trying to radicalize my father but he’s been white man pilled by his father since birth

California State of Mind

I grew up in Meadowview, which was kind of a melting pot of a neighborhood, in a melting pot of a state. My first grade class was filled with every ethnicity you can imagine. White, Asian, Black, Indian, Mexican, and a few islanders. I say islanders because they ran the gambit from Hawaiian to Samoan to Tongan to Fijian and even a few Haitians We also had a couple Portuguese in there, too. Like, Meadowview had a surprisingly large Portuguese community. Looking back, that sh*t is kind of staggering how many of them there were. I didn't notice as a kid because who cares but, looking back as an adult, it was really a substantial amount. But this crop of kids, that first grade class, would be people i would call peers for the next twelve years of my life. Some of them, even more so. My best friend from grade school was an Asian kid named Peter. We used to larp out in the football field during recess and wanted to make games together. How big of a geek was I that I wanted to make video games with my best friend at eight years old? I used to go to his house and play DnD with him. Our other friend, Trevero, has a crush on Pete's older sister. It was weird. This was LONG before i met B, which is weird because he literally went to the elementary school a street over. It's odd how segregated we are as kids until we're not. It's like we were exposed to the world in incremental stages, which leads me to the next step in my exposure; The seventh grade.

When i got to seventh grade, i went to a different middle school than most of my classmates. I said farewell to these kids i spent my entire life with up to that point, and got bused to the rich middle school because the one in my neighborhood had a bad reputation. Surprisingly, that didn't matter because i was still put in remedial classes anyway. When i left grade school, i was doing algebra. Everyone thought this particular middle school would facilitate that but, because i bused in from the ghetto, they did not. It was mad surreal doing sh*t i had already mastered in, like, the second grade, because motherf*ckers thought less of me. For living in a poorer neighborhood. Still, Sam Brannan was good to me. I met a lot of dope motherf*ckers that i still talk to today. More to the point, this school as chock full of Asian kids. Like, SO many, man. It was insane how many Asians were in this joint. I mean, there were other kids, of course, but the vast majority of that school's student body was definitely Asian. Coming from my grade school where they were the minority, seeing this many Asian kids was captivating. I made friends with a lot of people that I didn't think i would ever have the opportunity to do so with, and it went a long way for broadening my already healthy cultural horizons. I was introduced to a plethora of Asian cuisine and philosophy. I met my first Buddhist there which sparked my interest in learning about the world's religions, not just Christianity. I didn't return to Brannan for my 8th grade year though. That school was kind of whack for the scholastic aspects. Instead, I went to Goethe, the school no one wanted me to go to in the first place.

Goethe was interesting. I met a lot of my oldest friends there. I met Kellen there. I met my first real crush, Melisandra, there. I met B there. That motherf*cker ended up being family and I miss him everyday. Tamika, David, Jay, Brittney, Shameka, Chris, and Alaina. I mean, not s much Alaina. She was my Dad's best friend's niece so I kind of knew her from other things. I met a chick named Sparkle and another one named Star. I met a neighborhood bicycle name Tawana, i think. A friend of mine from that first grade class knocked her up that year. I met my first chola named Anneletta who tried to stab a b*tch in my first period history class. Mr. Varner, the teacher, straight up kicked the victim out into the wild to fend for herself when she ran into our class for help. Coldest sh*t, ever! That was wild. I went to my first school dance there and ended up slow grinding with my homey's ex. That was fun and later, real problematic. I came back to a school where the majority of kids were once again, black, where i knew so many people and was still able to meet so many more. There were definitively more of us but the ethnic mix was still pretty eclectic. So many races, so much cultural melding. And then i got to high school. That sh*t was wild.

I went to, statistically, the best high school in South Sacramento. All those overachieving Asian kids from Sam Brannan? They went to my high school. Everyone from 21st street up to Freeport, the f*cking ghetto i grew up in, went to my high school. That was basically everyone from my elementary and middle schools, all in one place. These two, independent worlds that i lived in, collided for the first time, and it was a little overwhelming at first. Mostly because the high school, Kennedy, wasn't just MY schools. Cats that I met when I stayed in G Parkway for that year, motherf*ckers I met when I went to the worst school ever, Parkway Elementary, found there way to my high school. So many people i didn't know, went to this school. Cats that came from super affluent areas. Motherf*ckers from straight up hoods. All of these people, so many different cultures and ethnicities, so many different financial and living situations, all trying to figure out who they are, who they are going to be, all at once; It was an experience. Looking back, it was actually kind of intense. Beautiful, but intense. Kennedy, for me, and I can only speak from my personal experience here, was like that first grade class but blown up to, like, thousands of kids, not just the thirty-three I started school with. I loved that part of it. Not so much the actual schooling. I stopped actually learning sh*t in class when I was in, like, the third grade. One I had the fundamental sh*t, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, everything else was that an exercise in fact memorization. That's all the US education system is, memorizing mundane facts or tasks, and then regurgitating them on tests for grades. School is dumb.

