Tired

Last night while relaxing at a bar I saw the footage of what appeared to be an outburst by Serena Williams during her match at the U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows, New York. This morning I awake to find that, because of a foot fault call made by a line judge, Serena became angry and was ultimately eliminated from the match, an elimination that was quite a costly one.

Some of the comments made by rank and file Americans on sites like AOL.com and youtube are quite disturbing.


jakegorospe1980 said: pure criminal.. just a classic ghetto bad ass attitude.. the sort of thing that puts majority of black amerficans straight to jail. they dont think, they just act naturally like a criminal.


hateyou79 said: She is just mad that a white girl beat that monkey ass. Fuck that ugly ass nigger. Tennis is a white persons sport. Go play basketball or something.

While Car3radio eloquently opined: Just a IGNORANY "APE"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess they've all forgotten John McEnroe's vicious outbursts.

I read these comments and wonder why I'm still in this country. Why many of us are still here. When will we learn that we'll never be accepted as citizens. We fight in wars we don't start, with people who've done nothing to us, for people who hate us. Like Muhammad Ali once said, "No Viet Cong ever called me Nigger." We're patriotic. We pay taxes and many of us, despite what is depicted by the media, do our best to be law abiding citizens.

The message is loud in clear to me, as it was to Marvelous Marvin Hagler many years ago. Many of you may remember after Marvin was defeated by Sugar Ray Leonard, he felt that because he was from the streets and Leonard was the All-American Olympic Gold medal winner, he was unfairly denied the victory. Marvin immediately left the sport of boxing and the country and hasn't lived here since. He moved to Italy, started acting and last I heard was a very happy man.

I was watching a documentary the other day about a woman from England whose son was murdered by a woman he was dating. What stuck with me about the story was the fact that as a young woman she had planned to go to different countries across the globe to work. Her first stop was Australia, then she came to America, after which she planned moving on to South America. What was so profound to me was this woman never felt as though she wouldn't be welcome globally. I feel unwelcome in neighborhoods, restaurants, shopping malls etc. RIGHT HERE IN WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE MY OWN COUNTRY! I began to wonder what it would be like to feel as though you are welcome every where you go. I'm sure she would be shocked if someone treated her as though she wasn't welcome-I'm surprised when I'm welcomed.

This type of silent but deadly mental pressure is taking its toll on me and I can no longer ignore it. When in the military during my tour of duty in Spain, I sometimes felt the uneasy stares from Spanish nationals, but I expected it from them, I was a foreigner in their country. But I was also able to travel many places alone where white G.I.'s could not go without being attacked. I don't know if it was a fear they had of me, or if it was because they understood our history as Americans better than most of us do. Suffice it to say, I felt more welcome in that country than I ever did here in this one.

African Americans have been fighting and dying for this country since its inception. We've been pioneers in medicine, technology, literature, art, sports, education and it all pretty much goes unnoticed. Many Americans (white and black) have no idea that Charles Drew researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge in developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II, saving thousands of lives of the Allied forces, only to die in a car accident because he wasn't allowed access in a local whites only hospital. And then there's Garrett Morgan who originated a respiratory protective hood (similar to the modern gas masks), invented a hair-straightening preparation, and patented a type of traffic signal. He is renowned for a heroic rescue in which he used his hood to save workers trapped in a tunnel system filled with fumes.

I could go on about the many African-Americans inventors whose inventions improved and or saved the lives of many U.S. citizens only to have their inventions stolen, or their names and contributions omitted frm the pages of history. And let's not forget that many of our ancestors labored and toiled in this country and gave it a great financial foundation-a foundation that has provided many a U.S. citizen a comfortable lifestyle-while we are denied the right to be treated equally even to this day. Immigrants come to this country and are more welcome than we are. And they come knowing exactly who's the lowest on the social totem pole.

I was tired when I was in junior high school so you can probably imagine how exhausted I am now. I can read the writing on the wall-we're just not going to be accepted. We'll always be considered second class citizens no matter what station in life we achieve. If you don't believe me look at how they've treated President Obama. I can't speak for the rest of those who share my skin pigmentation and who have also shared my experience here in this country, but this second class citizen is done. If I'm treated as a second class citizen in another country it's to be expected-it's justified, I would be a foreigner. But here, in a country where I've served in the military, paid my taxes like everyone else, abided by the laws and tried to conduct myself as a model citizen, I can't take it any longer. I have to find a way out.

