I’m Not The Only One

Since tomorrow is the last day of Black History Month (eyes rolling), I figured I’d blog a bit about my own questions and observations about the African-American community and about this state-sponsored joke we call Black History Month.

1) Black History Month is the biggest joke ever. If you’re black, every month should be Black History Month. You shouldn’t wait for the white man to teach you a watered-down version of black history. To tell you all about Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall and Jackie Robinson and all the other African-Americans that don’t make white people nervous.

When I was a kid and a teenager, all the books about Puerto Ricans and Latinos (in the libraries I had access to) were in Spanish, a language I did not master until adulthood, so I instead read books about the Native American and African-American experience. I’ve read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, Roots, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Culture Bandits, Goodbye to Uncle Tom, Black Indians, every Donald Goines book I could get my hands on and countless other books. I read the Daily Challenge, New York City’s only daily black newspaper because I didn’t know enough Spanish to easily read El Diario or any other Spanish-language newspaper.

My point is that there is so much information on the black experience in America in what I read on my own that I never heard in school. Besides, the U.S. government is the one most responsible for oppressing African-Americans, from the legal status of slavery and the African slave trade to Jim Crow to the “Great Society” to the War on Drugs. Why on earth would a government-sponsored school like the one which I and millions of other Americans of color attended ever tell all aspects of African-American history, namely the disenfranchisement of blacks via the U.S. government? (more…)

North Korea got a taste of the NY Philharmonic this week, and have reportedly invited rock geezer Eric Clapton to play in Pyongyang. Kim Jong Il and his buddies love Western music and are itching to see more live performances, which means they may be more open to dialogues with the U.S. and its allies if they want to see such performances in the future.

Why didn’t anyone try music before as a way to improve relations with unfriendly countries? American music is the biggest export of American culture ever. Is there any country in the world whose people cannot name a single U.S. or British recording artist? And the U.S. is home to so many different genres of music, it’s hard for anyone to hear it and still see us as the enemy. Perhaps if Tony Blair had sent to Saddam’s palace the Clash to sing “Rock the Casbah” there wouldn’t be any U.S. troops in Iraq today and Saddam would be enjoying all sorts of musical performance in exchange for far more open relations with the U.S. and maybe even a discount on all his oil.

From a fiscal perspective, it is far cheaper for the U.S. to offer live performances of Western music to unfriendly nations than it is to execute expensive military ventures (not like we could afford to after Iraq!) as a means to thaw out some otherwise icy relations. (more…)

For Black History Month the Food Network has added a black couple to join the channel’s impressive lineup of culinary artists who host their own cooking and other food-related shows. The newly added program is called Down Home With the Neelys, a cooking show hosted by husband and wife Pat and Geena Neely whose owns a chain of successful barbecue restaurants, Neely’s Bar-B-Que, in Tennessee and expose viewers to such recipes as Get Yo’ Man Chicken, Southern Creamed Corn, BBQ Spaghetti, Memphis-Style Hickory-Smoked Beef and Pork Ribs, and the Neely Family’s BBQ Sauce.

My fiancee is a wizard in the kitchen and even her own blog, ItaliaRican Kitchen (Her mother is Sicilian and her father is Puerto Rican), complete with recipes and little nuggets of culinary wisdom. My favorite dish of hers is hands-down her spinach pete, a dish which can be best described as spinach pizza without the sauce. (more…)

Since Fidel Castro will no longer be President of Cuba, now is the best time to share some of your favorite Castro jokes here!

Fidel Castro is giving a speech in La Habana, one of his famous six-hour speeches before a crowd of thousands of Cubans. In the middle of a sentence, he is interrupted by a very loud food vendor shouting “Popcorn! Peanuts!” El Presidente is annoyed and briefly surveys the crowd for the loud-mouthed vendor before continuing his speech. Again, Fidel is interrupted mid-sentence by the words “Popcorn! Peanuts!” Fidel angrily scans the crowd for the food vendor, doesn’t see him, and continues his speech. Again, someone calls out “Popcorn! Peanuts!” This time Castro is pissed. He roars into the crowd, “The next son of a bitch who cries out ‘Popcorn! Peanuts!’ is gonna be on the first boat to Miami!” At which point the entire crowd screams, “Popcorn! Peanuts!”

Please leave your favorite Castro joke as a comment.

I was delighted to know Fidel Castro had recently stepped down as President of Cuba. However, I am sure that his brother Raul to whom the Presidency has been given will enforce the same dictatorship that Castro has maintained for decades. Cubans reportedly say that little will change in their lives-especially their dismal standards of living-with the change of leadership, so long as the regime remain intact. At least they won’t have to hear anymore of Fidel’s notoriously boring six-hour speeches.

