I think the best d.j.s really open up with their listeners. Now,  don’t consider one of ‘the best d.j.s’ but I don’t see anything wrong with trying to do things right.  I’ve had very spirited internet discussions about religion and politics the past few days.  I feel like I’ve expressed what I need to express in those areas and want to move on (although I’m sure someone will tick me off and I’ll get sucked back in).  Then a saw where somebody had a racist message painted on their car and it became clear what I needed to attack next.  A little about my upbringing after the jump.

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I was born in Compton California, home of the two most notorious street gangs in the world, the Crips & Bloods. We didn’t stay there too long, we moved to Orange County where we leaved near one of the most dangerous Hispanic gangs.  We never thought of these gang members as black or brown, we just thought of them as bad.  Pretty amazing, since all the Crips & Bloods ARE black and all of the people in a Hispanic gang are brown.

 

I don’t think it’s enough to say “I grew up around people of all colors”. That sounds like some kind of cop out for people who are trying to hide some racisms, so I’m going to lay it out for you.  When I was elementary school age, the kid across the street, Shane, was white.  As we got a little older we started hanging around with Jacky who was Hispanic. He was a year of two older than us, so it took a while before he’d hang out with us.  Around third or fifth grade my best friends were Reuben and Greg, both Hispanic.  This got weird in sixth grade because that’s when the influence of the Hispanic gangs started creeping in, but still we just saw them as a ‘gang’ not any particular color.  Around this time I started hanging out with one of my best friends ever, Eric, who was Philippino (sorry by spell check isn’t giving me a better spelling of that). Sometime around then, if I’m correct, Bill, another white kid moved in down the street.  As we went to high school I joined football and made another best bud by the name of Danny, Hispanic.  We then started hanging out with a new kid named Kevin who was Black.  We’d occasionally pick up this kid Juan who was Hispanic and still learning English.  Occasionally we included this kid Kelly (REAL Irish) in the mix.

 

So that was my friends.  No race quotas, no nothing.  We just hung out with whatever kid that was cool and nearby.  When I was 16 my dad remarried and before you know it, me and my white brothers were off to Texas.  I’m not going to lay the whole friend making process around for you, but me and my new brother Bill continued to just make friends with whatever people we thought were cool.  The only people we didn’t hang out with was the people who told us we shouldn't hang out with ‘those people” (meaning the other races, the white trash and so on).  I even remember me and Bill going to our buddy Clifton’s 18th birthday party (on the wrong side of town).  There were about 50 family members there, all black and me and my brother Bill.  We just didn’t give a sh*t.  Clifton’s mom was so happy we were there and fed us like crazy.  Anyways there was some real racist feelings going on in Brownfield in ’79-80, some that continue to live across Texas Today.

 

Now that I have Nightmare on 19th Street, I work with about 100 kids.  They are all colors, and when I say “all colors”, I mean all races, plus kids with blue and green hair, so really, “all colors”.  These kids don’t see colors when they see friends either.  We’re all just “Nightmare” people.  These kids have started getting older and some of them are having kids of their own and I hope those kids never have to deal with race issues.  Racism is a learned behavior, it’s taught to kids by unthinking or hateful parents and it needs to stop.  I can tell you from my travels that Texans, and especially people from Lubbock have GIANT hearts and I’m hoping they will continue to use them to break through race barriers.

 

To make change in areas like this, you have to be vigilant and a little radical. When people see someone in a KKK hood they say, that persons crazy and I don’t want to be a part of it.  When someone you know tells you a racist joke, sometimes you just shrug it off and maybe think a little less of them.  Well, it’s time to tell them to shut the f@ck up with the stereotypes.  You see the people who keep a mild undercurrent of racism going are much worse than the out and out crazies who are easy to dismiss.

There’s one more thing I want to mention.  It is not cool for people of any race to say or call each other ‘nigga”.  I know that this context is supposed to be acceptable, but it’s like saying “shoot” instead of “sh*t”, people KNOW you mean sh*t, even though you said shoot.

 

So anyways, what’s the point of all this?  Not much, unless I crawl up your ass about some racist statement on the internet, then, at least, you’ll know where it’s coming from.

Remember.  Be Excellent To Each Other.

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