What Shade of Race are We - Intro

What shade of Race are you?  I think we all need to answer this dazzling yet scary question.  It is useful to approach this topic.  The seeds for my interest in this topic are the origins of Race as a category.  I use the theoretical basis that Race grew from an English Christian need to justify slavery.  What does race mean to you?  I want the world to begin to recognize our outward features as distinctive but not differentiative.  I want us to stop using race as a measurement.  I have this strong urge to reverse engineer this complex concept.  I want to address how it has deteriorated the opportunity for human harmony across regions, nations, and now, more than ever, the globe.  My motivation comes from the heated and explosive phenomenon currently ravaging American popularism.  My motivation has grown from my passion for feeling empowered after many encounters with feeling incapable, especially due to identifying with a race.  I want to unwrap the grip Race has on humanistic productivity.  I want to loosen the grip Race has on humanistic symbiosis.  The reversal begins with me.  I started this idea with answering these questions myself.  What shade of Race am I?

I am an Albuquerque citizen, located in the Central Rio Grande Valley, a city in New Mexico, a state in the United States of America, on the North American continent, and I could continue up and down a cosmic hierarchy of fractal proportions, none significant enough to die or kill for.  This is what sets the stage, prepares a workbench for my unraveling and dissecting the entangled pieces that have created my shade of Race.  I am excited by how persistent I was to address my racism.  I feel I was able to encounter my advantages, disadvantages, and the experiences between.  I feel I needed to recognize my own racism before I could detach from the entanglement I had with Race.  I have reached an understanding that Race only exists because I, along with the civilized world, give it validity through human characteristic and traits like discrimination, competition, and distinction.  I have transcended my original dependence on culture, identity, and belonging to step away from these to see how power and privilege in toxicity has shaped the invisible social thresholds that reinforce and amplifies Race.  I did not remove them though. E-race-ing racism does not eliminate how we naturally find discrepancies in peoples’ lifestyle.

Part I

Not hasta, Siempre

Love is not dying, nor dead, but flowing in its most potent way, spirit.  More than a life, more than my grandma, more than a mother, more than a wife, Margaret was cultural art.

 My grandma was torn apart, slowly, by dementia. She drifted off into a final sleep. She drifted off in way that was beyond any of our control. She was fatigued down to a few gestures and the most beautiful eye contact. The strong willed woman that orchestrated our family, was asked to simply lie trusting her faith, trusting us, and letting her body prepare itself to let her soul launch into the heavens.  My last moments with her were spent sharing our essence, dripping water from a straw into her dry mouth, and watching as she methodically swallowed.  That is how I picture the divine feeding love to the world.

 At her end, short bursts of interaction were enough to drain her into a restful sleep. Then she would want to visit more, letting us know by opening her eyes and gazing. My counselor training helped me understand the process, my education reminds me of the systems and how they teach us to deal with death, and still my heart hurts. My grandma had a graceful death. She laid resting in her home, her room, and on her beloved's side of the bed.  A traditional photo of the sacred heart of Jesus looking over her. 

As much as I wanted to be there for her last breathe I could only be with her while her warmth turned. I was confused for a moment, believing possibly that the cool rigidity of her cheek was misleading, hoping childishly that the warmth still in her hands was an indication she was still with us. She did not have an anxious expression and she looked like she did during any other nap. My grandma left peacefully.

She was a huge reason I am who I am today. She is also a reason I am who I want to be today.

Graduate?

Finally feeling the emotions that come from my child graduating high school.  I cried this morning, not so much for her success, not so much out of sadness, not really understanding why, and absolutely knowing why.  She represents the newness in our culture.  She represents the progress in our sophistication.  She represents the persistent effort our family and ancestors have evolved to be.  She was never hoping to graduate, like my generation.  She appeared to be learning in ways rooted in her design.  She rarely seemed to feel obligated to learn.  I never felt she was a few decisions away from a life of delinquency.  And yet she had a father who had to learn how to parent like she was capable of doing anything. 

I cried because I didn't know how to teach her to believe in herself.

This is where I find our New Mexican culture, trying to develop a belief in ourselves.  Unknowing and yet learning how to believe in itself, she is a bloom from this, she is doing it.  I had to set aside all the toxic traditions that kept me alive.  The yelling, hitting, drinking, shortcuts, ambivalence, dogma, and toxic obedience.  She inspired me to trust in her.  She gave me every reason to have a little more patience.  She taught me to believe in me, as a father.  She let me fail.  She didn't let me fail.  She is moody like me, temperatures changing in moments, stubborn to the point of spite, and also expressing emotions as fragile as a snowflake.  She gave me fear that lured my selflessness out in ways I'd never experienced. 

