It's Hot

It's really hot here so my mind can only think in lists:

1) Why was there a guy sitting on a bench smoking a joint at the park at 7:15 AM this morning? Isn't it a little early for all that puff puff pass mess? Oh, except he was puffing solo so he had no one to pass to.

2) I know Mike Huckabee apologized for making a joke yesterday about an assassination attempt on Barack Obama, but I'm feeling pretty uncharitable about the whole thing. Not cool.

3) On the list of racial inequalities in the judicial system comes this story from South Bend, Indiana: White co-defendant gets no prison time biracial one gets 8 years. Uh huh. Is Al Sharpton gonna roll up any time soon?

4) The pictures from China are breaking my heart... and my dad heads there in two days for work. Sigh. Greedy people + Building codes = Disaster when an earthquake hits.

5) My seven year-old wants to know why Dracula only bites people on the right side of the neck. He claims to have observed this since my husband let him watch Batman vs Dracula last night. Yeah, he didn't sleep in his own bed after watching that. Poor baby was scared.

6) I'm hot.

7) Clearly, as you can see from the picture above, Rick Ross needs a bra and the Jillian Michaels "30 Day Shred" DVD. And, we all know what would happen to Trina's career if she got a gut like that.

8) Still ridiculously excited about winning the Depeche Mode contest. Like commenter Neil suggested, it totally is like winning the lottery.

9) Speaking of music, if you don't have any Bjork records, you should get some. Like this song:


10) And now I'm going to brave the 95 degree weather. I'm afraid.

When Disaster Strikes

It feels like there have been too many disasters lately, doesn't it? Fires in Florida, the Cyclone in Myanmar, tornadoes all over the place, and now, the earthquake in Sichuan Province.

Last night I was chatting online with my dear friend Joanna about the awful disaster in Sichuan Province. I know Joanna because while I was living in Guangzhou, Joanna was studying in Beijing. We met while we were both traveling in Guanxi Province. I can't remember where exactly, because I tend to have an awful memory (which means I can't lie because I simply can't remember long-term what I've said). But, I do recall saying to myself when I first saw her in the little "motel" I was staying at, "Hey, there's somebody who looks like me, in China!"

Anyway, we lost touch a few years ago but, thankfully, Joanna found me through this blog and now we also keep in touch on Facebook. So, last night we were chatting online, and of course, given our experience in China and what's happened there, we got to talking about construction, rampant non-compliance with building codes, and the experience of living in a cinder block building just like the ones that have crumpled under the impact of a 7.9 earthquake.

When I first went to China I had no idea that such huge earthquakes could happen there. Then I learned all about the big quake of 1976 that killed hundreds of thousands. Some Chinese people feel it also predicted the death of Chairman Mao. All psychic or superstitious speculations aside (and there are already some interesting ones about this quake), I seriously don't know what I would have done if one had happened when I was there.

But of course, my mind immediately turns to my current home, Los Angeles, the place I know very well has earthquakes all the time. Folks are even saying what happened in Sichuan Province could be a worst case scenario for us. And if the ground isn't shaking, as you know, we have wildfires too.

I don't have a real disaster plan in place in case something happens, which is totally inexcusable because, unlike China being about to send 50,000 troops to the aid of people in Sichuan Province, are there even 50,000 soldiers around here that are able to be mobilized within 24 hours to help? Think about Hurricane Katrina before you answer that question.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from a woman named Amanda and she asked me to be a part of the State of California's emergency preparedness pilot program. Of course, I agreed. I was supposed to be sitting down with my family to do our disaster plan and I've been putting it off. Gosh, I feel like I better hustle and get on it! The first step is to assess your family's risk.

You really should click on that link because, gosh, you can think you have no risk but then when you find yourself answering "no" to some of the questions, well... you need to make a plan.

So, I'm going to make a plan with the family tonight. I think all this going down is a "sign" of some sort. I'll let you know how my plan turns out. What about you? Are you going to make a plan too?

