Black in San Berdu

    Truth sometimes lies between reality and fiction, because it can be impossible to encase all the empirical truths of reality into just facts and scientifically-based data.

    Most of us are looking for answers, but sometimes we do not know the questions. Sometimes we wake up at age 30 and wonder things that have never been wondered in our heads before. And maybe we forget those questions the next day, or the next year, and the puzzles go dormant for years, or even decades. But the thoughts usually return. Eventually.

    Questions arise, they come and go and come again. Books, articles, movies, T.V. shows, radio talk, Internet blogs or PodCasts, casual and formal conversations, classes and courses, studies and investigations.

    Cases. Legal cases, like the Supreme Court overturning Roe versus Wade (1973), or other judicial decisions, Congressional oversight into Capitol Building riots of January 6, 2021, called by some an "insurrection", which I think is inaccurate, because to me an insurrection is more organized than what happened on that terrible day. Sure, it built in rhetoric and momentum since the night when Donald Trump knew that he lost in early November of 2020; the mayhem year of Covid-19 pandemic soon followed by the protests, rage, and recriminations of George Floyd and his death. A loser dude, but a martyr to millions. Because of a very callous, or stupid, or mind-numbed policeman named Chauvin, who knelt on poor George's neck.

    Dead. The drug induced binge that led George to passing a fake bill for cigarettes, that got the cashier of the store with tobacco for some 17 bucks concerned about its legitimacy, and thus it all played out from the attempted arrest, to murder by the blue man, to huge rage and further bodies en masse and millions of souls walking and striking across the cities and towns of the United States and the world.

    Black Lives Matter.

    Blue Lives Matter.

    All Lives Matter.

    Do all of these statements truly matter?

    Kapernick in 2016 was right for kneeling during the national anthem.

    Is that the right conclusion?

    The Man (or White Dominant Government) has kept the people, especially those of color, down and oppressed? Disadvantaged for life? No justice, no peace, and no way to help the minorities get a fair shake? Systematic and institutional racism abound?

    Questions. Concerns. Accusations. Blaming. Brutality. Inequality. Racism. Hate. Suspicion. Doubts. Murder. Theft. Drug use and overdose. Drug selling and producing, and dissemination. Legal and illegal businesses. Envy. Jealousy. Violence. Organized Crime. Gangs and murder. Due process. Injustice. Education. Equity.

    So many questions, questions, questions.

    They come in our waking hours, they show up in our sleep. By ourselves or in groups, or in city halls or on the air waves. Doubts and unknowns abound.

    Why? Why? Why? How come?

    Are there answers?

    Maybe yes, maybe no.

    But we are free to think, talk, ask, research, analyze. Gratefully, we are not China.

    As Ukraine succumbs in part to the bigger neighbor Russia, like Crimea in 2014, and the world grain and other commodity prices and supplies are strangled and delayed, and the poor pay more for less. The middle-class sways on the margins of struggle, and the wealthy sometimes get richer.

    Marx, Lenin, Mao, and modern-day socialists, (Bernie Sanders of Vermont), are convinced that we are really wrong. Al Gore, Malala, and more than a few other future green doomsayers are also sure of our mutually assured destruction of the planet.

    All of the above are crusading folks who make good points. There are a lot of problems to resolve.

    Questions, years or decades later, abounding for most of us. Some may not care, or do not think that they have the time nor the capacity to go anywhere solving these issues, all these ponderous questions.

    They may be right.

    I thought that some racial questions in the United States were being resolved back in the 1980s when I was coming of age, turning into a big person, an adult.

    In the 1980s the Soviets were the real concern for existential peace and prosperity. Racial differences and poverty were problems, but we thought that things were improving. The O.J. Simpson trial in the middle 1990s surprised a few about the disparities of Black and White.

    Later, a generation later, we have cases of Trayvon Martin in Florida, Eric Garner in New York, Freddie Gray in Maryland, Michael Brown in Missouri, and on and on, till George Floyd and beyond. And guys of color still get blasted. (So do Whites and Browns, but those cases are dismissed more easily). And hate crime shooters cap and kill their innocents everywhere, including in our schools. Texas, Florida, Connecticut, everywhere, big or small.

