I have been wanting to post about this since I heard about it, but I wanted to first gather as many facts about the situation before I posted any of my thoughts on the matter.

* The incidents happened in the fall of 2006.
* A group of 3 white students hung nooses in a tree on high school property.
* A group of 6 black students proceeded to beat a white kid unconscious because of escalated racial tension over the tree incident. (The six kids were prosecuted and one is still being held in jail because he has not posted bail.)
* The six kids were charged with “Attempted Murder” but later the charge was lowered for 5 of the kids to “Battery”.
* The white kids were never charged legally.

This is where the facts end, and the feelings from everywhere start to run wild. I want to first write a little background for my international readers that might now understand what this is all about. When you are from outside the U.S. and you hear about someone hanging nooses from a tree you never think of race relations, you think of the wild west.

Historically in the US, a cross burning, hanging nooses or even some people flying the confederate flags have been used as intimidation symbols by “white” people to “oppress blacks”. I put quotes around the words white and black because I personally believe that you cannot generalize to the color level. Not every white person in the U.S. is a cross burning member of the KKK and not every black person is a uneducated thug. When there is a racial incident in the U.S. everyone has to pick a side or risk being called racist.

I am sure if this town is an example of the many towns that are still segregated in the U.S. or not. I am not sure if there is race tension or not. One little known fact about the U.S. outside of here is that every single town seems to have places that are still segregated as in the “black” part of town, the “Hispanic” part of town, and here in KC, Johnson county. Wait a minute… I live in Johnson county… that’s right. There is no “white” part of town… or is there?

I personally would never want to leave in a place where I am not welcome. There are communities in Chicago where you cannot live unless you have X amount of dollars. And no, I do not mean you could not afford the house, I mean you have to be able to buy the whole town or they will not let you into their community. I am sure that KC also has exclusive communities and it is mostly economic. However, there are still places in the U.S. where the “black” part of town and the “white” part of town exist. I am not sure where all the Latinos live in those communities because I have yet to find a city in the U.S. without someone that speaks Spanish. I know where I am not welcome and I simply don’t go there.

The story of the Jena six goes something like this, the high school has a “white” tree. The tree where the “white” things hang out. Again, I am not 100% on this being a segregated town or not because I have never been there, but I know that I have been to town where I have been the darkest person for miles. Two “black” students sat under the tree and next thing you know nooses are hanging from it the following day. Obviously a racist statement that should have been properly addressed, and in some people’s eyes it was. When the culprits were found they were suspended. Should they have been kicked out of school for being racist? Was it racist?

I have seen more teen movies than I can count. Most of them start by defining the cliques in school. I am not sure how it is in Jena, but it is possible that there are groups of friends comprised of only “black” kids and some of only “white” kids. I am not sure if Jena is a place where there are race tension is an every day thing, but from what I remember school age kids tend to have cliques no matter what you do. It is part of the identity forming process. Inside such groups stupid pranks and retaliations towards other groups happen, while the noose has a different connotation than for example toilet paper, I understand the suspension. Should have been this a felony and considered a hate crime? Should have this been the same as when when in the side of my high school someone spray painted “Die Ni**ers.”? Was this worse than that? (btw, the culprits at my school were never found.)

So, after the whole tree incident, some black student decided to protest under the tree and they were broken up by local authorities. Then there was the story of a black teenager being beat up at a party, and some others threatened with a shot gun. Supposedly the only charges that came out of that was that the black kids that were threatened with the gun wrestled it out of the hands of the other person and were charged with stealing the gun. I do not think any of this can be considered fact here because I have not seen it come from a “reputable” or even multiple sources.

As racial tension mounted, a kid said something to support the noose hanging and maybe even called the six kids in question “ni**ers.” A beat down ensued and six kids ended up facing the law.

In my personal experience I have seen many beat downs. Some between rival gangs in my high school. None of the people involved on those fights were ever charged with attempted murder, and I cannot recall any incidents in my school where someone was left unconscious. Partly because when that was happening I would just go down the opposite hall or stay indoors if it was in one of the courtyards.

Is attempted murder too high of a charge?

I personally don’t think so. The kid could have died as a direct result of the brutal beat down. Six on one is not a fair fight. The guy that is still in jail has a record. At this point, even with all the other information I have here I don’t see how this is a race related issue. Teenager get in fights all the time over a lot of reasons and even if this one was motivated by the hanging of nooses, I don’t believe that beating one kid until he is unconscious is going to change a community if it is really that racist. Again, why would anyone want to live amongst people like that?

