, it can map out what race is supposed to look like and deny the definitions in the same breadth. Not only until recently did I hear my grandaunt and my mother proclaim their African roots. That certainly would have helped the little boy I was to sift through this cultural clutter.

QuisqueyaI’m also critical of the categories those early social scientists and politicians constructed for humans. These divisions exist primarily to divide. How much easier was it for Rafael Trujillo to justify the genocide of and contempt for Haitians when Dominicans could fall under every other name but “Black” even when they looked so alike to them? How easy is it to insulate “desirable” communities in this country if people have to fill in the category they were taught to bubble in on the basis of race? How wonderful is it that people who are “mutts” can be shown disrespect for giving credence to the idea of race (“Race is just a social construct! You fit in just fine!”) AND on the same end, for not being “enough” of one race.

Then, I look at my experiences as a Dominican-Haitian-American, and realize that as many obstacles and tribulations I’ve had, they eventually made me who I am, and I love that person. I love my ability to switch between English and Spanish, to enjoy merengue, hip-hop, salsa, bachata, and rock with no qualms. I’ve been in executive boards of Black and Latino organizations, and held memberships in Haitian and Carribean organizations. I can write about these experiences from my own perspective. I love my brown skin, and how it only costs me a few dollars to get a haircut. (I love my ass, too, but mainly because of the positive reactions I get from women. I can’t help that.)

And I can finally tell the boy wrapped up in the confusion that he’ll find his own path , because it’s the path he’ll have to make for himself …

When we talk about black maybe
We talk about situations
Of people of color and because you are that color
You endure obstacles and opposition
And not all the time from….from other nationalities
Sometimes it comes from your own kind
Or maybe even your own mind
You get judged…you get laughed at…you get looked at wrong
You get sighted for not being strong
The struggle of just being you
The struggle of just being us…black maybe

Common – “U, Black Maybe”

jose

Ed. Note: For a little perspective, my colleague Andy A. sent me this excellent article yesterday about how Dominican women straightening out their hair is a direct reflection of their denial of their African heritage. It’s all part of the Miami Herald’s series of articles about Afro-Latin Americans. What’s funny about this series is that it confirms exactly what I uncovered about my own history: my Dominican ancestors continually deny their African heritage because that’s all they’ve ever known.

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