man vs party

Your experiences build character and each experience changes who you are or what you become. As a minority, I constantly hear other minorities tell me of dealings with racism and how this eventually shaped them and usually makes them stronger and motivated to break out of these socially built constraints.

Ive never really felt racism. Be it that I grew up in a very large latino community where it would be odd to find a self hating latino belittling me. In college I had some questionable behaviour, but nothing that ever made me feel “oppressed”. I understand that racism exists and that its a pretty big deal for most, but again, I feel Ive lived the privileged life of never actually dealing with it.

I learned about racism in 5th grade. I mean, I knew about racism, but I really “got it” in 5th grade.

I grew up in the 90s and like most children of that era was kind of “into” gangs and gang type activity. Gangsta rap was king. I think one of the first albums I ever really absorbed was Doggystyle by Snoop Dogg (pretty telling of the person Ive become having it as my favorite album in 4th grade). Now, as most kids, your friendships are limited to proximity. I was friends with kids from my neighborhood that also loved the gangsta rap despite our varying social economic upbringing. To them this was a bit closer to home, although I have my share of “cholo” cousins (one once pulled a gun on me for hiding his beeper).

So all this added up to us deciding that we needed to start a gang. Sure, a gang, why not, smashing idea! We went about giving each other cool cholo names. I being on the lower part of the totem of friends missed out on classics like “El Shorty” and “Mr Big” and got stuck with “Kid Cupid”? (not sure how this came about) We decided on a gang name and went about our day.

So it was set:

cool gangster names, check!

cool gang name, check!

Now we needed to make our presence felt. Clearly tagging our notebooks, backpacks and whatever surroundings we had was next. Of course a gang of 10 year olds wanted to get noticed by all those real gangs. We set about writing our names and gang names everywhere. We even heard that another gang was pissed, maybe one of us would get shot! Success!

Of course one day a teacher noticed our tags and was of course surprised, why wouldn’t you be, a gang of Mexican pre-teens, this had to be stopped! The teacher did her research and called us all in individually where we immediately caved and started pointing fingers at each other as of the origin of the “gang”. However, no ne was really upset about the fact that we started again. Something else bugged teachers.

After school we had a lot more finger pointing and in fighting, this gang thing wasnt really working out. We decided to give up the whole gang thing after only a couple of days. The next day we were round up once again, this time all together. This time the teacher began to talk to us about racism. We were confused, we were a very inclusive gang and would have allowed anyone irregardless of race to join our ranks. This apparently wasnt their concern. It stemmed from the gangs name. We had been tagging the our names and of course the acronym to our gang name. Our gang name, which was made to inspire fear and denote our toughness was of course Krazy Kidz Krew and we had been tagging KKK all over school.

We sat down and watched a video about the KKK that day. Never really talked about our “gang” again.

I don’t think any of us are ever really ready to deal with the death of a loved one/friend/family/acquaintance/etc, but we find ways to understand it and cope with it. We tell ourselves it was their time, we tell ourselves that it was just an accident, we tell ourselves that maybe that’s just the way its supposed to be, we tell ourselves that maybe its just part of “Gods” plan, we tell ourselves that its inevitable and just move on with our mortality. But what do we do when none of that makes sense? None of it is soothing or calming or comforting or understandable.

Esme B as you may have already known or read, was truly a great person. No matter what you have heard or read, those that have known her can attest that every single compliment is neither cliched nor hyperbolic, she was simply that awesome. The woman lived her life in such a way that made everyone around her envious, not in a bad way, but that through our own inhibitions we were probably not having as much fun as her. She was the life of the party, whether cutting it up on the dance floor or playing the next great record to keep us dancing. She was kind and gentle and a ball of pure positivity that made your problems disappear just by letting you know that they probably wasnt a big enough problem that you couldn’t resolve by thinking clearheadedly and get through by having a good time. She used her exuberance to touch the lives of the youth and let them know that all was achievable if you followed in her positive footsteps. You’ve have heard all the great things by now.

Unfortunately, Esme and I had not been close for a few years now. She left El Paso, I left El Paso, her to Austin, I to Austin light(Denton). We still exchanged the occasionally mix tape and used all the social networks of the time to keep up, slowly drifting, as people do, apart. No animosity, no fight, just let the time and distance do its thing. When I eventually arrived in Austin, I would see her out on occasion and we would exchange a cordial “hello, how are you?” and be on our way. I deeply regret that, but those are all “what ifs”.

When I found out of her death, at first it struck me as the death of most people would have, a sadness and a movement to understanding. I felt like there must have been a “reason” and moved forward. As details of what occurred slowly came out a deeper sadness and panic set in. Could this really have happened? In Austin? To someone like Esme? The panic and sadness turned to frustration and confusion, regret and remorse, and now simply fear. I’m just scared now. Scared for all my friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances. My cynicism had its blinders on, I dropped my guard, I had grown comfortable/happy and this tragedy brought me right back to reality.

Fuck that. I refuse to live in fear, I don’t want anyone else to live in fear. We need to seek justice, we need to find the person responsible for this and close this terrible chapter in our lives and move forward to remembering only the wonderful legacy that Esme left behind. We need to learn to take better care of one another and not take each other for granted. You need to tell everyone you love and care for just that, that you love and care for them. We need to unite, as so many are doing now, lets continue to spread information to bring justice to the culprit and not let this happen again.

If anything, let this tragedy teach us that we must learn to be safer, smarter, better and positive. The best way to honor Esme now, is to try and be as much like her as we can with one another.  

http://esmeandyou.tumblr.com

http://forouresmeb.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-post.html

“SAY GURL SAY, IM MEXICAN ON THE OUTSIDE BUT IM IN YOU ON THE INSIDE” - Mexican dude hollering(me)/the most clever thing I ever wrote