Who Sits Next to Black Men on Trains

I've been preparing for a class presentation and some of the readings involve perceptions of black men being unsavory, untrustworthy, confrontational, and deviant. Of course I know about these things. My father is a black man who talked about the daily frustrations regularly of these false images projected onto him.

However, sometimes I forget how salient those conversations were with my dad because I am very comfortable around black men. I guess that's why I never really pay attention to who sits next to one on the train or the bus.

Lately, I've been taking mental notes about who sits next to whom when riding the NJ Transit and the PATH rails into New York. Usually there is an empty seat reserved for the nothingness right next to a black man.

Like tonight, as I came from New York, the train was semi-crowded. There was one seat on my right that stood between myself and a brother. No one, and I mean absolutely no one took that seat.

What does this form of psychological racializing and assumptive behavior do to black men themselves and the people who consciously and unconsciously engage in the daily practices of dehumanization? And I am not absolved either.

For one, we miss out on social interactions that are priceless. Like the day I spoke to an older black man on the PATH train. It was a simple hello. This particular day the route we were taking became temporarily out-of-service as we stoo on the platform, so we had to reroute ourselves and go back up to 34th Street (New York's Penn Station) to catch another train into Newark.

The elder turned out to be a WWII Veteran who explained with detail and depth his experiences as a black soldier in Europe. It was better than Spike Lee's movie, Mircale at St. Anna's.

After we hooted and hollered about his experiences and his attempts to get proper Social Security at 80-plus years with a bum knee, he then told me how viciously segregated the New York and New Jersey trains were back in the 40s and 50s.

I wanted to tell him that in many ways, they still are.

As I think back to this older black man, it was a simple gesture that gave me access to historical gems from the lens of someone who is perceived as deviant.

I look back to that day. I now recognize that, that older man was as an extension of my father. Then I think about tonight as I ride the train, looking at the blue-collar, black man sit "alone" on a crowded train.

I ponder how my father or my significant other feels when people make it a point not to sit next to them. For this I cry.

We have created segragationist lines in our psyches and in our social stratum that cannot be erased by laws, but simply justify an inequitable system that bites us all in the ass.

LA Confidential: The Most Segregated City in the Country

I grew up on the bottom of the hill, looking at the false lights of tinsel-town, aka Hollywood. So when I read about the report of a missing, young African-American woman, Matrice Richardson, who was arrested by Malibu Police Department for failure to pay a restaurant bill (although a relative agreed to pay by phone), I was not surprised at all.

Los Angeles IS the most segregated metropolitan in the country. This is not my opinion, but is fact. Wave Newspaper reported that the diversity-spill is only a superficial claim often made by political jackasses and ignorant celebrities who only goes as far as the Hollywood Circles they break their necks to be a part of. In an article by the Wave (a community-based LA paper):

Two recent USC studies have found that Los Angeles continues to be plagued with racially isolated neighborhoods — with infinitesimally small integration in historically white communities, especially the Westside of Los Angeles, which are statistically the safest and have the highest performing public schools. (07 February 2006, by Tony Castro)

The hush-hush thing that those Hollywood types and the California tourism board are afraid for others to find out: people of color are grossly disenfranchised in funky-ass L.A.

Of course there are those who disagree with my analysis, but those people are usually the ones who live in a fantasy LA, or have migrated to Los Angeles and live in places like North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Ventura County, and all points around the scrotum sacs of the dirty the Hollywood Hills; including Bel Aire, West Hollywood, Brentwood (hi OJ) and the little pockets around the Mile High section. These people will never tell you that Los Angeles today is only about 4 percent black, and most of them live nowhere near the areas I mentioned.

These people would never, ever set foot into areas such as: Athens Hills, Crenshaw District (east of Baldwin Hills), Watts, Compton, Inglewood, Lynwood, South Los Angeles and the other smaller pockets that black people live. Why? Because they are scared that the locals such as, Gheri Curl Pookie and Gangster Jose, will gun them down. Ironically, there are such disproportionately high numbers of shootings by police officers, the probability of them getting hemmed up for a DWB would statistically happen a lot faster. More than likely, as soon as they drive into the area they fear the locals would get'em.

