Things That Never Change.

"And these are things that I don't understand." - Chris Martin

I haven't been as active as I used to be on my blog page this past year, so far, in comparison to the way I used to be back in the day. But with all of that being said, I must admit that I've grown quite a bit since the last time I posted here, and in that time that I've been away I've come to be much more vocal about a topic that has been eating away at me and effecting my life for years now - something that I've sorta been negligent in speaking up about up until now and something that gets alot of people up-in-arms about: Race.

I'm not great at relationships, nor have I been in many to begin with, but one amazingly huge factor that I keep running into - no matter what the girl's ethnic background may be - is race. My race, to be exact. Either her parents don't like me because of the color of my skin or she, herself, is too afraid to commit to me because of the potential blowback from her own family and friends. This is one of the many, many examples that I, myself, have to go through alone on the frequent basis out of my very own multi-racial circle of friends; A plight of my own, in fact, that alot of my friends who aren't necessarily of the same ethnicity as myself don't seem to understand - mostly because they've never had to walk down the same road that I've had to in this particular way, and in many other ways, also.

I look around myself sometimes and I can't help but to think that I see the world in a much different light than how other people may or may not see it. Some may say that my worldview is an opaque or bleak one, but in all fairness: It's the only one I've really ever been exposed to. Nothing humanly possible can change that fact. I mean, come on, let's take a look at the facts: All of the main characters on television are white, all of the biggest and most iconic comic book characters are white, all of the biggest movies and films star white actors in the leading roles, all of the magazine covers feature fit white people on them, and the list just goes on and on and on. As a black man: I'm simply not represented by popular culture (well, certainly not in a popular way atleast) when all is said and done at the bottom line.

I had a sorta epiphany not too long ago, actually, and it really broke my heart - not nearly as much as constantly losing out on a lover just because of the ignorance of her family, of course, but nonetheless: It still hurt pretty badly. The epiphany was this: Take a look at my most favorite TV show of all time, "Supernatural," and now - let's hypothetically replace just the two leading characters of Sam and Dean Winchester - with the same background and everything left intact origin/character-wise - and then take a good, long guess at if that SAME exact program featuring two black protagonists named Sam and Dean would've been as much of a success on television as it's been in reality with two white actors in the leading roles. The sad truth is this: Hell no. Of course not.

Now that example is something that I don't think alot of people who are white, including some of my very own friends, can understand. Or more to their own credit, even if they actually did understand that example, I feel as if they most likely wouldn't be able to grasp the reason why that revelation hurts and bothers me so much - partially because they're not affected by that example or more-so because, and this is very true: They just wouldn't care.

I have lots of friends of all ethnicities and I find, quite commonly, that either: A) They're white and are insultingly oblivious to their racial advantages, or B) They're not white and they are naively living under the 'illusion of inclusion' where they believe that they have the same free rights and privileges as the case may be for those who are racially the complete opposite to themselves might have it.

I won't lie, either, to be honest: I find that I'm able to open up way more around my non-white friends (with the exception of my ex's aunt Rhetta) as opposed to my white friends who wouldn't understand where I'm coming from with the potentially controversial things that I have to say alot of the time. And that, itself, comes from the hypothetical and very REAL fact that my white friends just don't go through the same hardships that my black friends (less-so my hispanic ones) have to go through. Especially in matters of the heart.

Let me just put it like this: One of my white friends could meet, like, let's say an Indian girl and then ask her to marry him somewhere down the line. I can bet you 1,000% that the girl's family would be WAY more than happy to give their daughter away to him whenever the time came. Now if I were to tweak that example a little bit and replace that guy with a black man, I can truly assure you that the Indian girl's family would fight against that relationship so much that they'd most likely disown their own daughter because of it. And the same goes for girls of Asian descent, European descent, and as I've learned the VERY hard way: Girls who come from Italian descent.