    Yes, we have problems and questions.

    I moved to San Bernardino when I was 29. I had a decent job, especially for this community; I was paid to work with kids and teach them Spanish. This city, an hour and change from downtown Los Angeles, was at least fifty percent Hispanic. Mexican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran. And a few other straggler Latinos among them, like people I knew from Colombia, or Bolivia, Peru. Even an occasional Caribbean-based Latino. Blacks came in second, just ahead of Whites. African-Americans and Anglo-Saxons, and the somewhat numerous on the margins Southeast Asians, like Vietnamese and Cambodians, with the other smaller ethnic groups like Polynesians, Arabs, or some others, like South Asians, from India or Pakistan.

    Blacks were well represented in San Bernardino, but they had a lot of competition. In the United States of yesterday and today we are all trying to share and consume the same pie, and often times it seems as though certain people have more access to it. Some people appear to grab it and hoard the pie and hog it to themselves. It seems unfair to most of certain backgrounds. Or, the wealth and prosperity cycle seems like an impossible pattern or system to follow. For many Blacks, people of these communities struggle greatly.

    I saw and met and taught students of all the above backgrounds. My students were good and bad, aggravating and energizing. Some did not want to learn "Mexican". At that point of my life, I had spent 25 months of my life in Spanish-speaking South America, three weeks in Spain, and had made a few visits to Mexico and Puerto Rico.

    I had spent other years of my life learning more Spanish with native and non-native speakers of the language, I had read books, watched T.V. and film, listened to albums, and I had taught mostly English speakers the words and some nuances of this Latin-based tongue in various courses. From small youth to adults. Learning, listening, speaking, repeating, guiding, teaching. El español. Castellano as the Chileans preached and implored.

    Pushing myself in the world of a different language, other cultures foreign to my own.

    It could be a hard sell to Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians. What was in it to them? Kids in highs school are rare that really want to know, to learn. High school age students can be difficult, especially in a hot, cramped room of 40 of us others.

    I had winners and losers of all races, and not all of the students were one or the other. It could depend on the day, including for me. I was not always at my best, that is for sure.

    I was happy to see one young man on the television screen on the Smurf Turf football field of Boise State years later. I was shocked and rocked learning of the shooting death of another student, maybe a year after that. Both Black men. Both showed me respect. I hope I returned it to them.

    I taught about 400 students in high school in San Bernardino (after grad school my wife and I combined to teach maybe 100 to 200 more). Probably 30 percent Hispanic, 30 percent Black, 30 percent White, and 10 percent Other. Or of mixed race.

    So, maybe I was a teacher for about 120 Black Students over the turn of the century at that high school. Me, a non-native Spanish speaker trying to help them learn a second language. I cannot remember all their names. I do not recall all their faces, or stories, as much as I knew them then. And I cared.

    I do not have all the answers to race or hate or disparity and inequality in this country, or others, but I hope that these ones that I knew and tried to guide, now in their late 30s and early 40s, know that this White guy tried to make a difference. And differences can be made.

    Charles. Ernest. Daneesha. Latecia. Darnell. Donnell. Precious. Kimberly. Brian. Ariel. Thomas. DeShawn. 

    Perhaps some of them still live San Bernardino. Perhaps some others have died like Donnell in 2006. Perhaps some of them have learned to speak Spanish, or it has become useful and beneficial in their lives. Some may be police, or FBI. Doctors. Lawyers. Teachers. Criminals.

    What did my former students go on to do, and what did they do in wake of the pandemic and protests of 2020?

    Some may have married into another race, with groups as they are mixed in the Valley, in the Inland Empire, more likely than many places with far less diverse populations.

    At the end of the day, I say or proclaim this: It is not all black and white. We are not all Black and White.

    The questions and answers lie within us still. Some days they come, some days they are released.

    I thank my students from twenty plus years ago, and for being humans of all the colors. All the races make us who we are. I am grateful for the ones that tried, those who did the best that they could.

    That is what we all want in the end.

Cheers, Pacific Pirates, classes of 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2005. And maybe 2006. Fifth year seniors, we remember and salute you. We wish for you to discover the questions and receive the answers.