Final Journal- Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed

Dave Chappelle's WRAP IT UP BOX is the best visual aid I could come across to illustrate the non-existent yet perceived rush I find myself in (though I don't feel quite as rushed as Halle Berry at the Oscars, I still want to put some form of punctuation on the end of this experience).

Multi-ethnic is gone, I barely knew ye.

A little over 6 weeks ago I walked into a classroom filled with faces. Faces of friends, faces of classmates, faces for the most part, unknown. Upon sifting through the massive dump of articles in my inbox, one reading in particular (and its headline) highlighted a similar situation I faced with the discomfort of unfamiliar faces.

Obama Confronts Ethnic Tensions In Bid for Votes

Pretty bold, almost as if the Washington Post had found a way to set up ethnic tension as Darth Vader (to my overactive imagination, though Ethnic Tension is just as amazing a name for a villain as Darth Vader) in this epic struggle. Boiled down , it brough the idea that some immigrants were pushing towards Hillary Clinton because of their familiarity with the Clinton name (I'd say dynasty but it isn't quite there yet). I drifted towards the familiar faces as I walked into class, suddenly realizing that there weren't many. When confronted with an over-abundance of unfamiliar, it's fight or flight, fight in this case meaning adapt, and adapt in this case meaning pretend that I feel comfortable (flight's not a option in a class that only meets 6 times).

As the class went on, I found myself engaged in ideas and conversations I thought I needed some sort of excuse for: do black people get sunburned (admittedly I wondered just how severe it could get)? Are dreadlocks really all that common? Are all Cubans really that loud? While light and funny, these are questions that can inspire dread if they enter the mind mid conversation. The person will twitch slightly, debating with themselves as to whether or not they will answer the question. As I learned, we're all that weird and full of uncertainties, so I might as well ask just to get something started.

That mental debate came at the same time a link lead me to the yforum, a site that is so cringe inducing it's beautiful. Post questions with relative anonymity for people to answer. Anything and everything finds its way across the forums, letting me feel that some of the things posted made my questions seem relatively...boring by comparison. It showed it'd be harder for me to come up with something that would offend than I thought.

Just a random confession related to the class. I had never seen Barbershop (any of them). Based on the clips, I always preached about its pointless nature and crap dialogue. I formally take that back. While not a work of high art, I would compare it to Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (fans of Bergman can shoot me later). They both offer a fairly candid view into things that aren't often discussed in public, marital problems and African American stereotypes being offered in each repective film as the spark to light a conversation.

Back on track, there are two quotes that highlighted my approach to this class, both from Oscar Wilde:

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

Though I was tame, there were a few jokes and comments I let fly without much though, which thankfully came with laughs just after, letting me know I'd done something right...

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

While I can be open and earnest, there is always a limit I need to be aware of... though I intend (particularly after the completion of this class) to continue pushing further and further. Not in the overused, motivational poster, "push yourself" way, but in the "I don't understand, therefore I must find out" fashion of journalism.

The class.

*Rubs eyes*

Final thoughts?

Just one.

Spic still doesn't cut it as a racial slur for me, Nigloo is a racial slur I doubt I could ever find the right person to use it towards and Jewbacca has to be the single funniest word I've seen in the past year.

Not enough? I figured.

I don't mean to get sappy (actually I do). This class was what a class should be honest, discomforting and engaging. It was all that and...ok, so I can't finish it with more because I SWORE to myself I wouldn't end on a cliché. It was all that and a crushingly realistic view into the world I could never have expected in any form of higher education.

Mission Accomplished (and not a banner or flight suit in sight).

Cheers.

Listening Post 3- Less a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, More A Final Walk About Town

Done.

It's still out of reach, an absolute grasp on racism I mean, but I can safely say that my final trip through Overtown via Jackson's Soul Food was unproductive (in the sense that I had no contacts willing to give me their information). In every other sense, it was what I'd been trying to have all along, fun. Not to say the homeless are, well, fun...but they were more willing to provide tales from rock bottom than I'd figured. Among weaving their stories for me as I shared a cigarette (since I was just passing by), we touched on everything in between, the genius of Issac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul, Obama graffiti, and where they spend their evenings. As police cars began to pass by, they (I say they because the informal exchange never got to names) quickly became jittery. I figured I'd let them move their makeshift homes and not slow them down.

