fromthemouthofmoi

A couple of weeks back I saw that a concert was to be given by The International String Quartet of Yucatan. My friend Ben and I went, and honestly, I was not expecting much of anything. I had, earlier in the year, gone to the Merida City Ballet and that proved to be such a disaster that I simply found myself skeptical concerning things referred to as 'classical' in Merida. The ballet was so profoundly disappointing that at one point during the performance I found myself looking around the theatre to see if anyone else was laughing. It was a real Candid Camera type of performance. Ballerinas falling on stage, male dance partners spinning ballerinas around so violently that I held my breath half expecting them to be flung offstage...ballerinas being spun because they weren't able to pirouette on their own. It was really spectacularly awful. All the rows in my near vicinity were occupied by people with smart phones filming the performance; not one thought turing off thei...

As an American of African descent I am all about things being created equal and I am always on the lookout for people and places that see me as a human being rather than a colour. Just like you, I like being treated well and looked directly in the eye. I enjoy the feeling that comes with transactions that leave racism and class out of the picture. I love not feeling like an outsider. I like feeling a part of the world I live in and I like the feeling I get when I am given common decency, not because I asked or demanded it, but because it is a given. I don't get that in America. In America I have to fight for it on a daily basis and in reality I am tired of wrangling for it. Plum Tired. Most racism today one would need a machine of some sort to detect, but it is there nonetheless. It is there for a split second when I ask for directions and the person I ask momentarily flinches in recoil not sure if I am really about to mug them. It is there when I overhear people talking negatively...