40 Things About Moi

I was visiting Hammer over at When Your Only Tool's a Hammer and I decided to swagger jack this fun meme from him:

What I was doing 10 years ago?
-Roaming the streets of NYC
-Getting ready to move to LA
-Working out for two hours a day (running, rowing machine and weight lifting)
-Listening to a lot of Hot 97 (Busta Rhymes had some hot stuff out then!)
-Going dancing at the Latin Quarter

Five things on my to-do list today?
· Write an article for Divine Caroline
· Revise an article for Anti-Racist Parent
· Go to a school site meeting at 8 a.m. (totally dreading it)
· Go get a chai from Starbucks to help me survive the meeting (I might spike it with some melatonin so I'll be nice and mellow)
· Do this workout (eek!)

Places I have traveled?
· Beijing
· Montreal (not in the winter, m'kay!)
· Catalina Island
· Birmingham
· New Orleans

Five snacks or treats I enjoy?
· Yogurt-covered pretzels
· Twizzlers
· Gummi Worms and Gummi Bears
· Wheat crackers with pickle relish or peach pineapple salsa
· Breyer's triple chocolate ice cream (especially the white chocolate section)

Things I would do if I were a billionaire?
· Start a college prep tutoring non-profit for low-income middle and high school kids
· Buy a place in Villefranche-sur-Mer
· Go live in Villefranche-sur-Mer after I take a trip around the world
· Pay off the bills of everyone in my immediate family and create investment funds for them
· Give money to lots and lots of charities

Five of my bad habits?
-Throwing clothes on floor of my closet
-Procrastination
-Not taking care of myself as much as I should
-Too much multi-tasking
-Inability to spend money on myself

Five places I have lived?
-LA
-New York City
-Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
-Montreal
-Chicago

Five jobs I’ve had?
· Teacher
· Teacher supervisor
· Bank teller (I thought I'd get robbed every day)
· Research Assistant
· Waitress/Restaurant Hostess

Gosh that was fun! Now you know I want to tag some of y'all but I'll refrain. But, if you do this meme, let me know!

Stranded in Guangzhou

Let me count it up. This is blog template number... five? Six?

This one is courtesy of the amazing Annie over at BlogU. Me making one on my own was just not working as well as I wanted and I am not one to reinvent the wheel when I see something I like.

What do you think? Hao bu hao? That's Chinese for "good, not good".

So if I see you on the street I might ask you, "Ni kuangre mama hao bu hao?" - which basically means, "How's your fanatical mother doing?"

I know. How did we get from talking about blog templates to the Chinese translation for, "How's your crazy momma?"

I suppose I just have the Chinese city I used to live in, Guangzhou, on my mind.

If you know anything about China, you know there's a lot of people. You know that it's tough to walk into a Wal-Mart and find something not made in China. You might know that Chinese money is propping up some of the financial industry here in the States. So you might think folks are just rolling in the dough there.

They're not. Just like here, wealth goes to a privileged few. When I lived there, the average person made $52 USD a year. That was a dozen years ago and I recently heard it's still not much above that.

The only thing is that China has a history of having, uh, revolutions when folks can't deal with the extremes of wealth and poverty anymore.

Which brings us to the fact that China's been hit with the worst snowstorm in 50 years. The weather is causing total chaos there. You see, Chinese New Year starts on February 6th and millions of people leave the cities and head back to the boondocks to visit their families. But the weather is shutting rail lines down and making getting around impossible. It's estimated that half a million people are stuck in Guangzhou.

The picture above (courtesy of Getty Images) conveys some of what's going on. But to really get how bad it is, watch this video of the Guangzhou Train Station. I got chills watching because these are folks who work all year in the cities and don't get to see their families until this time of year. Parents leave their kids in the countryside and go to the cities to work and you want to tell them they can't go home?

Yeah, folks are flipping out.

I remember taking a train out of the Guangzhou Train Station during the New Year travel time. My first clue that it was going to be an interesting experience was that there was one line for foreigners to buy their tickets and one line for Chinese folks.

The first time I went there, there were around a dozen of us in line and I only had to wait maybe an hour to get a ticket. But for the Chinese people, there was one window open for thousands of people. Folks started pushing in line, started yelling at each other. And before I knew it, some guy pulled a small machete out and began screaming at the man behind him.

People started yelling and running and I was absolutely terrified. It was one of those moments where it really felt like anything could happen. Then suddenly, before anything could really jump off, the police came running in with these huge sticks and beat the people back into submission.

