Founding Fathers.

Seriously, what is the big deal with these guys? They are not deities. They are not untouchable beings. Their judgement is and was not flawless.

Why do people have a hard time viewing things in context? The Founding Fathers set up a system that we enjoy today, but it is hardly the same system we had then. We live and work in a Post-Industrial society, which is much different from the Agrarian one they framed their ideas in. We live in a time when black-letter law of slavery, segregation, and oppression of women is done with, but these things were the norm in the time of the philosophical framework of the system the Founders agreed on. We offer public education for those who do not have the funds or the desire to see their child schooled privately. This option, however, was not something that was part of the framework for our founders vision. However, our society has prospered with those things implemented, and we've been fine. Why can other issues that may conflict with "The founders" intentions not be viewed in the same context?

If you lost all of your money or assets and had no more private school, you'd be damned happy there is a public option for your child to be educated under, to guarantee at least a minimum of education and opportunity in this society. Why should this be any different for health-care, the matter of life and death for many Americans? We have a "right" to buy cheap, subsidized fast-food (which was built up by government socialist subsidies to begin with), but not to be able to walk into the hospital or doctor to get care? I think this is less a question of freedom and more one of priorities. Government management was and is responsible for interstate highways, public schools and colleges, pell grants, GI Bill (albeit having a racist implemenation), Social Security, public libraries, bridges, NASA, and public transit. So why exactly is the government managing a public option for some a bad thing? Oh yeah, that's right. We already do have and have had public options for some for decades (Medicare and Medicaid). Somehow, the country hasn't collapsed into a socialist dictatorship. Imagine that.

Oh yeah, I forgot another large government beaurocracy: the military.

Somehow I get the feeling we'd be "okay" in adding a public option. It's our priorities with respect to who gets kickbacks, tax cuts, and subsidies that needs to be examined.

Family

You know, I get told a week before hand that my brother coming home, I don't have time to ask off for it, but I work a 9 hour day, drive home at 10PM, get there at 11PM, ready to spend what little time I can with him before he leaves the country again. Then, you make this comment to me over and over, in front of everyone, and try to bring yourself up at the expense of me and my life. If it were almost anyone else, it wouldn't bother me, but make me laugh heartily. But since I care about you, the comment stings badly. It stings, not because others heard it in and of itself, but because my life is hard enough than to have my own flesh and blood publicly displaying their resent about my good fortune in front of a family member I hardly ever get to see and often wonder if I will get to see again once he leaves the country.

I have done nothing but bust my fucking ass, save and scrimp every dollar I can, take care of my own affairs without begging for money to bail me out at every turn for fucking myself over, and when something good finally comes my way, you took several opportunities to slight me because of it, as if I had any say in the matter. Why can't you feel good that things finally took a turn for the positive? All this after my car died in December, I had to buy a used one and do lots of work getting it in decent shape, I had to move to a new place (which meant a big increase in rent and a nice sized deposit, take on debt for the first time (which I was openly unhappy over), and deal with even more things to pay off every month. And yet, I'm the one that's open for attacks, however 'jokingly' they are supposed to have been.

I'm hurt and offended.

La Pregunta

"I'm not a nigger. I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, that means you need him, and you gotta ask yourself why."

- James Baldwin, interview, 1962.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDjaqhuSqQE

Interesting clip of an interview with James Baldwin. He is one of my heroes.

To those confused.

I've received comments from people who are confused, concerned, or just flat out pissed towards me because of a misunderstanding they have about why I write the way I do about racism and what that means for my feelings on White people. This is especially pronounced in my case because in the eyes of most Americans, I am a White man.

Some feel I am guilty. I'm not guilty about anything. I didn't create the system of racial privilege and I did not choose my skin color or any other physical feature. I feel no guilt. I do, however, recognize the responsibility I have now that I have become informed. Once informed, I now feel outrage when I see things perpetrated in a systemic and institutionalized way, all the way to a personal way when it comes to racism. I feel particularly outraged due to a lack thereof on the part of other White people, though ultimately my outrage isn't landed at their feet. This leads me to my second point.

