nyc

Our Middle Fingers Are The Same Color, Too

by Jose Vilson on July 5, 2011

Powerman Can't Catch a Cab Either

Yesterday, I reflected on the state of our country in a July 4th special on this blog. About 18 hours later, I got the best example of the state of our country’s views about each other with a couple of waves of the finger. We watched the fireworks explode from Weehawken, NJ, sitting together watching as many colors in the sky as there were watching amongst us. After the half-hour spectacle, we drove home very late at night (why they would close any roads near any of Manhattan’s bridges is beyond me). I asked our friends to leave us close to our houses since they had a much longer trip home than I did.

Soon after our friends dropped us off on the Upper West Side, I waved for a taxi to take me home. My index finger waved high enough that any of the empty taxis could have picked me up. I blinked when the first one passed me, I giggled when the second one did, and by the fourth, I let out a full-out belly laugh. The discrimination was so absurd that I’ve learned to expect it. This was only accented by the third taxi in this caravan, who looked at this smiling Black man in the corner and waved me a middle finger before speeding down the street. I was in shock, but stood there undeterred.

The sixth taxi pulled up to the corner, and the driver was a Haitian man who humored my tale about his pseudo-compatriots. So much of what we understand about race breaks down after seeing an example where a man who is similarly colored as all those drivers couldn’t get a taxi until it was a man with other similar features. It’s easy for me to categorize all of those men AND all the previous men who happened to have similar cultures into one category and call them all prejudiced. But that would discount all the friends I’ve made who also share those features and that skin color.

Race is so much more complex than the physical. It’s a set of experiences and notions we start developing about each others’ lifestyles and cultures. Who knows what would have happened if I was wearing a polo shirt instead of a jersey and a red shirt? Would I have been given the cursory finger salute? Who knows?

What I do know is that the jersey I was wearing had the letters USA emblazoned on a red, white, and blue shirt. I wonder if Patrick Ewing would have caught a cab or would he have to wait for the same one I did after representing this America.

Jose, who has a virtual keynote he would like you to attend tomorrow morning.

p.s. – I wish I could do what PowerMan did …

 

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Some of the Right Questions To Ask About The Police State

by Jose Vilson on August 11, 2010

Stop and Frisk Policy

I can’t say I’ve ever been stopped and frisked yet, though I’ve accumulated my fair amount of “treatment” from other entities in NYC. I can say that we need to start asking the right questions, like why police find it OK to shoot 40+ shots anytime they’re even in neighborhoods with high concentrations of people of color. Even with the shifts in population, the discriminatory practices won’t seize. One might ask, “Are these ‘type’ of people prone to violence and crime?” The better question to ask is: “Why will more new prisons be built than schools?” or “Why are the stop and frisks more proportional to the population we have in NYC?”

The New York Times does a masterful job in showing you what many of us have known along. Here’s hoping this not only answers some of the questions we have, but also changes the wrong questions to right ones.

Jose, who doesn’t think everyone’s asking these questions enough …

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Disagree Without Being Disagreeable

by Jose Vilson on October 23, 2008

Remember how in the Time Out NY Mag, I called Mayor Bloomberg out for being on every damn list I’ve read. From TONY’s 41 to Esquire’s 75. No problem. For better or worse, he’s New York City’s mayor and I harbor no hate for his hustle.

However, I’m really not feeling his policies.

I completely disagree with the massive overdevelopment of NYC, the rent hikes, the infiltration of KIPP and charter schools and the corporatization of public schools, and the latest coup de grâce, a referendum to keep voters from having any say as to whether he gets to run for a thid term.

But it’s like I’ve said: NYC is Rome. It’s the Empire City in the Empire State, the Capital’s Capital, and now, we have our benevolent dictator. Or even plutocrat. His money’s his muscle so few people have the courage to stand against him when he really only sees NYC as his blue chip and not as a city with actual people living in it. And not all of them have tons of money either.