And when I say they were beating people, I'm not talking about a light swat. I'm talking about full-on swinging on men, women and children.

It was crazy because the guy with the machete just put it away and everyone went back to standing in the line or sitting in silence. It wasn't like here in the States where people would be yelling, "I'm calling my lawyer! I'm gonna sue this city for police brutality!"

No, none of that. Ten minutes after the machete got pulled out, it was like it had never happened. Folks just began waiting again. I asked one woman how long she'd been waiting and she told me she'd been there for two days.

Still, none of what I experienced is even close to what's happening there now.

I come across so many people who hate China or hate the Chinese people because they think they're getting rich off the backs of Americans. When you see these pictures or watch the video, you just see how it's not true. When you go to China and see poverty like you've never seen before, you see how, just like here, the good economic times are clearly not being shared. Voodoo economics ain't working over there either.

They're people just like us and my heart truly goes out to them.

Legacy and Destiny

I've been up since around 4:30 this morning. obsessively listening to "Map of the Problematique" by Muse, admiring the full moon hanging so majestically over Los Angeles, and writing a reply to a quite thought-provoking comment left yesterday on my last post. My response to this comment turned into quite the lengthy essay, so I decided to post my reply here instead of in the comment box. Go check out the original comment for more context, but in the meantime, here's my two cents:

Dear Anonymous (and anyone else who might be interested),

Your viewpoints absolutely do not offend and they are clearly offered with true sincerity. In fact, thank you wholeheartedly for taking the risk of offering your perspective. Your thoughts have also made me think about a couple of things.

What you said about your living in the UK and perceiving the US as being like a soap opera reminds me of the time I spent living in Guangzhou, China. I lived in China the entire time the OJ Simpson trial was going on, returning shortly before the verdict was given. To be so outside the situation, it did seem like some sort of sick and twisted soap opera. It made me wonder how I'd perceive the US if I hadn't grown up here, if I hadn't been trained to think about skin color and people in the way I have, in the way I have to constantly struggle against.

One of the other American teachers at the school I worked at disliked me excessively because he said I thought about race too much. He didn't believe that the problems America has with race are a big deal at all and could not understand what I was going through as a person of color who'd been suddenly taken out of the racial mire of America. This is not to say that China was any racial utopia. But there, the beliefs about race, specifically, the beliefs about black people, were not so ingrained, not steeped in a painful history of chattel slavery, and they were easier to overcome.

This guy disliked how I'd constantly talk to the my Chinese students about the oneness of the human family and the beauty and nobility of people of all skin colors. To me, the unity of the human family is the only thing that will cure our social ills so it was natural to do so. For example, one of the first things I did was show my students pictures of my parents, my sister, my cousins. These third and fourth grade students, like some folks here in America, seemed very surprised that my mother is black and that my father is white. They kept asking over and over if my mom was really black. I understood what that was about, clearly having experienced such a reaction before. The Chinese teachers at the school were more honest and direct in their explanations that to them, being black meant being a criminal, stupid, lazy, ugly, thugs and HIV positive. They got all of this from watching American shows on Star TV. Their favorite show was "COPS".

It was at that point that I really understood what a huge role the media has around the world in spreading racism and I understood even more what a huge responsibility we have in the US to solve our racial problems and come together united as one human family. We model so much for the rest of the world that desires to emulate our materialism, our consumerism...and our racial ideologies. .

I remember the day I taught the words beautiful and ugly. I decided to do an experiment with the students. I asked them to say one of the words in English when I held up individual pictures I'd ripped out from some magazines I'd brought from the States. Every single time I held up a picture of someone who was not white, they said "Ugly". I held up a picture of a Chinese woman and a white woman side by side. I asked them which one was more beautiful. It's a mean question, I know, but I was curious. Every single student picked the white woman.

This kind of thing is the same in the States, as evidenced in last year's documentary by Kiri Davis, "A Girl Like Me". We are taught in this racial system that to be white is to be beautiful, intelligent, superior, capable, good, hard-working. If I go to the store right now and look at every single magazine cover, chances are I'm not going to see a black face unless I'm looking at Essence, Ebony, Jet or O Magazine.