I remember when I was in high school in the 90s I went to some trailer park type-of-city with the other members of the student council. We were told that we were visiting our sister school. To this day, I don’t remember exactly where, but it was located about an hour and half’s drive away. I didn’t know we had one, and after that meeting, I would never forget our sister school because a group of cars filled with white boys followed our bus out of that dump throwing bottles and screaming “Nigger.”

I always liked Ice Cube’s simple analysis of Los Angeles, it is not all “surf and sun,” especially for the black and brown. And with the dismal numbers of black folk, it is becoming a nightmare.

Here is my Top Facts of Racist L.A. that I think you should know:

1. Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by Afro-Spaniards. The group of founders were blacks and mulattoes from Mexico who were mixed with African, Spanish, and Native people.

2. Los Angeles’ police department and sheriff’s office has a vibrant history of members also being members of Aryan Nation organizations and Klu Klux Klan

3. Los Angeles has the highest homeless population in the country, mostly consisting of people of color, women and children. African-Americans have the highest rate of homelessness in Los Angeles.

4. Most black Angelenos have direct roots from the American South.

5. Before the Great Migration to Los Angeles during WWI, the population of blacks was less than 25,000. The local whites thought that to be a safe and manageable number, that allowed the few blacks to own homes and live “sensible” lives unlike the Southern hostilities, but still be kept in their place.

6. Los Angeles has the second highest foster care youth population in the country, mostly black children; 80 percent of teens who are emancipated from the foster care system end up in jail, dead, or homeless.

7. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department major recruiting area is in the Midwest; places where whites have not even interacted, let alone, seen black or brown faces.

8. According to Dartmouth Geography professor, Richard Wright, Los Angeles is more so segregated by where people live, rather than where they work.

9. Current-day Watts used to be the headquarters of Los Angeles-based Klu Klux Klan.

10. Until around 1950s, a black person could not be in certain areas of Los Angeles after dark without a written pass indicating that they worked in the area.

11. African Americans, according to 2000 census data, make up only 1.93 percent of the population of Bel Air; 1.77 percent of Beverly Hills; 2.48 percent of Brentwood; 3.09 percent of West Hollywood; 1 percent of the Pacific Palisades; and do not even register a hundredth of a percent in Westwood. (taken from Wave Newspaper Article)

12. Lennox Sheriff’s have a notorious reputation for harassing, shooting, beating, killing, and framing black males.

13. Allentown, a small, black, thriving agricultural community just outside of Los Angeles was disenfranchised when local whites poisoned the well waters.

14. Blacks did not have access to most of the coastline and were designated to one section of the beach called the Inkwell, located in today’s Santa Monica.

15. Black owners of beachfront property were forced out through harassment and eventually, physical persecution by the 1950s.

16. Compton used to be fertile farmland and dairy farmland. It evolved to an area where affluent blacks resided until the late 70s when segregation eased in some areas and blacks began to move west. The 80s crack explosion, and the closing of the Firestone plant (Watts and Compton) wreaked havoc on the economy in the area.

17. African-Americans have the lowest median income in L.A. County at about $32,000 compared to $34,000 for Latinos and 54,000 for Whites.

18. 44 percent of African-American high school students in L.A. County fail to graduate within four years.

19. From 1920-1955, black performers were not allowed into major white hotels in Los Angeles. They stayed on the East side, and often performed in Jazz clubs and Juke Joints on the famous Central Avenue.

20. The Dunbar Hotel, formerly known as Hotel Somerville, was the prestigious hotel frequented by African-American performers. The hotel was built by prominent black Angelenos Jade and Vada Somerville. Today there are NO black-owned hotels in Los Angeles, or in much of the US.

