Johnny Clyde

Woman can finally vote! (as long as you're a white woman!)

Slaves are finally free! (but can be legally hunted and segregated!)

Treaties signed with Natives to give back (some) land! (Completely empty promises that come with zero apologies!)

LGBT rights spreading across the nation! (Inside and out of the LGBT communities are riddled with racism and sexism as the face of LGBT rights remains white and mostly male.)

All that and much much more! America, never taking the leap!

Andrew Jackson (AKA "Indian Killer" and "Sharp Knife" by the Cherokee) was awful. His main mission as president, his one constant, was the removal of natives in America. Andrew Jackson had a mission to exterminate the native in America. He instructed the military to systematically kill the woman and children after each native massacre as to further the agenda of extinction. Because of his efforts, the Creeks lost 23 million acres of land in the south, thus paving the way for more cotton plantations (slavery, obviously). One year into office, Jackson had signed the "Indian Removal Act"-which was legalized ethnic cleansing. Which is what would become known as the Trail of Tears. Or as it was originally called by the natives, the trail where they cried. 46,000 natives were removed from their homes. Thousands did not make it.

"They were rounded up and interned by troops, concentrated in camps until their numbers were sufficient to make efficient their being forced-marched at bayonet-point, typically without adequate food, shelter, or medical attention, often in the dead of winter, as much as 1,500 miles to their new “homelands.”

Now you might be thinking "It was the times, it's how things were back then." Not. Everyone. Was. An. Asshole. Being a monster is not excusable by it's time in history. There were oppositions by senates in America, who's voices went unheard as the government's greed for cherokee gold and land grew stronger. Jackson arrogantly defied the order of the court to not remove natives from their ancestral homes by going ahead and doing it anyway. “True philanthropy,” Jackson said, "reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another." He continues with, "Tribes in the Southeast already were annihilated, or have melted away, to make room for the whites. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?" Jackson's mission was clear and bountiful for white people.

He also waged war on the Seminoles, a tribe from modern day Florida. The Seminoles were taking in runaway slaves. Something Jackson hated. This led to Jackson's bloody campaign, where he ordered "Seminole women and children be tracked down and ‘captured or destroyed." After his victory, he wrote this to his wife "I think I may say that the Indian war is at an end for the present, the enemy is scattered over the whole face of the earth, and at least one half must starve and die with disease."

OK so I’ve wanted to write this post for a while, and it’s going to be a huge one.