You bring up how black people are having plastic surgery to change their noses, and ask why skin lighteners are such a big business. Well, it's because our whole society screams this negativity. We're buffoons, fat mammies, hair weave wearing rump shakers...Hottentot's indeed. And black people are marginalized in the most seemingly inocuous ways. For example, I can't just walk into any hair salon and expect to find a stylist that knows how to do my hair. In fact, I used to walk into random salons just to mess with the staff. I'd request to have my hair cut or styled. They'd freak out at Super Cuts and Fantastic Sams as they stammered that they didn't have a stylist that did black hair...because our hair is supposedly so difficult that everyone isn't trained to do it.

You said, "I, like a lot of "black" Britons look to "black" Americans for social, psychological, political and spiritual guidance."

I found that so interesting because it made me think about a Baha'i quotation that compares black people to, "the black pupil of the eye surrounded by the white. In this black pupil you see the reflection of that which is befor it, and through it the light of the Spirit shines forth."

It's that light that keeps black people going despite everything that's happened in our history. I believe we do have an innate spiritual legacy, born from the blood of our ancestors. It's a legacy that's soaked into the soil of this country, shaped by the countless prayers surely said for deliverance from horrors I hesitate to imagine, all while offering thanks for all that they had. To me, tapping into that legacy and leaving behind all the materialism and consumerism is the ultimate revolution.

We don't know who we are right now. We have absorbed all the messaging our culture has given us and so we see ourselves primarily as material beings, still to be bought and sold to the highest corporate bidder. To me, that's why we have black on black crime and the problems with addiction. Definitely read that Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome book. I wholeheartedly believe that when we recognize our true selves, then things will change. When that happens, you won't have the helicopters and neither will I. Some folks think that's so idealistic, but I think it's completely possible.

And truly, there are so many amazing and dedicated people who are doing what they can to change things in their own spheres of influence. I really believe it's less about some big charismatic "Leader" and more about how we are leaders in our own communities, with our own circle of friends, with who we decide are our friends.

Surely, if we all, no matter what color our skin is, change our own hearts, ask ourselves the tough questions, and then act on what we know to be right, surely, that can and does make a difference.

This White Devil Right Here

Romeo Must Die, Rush Hour and Cradle 2 the Grave. Three movies with Chinese and black characters and all three were on TV today. What does this mean? Is it a holiday honoring Jet Li, Jackie Chan, DMX and Chris Tucker? Are black folks about to sign some sort of alliance or treaty with China?

No, have no fear. It only means it's still Black History Month since February is not over yet. And now, it's also Chinese New Year. Welcome to the Year of the Pig!

Hmm...Come to think of it, what a combination. Y'all soul food lovers better get ready to cook up a vat of chitlins.

Since the Chinese Zodiac goes in 12 year cycles, I have some very good memories of the last time the Year of the Pig was around. If you know me in real life, you know that twelve years ago, I lived at 56 Sui Yin Lu in Guangzhou, PRC. That's the People's Republic of China.

Living in China was one of the toughest things I've ever done and one of the best things too. I didn't really know what to expect before I got there. Even though I'd read my Lonely Planet book from cover to cover a dozen times, I still wasn't really prepared for life there. For one thing, everyone was Chinese. I mean, you know that going there, but then you see the reality of it. There weren't any black people, no Puerto Ricans, nobody from Hungary or Poland, no rivers being dyed green on St. Patrick's Day. Nope, nothing but Chinese people all around.

You have to understand, twelve years ago, China was not as politically or culturally open as it is today. The Internet as we know it today, was just starting to get going. And, in a city with millions of people in it, there were two McDonald's and one Pizza Hut. There was no Starbucks to be found. There wasn't even a Wal-Mart in China yet. Not even a real shopping mall either.

Even though Guangzhou is the size of LA, there were no freeways because most people didn't own cars back then. I sometimes saw other expats or foreign businessmen if I decided to bike down to the central financial district where the McDonald's was. Sometimes I got a serious craving for scrambled eggs and pancakes and I'd splurge and bike over to the ultra posh Garden Hotel. There'd always be a couple of foreign businessmen there from France, Australia or the UK sitting at the restaurant table next to mine. Sometimes they were friendly, particularly the guys from France. Sometimes they weren't. I often got the feeling that many of them were on the prowl for Chinese prostitutes.

