Golden State? How About Fool's Gold

Last week, I Wandered around my new neighborhood. On my journey, I just so happened to meet a neighbor I had met shortly after I relocated; so we talked. Soon after, she excused herself, but left me with her twenty-something son. He and I talked and what he said was eye-opening about one human condition in the State of California.

I asked him the same question I always ask people bold enough to say they're native - not transplanted - Californians. No, not displaced Native Americans before colonial incursions, or the Spanish (Mexican) who lived here as far north as San Francisco.
Remember 54-40 or fight?

The question, I have to ask is, "Why don't people talk to each other here?"

His answer?
He told me that people have done each other wrong for so long that there is little if any trust left for one another. So, I asked him, '...Done wrong, like...?'

And he replied, stating reasons ranging from betrayal to infidelity, to theft, to failing to repay loans, to hurtful gossip, to meddling, to informing on one another including family, friends, neighbors and law enforcement . He said people are not good to their word out here (west), so folks just keep to themselves.
Something that I felt, but even Dr. Phil would say that can't be healthy.
Not to mention painfully boring! Who has the time to be that disconnected? Who has the time to be so low down as to play on good people like that?

We are social animals. So, by definition, folks here - if I may come to my own conclusions - are socially immature, living in physically mature bodies.

I find people here so wrapped around their anger from a slight from their social circle from yesterday or so long ago, that now I can only call it a childish anger.
What's dangerous about it, is that they are acting out through an adult body. But, the behavior is childish.
And it's sad. Sad that there is little opportunity for social interaction or cross cultural interaction in this car-reliant part of the country.

Imagine the rush to go west.
Who went?
Those who had? Not likely.
The Wanderer, yes, but mostly those who had nothing, who were relatively uneducated and of course, the ministry.
Dangerous combination.
Not to mention high powered weapons and way too much alcohol. I think that social structure still exists here in some real ways.

Zip back to today.

Think of it; millions get up, get in their cars, go to 'work,' have lunch, get in their cars, go home and wait for tomorrow.
When do they meet people? Nobody walks out here.
When do they meet people outside their communities when they barely meet people from their own? So many don't even know who their neighbors are.

And what about interaction with people from other races? What about those who have a social prejudice already? When and where will they have a positive interaction with people from other races?

Interaction dispels stereotypes (most times), but if all you see of another race is from passing them in your air conditioned (or not) car, or at the mall, when will you know that that young man with his pants sagging a bit has a degree and value? That he goes to church and works with youth ministries? Or that he loves and cares for his mother?

It also occurred to me why gangs are so prevalent here and I believe it's because of the lack of healthy communities, trusty and healthy, social interaction. Things I've seen in so many other communities and countries.

I want to say there was a social breakdown going on out here, but I'm not sure it ever was "fixed" or working well. What with cow-punchers, transient people and families, gunslingers, rustlers, hustlers, snake oil salesmen, bushwhackers, trade from the east, Mexicans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, businessmen, shysters and all sorts of desperadoes...

The need to be social is very strong in our nature but so difficult to establish and maintain here in Cali that people make their own social organization, even if it is potentially unhealthy.
But I've found in conversations with folks, it is a secondary family (sometimes primary) that provides a place where codes of conduct require some honesty and social loyalties - often with swift consequences for breaking those codes - things neighborhoods no longer - if ever - supply.

Folks here need therapy; me included.
Something that will help their inner child go back inside, grow up and come out later. Much later.
I could visualize folks walking around with 'Back in a Year' signs draped over them.

I think of a popular west coast rapper's lyric stating, "I've got hoes in different area codes..." I just have to wonder if those women think they are his only 'woman?' And so, one more facet of distrust kicks in.
No one trusts here. Because, often times, when folks do, the person is lying. There are many disappointed, jaded and just plain angry people here. Repercussions from socially dishonest behavior is slow.
Honesty is a rare commodity.

Kind of like Gold.

Up Jumped the devil!