I, for the record, do not and never have hated White people as a group. I don't automatically dislike them upon meeting them. How could I? I am White, most of my family is White, and some good friends of mine are White. I love all of these people dearly. Some integral people in my upbringing were White (my Grandmother on my Dad's side being one). Many well educated and respectable people in history and society today are White.

Where my outrage is ultimately directed and where I feel the most resentment (with regards to White people specifically) is with two groups:

1. White people who refuse to learn about the society they are in and how it functions. Ignorance is one thing, but that can only be allowed for so long. Flat out willfull ignorance of the problems and manifestations of injustice in society in order to preserve some fairly tale life one wishes to remain subdued in is not an excuse. I do find that many White people fall into this category, and it is with them that I hold a lot of bitterness towards upon encountering.

2. White people who know damn well what the system is, don't care, and do things consciously or unconsciously to perpetuate it on a regular basis. I have zero tolerance for these kinds of White people.

These two groups are bunched into a group and divided by a very thin line (sometimes they overlap in small ways), but I find these two to the best most problematic, followed by the "Well-meaning, do-gooder White" who is oblivious to racial issues in any authentic manner (outside from interpersonal and overt racism).

This does not mean I hate White people. If I hated White people, why the fuck would I try to reach out to and write about them and their behaviors if I hated them? Wouldn't I let it go and allow their racism to continue if I hated them?

The truth is that I think White people are better than this shit. I know what most White people act like in all-White settings. The truth is, most intelligent and educated White people are capable of learning so much about things like religious intolerance, homophobia, global climate change, politics, etc., so I know they are capable of learning this. I just also know it is a much tougher lesson for them to learn, so I go into it with a thicker skin and an attitude that is ready for all types of responses.

I also know that I have to be on the lookout for my own racism, educate myself on these matters, listen to other POC and Whites who are informed, and continually sharpen my understanding of this issue.

I believe the fight against racism to be a worthy one, as well as the fights against other injustices. But, if I treat White people like it is not their job to work against it with minorities, then that would be the one way I could show my lack of humility and caring towards the White community.

For your viewing pleasure.

Two movies you all must see:

Capitalism: A Love Story

and

Why We Fight

I highly recommend both.

Enjoy.

Great words.

"We hungry but them belly full,
The structure is set, you never change it with a ballot pull.
In the ruins there's a network for the toxic rock
schoolyard to precint, suburb to project block,
Bosses broke south for new flesh and a factory floor,
the remains left chained for the powder war.

Can't waste the day when the night brings a hearse,
so make a move and plead the fifth cause you can't plead the first.

So now I'm rollin down Rodeo with a shotgun,
there people aint seen a brown skin man since their grandparents bought one."

"The rungs torn from the ladder, can't reach the tumor,
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer"

- "Down Rodeo", Rage Against the Machine

Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KEKL8fcvzY

Music

I don't credit it enough, but punk and (some) metal music really did aid in my arriving to my current state of understanding of the world. Not so much going to shows and participating in the pits (though I found that unforgettably exciting and meaningful), but the feeling of like-mindedness amongst all of the people there made me remember that there are important aspects of humanity that haven't been steamrolled over. This also helped me prepare for making comrades in my current fight on the progressive front.

If I have no name specific bands, there are really only two that I was ever truly fanatical about: Bad Religion and Rage Against the Machine. This is not to say that I only enjoyed these two bands in the punk/metal genre, but that they are the only two I gave a shit enough to follow and listen to on an album by album basis.

Both of these bands, though they are in two different genres of rock music (BR being punk, RATM being metal or funk-metal), helped bring me to a closer understanding of society and the world than any other groups or artists, though others like Mos Def helped me understand things about society I could never forget.

Bad Religions cutting cual guitars and fast-paced tempos are mesmerizing in themselves, not to mention the onslaught of lyrical genius displayed in many of their songs. Tracks like "Leaders and Followers", "The Handshake", "You", and "21st Century Digital Boy" became anthems I lived with week to week. I feel like this band was the first to make me feel empowered and make sense out of the confusion I felt in this complicated society. From "Leaders and Followers":

Recognition by proximity, and a brand new face
Just a smidgen of the success pie, and a pinch of social grace
You can play with the big boys, or you can tell them what to do
But sooner or later there's another one like you.

