Family Reunions are better than happy hour at Wet Willies!!!

“By your powers combined I am … Captain Planet.”

As college days were swiftly passing, Black folk used to hate this one part of the party … when they played Spanish music.  If you want to know what it looks like to see someone who smells a fart but can’t say nothing about it, look at the face of all the Black folks standing on the side of the party when they start playing merengue at the party.  Man was I glad I knew how to dance to salsa and merengue by time I got to college.  That ish was like a “DRAW FOUR”!  But still not being the best was a problem for me, so me and a Residence Hall Director put together salsa lessons once a week.  This was the beginning of a great relationship.  As a member of a Black Greek Lettered Organization, people always speculate, if it hadn’t have been Alpha what would it have been?  And although people say Kappa, I be like, nope, nah, LUL son, those my dudes.  We tag teamed in Cornell for things of EPIC PROPORTIONS.  #FreeLUL.  I’m just joking, there was really one choice or no choice.

Go back to college, one of my boys was Dominican and we used to have the same routine at every party, “you go round up your chicks, and I go round up my chicks and we meet back at the house say around two-thurrrrrdy.”  You put a Black and Latin man in the same room and it’s an instant POWER CLAP.

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On a serious note, this is the last post for Hispanic Heritage Month, next week we’ll go back to the regular programmed television.  I am so glad to be at the end.  I think that this last post will attempt to show you why I think we are all one big happy family and we should start acting like it.  As I stated on The Book, the difference between Latino and Black is, “Your ship went that way, and my ship went this way.”  We are all the same.  We all have different stories, but they read the same with the same lessons.  I think that many of the SBM readers have expressed that their crews are mixed in nature, but there’s still a large population of people segregated, or separated.

A few years ago, one of my Dominican female friends told me she was moving to Atlanta.  She asked me about nightlife and I said, well, why are you moving down there?  She said, she thought the social scene would be a change of pace from NYC.  I hesitated a little before saying, “Well, I’m not trying to discourage you, but NYC can skew the picture of Black and Latino relations.  In Atlanta, I’ve never seen it as mixed as in NYC, of course there were a few Latinas who frequented places like Compound, but it might have been four in the whole spot.  For those who don’t know Atlanta, it’s called, Compound, think about it.  She moved down there and then moved back less than a year later. 

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Next time I experienced this situation was in Oakland.  My boy is Mexican and I thought it would be cool, but imagine my surprise when he told me, “Oh yeah, she not gonna date a Black guy.”  What type of Nazi ish is that?  He didn’t say she only dates Mexicans, he said, she doesn’t date Black guys.  Ain’t that a b.   I don’t like for people to single out a group of people they don’t like, “I don’t date white girls.”  That’s just stupid to me, what if the girl of your dreams was a white girl?  Race surely can’t be the reason you give God on judgment day that things didn’t work out with whom he intended for you to be with. 

I’m a big family party type of person.  I want to invite everyone to the party, I want everyone to have a great time, and I want everyone to play their music dance their ass off.  I’ll go to a party where we can dance to the roughest of the roughest gangsta rap, salsa, reggae, bachata, samba and then all rock out to some Bon Jovi.  The bigger the party and the more diverse the better.  I’ve never felt comfortable being confined to one circle.  Sort of like those people who refuse to leave Brooklyn, or can’t go to a party unless there’s reggae.  I don’t discriminate people, I’d rather we came together than be apart.

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In my opinion, there’s nothing better than a diverse group of friends.  So as I take this last shot for Hispanic Heritage Month, pour myself another Pisco Scour, and finish it off with a glass of Brugal, I’m excited about my life because I live it in a world that doesn’t pit race against race, or nationality against nationality.  I get so tired of hearing people thinking that we are in this competition with one another.  We don’t have to be in competition together, we can put our powers together and be a movement.