I was at the Cavalry Christian Center Church this morning; do you know Pastor Goudeaux?
Well, there I was in the second row, when the pastor said to take out your Bibles and turn to Romans...

Now my close up vision is kinda funky of late, so I took out my reading glasses, opened the case, unwrapped them from their lens-cleaning cloth.... Get this... The left lens literally jumped out of the frame. Good gracious!

I spent the next 20 minutes trying to replace the lens. It kinda creeped me out a little, but then I remembered I was in The Lord's House and that I am a Child Of God.
Then I realized, it's not the glasses, it's The Word.
So, I put the glasses away, and listened to The Word!

The answer is... FAITH!
Don't let anything destroy your Faith!
Fear is a paralyzer. It comes in many forms. Don't let it steal your FAITH!

God Is So Very Good
and so very good to me....

Common Courtesy

I talked with more and more 'transplanted' Californians who say the same things I do about the 'Golden State.'

I offered my card to a woman recently, but before she even read it, she said, "No thank you, I'm not interested." Interested in what? Not interested in what? I wanted to ask. Instead I just shook my head and walked back to my car.
I could have been offering a million - yeah right... But it's just the idea of an unwillingness to communicate.

The prevalent idea seems to be that personal contact means you want something from the person you begin a conversation with.
Maybe, but you'll never know unless you talk to each other about it. Networking is a good thing.
The unwillingness to engage still boggles my Wandering sensibilities.

It's not hard to see how far something as simple as a 'Good Morning' or holding a door for someone can go in making someone feel welcomed or a part of the human condition here. A sense that, 'hey, you're in the wild west, but you're not alone' would be a welcome sensation.

But over and over again, common courtesies are absent.
There is a cultural divide here. A divide in humanity.

And I believe it's one that can begin to be bridged with just a little common courtesy.

What to do, what to do?

I was Wandering around Sacramento's tree-lined streets with immaculately cared for homes and estates and then the near barren and dead tree, low-income neighborhoods - the neighborhoods that were abandoned by the gentry or is reclaimed farmland.
I sat for a moment to take it in.
More police in these neighborhoods, but why?
Pants sagging, music loud, cussing prevalent.
But that's just the surface.
I've learned there's always something underneath.

So, my twisted psyche went on a journey.

I looked around at America's global wealth and the hard times folks are going through now. And for the nation's Black or African American communities, they just seem as an anachronism.
The nation profited, but they were left behind. The jobs that could be done here are being done by people in foreign countries. The argument is that it's cheaper for business to hire them than hire Americans.
Hmmmm...

Now there's a fine how-d-ya-do.

Then, I thought:
What to do with a leftover workforce?
It occurred to me that about 'Eleven-Million' Africans were brought to these shores as slaves - 11-million - those who chose to survive. Not to mention all those hundreds of thousands who didn't survive the journey across the Atlantic.
I think I can say, "Only 11-Million made it." That's more people than in my beloved New York City. Eleven-Million...

Let that set in.

Those Africans, and several other races, built a nation through the sweat of their brow, bearing children, cooking, cleaning, planting, harvesting, building, inventing, engineering, shoeing and caring for horses, mules, cows, bulls, chickens, pigs, automobiles, trains, planes and eventually fighting in wars.
All the while, experiencing an historically unparalleled level of inhumanity for several hundreds of years. Its remnants and memory still green with many.
But yet, they were teaching many of their captors how to treat each other humanely. How to enjoy life. How to play music.How to dance despite and through adversity. How to respect each other. How to raise children in a 'village.'

Now, fast forward to today.
That labor force is no longer needed.
What to do, what to do?

Most were denied education back then. Death awaited and accepted thousands whose only crime was reading a book.
A man named Lynch, whom a terrible form of hanging death was named after, devised a plan to control those sometimes violently unruly Blacks with methods of horrific terror.
It can be argued that today he might be sought out and prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Methods so heinous they're not even talked about today.

Now there's a controversy about water boarding? How about intentional, public killings or maiming - of both men and women - some while last-trimester pregnant - rape and imprisonment for the slightest infraction. That's terrorism on the highest scale. And it didn't happen in the Middle East or Asia, but right here in America.