Watching her grow was my lesson in belief.  She showed me that believing in her wasn't up to me.  She didn't need my permission to believe.  She taught me how to feel someone else's, the other's, worry without having any role in dealing with it.  For every time she hesitated, I felt inspired to show her how not to.  For each hasty attempt at some reckless response, she invoked in me a call to patience.  She still leaves her room a mess and each morning when I'm about to leave mine unkept, I pause, I lament, and I take the time to put things right, knowing I am asking her to endure "each thing has its place".  Not doing this mindful act will feed the habit of neglect.  She teaches me to feed my habit of care, diligence, and focus.  She is my exam!

Her beauty is not my success, but the success of every interaction, every lonely encounter polishing her perceptions, and every courageous exercise in believing she is greatness.  Then I accept that she will also be taught to doubt, and this scares me.  And then I trust how doubt might be the most important ingredient.  Without doubt belief does not have its beautiful nemesis.

The milestone is not a high school graduation, rather a realization that "wanting the best for her", has likely been the subtle wisdoms for how I learned to improve on my perception of me.  My tassel, as a father, is believing in me, not selfishly, but with the necessary application of knowledge and fearlessness, that will help me continue to be an example of refinement.  My daughter is not on a trajectory for grandiosity, but an extension of progress, sameness, and flavor.  And in that same thought I am full of shit, because I cannot know who my daughter fully is, nor can understand where she is going. It is what I hope for me.

What shade of Race are we - Part IV

The healing of our minds from the delusions of tribalism is not something to heal but to reorganize so that we can learn to appreciate our differences, where today it seems to be a social Olympics.

It allows me to recognize that we are healing together but possibly still unable to recognize that  disadvantage is not race based or limited to opportunity, but rather a consequence of greed and scarcity of access. We have not grown to ask why there are limits on educating and employing. When we account for how money is contributed to education, research, manufacturing and vocations we might begin to see that corporations make most of humanity a liability, a cost of production versus an asset.  Even better would be to see all versions of humanity as cherishable and invaluable.

The sad aspect to these injustices is that we have not grown to separate the pain of prejudice and discrimination from the pain of exploitation. The Anglo cultures that appear to be expressing their marginalization or injustice seem to make the battle about the lack of care for their pain. These Anglo cultures who express marginalized seem to believe that they are being discriminated by the interventions put into place to protect the marginalized peoples of non-white heritage, disabilities, defenseless, or non-traditional. These Anglo cultures seem to be making the fight about whose discrimination is more worthy of political agenda. The interventions seem made out to be the dysfunction. There is strong resistance to understanding how these interventions can work, because it isn't addressing their marginalization.  We need a creative way to see oppression through an ecological lens where we like to look at it through a economical lens.

Man-turing

Once a boy, wondering when manhood would fit.  Wanting my manhood to be genuine, like a dirty work shirt, still functional, completely functional, lying just organized looking folded, enough, next to a worn down broken in pair of leather gloves, making room for a stoic rigid toughness.  I no longer want to love like a boy.  I  am eager for that toughness to protect me from that anxious pain I've felt around love.  More feeling like artificial love.

Maybe not artificial but definitely not love. The desire! I am eager to have that discipline to protect me from my desire.  Not all my desire.  Likely the toxic desire.  The kind that leaves me hungry and inflamed.  I want the real nutrient filled love.

Stop thinking I'm holding the world, and wonder what is.

The love that strengthens boys,  melts the ego, and nurtures the balls, leaving an unwavering, bitter hope for love that is more fulfilling.

When will I have this certitude that men are supposed to have?
The wherewithal that is unaffected by romance's and jealousy's tug;
The immunity to the pain for being alone;
The carefree acceptance for the things about me un-grown;
The Being able to call wherever I have to lay my head home.

When will that come?

I sit thinking how odd it is to suggest, I un-regretfully, today could care less.  I wasted so much time wondering if I was doing manhood right.  I have reached this point where not knowing fits nice, maybe a little tight.

Is manhood a destination or a figment of societies' imagination?

Something about it feels more like humiliation, for falling short, more or less to the obligation that manhood is cessation.

I seem to encounter more lives that are forward looking, while I feel a stronger urge to look back.  These young-bloods look to be encountering choices still worthy of an investment, at a future I remember looking at so filled with stress from the uncertainty of whether I'd get respect. 

And so I sit, alone, not knowing, feeling as capable as ever of being gentle, blown away by not needing to claim something as my own.  I am more interested in beginning to understand we're never really fully grown.  Not so much fearing never reaching complete, just accepting I'm nearing it. 