African American Communities in Los Angeles County
Ten Largest Black Percent Black Communities Population of Total
1 Los Angeles (City) 401,986 10.9%
2 Long Beach 66,836 14.5%
3 Inglewood 52,260 46.4%
4 Compton 37,263 39.3%
5 Hawthorne 27,208 32.3%
6 Carson 22,485 25.1%
7 Pasadena 18,711 14.0%
8 Lancaster 18,548 15.6%
9 Westmont (Athens-unincorporated) 18,095 57.2%
10 Palmdale 16,447 14.1%

Estimated Population of all of Los Angeles County: 9,862,049 residents.

This Youtube video is a snippet of this guy named Billy Broham who reports on what is going on around Los Angeles. He had a DVD out some years ago that reported the grassroots truth about police brutality and other real ish. I had the opportunity to speak to him and this brother works with at-risk male youth. So he is very for real with his work. I hope he comes out with something else.

I AM the Black Dot in the WATER that is Pissing in a Philly Pool

(PHOTO CAPTION: In 2004, Maritza Correia is the only African-American woman to qualify for the US Olympic Swim Team)
It was the early 80s and I just finished winning a 50 meter freestyle race somewhere in the Valley, right outside of Los Angeles. I was the only black in the event and one of the few blacks there. My older brother and sister made it to these finals for LA County's aquatic summer swimming program. As I was rounding the corner, a group of white girls who I just beat came up to me. The leader of the hyena pack said, "My daddy told me to tell you that you are a nigger." Appalled, hurt, and upset, I ran to my parents and told my father what happened. He told me to run back and tell them, "You ain't nuthin' but a peckerwood, cracker."

Oh no, my father does not believe in the non-reactive Civil Rights approach found in the black swimmers' movie "Pride". That was the typical MLK "turn-the-other-cheek" song and dance that we did not boogie to. So when I saw that girl, I let her have it, and of course, a couple of choice words I had picked up from my father as well. Then, I won another event and went on to become a lifeguard for 10 years.

Racism in the swimming pool and at swimming areas still goes on as we can see in the latest contempo-segregation at a Philadelphia pool where 60 black and Latino kids were turned away. Unfortunately, this is a norm that white America likes to avoid. That for the most part, there is an inner anxiety in intimate settings with darker hued folk.

Black people do not swim as much in this new world, not because they don't want to. For the most part, many of us did not have access to pools. Also, I argue that blacks, in particular, in the US, have not dealt with the spiritual pain of the Atlantic waters, or the sea. Plus, black women are so imprisoned by their hair care regime that the pool was never an option for many black women.

In spite of the aquatic segregation that was fought in the 1960s with "wade-ins", we are lovers of the water, best believe. My mama told me that one of her older brothers used to dive in the bayous in Louisiana to pull out the bodies that drowned in the waters. Talk about having Jacques Cousteau beat!

On a serious note, aquatic recreation has dried up in many communities of color, and like the long list of things we have not fought for, nor have funded---efficient and clean public pools are one of them.

Here is a little list of stories of inkwells (black swim areas) that were either removed, or set up to segregate black communities. Click on them to read a link about their histories.
(PHOTO: Black Inkwell in Santa Monica)

Martha Vineyard's Black Inkwell

Santa Monica, CA's Inkwell Beach

Racial Division in Chicago Public Beaches

Carr's Beach in Annapolis

Sparrow's Beach in Annapolis

Atlantic Beach in South Carolina

Segregation in Cape May, NJ

Gulf Coast Segregation

This reminds me about a documentary about Black Surfers called "Whitewash" that is being showed in Harlem next Thursday at an amphithetre by Marcus Garvey Park. The music score is by The Roots and Erykah Badu. A surfer girl who is land-locked. I will be there doing my AquaBoogie, yep, yep. Here is a trailer of the documentary.



However, I would like to the know the address of this recreational facility so I can piss in the waters and perhaps donate a Baby Ruth candy bar.