Poverty Here and Abroad

O-Shen, a dancehall reggae artist from Papua New Guinea, has an interesting take on what we call "ghettoes" in the US.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Aug/03/en/hawaii708030313.html

I actually printed the article last year and was going to blog on it then. However, I was distracted by other issues then. But I saw the printed copy of the article again, and now I'll comment on it

But 1st, this is how O-shen describes his song "Neva Seen a Ghetto"


'NEVA SEEN A GHETTO'

"In a lot of American hip-hop, everybody tries ... to talk about how where they come from is so rough and so poor and so rugged. In my opinion, nowhere like that really exists in the United States (compared) to what I've seen in other countries.

"A lot of these people that come (from) places they call ghettos are delusional. They don't know what a real ghetto is. They need to travel outside of the United States and see real poverty. ... The standard of what is called a ghetto in America wouldn't be called a ghetto somewhere else. In other countries, ghettos are where people lean some tin against a tree with a side of the house being a tarp. Here in America, we'd call that (being) homeless."


I expressed something very similar on Ka Leo back in 2001. I discussed the "rich-poor gap" in the US. I mentioned that the USA got the richest poor people in the world.

http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storage/paper872/news/2001/11/01/Editorials/U.s-Not.Best.But.Better-2806056.shtml

I pointed out that the housing projects in Kalihi (where I grew up), people might be struggling to pay the bills, but they have things people in other countries don't have. Even in those housing projects, they got TVs (some of them hooked to cable), stereos (some with very loud bass), microwaves, ovens, refrigirators, running water, telephones (nowadays, they got cell phones) and beds.

However, this one guy I call the Hissy Fit Boy(real name: Tobin Jones) went all ballastic on me!

http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storage/paper872/news/2001/11/05/Editorials/Letters.To.The.Editor.11.05.01-2806085.shtml

This Hissy Fit Boy also taunted me on myspace that he's been to more places than I did. (how would he know?)

Did Hissy Fit Boy ever visit Mexico?(and a few hours in Tijuana doesn't count) I DID!

While in Mexico, I visited Guadalajara, Mexico City and Oaxaca! I took the 3rd class bus ride from Mexico City to Oaxaca, and along the way I've seen rural poverty!

In Mexico City, my dad's childhood friend lived right near the airport's runway (you'd need earplugs there) I've seen urban slums there!

These slums in Mexico make South Central LA (I've been there too) look good in comparison!

While South Central LA isn't the ideal place to live, it doesn't erase the fact that many Mexicans & Central Americans rather move there than stay home!

While South Central LA was once known as the "land of African-American poverty", it is now mostly Latino. (Crenshaw & Baldwin Hills are still mostly African-American, but Compton, Watts, and Inglewood are now mostly Latino)

Why is that?

Because many African-Americans can now afford to live in the suburbs. Many former South Central LA residents moved to middle class suburbs in Riverside.

But Hissy Fit Boy gets bent out of shape when I mentioned that people have moved up the economic ladder in the USA, even non-whites. If that wasn't true, those African-Americans would've been stuck in South Central LA. And that neighborhood would've still be 80% African-America as it was when the NWA members were little kids!

Even the Latinos are moving up. My uncle once lived in Inglewood (considered part of South Central LA, even though it's not within LA city limits).

In fact, he was living there during the infamous 1992 riots. I still remember the 1st day of the riots, he called my home. I was 5th grade, just came home from school (it was about 3:30 Hawaii Time when he called) when he mentioned about fires in the neighborhood. My brother came home right after, I mentioned about the phone call, and my brother already knew about the riots.

However, now my uncle lives in Highland Park, a middle class Latino neighborhood near Pasadena.

Even places like San Fernando Valley and Orange County, once known as European-American middle class suburbs, now have a large Latino population. Those areas are still middle class, just more brown in it!


I know, Hissy Fit Boy would claim the LA riots is proof that USA is soooooo bad!

Yet, when I pointed out that there were racial conflict in France as well, Hissy Fit Boy went ballistic again

My article pointing Europeans aren't more open-minded than US Americans!
http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storage/paper872/news/2003/04/01/Editorials/Trend.Of.European.Bigotry.Lacks.Respect-2802986.shtml

Hissy Fit Boy's pro-France hissy fits
http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storage/paper872/news/2003/04/09/Editorials/Letters.To.The.Editor-2802801.shtml

Yet, look what happened a few years after I wrote about the issue.