The beauty seems to be that there is still a curious boy in me.

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In honor of the men who are contemplating on the Cosmic Importance of Male Initiation this weekend at the Center of Action and Contemplation.

What shade of Race are we - Part III

Part II

It is hard to entertain the suggestions from the marginalized Anglo-American asking for equality or fairness. One suggestion is how their disadvantages are comparable to or elevated by the attention given to Non-Anglos, the kind usually associated with American racism.  Some of these are affirmative action, civil rights, and political correctness.  Some of these different Anglo cultures have a need to be seen as discriminated, disadvantaged, or limited.  Their barriers or disputes appear to be sharing the same source of pain and economic injustice as non-Anglo cultures.

It is sad that race boxes these marginalized Anglo-American peoples into a stereotype of un-oppressable.  I've had an idea that Anglos can't be disadvantaged or discriminated because by default they are the privileged, rule makers, control brokers, and don't need advocates.   I have to acknowledge that I stereotype and I have my own prejudice against Anglo-Americans.  I think it is has been called reverse racism.  I think is more, a human reaction to victimization.  How a victim might have fear for their victimizer. We may find that reverse racism is more of a protective response rather than an ideology.

We may need to recognize how Anglo-American prestige is more about how greed doesn't discriminate.  Anglo-Americans are starting to see themselves as compromised by their "race", yet that is not the obstacle as much as their loyalty to a neglectful corporate culture.  It might be easier to say that Anglo-American disadvantage is not because they are "White", not because institutions are asked to include a diverse population, but possibly because our institutions refuse to expand and creatively reinvest the wealth in newer communal ways.  Communal ways, that would encourage the replication of effective accessible education, technologies, resources, and lifestyles for more than 38% of the Non-Anglo citizenship (Reeves,R.V.,Joo,N, 2017).

It seems like these marginalized or disadvantaged Anglo-Americans want to blame the interventions our American legislation has provided for discrimination based on xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and prejudice. The support of ethnicities that are not Anglo, struggling through prejudice, are now seeming to be re-attacked.  These Anglo-Americans would rather look at these policies than to look critically at the corporate or capitalist strategies that have evolved to no longer need race as an economic strategic tool.

Corporations can no longer easily compartmentalize a race as superior and depreciate darker people as disposable. This seems to force the once elevated Anglo-American class to now suffer the consequences of corporate neglect, disinterest, greed, and disenfranchisement.  This is something many Black, Latino, Migrants, and Women have experienced regularly.  But it is new to the middle class Anglo-American people.  Its no longer about keeping these people off table, after having to make room for us at the table, now its about asking us to trust that your attitude has matured enough to keep us at table as space shrinks.  Trusting this idea, given the Anglo-American's leadership record on self imposed benevolence and non-malfeasance is near impossible. 

Many corporations have a disregard or loose interest in being responsible to the communities they find themselves harvesting for human resources as soon as their return on investment suffers.  The corporations and executive classes do an effective job of bringing life to communities but struggle with transitions or worse responsibly having to say good bye.  We want to admire these businesses when they bring economic growth and accept how they pick up and move on when there is nothing left to harvest.  Some could argue this is exploitation or abuse.

We need to teach businesses how to die or transition with greater respect for their employees, communities, and environment.  Or at least, learn to not blame civil rights and protections from discrimination when economies flounder.  The economic disregard for community as profits and resources shrink seems to create acceptance for corporate abandonment, neglect, or an exploitative attitude.  And possibly for the first time, these Anglo-Americans are feeling the angst of exploitation.  This seems to lead to blame towards minorities, migrants, and any other susceptible community competing for opportunity.

What if we taught ourselves to look critically at the corporate or capitalist strategies we seem to romanticize. It is scary to be asked to believe that discrimination is gone when so many indicators reveal it's active.  Its sad that some Anglo-Americans deny these indicators or conveniently interpret them in their own advantageous ways.  It distracts from looking deeply at the roots to their own growing disadvantage. The complexity behind how Anglo cultures have manifested competitive advantage and conveniences to economic progress is not hard to present, but it has been nearly impossible for enough Anglo-Americans to acknowledge.  Possibly because oligarchies that have benefited the most were able to camouflage themselves with a loyalty to the concept they called "Race".

The toxic strategies Anglo-American ancestry once leveraged to elevate their status and wealth cannot continue to be ignored.  Some of these strategies, like slavery, barriers to entry, segregation,  preferential education systems, or deregulation need to be seen for what they are and likely will continue to be seen as useful by those who cannot bare to be identified as equal. Blaming these corrective policies ignores how the entire working class are susceptible to these newer, non-race based, forms of exploitation.