Over the years I’ve had a deep interest in Cuba and have always read news articles concerning the island, from its history to the Bautista regime to the Revolution, even the Pope’s visit to Cuba, mostly because culturally speaking, Puerto Ricans and Cubans have more in common with each other than we do with other Latin American countries and cultures. As the saying goes, “Cuba and Puerto Rico are two feathers of the same bird.” I never supported the U.S. embargo, however, because I believe that American capitalism can do more to bring democracy to Cuba than any trade embargo. Like Cuban-Americans, many Puerto Ricans also want to see a free Cuba, especially those Boricuas like myself who wish to see an independent Puerto Rico.

But back to the subject at hand.

There is a twist to this story of Cuba’s longtime leader stepping down. Over the years, I have heard from the mouths of many Cuban-Americans, Puerto Ricans and even in some news articles the theory that Castro employed Santeria (I’m not talking about the art of sculpting or carving figures of Catholic saints) to successfully overthrow the Batista regime in 1959. (more…)

Need I say more?

Are people really buying these t-shirts?

It seems that Hillary has pulled a Howard Dean, and she didn’t even need to scream on national television! She went from leading in votes and delegates over Obama in the first primaries/caucuses to lagging slightly behind in the most recent statewide contests.

Clinton’s edge slips with whites, women

Knocked Off Balance, Clinton Campaign Tries to Regain Its Stride

Potomac Primary Leaves Hillary Clinton Campaign in Further Turmoil, Barack Obama Sweeps Votes Creating More Democratic Deadlock

Needless to say, I couldn’t be happier. I think people are beginning to understand why Hillary Clinton is not the best candidate for President. A lot of blue-collar Democrats, especially Latinos, tend to support Hillary because of the accomplishments of her husband during his eight years in office. But I believe that it is dawning on more and more voters a vote for Hillary Clinton is not a vote for Bill Clinton, and that his achievements are his own and not connected directly to his wife. I think some people may have seen electing Hillary as a way of ushering Bill back into the White House to bypass that Constitutional ban that prohibits two-term Presidents from being elected again. But Hillary barely let him be President when he actually was the President. In 1993, the meddling Hillary forced Bill to allow her to draft a comprehensive national health care plan. Though her heart was in the right place, the plan was hideously flawed and opposed by many, especially the then-Republican minority in Congress.

Given this fact, would Hillary actually allow Bill to anything in her Administration other than damage control when shit blows up in her face (and it will)?

On a side note, I do not agree with Barack Obama’s or Hillary Clinton’s promise to implement universal health care. After the soaring costs of the Iraq War, this country can barely afford to adequately defend itself from an outside invasion or attack, much less control the unchecked influx of persons and various materials through its borders. Something as expensive as universal health care should be on the back burner until the U.S. can withdraw all troops from Iraq and downsize the number of overseas military installations. Besides, after all the money her Senate and Presidential campaign has accepted from the giant pharmaceutical lobby, I am confident that any universal health care package Hillary Clinton promotes would primarily benefit HMOs and the pharmaceutical industry. (more…)

Well, Primary Day for New Yorkers was last Tuesday, and I’m glad to see Obama is still neck-in-neck with Hillary.

Also, on my MySpace profile I received a friend request from a profile called Re-caucus Nevada. The claim being made here is that many voters were turned away at the Nevada Caucus and as a result many votes were not counted. Does anyone know how legitimate this claim is? This profile is set up by a 24-year old from Las Vegas and doesn’t appear to have any affiliation with the Obama campaign.

I was a bit disappointed to see that Latinos in my home state did not come out for Obama as much as I thought they would. My mother actually called me a traitor for not voting for Hillary, as she did. Most of my mother’s Latina friends and their families voted for Hillary. When I asked why, they said because “everyone else was doing it” and/or because they like Bill Clinton, which are both stupid reasons to support Hillary. (more…)

I googled “Obama Latinos” to find Latinos who were Obama supporters like myself, but I was surprised and disappointed at what I did find.Clinton’s Latino Firewall: Distrust Of Blacks Among Latino Voters Could Trouble Obama

Big Challenge For Obama To Trump Black And Latino Tensions

Barack Obama addresses black-Latino ‘divide’

Whose Afraid of the Big Bad Black Man Obama? Latinos?

Feds tackle Latino gang accused of targeting blacks

These are claims made mostly by non-Latino pundits employed by the mainstream media. Non-Latino “Latino experts” who are horribly out of touch with the Latino community at large. Unfortunately, African Americans and white Americans, both of whom can be terribly ignorant have been eating up this misinformation, as you can see in this hate-filled comment thread from Blackprof.com.

This myth of Latinos being unwilling to support a black candidate and of having a negative view of black people is poorly based on a handful of misleading polls, general ignorance on the part of white Americans and African-Americans, the isolated Nevada “phenomenon” and news stories of Mexican gangs in Los Angeles clashing with black gangs and attacking non-gang affiliated blacks on L.A. streets.

There are so many inaccuracies in these assumptions made by mostly white media pundits and the African-American readers whose unfounded fears of Latinos jump at the white journalists’ command. Where do I even begin? (more…)