lost boys- Renee

We were piled 10 deep in a minivan flying down the FDR late night in 96′ when “Renee” flowed through the speakers. We instantly connected with the story of love in the gritty city Mr. Cheeks shared with us. It’s been a constant ever since. Lisa was my girlfriend around that time. She gave me my first note sealed by lipstick lip prints. Wish I still had it. We dated for two weeks till’ I decided to quietly part ways. It was that or take a beat down from twenty dude’s in our grade that were feeling her and organized to hate on something beautiful. This goes out to Lisa and all who know the wonder and pain inherent in navigating the laws of ghetto love.

Neither, I'll be going up over or through...

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The haze that settled in a week before my qualifying exams has yet to lift. While on my way to visit friends in willy-b (a part of the city I don’t visit often), I slipped while waiting for the G train on the yellow safety line that is supposed to serve as protection and warning. As you know there are different species of these subway lines, each with their particular geneology tracing back to whatever crook happened to finagle a municipal contract in that moment. My companion in that painful fall was the large iron bumpy kind, caked in a glossy yellow enamel. They also happen to be the least hospitable to your back if landed on directly. The impact was absorbed mostly in my lower back followed by a second impact on my elbow, head and hand.

No breath for a while after that one. Just stars and a wish my counsciousness could escape the unbearable feeling of having every sense overtaxed by the pain that would surely follow. The kicker is nobody helped me up. Fucking platform full of twenty and thirtysomething hipsters and not one of them lent a hand. I laid on the ground for 10 minutes doing my best to remember to breathe before the next train arrived. When the doors opened this older west Indian woman picked me up off the floor and sat me in the seat next to her. The haze has changed in consistency. Feeling better in some ways. Pain can clarify some things and obsure others. One plus is that moving a bit slower forces me to be a bit more mindful and contemplative.

Contemplating getting rid of it…

I recently found the first post I wrote when starting this blog. I thought I’d share it below. My reasons for getting back to a daily practice of self-reflection most definitely still include (but are not limited to) the words below. Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

-Justino

The reason I began this blog is that as a working class Afrolatino choosing to pursue graduate study, I do not have much in the way of a peer group ( the small handful I do  have, you are loved, appreciated and respected!).   Also, at the City College of New York where I am finishing my bachelors there aren’t many people applying to doctoral programs. Out of the number who are, only a small percentage are people of color. The insecurities (academic or otherwise…) that one faces throughout this process are intensified as a result of dynamics related to class, race, and gender opression. Often we (people of color, women, working & oppressed people) doubt ourselves and do not feel we are capable enough or deserve to succeed in. this is especially true if we happen to make it to Academia. This is  not the fault of us individually or collectively but is due to our existence in a society  we that does not fail to remind us of our “supposed” inferiority through the various material and cultural forms at its disposal.  Those who squeeze through the small crack in the door that exists to perpetuate the myth of American meritocracy face another set of dangers. Every step of academic progress comes the possibility of further alienation from your friends, family, former peers, and possibly even culture. This blog is my reminder that despite this process being one that is profoundly atomizing and difficult, I am not alone in going through this. Many of other aspiring future academics of color I know are making their way through this wilderness called  North American academia and confront similar obstacles on daily basis. It is my hope that by sharing my experience (on this site more as a record as my main focus is in building community in the real world!) we might actually have a chance of both getting into and possibly even surviving graduate school. I hope to build some amazing relationships and learn as much as I can and about myself in the process. Through it all I will do my best not to forget myself by staying true to the experiences and people that have made me me who I am today. Saludos y suerte migente!

Hello All,

My name is Justino and I’m a 26 year old Nuyorican going in my senior year at the City College of New York. My major is History with a concentration in Latin American and Caribbean history (with anti war and immigrant rights activism fit in for good measure!). I’m in the process of applying to Grad History programs strong in modern Latin American History.

My major interests are Contemporary Latin American labor and social movements in the era of Neoliberalism and their ability to struggle against forms of power on a local and global level. I have spent the last two summers in Bolivia learning more about the history if its social movements. While living in several other Latin American countries (Argentina and Brazil) I was given the opportunity to work with individuals and organizations to whom I am forever indebted for the lessons they imparted in our time together.

	Jay-Z – Beach Chair
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

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This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish.  Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that, for the heart of the matter is here, and the root of my dispute with my country.  You were born where you were born, and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.  The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever.  You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being.  You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.  Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth , you have been told where you could go and what you could do (and how you could do it) and where you could do it and whom you could marry.  I know that your countrymen do not agree with me about this, and I hear them saying “You exaggerate.”  They do not know Harlem, and I do.  So do you.  Take no one’s word for anything, including mine—but trust your experience.  Know whence you came.  If you know whence your came, there is really no limit to where you can go.  The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you.  Please try to remember that what that believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.  Please try to be clear, dear James, though the storm which rages about your youthful head today, about the reality which lies behind the words acceptance and integration.  There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you.  The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them.  And I mean that very seriously.  You must accept them and accept them with love.  For these innocent people have no other hope.  They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.  They have had to believe for so many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.  Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.  To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.  In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of identity.  Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shinning and all the stars aflame.  You would be frightened because it is our of the order of nature.  Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality.  Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.  You, don’t be afraid.  I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man’s definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name.  You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality.   But these men are your brothers—your lost, younger brothers.  And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.  For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.  It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved and unassailable and monumental dignity.  You come from a long line of poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer.  One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off.
You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.  We cannot be free until they are free.  God bless you, James, and Godspeed.
Your uncle,
James

( An extended excerpt from: MY DUNGEON SHOOK:  LETTER TO MY NEPHEW ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE EMANICIPATION. – James Baldwin)