The first time i saw a complete lack of diversity, was my first day of college. That was the whitest day of school i ever had in my entire life. It was surreal. I had just the last two decades surrounded by a rainbow of color, of culture, of perspective, and now it's all milky white. That was the first day that i really understood, on tangible, conscious level, what it meant to be white and privileged. You hear all of the statistic and the numbers about how minorities don't make it to higher education, how hard it is for black kids in particular, to make it out of high school without a rap sheet or even f*cking alive, but to see it in real time like that? To experience that sh*t on your first day of real school? It's mad disheartening. Of course there was a semblance of diversity on my college campus, it is a college, but i knew i was definitely a minority at that point. I knew for a fact that there was less people who looked like me, at this level, and it kind of hurt. It hurt even more as i got older and learned that was the norm, not the exception. I mean, you always know. I can only speak for black folks, but you're taught at an early age that you, as a colored person, are an endangered species in the US. That you have to be twice as good at everything just to get half of what my white friends would have. But to see it as an adult? To actually witness that sh*t firsthand? There's no amount of preparation that can prepare you for that rude awakening. Reality hits you like a ton of bricks once you finally get outside of that social bubble you grew up within. And it gets worse the farther away from the scholastic world you get. The last job I held had maybe ten black people there at any one time. Ten. Realistically, less than that. Usually around five. I have held about seven jobs in my life and at three of them, I was the only black dude. That's my reality.

I said all of that to give perspective on this: I've never not been surrounded by diversity until i was grown. The formative years of my life were spent exposed to almost every major culture and race of the world. I didn't grow up with a lot of white kids in my neighborhood but they were there. I was able to get their perspective, to understand what it was like to be white in a world of color. I was able to see that the ones who lived with us, were just like us. I didn't grow up segregated in our own, little, Negro areas, I grew up in a cornucopia of different people. The crew i rolled with in high school was full of black kids, sure, but these were cats I've known since i was, like, twelve. We were tight going nto Kennedy but that doesn't mean were weren't inclusive when we got there. We never discriminated against anyone, ever. We made friends with everyone. Our locker was opened to anybody who was chill and could play dominoes. Hell, there was this little Asian kid that Bryan brought once and he just never went away. Motherf*cker never talked but dude was chill as f*ck. Cats would give him sh*t but that stopped when he started posting up with us. That's the energy of California. That's the energy i learned growing up. That's the energy i carry to this day.

My best friend was an Asian kid until i got to the tenth grade where B and i shared that English class and got super tight. The person i was closest with in seventh grade, was a Japanese girl that i met in PE named Jamie Hom. My first, real, girlfriend was named Maristella Cordova and she was Brazilian. The first girl i ever danced with in eighth grade, Tina, was Hmong. I played football with all of the giant Samoans and Magic with the nerdy Asian kids. I was in BSU and a ghost member of the Anime club. My kid sister is Desi, one of my closest friends is Puerto Rican, my baby sister is white, and my chick is Mexican. I can't fathom what it's like to not have that diverse perspective but, statistically, my experience is rare as f*ck. The experiences my friends and i shared growing up here, in California, are rare as f*ck. Our diversity isn't the norm, it's the exception. There are more places like Idaho, where ninety-three percent of that population is white, than there are places like California. Its not that we're super liberal, it's that we don't exist in an entitled echo chamber. We don't have xenophobia because we were constantly surrounded by the xenos. We have so many different voices, so many different perspectives, that we can't help but be progressive. It takes a diverse perspective to think forward and we have diversity in spades out here. If the majority of the people who live here, grew up like i did, then of course we'd be the most progressive state in the union. How can we not be?

I don't have a point of reference for alienating the Other. We were all Others. I grew up in a neighborhood of Others. I went to school with a peer group of Others. My family is made up of Others. Being different, being the Other, has never mattered to me. It doesn't matter, period. People are people, regardless of race, creed, or sexuality. That's why California is different. We celebrate that diversity here. We make it a point to use our differences as strengths, always have. That's why i don't understand all of that MAGA sh*t. I mean, go off with your ignorance but it doesn't matter. You can't make America great again because you've conflated whiteness for greatness and there are too many people with melanin for that to ever be a thing again. You can march and scream and gerrymander and voter suppress and poll watch and whatever else but it's all for not. There are more of us than there are of you. There re more people like me, who grew up like me, than there are of you, here, in California. Rail against the Others all you want. Vilify those who champion diversity. Try and force your witness on these who aren't white. Heep on with that wild, embarrassing ignorant sh*t. I'm just going to be over here, with my Desi sister, my Mexican lady, and black homeys, laughing at your narrow ass life choices. How sad is it people choose to deny themselves so much rich dopeness and shine because of some misplaced idea of supremacy? Segregation is stagnation, man. That sh*t is how you become irrelevant. That sh*t is how you go extinct.