In 2005, there was a racial riot in Paris, in which those of Arab & African ancestry rioted after a police brutality case.

Here was my commentary on those riots
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html#113158519574206143


The LA riots happened in 1992. The Paris riots happened in 2005.

So that means the Paris riots was more recent!

Yet, Hissy Fit Boy was upset that I claimed economic progress, and he ranted that there's still poverty & racism in the USA

Yet, Hissy Fit Boy was upset that I pointed out the same conditions existing in France!

----------------------

So why am I still writing about Hissy Fit Boy. Those who say "let it go", you probably have ZERO clue about what it's like to be smeared on your college's newspaper and on the Internet!

Civil disagreements is one thing! Hissy Fits and Temper Tantrums (Tobin Jone's tactics) is a whole different story!

Even though I am bigger than Hissy Fit Boy, I never did anything violent to him when I had the chance. I am a non-violent guy and I am able to restrain myself!

I contacted him on myspace earlier this year on civility, he responded back with another Temper Tantrum. If that's how he reacts, I'm just going to continue to vent my frustrations on my blog. I can't hold it in and I got my freedom of speech!

Hissy Fit Boy got his freedom of speech. SO DO I!

The 2 political Jesse's

The 2 political Jesse's -- Jesse Helms and Jesse Jackson -- represent many that is wrong with the right-wing and left-wing of American politics.


Part 1) Jesse Helms died on July 4th. The editorials on Helms life & death ranged from "he was the hero of freedom" to "that bigot should've died earlier"

The best commentary on Jesse Helms life & death was written by Juan Williams. Williams is an African-American centrist who has been accused of being a "conservative" for not going along with the Jesse Jackson/ Jeremiah Wright agenda!

However, Williams is criticizing Helms for being a phony "freedom fighter", and a bigot!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121581690915747421.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

In death, Sen. Jesse Helms is being honored as a conservative hero. My question is why?

Yes, the six-term senator defined right-wing political stands against communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and the former Soviet Union. Yes, he blocked international treaties that limited U.S. sovereignty. And, yes, he was masterful in his use of direct mail to stir contributions to conservative causes. But "Senator No" also created an angry, scolding, close-minded face for the modern GOP, exactly opposite to the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan.

Helms did not invite people into the party; to the contrary, he seemed to delight in excluding people and played on the anxieties of rural, older Southern whites. But if the modern Republican Party is to thrive it has to get out the welcome mat for young people, specifically the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population: Hispanics and Asians, as well as younger blacks who are more likely than their elders to be politically independent.

Today's GOP needs white men with college degrees and suburban white women with education, careers and children. Helms was never comfortable with this crowd; his worldview grew out of the experiences of a Depression-era young, white man from North Carolina. And he was too comfortable with the ordered world of racial segregation he knew as a child.

To be sure, for Helms the essence of North Carolina values was keeping taxes low, and fighting against big government. That is a great message. It won him a base of support.

But that base was rural working-class voters and white suburban male voters. He rallied this base by letting everyone know he disliked Chapel Hill intellectuals -- the kind of people who protested for equal rights for blacks and challenged U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He showed no compassion for gays coming out of the closet and women who wanted abortion rights; instead choosing to make them demons threatening family values. And he made blunt use of racial politics.

[skipped paragraphs]

Helms also had an answer to charges that he played racial politics. Helms told me that he had never spoken before the NAACP in North Carolina simply because the group always endorsed Democrats so there was no political benefit to addressing their convention. But he added he regularly met with black constituents who needed individual help from their home-state senator. His opposition to affirmative action, he explained, was a matter of his belief that the best qualified people should always get the job. He did not have much to say about his opposition to the King holiday, except that he was suspicious of people who stirred up racial protests. [pablo's note: those racial protests happened because of punks like Jesse Helms]

This was all done with a sly wink. Helms was smart enough to know he was dancing around with rationalizations, simply for political expediency. He was holding on to the past, even as his state and the nation was changing. Today, North Carolina is a state where a black man can win the Democratic primary for president.

Republican leaders in the Tar Heel State and nationally would be wise to tip their hats to Jesse Helms as a man of the distant past who lived long beyond his political era. But the greatest wisdom will be to resist any temptation to make a hero out of him. The demographic shifts sweeping America mean that the key to building a successful 21st-century GOP will be a decisive turn away from Helms's use of the politics of exclusion.