I understand where people are coming from when they call the race card. It is hurtful when someone looks at you like you are from another planet because you do not look like them, it is even worse when they make assumptions about who you are based solely on the color of your skin. If I had a dollar for every time someone mentions cocaine when I say I am Colombian I would probably have enough money to be confused with a drug dealer. However, I believe that sticking up for 6 kids that beat up another for some stupid symbol is a waste of time.

Why isn’t Jesse Jackson here in KC talking to the superintendent of the KC public schools about why seven schools want to move to another district. This issue could be just a racial, they want to move to the “white” school district. Doesn’t that matter a little more than defending people that obviously committed a crime? I guess Jesse is too busy telling Obama that he is taking the “white side.”

You see, in this country unless you either have to support one side or you are labeled. If you support the law in this case, you are told that you are supporting the “white side.” I simply think that people need to stop playing the race card or what happened to the Duke students will get to be more common. If you are not aware of that case, using race tension for political gain a “white” guy accused some “white” kids of raping a “black” stripper. I hope that guy goes to jail.

People everywhere need to wake up. If someone breaks the law, make sure that they are put in jail. If people are racist, do not try to change them just let them be. The more you try to change people’s mind the more they are going to change yours. All you accomplish trying to change someone’s convictions is making yours thinner and thinner. Right now we get almost hourly updates on Britney Spears drug problem and that is what is news. Racism is going to end when we stop making it the first thing we think about when there is an issue. I am not saying it does not exist, I am just saying that the more you pull the race card, the less people are going to listen when race is really the issue.

Jena Six 6 Race Relations Racism Jesse Jackson Obama

I don’t only want to boycott talk like a pirate day, I want it to END! Lets replace it with something more sensible, like talk like a ninja day… how does a ninja talk you ask? go here for your answer.

The ninja vs pirate debate is part of the internet culture, so you MOST pick sides… and while the Pirates might claim that they have an actual day for talking like them therefore actually having one up on the ninjas I call, Kramer please!

Ninjas are cooler, cleaner, and deadlier… if someone talks like a pirate to you today, grab your nearest shuriken and go to town.

Since I installed a couple of pluggins for wordpress my spam has diminished exponentially. It went thousands of spam comments and trackbacks to maybe a hundred, and they are a caught by the additional filters. I have to deal with maybe 10 or so spam messages a day here.

I was very surprised when I got a moderating message on my phishing post

—————————————————
A new comment on the post #286 “Phishing” is waiting for your approval
http://blog.logtar.com/2004/09/22/phishing/

Author : John Q. Netizen (IP: 24.180.17.82 , 24-180-17-82.dhcp.mtpk.ca.charter.com)
E-mail : abuse@XXXX.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=24.180.17.82
Comment:
Is this PayPal logon page a fake ????

http://login3.XXXX.com/cgi-bin/webscr.php?cmd=_login-run

The link was sent in e-mail

This page:

http://XXXXX.com/

Shows:

XXXXXX.com
This page is parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com
—————————————————

I have received plenty of spam and 99% of the time I ignore the message. My brain has been trained to recognize patterns in the way most of them are formatted and having a spammer put 200+ links on a comment is a pretty easy thing to spot. This one caught my eye because it was about a phishing site, which was what the post was about. Spammers now are manually testing sites before sending out their bots to post hundreds or thousands of messages, they try to sound like they are interested on your topic or site and try to put as many links as they can.

Blogs are about participation. The audience here has helped me cope with various situations and I have received very sound advice via my comments. I cannot believe the tactics that some people use to get their money… spam sucks, but phishing is worse than taking candy from a baby. And while we are talking about security, make sure you change your password.

I don’t remember my dreams all the time. I wish I did more often. Once in a while I have some very vivid and complicated dreams, and this one I remember as if it was something that actually happened. Maybe some of it is because I had it close to when I was waking up.

I dream of my childhood home more than other places. I live there from around 8 years old until I moved to the U.S. The house is still owned by my grandfather, so there is a chance that one day I might see it again. Two things are very vivid in my mind about the house. The ceiling on the front rooms of the house had wood finish instead of regular wall, I remember looking at the ceiling for the shapes on the wood.

My grandfather owned a pharmacy when he lived in Colombia. He moved to the U.S. years before me, so I remember the place as a kid. There was some commercial space right next to the house. When my grandfather lived there it was the pharmacy, but after he moved here there were a lot of other businesses there. A clothing store, a bakery I actually worked at, and last time I was there, a little grocery store.

Something else my dreams do is mix past and present places as if they were one. That childhood house often morphs into a two story place. This was one of those times. The surfaces, ceiling and overall feel was that of being back in Colombia. The having an upstairs was totally more similar to where I live now.

