Garlic crabs in a barrel

After a brief discussion about racial stereotypes with an old friend of mine, I think I’m more irritated than usual today.

It’s hard enough to deal with hidden agendas and the proverbial knife in the back, but when you’re forced to endure the “crabs in the barrel” attitude from your own people, it really stops you in your tracks and makes you take a hard look at society, culture and regional environments.

The Mason-Dixon line isn’t the only line drawn that some southerners secretly take pride in. Economic status, has always been a line that separates us, not only from a financial standpoint but a social one as well. When you successfully make that jump into the next tax bracket, you leave behind a few scratching heads wondering “how’d he do that?” That wonderment (also known as ignorance) turns to resentment. The end result? You now have a hater on your hands.

*Hater ~ from the urban dictionary perspective: a person who cannot abide another person’s success. Instead of being congratulatory, they make it point of exposing the person’s flaws. The thought process isn’t outright hate, it’s the desire to take that person down a peg or two in the eyes of mutual peers. Mostly to distract those peers from the hater’s own inabilities, flaws and other idiosyncrasies.

Now, let’s add some water to that grease fire shall we?  Break a few racial stereotypes, think outside of the box, or just blaze your own trail in way NOT typically known to be done by your ethnicity group and watch what happens.

As a black person, go rock climbing, or as a white person, become a rapper. White muslim? Jewish AND indigent? Depending on where you are regionally, you’ll be known as “selling out”, or acting something that you’re not. People are creatures of habit like that. Sad, but undeniably true.

Change upsets conformity.

When they see “different” then something must be wrong. Are we really hard wired like that?

My friend Anthony is a cyclist. He’s pretty good. But because cycling isn’t seen as a “black” sport, he’s operating outside of the known stereotype, and now he’s taking heat from his peers, accusing him of being something he’s not. really? Small minded people should just quit breeding. Ignorance begets ignorance.

While visiting family back home, I ran into a childhood friend. After reminiscing a bit, he pulls me to the side and asks, ” Hey dawg, so how long were you locked up for?’ See… for this jackass, military training and 15 years of bodybuilding equate working out in the penitentiary recreation room.

This is a very large world we live in. Get off your close-minded, prejudiced, one tracked, “I eat the same thing for breakfast everyday”, asses and experience something new. Talk to someone different. Walk another route. Go visit another country. Stop wallowing in your own ignorance and for God’s sake stop educating yourself via reality TV and Fox News (can people really not see their agenda?!)

FYI, we have some of the dumbest kids on the planets. Thanks failed parents! Let’s have more Honey Boo Boo’s and Plaxico Buress’s in the world. Yeah, I went there and no that ISN’T stereotyping. that’s a fact. Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong are making our kids look stupid. Literally.  Google it.  Nevermind. Here I’ll do it for you: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101240945

through playing with y’all…..damn.