New Miami Bloggers & Soul Searching

It’s almost the weekend baby!

If you’re not from Miami, you’ve probably fantasized about coming down here for one of our gazillion star studded events. This weekend is probably one of the biggest, that being Memorial Day Weekend on Miami Beach. Thousands of beautiful Black people, looking their best all hoping for a quick roll in the hay or a meet up with a celebrity.

I went down there last year, had an okay time with my friends but I think I’m too grown for the street walking crowd this year.

If you do plan on venturing down to the REAL SOUTH, you may want to bring an umbrella. This weekend is supposed to be the wettest weekend we’ve seen in a while.

Recently, I was featured on The New Miamian as a Miami blogger. I was happy to find other blogs by Miamians because I don’t know of any other Miami bloggers. It turns out that there are plenty of them, except they are all written by white people.

Isn’t it strange that as much as we profess to be an upwardly mobile society, even our blog communities are segregated by race? Think about the people whose blogs you frequent. How many of them are white? Even the white ladies like Juli, who we love so much, feel connected to the Black community in one way or another. In fact, besides one blogger I can think of, all of the white women in our community have half black children.

A part of me wants to say that this divide exists because we share different life experiences and can not relate to each other. But this presumption was dismissed when I watched the ever popular Sex & the City for the first time last week.

I was sitting there BLOWED as the group of friends had the type of discussion that my friends and I would have. It was the episode where one of those chicks (I think the promiscuous one) decided to wait 2 weeks before having secks with a man she had met. When she finally did it with him, and her friends questioned her about it, she cried and cried in a bathroom stall because she found out that her new guy had the worst curse of all men; he had a small penis.

I could totally feel her pain. I was so sad for her. That’s the worst.

I would have been crying about the same damn thing.

Blacks and whites are experiencing the same damn things, yet we look at each other as if we are from two different planets. We’re quick to judge and sterotype. I know that some white people are afraid of us just because of the color of our skin. I don’t think it’s their fault either. I believe racism is a learned characteristic. It’s a trait developed through years of low self esteem and the desire to feel better about yourself by classifying someone else as lower than you are.

Through getting acquainted with a few of the Miami bloggers, who usually blog about events and news in this area, I came across this blog that comically addressed the need to evacuate South Beach this weekend due to the impending crowd of Blacks that will flock to the area.

I couldn’t even be offended. After certain Gator games when I was in college, I knew to stay off the streets to avoid the drunken celebrations of my peers. And yes, often I classified it as “them crazy white people” but honestly I never minded the screaming and horn honking and general debauchery because..white people sure know how to have fun! They just party differently than we do.

Remember my past attitude concerning white people. I won a major award when I wrote a piece called, I was a Racist. These days I don’t have time to be concerned with how another race views me. I have so many other issues on my plate to deal with that extra stress. I still haven’t made any ‘let’s hang together all the time and share each other’s world’ type of white friends. But I have become friendly with a couple of caucasians who are vastly different from me, yet we still have enough of a common ground to enjoy a conversation.

I try not to judge people based on their attitudes because I’ve watched myself flip, turn, burn and come full circle concerning things I once thought I’d NEVER change my mind about.

We’re all learning, growing and fucking up. And we’re afraid to admit it most of the time. We retreat socially because we are afraid of being misunderstood.

I guess I’m hoping for a perfect world. A world where I would not be so confused all the time. A world where love was abundant and life was magnificent everyday.

I guess that won’t happen until Jesus comes back. But with the way I’m going, constantly searching for the truth for myself, by so many other’s standards, I probably won’t even make it to enjoy it.

Sometimes I feel like I’m turning into one of those ‘God knows my heart’ Christians. But the alternative would be, ‘I follow all the rules and so should you’ type of Christian.

Blah…I’m probably confused once again. As usual.

At least I’m trying…trying to get it right.