The key in my last post was that I finally had my stereotypical Overtown experience with a young man who kept coming around me on a BMX bike.

Guy (Marshall? Name was spliced into his sentence somewhere, but he had other things on his mind)- Yo. Lemme get a cig.
Me (it's the 6th one I've given out in the span of 3 city blocks)- Sure.

Nelson fumbles with the pack.

Me (mid-fumble)- Ah, hold up.
Guy- You want some crack?
Me- *stare*
Guy- Or coke if you need.
Me- Ah, nah thanks man.
Guy (looking desperate)- I ain't a cop.
Me- Neither am I.

Nelson gives the amazingly straightforward crack dealer a smoke.

Me- Take it easy man.

Nelson hastily walks back to car.

Granted, I spazzed and left, I hadn't realized the prospects for a Friday night would be so dry (well early afternoon). An error on my part, but one which opened up my evening to say goodbye to Nooni and take a walk in the evening through Overtown. Aside from the crack dealer, surprisingly uneventful Had I not learned anything in the class?! I panicked, feeling myself crawl back into stereotypes and the belief that I couldn't just walk around for fear of, ell, the irrational. I made my way back to my car and realized it had all been in vain, just letting the unfamiliar get the better of me. Though this final forray was really a quick glance back at the place I'd seen only a few times before, I realized the most important part in the exercise wasn't whether or not I'd fit in or found something profound in each and every person I came across, the point is that even though the class is done, I still want to go back. Not just for the food, but because it's just another part of town to get to know, and I'm still not quite where I'd like to be yet.

Journal 3- Focus Focus Focus

I've got a few things on my mind, including Good Hair, white people's wavering support for the president, and questions so awkward I could NEVER come up with anything even half as funny and honest.

First things first, what constitutes good hair? While watching the Jay Leno segment where people were interviewed in Harlem, the few minutes of black women discussing their hair was eye opening. I had never realized the amount of work that went into everything from straightening, relaxing and... I suppose I'd call it "weaving".

While the segment was good, it was short, so after a youtube search for similar segments, I came across a trailer for Chris Rock's upcoming movie Good Hair.



Simply enough, Rock sets out to answer the question, what exactly constitutes "good hair"? From the scenes available, it seems as if though black women have come to identify aspects of white women's hair as the desirable traits (i.e. straight, wavy, etc.) This gave me an uneasy feeling, almost the same as when I look at my area of Overtown, its seems as if though the black community is making themselves and their envoironment "whiter".

Being a faceless (or raceless) entity, was an interesting portion of Tom Fiedler's piece in the Miami Herald on bloc voting.

Interestingly enough, a familiar name popped up:

"People do it because they're very comfortable with people of their own ethnicity,'' said Marvin Dunn, a psychology professor at Florida International University. He once tested the process as a black man running for mayor of predominately white Miami. He lost.

The piece also tied in with the recent piece from the L.A. Times "Obama is fast losing white voters' support." It seems ridiculous, seeing as the figures are based off changes after Obama's first 100 days in office. Just because a segment of the public had high hopes and became disillusioned doesn't mean there is a "freefall" of support, it just means people are rethinking their decisions (as people often do), an action far more difficult than simply taking a stance.

Dunn continued on in the Herald piece with a degree of optimism:

"Society seems to be moving away from racial and ethnic matters,'' said Dunn, the FIU psychologist. "That is the overall trend. Politics may trail it, but eventually it will be swept along with it.

While inspiring, it came off as a sickly optimistic viewpoint, as if "I Have a Dream" became "I Have a Vague Notion".


In the end, with all these readings, I'm unsure if people really get what constitutes racism. While the class allows more freedom than the usual social settings, we are involved in a class. We can apply it to our own worlds and those we come in contact with, but I don't see a day where racism ends and politics becomes a clean game with voting based solely on qualifications and positions on key issues. It's human nature to be prejudiced, but to show that I'm not entirely cynical on the matters at hand, it's also human nature to call the social norms into question. I find myself kicking and screaming with no real audience and no real direction other than forward. I'm not entirely sure where exactly I'll end up, but the more I cut down the massive sound bites and pundits, the more ridiculous I realize our world becomes.

Anything can seem ridiculous, just think of walking. Essentially falling forward with some coordination. We, as a society, are always falling forward, hoping our feet continue their alternate pattern in a weird stumble through time.