SOLO said:
I think the whole conflict we are discussing now (your predicament vis-a-vis the AB "decision") has to do with the blacks and enes you grew up with not being your "group." It seems to me you chose AB in haste because you didn't have a ready-made group in which to classify yourself. But what automatically makes the AB your "group" if the enes or the blacks aren't?
The fact that in educating myself I found myself culturally distant from the streets. I became less interested in drinking 40s, tagging, and tryin to fuck hood rats than history, fiction, debate, politics, and English. My high school textes me and they were like "Oh you're a genius", and my family put me in a private school, and soon after my pops got his own business we frequently moved. I still rolled through every now and then, but I found myself in a different place mentally. Nowadays, I keep company with lots of different types, skaters, ghetto folks, whatever. My main criteria for my company these days is intelligence. You don't have to be college educated by you have to be able to make real, legitimate statements past everyday observations like "Oh she cute."
It sounds like they have been true to you, whereas turning to the AB was a decision made in haste. Read on:
I see your whiteness as blinding you to your true loyalties. It seems that you feel influenced and nurtured by the blacks and enes you rolled with, but you're facing a predicament because you think you're white so you can't click up with your true homies when faced with a life-or-death situation.
Repeatedly, I stressed that after giving the idea thought, I would not join any racist white gang. EDJ don't wanna hear this, though, which is why the topic is rehashed and the statement is quoted.
But you come from Mexican heritage. You were raised around enes too. Do you think they'd reject you if you attempted to click up and ride with them? If so, for what reasons?
My homeboys ain't really my homeboys no more, and I can still walk around and chat it up with a mothafucka on the streets, (I'm not at the "uncomfortable around minorities" white people level...I never will be) but I'm not at the same place I once was. Shit even the slang in the sco has changed to this day.
My feeling on skin color is this. It's an easy identifying marker for when people need to separate themselves on a simplistic and desperate basis--like in prison. If you got locked up, your ene and black homeboys would be counting on you not to base your loyalties on desperation and a simplistic rationale. I imagine you would have a tough time being accepted initially by blacks or enes incarcerated because they would expect you to take the easy way out (roll with the "whites") when it came down to it. That's why EDJ said he's suspicious of whites looking into black/"urban" culture--because when it really comes down to it, the vast majority of them aren't willing to put any skin on the line. They take the easy way out.
But see my homeboys I've either lost touch with or are long gone. As far as clickin up Norte, in the days of the internet any whiteboy can go online and talk about the red rag and the cause. It's getting to the point where you have to have something other than knowledge to back your claim for legitimacy, and a whiteboy with the black gangs in prison-I doubt it would ever happen, even if he was ghetto as fuck.
And as far as me bangin Norte with no spanish speaking, no homeboys besides a few here and there that might not even be around to this day, that's shaky ground. Like aye you know So-and-so from LN$ or so and so from this or that click. It's like Yea what's it to you? The homeboy ain't even around no more you know, and even though I kicked it here and there, they were acquaintances.
When you said initially that you would click up with AB, you did take easy way out, but I don't think you were happy with that decision and I don't think it's where your heart was at. Am I wrong?
Nah, but see in your case I'm dealing with a rational person.
I don't think the AB issue is now dead. I think everyone needs to have a continuous sense of where his or her loyalties lie. If you decide right now where your heart's at, it will prevent the desperate and simple decisionmaking I described above.
My heart is not in prison. that's where my loyalties are. If I ever do get locked up, I imagine myself "ridin with" Socrates, Nietszche, Steele, etc. What that philosophy like? lol.
If anyone decides to join AB I don't think it's a "stretch" to discuss whether he/she harbors racist attitudes. What seemed to shock EDJ was that you felt you had to click up with AB and turn against those who you'd grown and lived with. Ever since you posted that, he's been provoking you to see where your heart is at. If you're truly down for that decision doesn't it make sense that he would question your right to speak on "minority issues?"
Nah. He straight wrote me off, and that's the end of it.
Race and whiteness are social constructions. They exist insofar as we socially instill them with meaning. Both are flexible and fluid and changing. There are no "white" people. Whiteness is nothing but an ideology of supremacy. Is that enough? If you want me to elaborate let me know what you want me to answer specifically.
I developed my "white identity" in school. Multiculturalism classes, especially, where were I found my real beliefs coalescing. I saw white kids basically getting hammered in arguments. The belief put forth basically was Minority is culture, Minority is life, Minority is vitality and reality, and White was basically a description of an evil, vacuous spirit, a "nothing people" who lived in a sinister, asbract reality, giving little or no notice to the world around them.
And especially in the bay which is very liberal/multiculturally minded, White kids didn't have any ammunition with which to fight back. The public school system that brought us up taught that anything we touch turns to dust, we are intrinsically racist, held to a double standard of being forced to interact with minorities, yet dispossessed of the right to discuss minority issues, etc.
I knew some shit was wrong, but I couldn't exactly say what. I think my conclusion was that White people do have a heartbeat and a culture. It's simply a bit more mental, a bit more abstract, than the vibrant starkness of hip-hop, the "common sense" way of talking and interacting possessed by Black people, or the warm "celebration" and emotional reality of Latino culture.
In Goth, Kurt Cobain, Punk, Anarchy, Spoken Word, Satanism, Veganism, Militant Straightedge, Metal Music, Chaos Philosophies, Wicca, Extreme Sports, etc. (white dominated subcultures) I saw white culture. In the philosophy of my family, in Seinfeld, even in my examinations of skinhead philosophy out of curiosity (<-- This will give EDJ enough ammo for another couple threads), I saw common themes and ideas not particular to other cultures.
One of my conclusions, though, was that in a way, collectively white people are somehow culturally bound and connected to death. The death they create, their obsession with it, and the white preoccupation with conflict seems to betray an angered spirit in the collective past. White people had some of the quickest technology and exploration advances, and yet instead of using them to further the world, they acted in collective chaos, in disarray and destruction. Comparatively, white music and ideas in distinctly "white" arenas often stress destruction, hatred, death, and chaos, whereas Minority dominated media and thoughts often seek an equilibrium with the environment, a wish for "good times", as opposed to Kurt Cobain, Metallica, Neurosis, etc. who stress death, destruction, angst, and chaos.
Race should not be a seperator or an identifier. But in the context of rich racial polarization, what commonalities in factors and environment create simultaneous cultural occurences. I believe racially labeling people is bullshit, but racially labeling culture is not. This is why I identified "white", because in understanding myself and "non-minority" White america, I came to identify with it. Racially, I'm only half white. Ethnically and by choice I identify full. As much as a million people can disagree with me and call me a sellout, etc., in the end the choice is mine. The Latino community is not hurting for more members, and in the end i believe race is of little value, though to this day I stick by my choice of ethnic identity.
The reflex to tell mixed people to identify with the minority side comes from the mentality I was brought up in, that white is bad, evil, useless, etc. It's connected to the white history. You are saying that "White people were bad, and (some/many/most/all) still are bad". I don't agree with that, and I believe there is more to White America than a simple anti-minority, anti-global racist identity.