But first, a disclaimer! My experiences will always be different than someone else’s experiences because of a wonderful thing called circumstances. I grew up mostly in one small country town, and while that little country town is in America, it is obviously not all of America, for example. Had I grown up somewhere else, perhaps my experiences would be different, but I didn’t. I grew up where I did and my experiences are what they are and I know I am not alone. That being said, please don’t comment with “not everyone” or “not everywhere” because that is not the point at all and you are in a way discrediting me and my experiences and I won’t respond kindly to that. The purpose of this post is not to challenge each others experiences to see who had it worse or better. There are two reasons I am writing this post. The first reason is Donald Trump. He has garnered a lot of hatred towards Mexicans over the last year and people responded in a big way. There’s a lot of hate in the US right now. The thing is, when we talk about Mexicans, we are generalizing. As we do with refugees and immigrants in general. Whether positive or negative, we group them all together. “Mexican’s aren’t bad people” or “Mexican’s are bad people”, so I want to write a piece about what it’s like to be one of those people. What it’s like to be hated on the news every night, to have protests against you and your people. What it is actually like to be nationally hated. The second reason I’m writing this post is because I now have a daughter, who through both Moi and I, is mixed race and will have to grow up as such. I want her to know that she isn’t alone. Even if her experience is much different here in Europe. So this is my story. First off, I don’t like to refer to myself as Mexican. See half of my family is Mexican, and the other half is white. I grew up with the white side of my family. I do not speak Spanish and I have never been to Mexico. I am not from Mexico. However, the brown in me is Native from Mexico, Purépecha and Chiricahua Apache. I, like many other Mexicans, am choosing to identify with my native heritage as there has been an agenda to wipe us out. I don’t want to give too much of a history lesson here, but, and I say this a lot, being from Mexico doesn’t make you any specific kind of race just as being from America doesn’t make you a certain race. Mexico is a place not a race. Before a line divided Mexico and America, before settlers came to the Americas, it was one land occupied by indigenous peoples of various cultures and languages. When Donald Trump is spewing his hatred of Mexicans, he’s not talking about the Louis C.Ks (A white Mexican, AKA a Caucasian from Mexico) he’s talking about the brown ones. You know it, I know it, there’s no sense in denying it. When you here “Border” and “Mexican” and “Illegal alien”, it’s not white people that pop in your head. Those people you see are natives. Mexico was unfortunately very successful in wiping out native identity. Being native is seen as a bad thing to this day. So I don’t call myself Mexican because I’m not personally from there, I am native. I am Purépecha and Apache and I am doing what I can to reclaim my identity. Now the reason I hate the words Hispanic and Latino are because they further the agenda to erase the native. They are blanket words used to describe anyone from Central or South America. Any race from Central or South America is latino or Hispanic, they take away the identity of the native. So please don’t call me latino or Hispanic, if you absolutely have to call me anything, call me native. Because that is what I am. The last thing I’ll say about that is Spanish is from Spain. Spanish people are from Spain. Spanish-Spain. Spain is a European country. It’s right next to France. Spanish people are white. White settlers from Spain came to the Americas (modern day Mexico) and completely decimated the people living there, forcing their language and religion on the indigenous people. That is why catholicism is so big in Mexico, that is also why most Mexicans speak Spanish. Now because of this, it was good to be white in Mexico. That’s why a lot of Mexicans claim Spanish ancestry when they are clearly not white. There’s a lot of confusion in the USA about Spain. A lot of Americans think Spain is either in South America or it is a non-white county in Europe. They hear the Spanish language and see native Mexicans in their head, therefore Spain must be non-white. Which is why you can sometimes hear white people tanning boldly claim their skin barely burns because they’ve got Spanish blood.

OK moving on, this post is getting longer than intended but there’s a whole lot of misinformed people out there. In the summer of 1989 (I’ve always wanted to write that), I was born to a Mexican father and a white mother in Portland Oregon. My parents were never married and I lived with my mom. I don’t have a lot of memories from living in Portland as I was very young, but we moved around a bit before eventually settling in a little town called Dallas, Oregon. I remember very young getting compliments on my skin colour from the adults around me. My mom’s co-workers and teachers. Which was obviously nice, I liked my skin colour too. One day I was walking with my mom in the park when a Mexican looking man jogged past us. I asked my mom “Is it true we used to hate Mexicans?” My mom explained to me that it was true and how it was wrong. I remember looking at the jogger and saying “Well I still hate them.” I didn’t know why, I still don’t know why I said it, but I know I felt it. That’s a memory that has never left me. I remember at school I was hearing a lot of jokes. Jokes towards woman, gay people, black people, Mexicans, jokes at my expense. So I think that was probably it. I think I was about 6 at the time. Jokes turned into hate and I was having preconceived thoughts about people I had never met because of the colour of their skin. We eventually moved to that small town, Dallas. I lived in Dallas with my mom, stepdad, and little brother. My little brother and I spent a lot of time together, but we looked very different.

I remember being questioned all the time by other kids if we were really brothers. 

