Not in My Neighborhood

Happy Independence Day Weekend Everybody!

I find it interesting that as I start my celebration of American freedom and patriotism I am reminded that not all of us are as free as we ought to be.

ABC just scrubbed a new reality series were a group of white homeowners were given the task of deciding who gets to live next door to them. What the fuss?

The contestants were a diversity goulash including a gay white couple with a black child, a wiccan family, a hispanic family with a lot of children, a religous black family, a white family with a secret and a white family that goes right and tats all over.

The White couples could decide to vote someone off because of their religion, ethnicity etc. Why? Because this is television and everybody on television is white unless its Jerry Springer and on the UPN.

ABC forgot one thing we have these pesky laws, about fair housing that prohibits discrimination based on thinks like ethnicity. It eliminated restrictive racial covenants that sort of stuff.

Exciting reality television. Damn I am beginning to think Bamboozled ain't so far fetched.

"I, too am America." wrote Langston Hughes a complex tour de force of talent and angst.

"I'm not convinced." wrote Harold Gibson, a simple man who still don't get it.

The next thing I read was from my favorite city that I never want to live in--NYC. Thugs beat up on thugs and now its a hate crime.

Some white thugs beat up on some black thugs who were trying to find a car to steal. The black men are crying "we got rights!" The white men are crying "what were they doing here at 3 am?"

I have had my car stolen twice from in front of churches by black males so I have no real love for car theives. I also believe that I should be able to go where I want to go. But I also believe that you don't have any business in my subdivision at 3 am if you don't live here or know somebody in here. I don't espouse vigilante violence at all but damn it, dickheads that get their asses beaten on a "let's steal some cars adventure" ain't worthy of my racial angst.

Having said that and because I be one of them conflicted Christians, I am praying for the recovery of the man who got his head bashed. I hope he learns a lesson.

One of the cries of the black victims is that we can go where we want to go.

Go ahead and roll over in your graves, you civil rights martyrs. Go ahead and do some flips all you folks who felt water hoses, mad dogs and constant danger.

We are some real fussed up people if we think the movement was about gaining unlimited access to case joints to steal automobiles.

Marvin I need ya man to tell me "What's Goin On."

Happy 4th of July--in Amerika.