While downstairs watching TV I see my sister as a 12 year old girl come half of sleep to tell me if I can hear all the noise. I certainly cannot, but when I look at the patio I see shadows coming off the roof. Silhouetted by the moonlight several man advancing toward the roof of the commercial place.

Dreams are weird because at times they just don’t transport you to different place, they also give you a whole other reality. Almost like having a back story I knew that the current tenants of the commercial place were doing illegal stuff, so a S.W.AT. like team on the roof did not surprise me at all. My sister and I went back upstairs and saw that there was holes on the roof and you could see through the wood finished ceiling. I climbed to a terrace in the back of the house to talk to the S.W.A.T team about the damage to the roof. Their commander was pretty nice and said that everything would be taken care of no problem.

Then the dream got a little movie like. Their gear and weapons was just too advanced. Lots of what looked like unmanned weapons just wired to shoot via an electronic command. Tons of wires. Then the dream got weird and a priest was blessing the roof of the house, I asked him for a blessing and right after I shook his hand I woke up.

Yesterday was our leagues second soccer match. I have to admit that with my recent back problems I took it pretty easy the first week, but yesterday I started kind of trying. I was surprised that even though I have not played soccer in years I still have some sprint left in me, just not the stamina.

First match we actually lost 5 - 4 mostly because a couple of bad calls by the ref. Our line judge had to be around 14 and it was probably his first match holding a flag. This week we actually won 5 - 2 and it could have been 0 if our goalie did not have to leave at half time to go to work. We ended up with no subs and a regular player as goalie.

I did not expect much out of playing soccer besides just being able to kick the ball around like old times, but I am getting a lot more out of it. I am actually having fun regardless of the outcome. I think next week I might actually be playing at a better level that when I started, I say I was at about 20% first week, this week I think it jumped all the way to 45% and by next maybe 60%.

I am playing defense on the right side mostly, but who knows I might be playing midfield by the time we are done with the league. So what did you end up doing this weekend?

Appetizer
When was the last time you visited a hospital?
I just had some blood work done not too long ago, but the last time I visited a hospital was when a coworker ended up there because of some serious problems that almost made him leave this earth. Lucky he recuperated and came back to work.

Soup
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how ambitious are you?
I don`t like the word, but I know I have some… I like being driven better but if I have to put a number I would say a 7.

Salad
Make a sentence using the letters of a body part. (Example: (mouth) My other ukelele tings healthily.)
Forever our otter talked.

Main Course
If you were to start a club, what would the subject matter be, and what would you name it?
The Cook Geeks Gang. Comprised of a group of geeks that do not fit the typical label but like to do geeky things. We’d get matching tattoos and would be a motorcycle gang.

Dessert
What color is the carpet/flooring in your home?
Beige.

I am close to 30 now, and even though age has never been a huge factor in how I see myself, it is a big factor for how society sees me. I should have accomplished X and Y, and in some cases I did… but then I realized that those accomplishments where for other people and not really my goals.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been really introspective with my emotions. I have shared them with people, but I have been trying to dissect what I am feeling before I let the emotion take over me. I am a very emphatic person which is a double edge sword. I can get to know people very quickly and relate to them, but at the same time I can get caught up on someone else’s emotions.

I have been working my way on the emotions jungle lately and started to discern like never before where someone else’s emotions ended and where mine began. I have been trying to get in touch with what I really want for quite some time now, but I feel a huge break through lately.

People say things that hurt us all the time. I have way too many though the following about someone else, “You hurt me with what you just said.” Even though I don’t voice it unless the person is someone close to me, that phrase has been evolving. The first step was turning it into, “What you just said hurt me.”

I have known for a while that I need to go back and rely on personal responsibility for my happiness. I am the only one that can truly master all of my emotions. For year I had been working with anger, which is the emotion that I was weakest to. Emotion could take over and cloud my judgment quicker than any other. I work well under pressure, fear is not a factor for me and guilt is an ongoing battle. Sadness however was almost a afterthought to my other emotions.

I have realized that most of the time people’s words did not immediately made me angry, most of the time it was sadness I felt when people felt one way or another about a topic or what I was feeling. I have realized that sadness is one of the emotions that actually hurt me the most and woke up anger. Even though I know how to control my anger, I still was not stopping it cause just dealing with the symptoms.

The phrase in my brain eventually evolved to “What you said made me sad.” At this point I realized something. I had to dissect my thought process to really understand the emotion. I am happy to say that I can finally say inside my brain, “I let myself feel sadness because of what you said.” It does not take the sadness away at the moment I feel it, however I get over the emotion very quickly. I post this because in this journey through my emotions I hope to help others… maybe not, but just in case it does I will continue the journey inside my brain and little by little becoming the master of my emotions.