In America, people of colour are the minority. That's just a simple fact. Caucasian people are the majority. Now, because people create in their own image, and because the majority living in America are caucasian, those creators are mostly white people. Thus, white people are creating white characters. This results in white people being the most represented. In toys, in films, in books, in everything. It's natural, it's understandable, it's just the way it is. If you're a white child drawing humans, you probably reach for the pink crayon. If you're a brown child, you probably reach for the brown crayon. It's perfectly ok. However, that means white creators have to put in an effort to represent diversity. They have to purposefully write a native character because it doesn't come natural to them. And again honestly, I am not bashing. This is just nature. That's what happens naturally. Unfortunately the mind moves to comfortable positions automatically and reaches for the familiar first. So if a white creator attempts to diversify their creation and create a native character, it sadly has a large chance of being a racist representation. Because that's the familiar, that's the stereotype. I say native and you think of teepees and feathers, not business suits and briefcases. (also that's why I don't find racist jokes funny. Besides the massive disrespect, you perpetuate stereotypes. You feed into the creation of stereotypical characters. It's all connected and it's not hard to see the strings holding it all together if you just look. Surprisingly, it's possible to be funny without being an asshole.)

I hate comparing people as food, but it seems to be the only way some people can see things. Now imagine your favourite jelly bean flavour is green, but the most that's made is blue. You buy a bag of mixed beans, but the bag ends up being 77% blue (77% of americans identify as white) and only 17% green (17% of Americans identify as black). You dump the whole bag into a bowl and you're going to see mostly blue jelly beans. That's just math. So, because green is your favourite, you separate them into different bowls. Now you can actually see the green jelly beans, when before they were quickly buried beneath the blue. Now imagine these are actual people. Imagine it's not someone trying to choose their favourite flavour, but instead it's a black child trying to find someone that looks like themselves to look up to. Imagine a black child walking down a walmart aisle and seeing only light-skinned/white barbie dolls. Imagine that child learns that white = beautiful. Imagine that child grows to hate their skin colour and ultimately themselves simply because of the under representation of themselves in media.

BET has never had a mission of excluding whites, BET has always had a mission of representing the minority. Do you understand that? Not a mission to exclude, but a mission to include. In response to BET, people have demanded all white channels, all white award shows. In response to all black schools, people have demanded all white schools (again), and in response to black history month, people have demanded white history month. One more time for the people in the back, caucasians are the vast majority in America. By a lot. So back to the jelly beans. The green bowl was created so you can actually find the green jelly beans. It wasn't created because you hate blue jelly beans. But now, the blue jelly bean bowl, gaining the ability to speak, demands a blue jelly bean bowl. (obviously separating the blue and green beans would already create a blue bean bowl save for the small percentage of other flavours. In real life, this separation doesn't exist and for good reason.) So what would be the purpose of separating the blue from the green? The blue are already easily seen, they are the majority. They sit on the top of the bowl, they're everywhere. So the only reason to separate the blue from the green is because what? Do you understand what I am saying? The reason there is no white only channel is because white people are already represented hugely in the media. If a white only channel would be created, it would not be created for the purpose of representing the underrepresented. A white child can find someone that looks like them easily through the media. So why create a white only channel? Literally because black people get one so you want one too. Same with all white dating sites, all white award shows, all white whatever.

Some people say the only way for equality to happen is to get rid of BET, and to get rid of black history month. Does that then mean you're going to find a way to equally represent 77% and 17% in the same way? How? That's only black and white people, good luck representing the 2% of natives living in America equally. Should probably abandon powwows too since they mostly represent native people and native culture huh. And in representing, apparently we're separating? It doesn't make any sense. American POCs (people of colour) are fighting to represent themselves in a country that is mostly representing white people, stop trying to tear them down. America prides itself in it's diversity, so If it makes you angry to see things like channels with purposes of representation of a minority, it's time to face facts. You're probably racist. Get over it and learn. Better yourself. It's 2016.

So, reality is black people looked around and realized that they were going to have to be the ones to represent themselves. That's understandable. Again, creators tend to usually create in their own image. Obviously not always, but usually. (Please don't try and say something like "but Hey Arnold! was created by a white man and features a best friend who is black") The reason for a channel like BET is so people can see themselves being represented. And even then, they reward white people for their talents and efforts in the media all the time.

Hello everyone!  We’re still running our kickstarter campaign for a feature film! A strange and surreal odyssey story, only 10 days left to get involved! 

Hey everyone! I am super excited to announce my biggest art-venture yet. Writing and directing a feature film!