Yet, and even still, I wouldn’t wish the same fate of Julius Caesar to Bloomberg. I can disagree without being disagreeable. I’m just not so sure some of my other colleagues will be as good-natured.

jose, who’s taking a cooler approach to everything …

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Without Scum, There Are Still Yuppies

by Jose Vilson on October 9, 2008

A short note on yuppies:

Yes we get it. Young Urban Professionals. Upward mobility for (mostly) young white people wanting the best of everything. We get it: yuppies are more Wall Street conscious while hipsters are more charity conscious. We get it: they’re often the most biggest investors in urban art forms, including rap, slam poetry, and art. We also understand that the characteristics of a yuppie are broad enough that it’s far too ambiguous but any combination of yuppie / hipster characteristics will be met with disdain and spray paint against developing edifices all across any given metropolis. We don’t want them to die (well, most of us don’t). We understand; they’re people, too.

The rest of us urbanites aren’t letting up on yuppies and hipsters, though, and here’s why:

1) Yuppie-ism often invites more police and law enforcement to certain areas. Not that we hate the police per se, but why are poor communities only allowed to have better police enforcement when yuppies come in? Did we not pay taxes before or work hard enough for us to get real protection until we let developers gentrify our neighborhoods?

2) Yuppie-ism often means that mom-and-pop shops have to compete with multi-million (and billion) dollar corporations, which usually leads to …

3) Yuppie-ism often means that the flavor and unique characteristics of different neighborhoods get extricated in exchange for the safe, the sterile, and the monotonous, even when hipsters may preach about how they love the neighborhood and its flavor.

4) Yuppie-ism often drives the natives out of the neighborhood implicitly and not-so-indirectly with rent hikes, new buildings, and higher costs for groceries.

5) Yuppie-ism spends more time on Darfur than the South Bronx. It’s easier when people only look at some country as a distant problem than a train ride away.

6) Yuppie-ism, when confronted with said issue, is about preferring the “save the world” mentality as a measure of some guilt, but sometimes exacerbating the problem.

7) Yuppie-ism is when we see people jogging right across our neighborhoods that we helped build with our culture and and watching as the metaphor for this government-aided invasion punctures holes in us, deflating any possibility that we can have a nice neighborhood without it changing too much.

So the beef isn’t with yuppies / hipsters themselves. It’s with what they bring with them. They don’t really care to look at their shadows, where some of these evils lurk.

jose, who definitely read that New York Magazine article, and wondered this aloud …

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About That Time Out New York Interview

October 6, 2008 Jose

I thought I’d let you in on a little secret. Time Out New York magazine recently came out with the New York 40, a collection of 40 people who emblemize New York City in all its corporate, liberal, and sleek-grit glory. Everyone from Tina Fey and Derek Jeter to Jay-Z and Liev Schreiber showed up [...]

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I Am A Community Organizer: The Genesis

September 8, 2008 Jose

This morning, on my doorknob, I got a flyer from some group detailing the negative aspects of Daniel Squadron, a young man who’s running for New York State Senate, representing Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. The whole Lower East Side has been abuzz with community activism and political stationing, not so much about the presidential candidate [...]

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Paved With Gold

August 26, 2008 Jose

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 [...]

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The Real Terrorists To NYC

July 28, 2008 Jose

“ There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by [...]

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Gentrifuckation (part 1)

February 20, 2008

Every morning, this is what my walk to the train station looks like: That thing I circled is The Ludlow. At first, it doesn’t look too obstructive … Then, as I start to walk down Houston St., I realize how much it blocks my damn sunlight, the energy I feed off of every morning. It [...]

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Shower (and Sleet) The People

December 13, 2007

Today was the Penny Harvest Field Day for my school, and I, along with the principal, assistant principal, and 14 Penny Harvesters from my school, went to go check out the Penny Field in Rockerfeller Center. When I tell you that the sight was amazing, I’d truly be understating the experience. From my own understanding, [...]

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