Rage Against the Machine was the band that helped direct me once I'd been taken out of the shadows by Bad Religion. They take you step by step, song by song, through a web of lies, deceit, and hidden messages in society and government. De La Rocha's verbal machine gun fire is undeniably legit, as you can feel the passion and anger flow from each syllable.

From "Guerilla Radio":

A spectacle monopolized
The cameras eyes on the choice disguised
Was it cast for the mass who burn and toil?
Or for the vultures who lust for blood and oil?
They hold the reins, stole your eyes
All the fistagons, the bullets and bombs
Who stuff the banks
Who staff the party ranks
More for Gore or the son of a drug lord
None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord.

Yes, music played an indispensable role in my arrival to my current realization of the world.

Renouncing Whiteness: Saying it and doing it.

When I look at myself, I'm Jaime. I am a mix of recent English, Native American, Mexican, French, and German descendents. I enjoy playing guitar, basketball, reading, writing, and learning more about my car and how it works. However, to the people who matter, I'm White. I don't mean the government (well, partially I do). I mean the dominant culture - White culture. To them, no matter how much admixture I have, my phenotype tells them White. So, to them, White I will be. And this, whether I want it to or not, has an unmistakeable grip on my existence and shapes, at least in some ways, without my control the context in which I live and enjoy who I identify as personally. I am not a signatory of the contract of Whiteness, but I am, without my say-so, a beneficiary.

This is the dilemma in which a progressive minded, honest with oneself, anti-racist White person finds oneself. The vast majority of whites are likely not experiencing this dilemma because they haven't reached the realization of the world they actually live in. They haven't reached it because they don't yet have the ability to see it. They don't have the ability yet because they've been tricked; tricked by whiteness. Because they have not been taught how to think otherwise, they believe consciously or subconsciously, that the world they live in exists for a reason. To them, it may be that they benefit in ways that they may or may not acknowledge, but it's only because "everyone is an individual in this society" in their eyes, so that absolves them of any historical guilt or problems they may feel with respect to their current status. This narrative of the individualistic America, where everyone rose or fell on their own merits, where each man's predecessors worked hard to get their family to where they were is a dishonest portrayal of our society. The problem with this version is that it only includes Whites, and leaves out everyone else on whose shoulders White predecessors "worked their way up".

As another author has suggested, this is what the anti-racist White lives as the "White double consciousness". It is not the same as W.E.B. DuBois' "Black double consciousness", as Whites that are anti-racist do not necessarily need to view themselves in their image of subjugated groups to arrive at their place in this society (though listening to minority groups is a fundamental way to understand racial issues). The difference here is that the anti-racist White person also needs to see his/herself as they actually are in a historical sense. For instance, this realization does not mean saying that Whites do not work hard, or one persons White grandparents did not work hard, but only that the hard work was done with certain resources reserved for White competition at the detriment of racial minority inclusions. It is this double-consciousness that is necessary for anti-racist Whites to operate in, because they must know that this is true for them in a historical sense, but at the same time operate in a way that works against the large remnants still existing today.

It is not necessarily a conflict, self-loathing, or self-guilt trip, but actually sort of a tough love. It is finding out something about yourself that you may or may not have wanted to admit for so long, but once you do, you know it incontestably redefines you and your vision of yourself in the world. It also redefines how you see the people you know, the hobbies you have, the opinions you have, the people you identify with, and whether those things are conducive to the truth you've now uncovered about yourself and others around you.

The White double-consciousness means that Whites cannot simply renounce their Whiteness as a token measure, but they must act, think, and feel their renunciation. How does a White person do this? That is the journey that I'm on and have been on for some time. Maybe there is no set "way". However, one may argue that this blog in and of itself is a manifestation of my attempts to define that "way". Maybe only through serious self-reflection, cultural critique, and authentic relationships with like-minded individuals of both White and POC groups can a White person find his/her way. Wherever the path may lead, there is no turning back, so long as injustice and dishonesty cloud the social collective on race, as well as other forms of social divisions.