El Rey Day!

Featured Artist: Nikkolas Smith

If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr wore a hoodie:  My social progress has disconnected me from my social class, a childhood community.  I can't relate to the cholo like I once could.  I don't know if I am seen as Chicano.  I am living among the privileged, remembering like the disadvantaged, and thinking like the revolutionized.  I find my interests aren't congruent enough with my hommie's to participate in once cherished careless tomfoolery.  My tolerance for superficiality has almost evaporated.  The conscious Chicano is unfortunately scarce.  The proud Chicanos are just to loud for me.  Dr. King how come you never wore a hoodie?

I don't have the street cred passion that might have kept me close to the barrio.  I now lean towards the intellect, whom I find often isolate themselves, maybe for the same disconnecting reasons.  I am falling into indifference, not able to see injustice clearly, but understanding a common insecurity to compete.  I am seeing with non-violent eyes, but blending in like a dude with a hoodie.

I don't feel called to evangelize, revolt, march on main street, sit in, or ask for change.  I feel like throwing on my hoodie, popping out 100 pull ups, running some sprints, winking at the cutie with the light eyes, and then grabbing some green tea with a kale salad.  For once in my life I don't feel like changing this world, but can't seem to hold back the complaining.  I just feel like continuing to ground myself.  I feel worn down with resistance.   I have a hard time keeping my commitment to uncovering, discovering, and illuminating cultural dysfunction.

The pain, the lactic build up in my heart is there. The easy choice to be like everyone else whispers with pleasure.  Being non-violent doesn't mean there won't be pain.  I think it should have been called the Without Rudeness Movement or My Truth Hurts Movement because maintaining dignity can be violent.  I can barely remember the slang that united me with mi raza.  I have learned my way into an upper-enough class.  But  a class that still can't feel me.  Maybe a class that only sees a vato in a hoodie.  I am no longer familiar with one community and still not quite integrated into the other.  That is what I think of when I see the word "hoodie".  I am not quite from the hood, and I am not pedigree enough to be privileged.  I will always be just a little bit hoodie.

Dr. King what would you have to say about being somewhere between?