If you had to teach something, what would you teach?
In the Marine Corps, the best thing I ever learned was being brutally honest. Doesn’t matter the situation. Be as honest as possible, all the time, to the point where you might poop yourself when you breath because you aren’t holding anything in except your meal and certain work-related reservations which are irrelevant, because you will die when they are relevant, and there is nothing you can do about it. There are no parents you can cry for. No cousins to jump out of the woodwork. No siblings to cry to on the phone. No friends to text or call for a casual, simple, pick-me-up conversation. It is always best to live like no one will ever help you in a jam.
In living that way, I find that I do not hesitate to help others when it is necessary/required/appropriate for me on a level where I have no angles.
When I was younger, I used to do everything with a benefit in mind. The things I cared about were moreso for other people not to judge me for how little I actually want/care about.
I used to shout that I wanted: money, power, etc.
Tbh, I never cared about that, or I would have tried harder to get it.
I care about passing time pleasantly: doing art, writing and enjoying being alive.
I have no particular goal for my existence.
I was almost 3 months premature.
I was also almost aborted.
I almost died the first time when I was five. I peed myself in public often afterwards. Like, if there was a loud noise, I’d tremble and pee my pants–immediately getting hit or insulted for it. I was called a sissy for unmanly behavior rather than my parents comprehending the source. They didn’t want to be embarrassed so my goal was to avoid embarrassing myself. If I hurt, if I cried, if I cared, that was on me. I was only good when I did what I was told when I was told to do it regardless of how it was told me. My parents gave me life. There were many times I almost lost it. I owed them by doing what was expected when it was expected; in return, I could do ANYTHING I want, any time I want so long as I could afford it on my own and find the means in a manner that didn’t disrupt my household.
Then, pretty often after that; picture (insert adult) casually driving drunk on the wrong side of the road at times to and from school, or social/familial outings. This was a norm in my home including some fights on occasion.
On top of that we moved often with no cultural fit for mixed race, bilingual Dominicans. Being black in America, being white in America, or being a mixed race American is one thing, but being that and latino on top of it gives you a quadruple whammy. I can’t even imagine being Asian, or a mixed race Asian person in America. Or, a mixed-race Euro-Afro / Euro-Latino in America.
From my personal vantage point, I can tell you with confidence (especially if you never actually lived [I don’t mean brought your ways with you somewhere else; I mean fuckin’ livin’ and integrating and succumbing to your cultural ignorance] outside your zipcode) that there are no pockets of Americans. There’s the actual America, and then whatever you are fed on TV on any platform.
Actual America is diverse until you get to the midwest. Then, it’s a huge swath of who knows what, trying to do god knows what to god knows who for whatever reason they may have. Why? Who knows? To what end? Who knows? What do they hope to achieve? Probably to end a feeling they don’t want by attempting to grab things that were never meant for them in ways that require more effort than they need to be exerting. Basically, angry, insecure, wealthy child must let you know they are angry and insecure by making you feel that way about the things they are projecting at you in order to create a form of false camaraderie with their image.
Side Rant
When I was a kid in one of the places we lived in in South Carolina, there was a white kid who liked my dark-skinned sister. My dad was dark and my mom was light. My siblings were all mixed. This was normal to us. It was not normal to this kid. He hit my sister with a stick and cried when she cried. My sister ran home and told me over my older brother; my older bro would have gone nuts. My older sister would have called her friends. I was the safe bet. We go to the backyard they were playing at, and I confront the kid and ask him why he hit my sister.
We have a really awkward, 9-year-old 4th grade (me) talking to some 7 year olds about race.
The kid hit my sister because he liked her and didn’t know what to do when you like “those people.”
I don’t remember all of it, but I remember the “I like” and then an explanation of “those people.”
I didn’t fully understand racism as a Dominican kid from Jersey in South Carolina until that happened.
I remember feeling, “Okay… there are people who will attack us because they are stupid about their feelings, because their parents are stupid. That’s really scary. If this guy hits my sister again because he likes her, and she likes him, should I tell my parents?”
Throughout my school years in South Carolina, I was put in remedial classes for english and math. Then I attended summer school multiple times. When I tried to do well, I did poorly. When I pretend to struggle very hard, the teachers in specific classes LOVED me. The more I struggled/stuttered, the more they praised me. The more I did well with ease, the angrier certain white teachers got. I tried telling my Dominican parents this. They both grew up in Dominican Republic and in the Northeast. They had not experienced the American school system in the south where there are no other afro-latinos, or what we considered, “normal people.”
It was a shock to learn that a white person was a “normal person.”
Even as an adult, I have worked at companies where white people act like they own the place. You can’t do anything that might help because they have angels and agendas and they don’t care about meaningful things that topples their perception or pursuits.
No matter how great the company says it is, if there are white men on the board, it’s no place for normal people. I have been able to sleep better after realizing that.
Old white americans are the biggest hazards to the environment, society, economy, religion, ideology, genders, race, culture, business, and each other. They use everyone else as a proxy to wage passive aggressive clandestine violence for no reason.
The whole “who’s side are you on” shit is white propaganda. If you hear it anywhere, be on your own side. Whites start things because they want to be gods. They genuinely think they are/need to be perfect, and need to “educate” us on “the way.”
Picture a hick who doesn’t bathe telling you about Jesus Christ.
The nappy-headed, African Jesus that you are closer to by being of any afro/middle eastern/latin descent.
The picture changes real quick when you consider that there’s an entire group of white nationalists who don’t know their ancestry, have no economic power in America, and have no say in their own futures, but they are being told by the wealthy white people who own them (and their kids) that the thing they don’t own is being taken from them…
Look at who wears MAGA hats.
It ain’t rich people.
It ain’t people with means.
It ain’t people with enough to eat.
It ain’t people who know Jesus was black. I mean, dude, if you can count, then you can count history. If you can count history, then you can geo-locate. If you can geo-locate, then you can place Jesus in Jerusalem in his respective time period. White people didn’t make it that far down in those days. Imagine what they would have thought about a pale person. Dead on sight. The Pharaohs were not fair of skin either. Neither were their advisors.
There are a lot of concerns this raises.
Imagine a person saying:
“Sonic the hedgehog was red.”
You wouldn’t even have to tell him to stop.
He could only keep that up if he knew he was wrong and was doing it to get a rise out of you.
Nothing wrong with that, to people who operate that way.
You do what you were taught or whatever your emotions drive you to, even in 2023… where Elon Musk is launching Starlink… blocking out the sun via an interlaced web of satellites, and people are legit going to get chips inserted in their brain… There are bigger concerns.
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