A Frenchman said this country will be forever defined by how it treat the Africans who not only proved themselves as humans but as humane on the highest order: kind, compassionate, loving, communal, vocal, talented, courageous, artistic, craftsmen, gourmets and nurturers of generations of their own children as well as those of their enslavers.

Enslavers who had convinced themselves that the Africans were ignorant animals, or chattel and whose life was not worth much. The same peoples who were able to forgive them, contributing to their causes and way of life.

Some African Americans acclimated, some left while others have assimilated.
But there are pockets who remain. Many uneducated and uninterested in the society they find themselves in. A society that many feel they are not welcomed in.

It seems there is a sickness in the nation and in the ghettos we live in. A sickness of spirit, a sickness of disease, a sickness of hopelessness, a sickness of violence, a sickness of apathy. And I feel it stems back to how we treat each other as a family of man, regardless of color or status.

New Orleans, before the hurricane, was the most violent city in the country. We killed so many of our own, there was no need for outsiders to. We were eliminating ourselves because of societal neglect and lack of self respect. Then God (or man) sent a flood of Biblical proportions.
Is no one watching?

How do we treat a spiritual epidemic?

There are those who got out of their spiritual ghetto and have become successful. Some go back and lend a hand, others divorce themselves from their race's plight and struggle for their lost sense of belonging, their mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, their communities, tribes and their communal and personal respect; their unity.

Oh, what a proud people we must have been that so many of us here cannot imagine. Oh, what a magnificent people we must have been.
Looking at Africans today only seen on television is not a clear picture. If you believe the media, Africans are starving and AIDS ridden. Not true at all. But, like here in America, the idea of how Black folk are does not measure up to how we really are.
If you treat someone badly long enough, they will have a bad attitude. Can they be blamed?

Now, with computers and automation, some of which those African descendants helped invent, the need for large workforces are no longer needed. Labor intensive work is not an option for many African Americans. The idea of working that hard for someone else for low wages is near genetically repulsive.

So, what to do, what to do?

It still amazes me that drugs are so prevalent in 'the hood.'
How do they get there? When you consider our economic constraints, making it difficult for Black folk to barely cross town much less an ocean, how do they get drugs from Columbia or Afghanistan or Vietnam to Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard?

But the cop shows are rife with African Americans running from 'the law' or being incarcerated for long periods of time.
What bothers me most about that is that many prisons are private companies that some folks built to profit from.
If that's the case, then isn't there a profit incentive for crime?

At this point in history, there are many keys to get back on the right, and healthy track.

The key is education.
The key is being awake.
The key is regaining our spirit.
The key is not believing the hype.
The key is not buying the package.
The key is a change in paradigm.
The key is action.
The key is Love.
Love is the answer.

Someone criticized our successful athletes and celebrities for not giving back to the communities that produced them, but someone else chimed in that it's not completely their fault. Many in their communities pushed them away. Many other of our athletes and celebrities have reached back.
Oprah reached all the way back to Africa.

The communities that produced them have to realize the owners of those Gucci, Coach, Versace, Fendi and Dooney & Bourke accessories have given nothing back to the communities that helped them become wealthy.

If there was a consciousness that kept our economics in our communities, as a people we'd not be in the situation we are in today.

So, the question is not what to do, but rather, what are we going to do about it?

Brotherhood Of The Natural Disaster

It's funny how in La-La town, how suddenly an earthquake make people - even strangers - talk to each other.

These are the same people who pass each other daily, avoiding you rather than talking to you.

Did you feel it?
Wow! Was that an earthquake?
First time?
Oh, that wasn't so bad...

To paraphrase the great Yogi Berra, 'The more I learn about California, the more I learn about California.'
I just know I'm going to scratch a groove in my skull from all the odd behavior I've seen here.
I know I've got to change my social circle, but come on.

God forbid that it takes a natural disaster to make people talk to each other.