Even though I am disturbed by the Radical Left (and the Democrats who pander to them), the reason why I never joined the Republican Party was because of people like Jesse Helms. Helms is a morality fascist and panders to racists & gay-bashers!

Even many Republicans are repulsed by Jesse Helms! There's a reason why John McCain isn't following the Jesse Helms strategy! Neither did George W. Bush! (and neither Republican governors like California's Arnold Schwarzenegger or Hawaii's Linda Lingle)

But I suspect Helms last few victories had MORE to do with his ability to bring pork barrel projects to North Carolina, and LESS to do with his ultra-conservative ideology!



Part 2) Now for the other Jesse--- Jesse Jackson.

While waiting for an interview to start, Jackson was whispering to the guy sitting next to him about Barack Obama. Jackson claimed Obama was "talking down to black people" and then said he wanted to "cut [Obama's] nuts off"

Cut his nuts off?

Here's Mitch Albom's commentary on that!

http://jewishworldreview.com/0708/albom071408.php3

And if you don't think Jackson is worried about Obama eroding his power base, why was he moved to say, "I want to cut his n—-s off." You don't say that when you disagree with someone's philosophy.

You say that when you perceive a threat.

Jackson feels envy toward's Obama for being the new unofficial leader of the African-American community!

And what is this "Obama was talking down to black people"?

Obama was speaking out against fathers ditching their family, fathers not paying child support, fathers not being there for their kids.

While Obama was addressing the pervasiveness of absent fathers in the African-American community, it is a problem that affects other cultural groups of all races!

This reminds me of Reverend Jesse Jackson having an affair with his employee, getting her pregnant, and getting sued for child support payment! That was in 2001!

That was the begginning of the end for Jesse Jackson. Just the year before (2000), Jesse Jackson had a very high status, being the main guy drumming up support for then- Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore!

However, after the news of Jackson's impregnating a woman through an extra-marital affair, many church-going African-Americans were offended! While no man is perfect, they expected better from a reverend.

It got so bad, that even the gangsta rap pioneer Ice Cube was giving Jesse Jackson a moral lecture on Westside Connection's "Lights Out"

http://www.kovideo.net/lyrics/w/Westside-Connection/Lights-Out.html

So you can tell Samuel L. I'ma keep ac'in
You can even tell that xxxxxxxxxxxx Jesse Jackson
Pay your child suport, keep your payments up
Put a rubber on and don't xxxx wit us

Part 3)

The Obama speech on absent fathers remind me of Bill Cosby!


It was a few years ago that legendary African-American comedian Bill Cosby was speaking out against irresponsible parents. His speech-making tour was criticized as a "Blame the Poor Tour"!

As a person of Mexican-American ancestry, I say the Mexican-American also needs it's own version of Bill Cosby, and it also need it's own version of the so-called "Blame the Poor Tour"

Someone in the Latino community needs to speak up about the problems within the Latino community, including

1)the high school drop-out rate (highest of all racial groups in the US). Some blame the language barrier. Remember, many Asian immigrants also face the language barrier, but they don't drop-out at the same level of Latinos in the US! Even US born Latinos (who speak mostly English) drop out at high rates!

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22692

http://www.centrohispano.org/_pdf/Latinos%20in%20highschool.pdf

2) the high level of Latino youth joining gangs. Too many of us are wasting their potential in violent crime instead of studying and trying to successful in legit ventures! And it's mostly the ones born in the US who are involved in violent crime

3) the hate crimes commited by Latinos against African-Americans and other groups!

It is known that the Mexican Mafia has declared war against African-Americans!

It was only last year when Latino gang members in the Harbor Gateway community in Los Angeles were targeting anyone of African-American ancestry for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They even shot an innocent 14-year-old girl. Maybe those murderers were too cowardly to fight the Bloods or Crips, so they targeted unarmed citizens

http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/2007/march30-07/gangs.htm

http://www.infowars.com/articles/immigration/mexican_gangs_ethnic_cleansing_blacks_in_la.htm

If there's anyone who needs to be castrated, it's those racist killers associated with the Mexican Mafia!

