3:12 AM on 8, November, 2008, my mind is up this late a little troubled over my posting on the EA forum on the 2008 election and I feel some tension between a couple guys that I have to say, I admire very much and have learned so much from. I never intended for my thoughts on the political process of this year's Presidential Election to be divisive, just to put thoughts and feelings out for discussion. I feel really bad things went a bad course. My good friend John (8 in the Corner) a man I own very much to my knowledge of cichlid husbandry and care to, brought out the subject of racism in the postings and this troubles me somewhat. I'm not angry or "firing" back at all, I just thought maybe if we all examine the word Racism, and the meanings and experiences of that, it might shed some light on what the word Racism means to all of us as a group.
Of course I would like to begin by saying, if anyone feels I'm a racist or have racist views, I do find that a little funny and odd given my life experiences. Just to put that out in the open here, my family was a military family. Mom and Dad both from upstate NY, where I have to say "Minority" populations are not in great numbers. Being a dependant of the Air Force too, it should be noted that racism in our Armed Forces is no way condoned or supported in fact, can get a career minded person in a very bad situation.
That being said, the first girl I ever found a level of attraction to at age 6, was a Hawaiin girl named Heidi, the first girl I ever kissed at age 12 was Puerto Rican named Brigetta Garcia, my best buddy in high school was my fullback, an African American guy named Ernie Spicer, who was adopted and now lives with his family in Florida, my only childs mother is a white/caucasian woman, the first woman I married was an African American woman named Tamiko Richards out of Brooklyn NY, the woman I am with now is an American that grew up in Indonesia and who's mother was Indonesian/Dutch, the friends I still call and talk to back in Queens is Alberto Rivera from Columbia, Bianca Korn from Puerto Rico, and Anjani Surajpal from Guyana. I personally, have no issues with any race, belief, handicap, gender or sexual orientation. However, I can't make up anyone's mind or opinions but before I get judged I just feel you might want to consider these things first. No one person is this being directed to as this is open for anyone and everyone to read over.
My first actual experiences with racism was pretty early in life, though at that time I had no comprehension of what it was all about really. About the age of five or six I was playing with some kids in the military housing area we lived in, and one of the kids began singing this song about walking under a tree, looking up and what do I see, a little "racial slur" trying to pee on me. You know, at that age, you really don't know what things like that mean. You're just a kid and your buddy was singing a song so you just repeat it, sometimes at times it can help you, sometimes not. This case it was actually a good thing I decided to repeat that at the dinner table that night and got corrected about the use of that word and that it was wrong to ever say such a word. After finding out where that all came from, I wasn't allowed to play with that kid anymore.
As we bounced around from base to base, I can recall some good memories from those bases though some of the details get lost until we lived in Omaha Nebraska really. I do remember one of my best buddies in Maine was Reggie Smith and he was black, though I never really looked at him as different. I mean at like even 10, you really don't pay attention to those things unless you're taught to do so, and that's how I see it. Yeah you notice their skin looks different then yours, but only a kid that's taught to act or treat that person differently is really going to do anything about it. In Cub Scouts, the fathers of the Den had like our own verison of the Olympics and I distinctly remember always comming in second to Chris Kelly, who was black also. I never had any thought that race had anything at all to do with it, just that Chris was stronger then me was all. Man I tell you, that kid could throw a ball!!
What is funny though, and we're talking this is like 1979 or 1980, somewhere in that area of time, I was taking up Karate, and our version we learned was a Korean version, taught by a black man too. Tung Soo Do Moo Duh Kwan. A Thai kid that lived down the road named Smai was into kung fu, and at that time, all the martial arts movies were comming out and we'd see Bruce Lee be such a big thing. It started to come into my mind that Smai looked sort of like him and I started to wonder if that wasn't why he was so fast with his hands. I trained hard but my heart wasn't into that as much as sports was taking more into me. Maybe that was some of it, I don't know but another odd thing here is that Smai always wanted to fight with me to prove that Kung Fu was better. I just dunno really what to think of all that, but at like 10, what can you think anyways?
By 82 we'd moved out to Nebraska and of course, they had big time football there. Huskers football is almost like church out there so it was a good thing for me, BUT you go from living in far upstate Maine on an Air base where the Moose might outnumber the people to a city like Omaha maybe 500,000 or so about that time, you get exposed to quite a bit of culture shock so to say and new experiences you wouldn't experience living in upstate Maine.
In the bigger city area, we still lived in the military assigned housing but things were really different there. My neighborhood buddy ended up being Robert Gagnon, who's mom was from Guam and dad was white. Ernie lived in a different neighborhood plus Robby was a couple years younger then me too. We all played sports and it was getting clear I wasn't going to make the NFL you know, so basketball started being played more and more. The competition there was well, tough and different then playing ball at the Youth Center.
Now we're starting to look at 84 time frame and that was about the time when Michael Jordon was becomming a sports Icon.
