This fortune cookie is not applicable to "colored" folk.

Race is a funny little thing. I'm half Chinese, but since I don't look it, people tend to stare at me funny for eating with chopsticks in the cafeteria (I eat with forks too, but in certain cases I prefer to grab, not stab, my food). My other half is Mexican, but since I don't look it, cops don't pull me over and beat me on the side of the road. But what if I looked the part? Maybe if i looked Mexican, I'd get funny stares for listening to music that didn't have accordians in it. People would just assume I'm Christian and wonder why I didn't have a cross around my neck, or a picture of the Virgin Mary in my wallet with a prayer to the Holy Santos on the back of it. Perhaps if I looked Chinese, people would scrutinize my face to see if I had eyelashes, and they'd tell me shit like, "Hey, I bet i could guess your last name in just 5 tries!". If I appeared Mexican, I'd be able to "represent for my latino heritage", and all that shit. And If I actually appeared to be Chinese, I'd... I dunno, represent with my ballin DDR skillz? Okay, I want nothing to do with Asians.

But you all catch my drift.

How someone looks, as oppposed to what someone truly is, seems to be the card that lets them act in accordance with certain cultural idiosyncracies. For example, the blacker someone is (literally), the louder they can be in public. They're also allowed to say "nigga" more often and wear dew rags more freely. But what about milk chocolate? That nigga be dealin wif the short end of the stick.

As it turns out, race has nothing to do with blood and everything to do with aesthetic. Yet, rightly so - its the same blood across the board, right? But once upon a time there were a bunch of people living in Bumfuck Egypt. The sun was hot and their skin got dark. Simple. Race is just the effect, both internal and external, a certain environment has on a certain group of people. There's a reason chinks have slits for eyes. Then our brain, which is very adept at picking up on patterns and grouping them, picks up on these differences so that everybody who looks a certain way is classified as being a certain race. Yet take the mexican who doesn't quite look the part and all of the sudden a wrench has been thrown in the whole system. Holy shit what do we do? How should he act? We've got another beaner fit for television! It just goes to show how race is a blurred line to begin with. In reality, race doesn't even exist. It cannot be tested for in the lab, and if your ancestors slept around enough you're one adulterated motherfucker to say the very least. And race in its most applicable form is semantics at the very most. In all technically, if more beaners and chinks came together and had enough children, we could be classified as a race. The Mexichink race. And I'd be the president of us all. Of course.

I just don't agree with the way certain people tend to emphasize on race. Race is not something to be proud of, culture is. Being proud of one's own race is like saying, "hey I look different than you, go me!" And race is not to be confused with culture. Race has nothing to do with culture, they just understandably go together many times. As far as someone representing for his or her own culture, well, then it becomes a matter of how long one wants to perpetuate the imaginary lines that divide the human race for the sake of staying true to his or her own heritage. I'm looking at you, black people. Can you please stop accusing people of not being "black enough"? Can you please stop embracing the way you butcher the English language? Can you please stop being so proud of Macaroni and cheese?

I dunno. The world may not be colorblind but it should be. And I don't mean that in some sort of idealistic sense, because I don't like that kind of pansy talk. I mean it in a genetic sense. And I know that all sounds funny coming from someone with as many racist proclivities as me, but its all in the name of fun. I've often felt that many times, people are too quick to turn this planet into poetry; applying symbols to things and stopping at that, when reality rigidly unfolds to far greater depths. Yet its hard to find words to rhyme with "quantum" and "neutrino". Race is just another example of how people all too often stop digging when confronted by symbolism and appearance. And I know that all sounds like some sort of high school rant on appearance vs. reality, but suck on my nipple. Give me back my squeaky voice, gimme back my pimples. We're all humans here!