Look, I don't know what it is, I don't know why it is, but I do know that it IS: When it comes to Italian families, in my experience anyway, the opposition and purely obvious hatred towards a young black man like myself can be pumped up immediately and for absolutely no good reason at all. I can give two instances of this, actually (as many of my close friends already know all too well, I'm sure), and neither of them end particularly well: Once back in High School when I dated a girl named Mia, and once for a very short period when I dated a girl from Staten Island named Jenna.

It wasn't so bad in Mia's case, seeing as how most of the racism and prejudice from her family was mostly hearsay and verbal confirmation. One time, in particular, was when I hung out with her and her younger sister Ari one day. We were walking along, pacing actually, and all trying to get out of the rain when Ari made the comment to Mia that it would be best if their dad didn't hear about what they were doing that day because he'd flip out if he were to hear that they were hanging around a black guy (me). No laughs, no smiles, no giggles: Just point-blank seriousness from the two of them about the situation.

But, goodness, if Jenna's mother didn't just oose bigotry towards me when I met her for the first and only time that I did (or needed to) two and a half years after that cold and rainy winter day spent with Mia and Ari....! This time around, I made the effort to travel out to Staten Island for maybe the fourth time that summer to spend some time with Jenna. Somewhere along the way she decided to have her mother, sister, and stepfather meet me for the first time - completely off guard and unbeknownst to me, though, until I got there that day.

I'll never forget the disapproving look of disgust on her mother's face or the violent anger in her eyes when she set them upon me for the very first time. It would've stopped a thinner-skinned person dead in their tracks, I'm sure. But, anyhow, I managed to pull through the day. And what a hard day that was having to deal with the rude and unorthodox questioning that the mom put me through or the unmistakable exclusionary way that she treated me for just as long while I was there - in a place where I'd already felt unwelcomed, alone, and out of my element to begin with. Evidently, that was the very last day I ever saw Jenna.

Apart from relationships, though, I've come across the same sort of ignorant bullshit quite a few times in my life both subsequent to those examples that I've just given and beforehand too. Plenty of times with the NYPD, the Cape May police department, or with everyday people in some cases like this one time when one of my best friends and I were at a comic book store in the heart of Manhattan and the clerk made the effort to bag my friend's comics and not my own - even given the fact that my friend (who happens to be white) and I both had backpacks and I had actually bought more books to begin with than he did. I didn't make a scene out of it though.... sometimes it's not even worth wasting breath or loosing energy over.

But, on a wider and more universal scale, for all of those horrible yet eye-opening experiences, I must say that they were necessary for me to go through in order to shake me out of my own own naive soft-spokeness of once upon a time. And, with all of that said, too, the one thing that REALLY pisses me off is the gullible way in which some people would make excuses for the uncalled for bigotry that I've come across when there's simply no excuses to be made.

I suppose, really, that the only thing that I really wanted to say with this post was this: Although I may seem pretty gloom, pessimistic, and dark at times: I've got my reasons and I've got my experiences to justify those reasons too. Friends or not, there are just certain things that a person close to me or otherwise wouldn't be able to understand about myself without looking at how much the topic of race has played in my life.

A white person, in my opinion, wouldn't be able to fully understand or grasp the struggle that I, and many others like myself, have to go through in seemingly trivial areas of our everyday human lives. A white guy, for example, would - on average - have a different perspective on things such as interracial relationships, dealings with the police, working through the school system in this country, or the job market, predominately because their simultaneous experiences with ALL of those subjects would be a much more positive 180° tale than what mine would be - through and through - just based on our opposite skin colors alone.

But, when all is said and done: I suppose that I can only take my experiences with the topics of prejudice, bigotry, and racism in stride because no matter how long I go on about it at any length, or how much sense I make about my pureview on the subject: People are still going to be as blind as they choose to be or as naive as they want to be: Not just about race, but about the general unfairness of life itself in this country, too. Then again, maybe my words can help someone to open their eyes one of these days. To end this, though, I could say that perhaps only time may tell.... but as we all should know by now: Time changes everything.