4) the high rate of alcoholism within the Latino community! Too many of us are involved in drunkeness, and the Latino community has the highest rate of drunk driving!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-10-hispanic-dui_N.htm

According to the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center, 7.04% of Hispanic drivers involved in crashes in the state in 2005 were suspected of driving while intoxicated. That compares with 2.82% of whites in crashes and 2.29% of African-Americans, according to Eric Rodgman, a researcher at the center. Most of the Hispanics involved in crashes are young men, he says.

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We need someone in the Latino community to be blunt on those issues the same way Bill Cosby is blunt with his fellow African-Americans!

We can't blame it all on the "white man", "Anglos", or "gringos"!

Yes, we must continue to stand up to divisive bigots like Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Michelle Malkin or Rod Tam !

But too many disfunctions within ghetto Latino communities (commonly called "barrios") have nothing to do with the anti-immigration fascists!

It isn't "blame the victim", "blame the poor" or "making the white racist smile"! It's being blunt about what's going on and ringing the alarm!

Too many Latinos lives are wasting in dropping out, gang violence, committing hate crimes and drunkeness! Someone needs to say something!

4th of July

232 years ago today, the United States of America had declared independence.

It was the start of the greatest nation in history.

Unfortunately, there's some haters out there, even in the USA

Haters like Jeremiah Wright and Tobin Jones{my # 1 critic at UH-Manoa}. Nevermind that the USA gave Wright an opportunity to (voluntarily) join the Marines, and become a prominent and relatively wealthy minister!

Nevermind that the USA gave Jones an opportunity to go to college, receive a communications degree and be financially well off enough to travel to 26 states that he likes to brag about. (though he could be exxagarating to give himself a sense of "false sophistication" to rub it in his enemies faces)

In Mexico, there's no self-hatred, no embarrassment of being Mexican, nor any preacher screaming "god damn Mexico", even though Mexico has the same history of bloody conquests, slavery, and oppression like the USA! They recognize their history, but it doesn't stop them from having pride in their country!

Despite the stereotypes perpetuated by Jeremiah Wright and Tobin Jones, many African-Americans don't appreciate the anti-US animosity that comes from Wright or Jones! They love the USA and the opportunity it brings them!

Here's Walter Williams, an African-American economist, expressing the gratitude for the opportunity of living in the USA http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4217

Here's another African-American perspective, this one from Thomas Sowell, who tells us what happens if a country doesn't have enough patriotism. This time, he discusses France!

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/07/02/does_patriotism_matter

Perhaps nowhere was patriotism so downplayed or deplored than among intellectuals in the Western democracies in the two decades after the horrors of the First World War, fought under various nations' banners of patriotism.

In France, after the First World War, the teachers' unions launched a systematic purge of textbooks, in order to promote internationalism and pacifism.

(skipped paragraphs)

Does patriotism matter?

France, where pacifism and internationalism were strongest, became a classic example of how much it can matter.

During the First World War, France fought on against the German invaders for four long years, despite having more of its soldiers killed than all the American soldiers killed in all the wars in the history of the United States, put together.

But during the Second World War, France collapsed after just six weeks of fighting and surrendered to Nazi Germany. At the bitter moment of defeat the head of the French teachers' union was told, "You are partially responsible for the defeat."

Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mauriac, and other Frenchmen blamed a lack of national will or general moral decay, for the sudden and humiliating collapse of France in 1940.

At the outset of the invasion, both German and French generals assessed French military forces as more likely to gain victory, and virtually no one expected France to collapse like a house of cards -- except Adolf Hitler, who had studied French society instead of French military forces.

Did patriotism matter? It mattered more than superior French tanks and planes.

Most Americans today are unaware of how much our schools have followed in the footsteps of the French schools of the 1920s and 1930s, or how much our intellectuals have become citizens of the world instead of American patriots.

Or how much professors are like Jeremiah Wright, and indoctrinate us into Tobin Jones.

Every nation has flaws!

But if so many people are interested in representing their neighborhoods, their schools, their c cities, their states, their coasts (or regions), then we can extend that in also representing our country!

Some say Europeans aren't into national pride, but that's nonsense! Europeans scream national pride at soccer games. So do Latin Americans, Africans, Asians, Middle Easterners, Pacific Islanders and everyone else. Even the Canadians scream their national pride at hockey games!

So ignore the haters like Tobin Jones and Jeremiah Wright! Be proud of the USA!