I remember that at the time, Hong Kong was still under British control and my phone calls to and from the U.S. were regularly tapped. I used to laugh a little at the telltale clicking and the occasional sneezes and coughs that indicated that someone was listening in on my phone calls. I suppose the phone updates from friends and family on what was happening with the OJ Simpson trial must have seemed like some sort of big American state secrets.

My life was not as glamorous as that. After all, I was only an English teacher at a private Chinese boarding school. The biggest change was that even though I was constantly stared at, it was the first time in my life that I didn't feel the kind of racism that we get so used to here in the United States. I was still black, but I stopped being black. Sounds confusing, I know, but let me try to explain: Since I didn't look like Michael Jordan or Whitney Houston, people didn't know where to put me racially. They didn't automatically think I was black. In fact, no one ever thought I was even an American because at the time, the perception was that all Americans had blond hair and blue eyes. Actually, to go even deeper, people didn't initially care where I was from. They just knew I wasn't Chinese.

If someone followed me around a store, they weren't following me because they were worried I was going to steal something. No, they were following me around because they were curious about what a foreigner would buy. No one suggested that I only got into college because of affirmative action. No one told me that my hair was ugly or that it would look better straighter. In fact, Chinese people loved my hair because it was so very different in texture from their own. Hairdressers at the shop by my apartment building got into arguments over who'd have the privilege of doing my hair. And, if I didn't see any women that looked like me on fashion magazine covers, it was no big deal because, well, there wasn't really anyone else that looked liked me around and there were billions of Chinese people.

Like I said, in China, the only thing that mattered was that I wasn't Chinese. I was simply a "guai lo" (Cantonese) or a "lao wei" (Mandarin), both of which translate into "white devil". Or, nowadays when people are trying to be PC, they say, "foreign devil". Oh, sometimes I wished Louis Farrakhan was standing next to me getting called a white devil, just so I could laugh.

Most of the time, when I rode my bike for hours around the city, I went into lots of the neighborhoods that are off the touristy path. So many rural Chinese come to Guangzhou looking for work that there were lots of folks who'd never before seen someone in person who wasn't Chinese. I got into seven bike accidents in China and half of them were with people who would freak out when they realized that a "lao wei" was biking alongside them. They'd start shrieking, "Lao wei! Lao wei!" And then, next thing you know, their handlebars would lock with mine and they'd be toppling over on top of me. And then all the bikes that had been riding along behind me would crash on top of me too. They'd apologize, and to save face, they'd invite me for tea. I actually made a couple of good friends that way.

And then, I came back to the United States shortly before the OJ Simpson verdict was read. As happy as I was to see so many of my friends and family, deep down, I was fiercely depressed and wanted to leave again. I wanted to get away from a country divided so insistently along racial lines. I wanted to go back to a place where no one was saying to me, "Do you feel proud that your people got OJ Simpson off because of fear that there's going to be another LA Riots?"

Now, twelve years later, the Year of the Pig has rolled back around. I read over at Field Negro's blog about the racial divides in the blogosphere: It's being called the whiteosphere and the blackosphere. Then, I see how charged conversations about Barack Obama are becoming. "Barack can't win if he seems like he cares too much about black people" or, "Barack's a separatist because he attends a black church." I see how revelers go celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but it feels like someone's trying to brush away the real history of a city that used to be majority black. And it all makes me wonder if China, with her new openness, has lost some of that innocence she once had.

When I was in Guangzhou, all I had to say was that I bought something in America and people would love it. I'd buy a shirt in a Guangzhou street market and if I told people I got it in Guangzhou, they'd think it was ok. But, if I told them that I'd bought the shirt in America, they'd say it was the cutest shirt they'd ever seen. I wanted to tell them, don't love all that we Americans have to offer you. Don't absorb our culture so quickly.

China has a Wal-Mart and Starbucks now, but please, I pray they don't take everything we Americans want to give. We here in America like to say to ourselves, "I'm not a racist". Because we're all living in racially integrated neighborhoods, right? And we all have a diverse group of friends that we hang out with outside of work, right? And we date or marry people regardless of their racial background, right?

In China, I could see only having Chinese friends, etc., because that's all that's around. Here though, what's our excuse?