During the civil rights struggles of the 60's, after Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving her seat to a white man...(a white man...come on), a bus boycott was organized in Montgomery Alabama. Blacks came together and created carpools to ferry one another back and forth. It wasn't long before the city of Montgomery began to miss the financial contributions of its black citizenry. It became evident to many white males that their jobs were in jeopardy and they began trying to disrupt the carpools and force blacks to use the bus system. But black people in Montgomery were strong. I want you to notice that I didn't write we were strong. Those black people did their part and fought their fight. The rest of us have to do ours. We can't sit back and ride the coat tails of people on the front line and claim their victories. And they shouldn't have to drag the rest of us along-we all need to do our part.

Eventually the Jim Crow laws that mandated blacks stand when whites boarded buses were rescinded and the black citizens returned to using the bus system-which in my opinion was a terrible mistake. We should have never gone back. We should have allowed the public system to fail. That's always been our problem-we always give up the fight once we are given that which we should have had all along. I may not claim their victories but I will most certainly claim their defeats. We should have pooled our money together started our own busing system and never looked back. We should have stayed in our own neighborhoods, frequented our own restaurants, shopped at our own stores and kept our money in our communities which would have created jobs for our people-but we're too busy trying to be a part of a system that will NEVER accept us as equals.

I know that there are whites here who see us as citizens. But many of them refuse to stand against the system-and in some ways I don't blame them. It's not their fight, it's ours. And if we don't do anything about it, why should they? I don't advocate we go toe-to-toe with this system, that would be the equivalent of me climbing into the boxing ring with Mike Tyson in his hey-day. If blacks are going to remain in this country we should take a page from our history and silently disappear (like we did from those Montgomery buses). This disappearance might be welcomed by many white Americans...at first. But when they begin to miss the $750 billion dollars that we spend annually, someone is going to wonder what happened. When businesses begin to close and people begin to get laid off, the impact will be felt. I say we should disappear, never to return and the money we generate and disseminate into this economy should be spent amongst ourselves. The Jews, the Chinese, the Indians (native and Asian), all support their own little enclaves. Why just the other day I saw a sign on the side of the freeway that read Filipinotown.

What I do know is that I a man on an island. I don't think we as a people will ever open our eyes long enough to understand what we need to do to better our situation here in this country, and as I mentioned before, I'm tired. I'm 46 and I'm tired. Tired of having to make deliberate movements when I'm pulled over by the police so I'm not shot for reaching for a weapon that I don't own. Tired of ignoring the prying eyes that follow me around the department stores. Tired of ignoring the fact that I've been paid less than whites doing the exact same job I was doing, (I was once paid less than a worker I was supervising). Tired of being the poster boy for crime in this country. Tired of seeing my image being negatively portrayed in the media. Tired of white women clutching their purses or locking their car doors when I walk by. Tired of calling about the availability for an apartment and when I show up being told that they have none available. Tired of being afraid to go to a doctor because of what was done to black men and women during the Tuskegee experiment. Tired of watching black men just like me crumble under the pressures that I experience everyday and knowing that each day it's a struggle for me to put on that happy face and go out into a world that I know hates to see me coming. Tired of black women joining the ranks of those who wish me ill-will and further damaging me. Tired, tired, tired. I know people who read this are going to say I sound like a victim-spend a lifetime in my shoes and then talk to me. I know some women are going to read this say you're a weak man and my response to that is if that was true, I'd have been dead a long time ago.

Serena, sadly you'll never be nothing but a nigger in the eyes of most Americans...and I really don't know what a nigger is. But what ever it is, that's who they say we are and me personally, I'm tired of others defining me, or having to redefine myself every time I interface with Americans. I have many things in this life to be thankful for-but I want to feel like the British woman who, at the very core of her being, knows she's welcome anywhere she goes in the world. I want to be able walk into a public establishment and have it feel like Cheers, where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. I don't know of any place like that here. So I have to find a way to leave America and find some place like that somewhere else.

Signed,

Just Plain Tired.

:-(