As I reflect on civil rights because we recently celebrate Martin Luther King Jr, I find myself blessed to have the clarity and perceptions that help me not need to deny other's beliefs more than I try to understand them.  Some in these Anglo cultures feel a strong resentment for the retributions put in place to remedy the carnage of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, racism, discrimination, genocide, robbery, pollution, and inequality. It is unfortunate that some in these Anglo-American communities want to undo, uninstall, and reintroduce non-Anglo disadvantage as a solution to their disadvantage. What a tragic way to solve problems. I hear it as let us all be equally disadvantaged, when we really have clues to a history that has shown us that birds of a feather will punish less those that have similar feathers.  It is calling past discrimination resolved without having any way of accounting for the present day economic gaps for Black, Latino, Women, and other marginalized peoples.

Part IV

I am a brown paper bag

The luminarias, more commonly known as faralitos to other New Mexicans, begin to take shape, lining up next to the wheel barrow filled with dirt. Usually two scoops of dirt from an old soda cup will do the job. The bag creased and filled with dirt is ready to find its home along the sidewalk, maybe the drive way, there is also the chance it lands around a tree. It has been my grandpas job for as long as I remember to place the stick between each bag to make sure it fits.

I don't call my grandpa, abuelito or my grandma, abuelita. I call them grandpa and grandma. What a thought to have so close to Christmas. Regardless they are a lot like my parents. I don't call faralitos, faralitos. I call them luminarias, but they both mean the same thing to my Christmas tradition.

The Navidad, reminds chicanos of the luminaria. Not the ethnic Chicano but the cultural Chicano.  Not the brown skinned Chicano but the kind hearted.  The humble symbolic lantern of light in a dark night. Isn't our life a beacon of hope for one another. Isn't it true that we are lanterns and disorient-able at the same time. I have a small burning candle in my heart. Its sheltered in my core. I am the brown paper bag. It's nestled in a bed of dirt. It lights the idea of home.

I trust the dim little amber yellow glow will be enough to guide my thoughts home. Home has become a journey, the journey. Not so much a place. The destination is no longer the priority because home is a condition more than it is a location. Not a destination that can be marked on a map, but experiences that splash the memories of those who share this life. Experiences, dusting the cosmos like a thin white jet stream left by a plane. A jet that once had a destination but now understands that its duty is to simply keep flying.

No, not like a jet stream. A little less straight, maybe more like the wake from a catamaran on a turquiose sheet of water. A catamaran leaving a carefree and curving essence of existence, gradually extending diagonaly left and right until both vectors seems to disappear. They never disappear though, it dissipates. Unless it finds an object to cause a rebound.

No, not like the wake from catamaran. A little less luxurious, maybe more like the tracks from a lonely snowshoer. A pair of snowshoes breaking through a white sparkly brilliance. Two shoes belonging to one person, crunching along, leaving a rhythm of evidence and disruption for as long as the temperature will allow. An essence that is completely dependent on the weather. My flame leaves experiences like snowshoes from a snowshoer with a pulsing flicker.

But not really like a snowshoer's tracks. Not as cold and surely an existence not so lonely. Maybe, an existence like a poem, always holding at the core the genetic and karmic nature of its author. Sometimes expressing the hurts, joys, and indifferences that reacted with other poets ideas about existing. And maybe like the hustle, shuffle, and buzz of a coffee house that lures poets. A congregation of poets, some who call themselves poets, others who are by mere intrinsic creativity considered poets. A collection of experiences like poets writing in a coffee house, my flame dances with energy.

The flame that I see in my heart is as determined as a jet stream streaking furiously through an empty atmosphere. The flame is as nonchalant as a catamaran in Caribbean sea. The flame fighting to glow can be as unaccompanied as pair of snowshoer's tracks. But usually the flame in my heart is as caring and warm as a coffee house filled with poets churning out ideas. My flame throws light against the shelter walls, animating with every flicker.

My flame flickers on this journey, the attitudes of others rustle my flame, not necessarily trying to put it out, creating conditions that bend, taunt, and tire my teardrop shape of fire. The journey is home, staying my course is my hope, and letting my little light shine is my duty. This little flame needs a cover. A cover that will let just enough light out but protect it from the gusts of discouragement.

Like the brown lunch bag that protects the luminaria's' flame from winds and the dirt nestling the candle's base, my body shields my little flame from fears, sustaining my dreams. The years get more and more trying. It feels like the lonely, cold, dark nights grow incrementally longer, perfectly challenging this weak but untiring flame of mine. Still, tonight, and even today that flame flickers giving life to the rhythms in my soul.



Dance little flame, because there is plenty of wick left.