"Make Me Wanna Holler"

The beginning introduction to this article has already upset me. Is it because I am not white, middle class or male but grew up with little more than an inner city attitude influenced by my Puerto Rican mother who was raised in the Bronx? I don't know. But I will admit that I often find myself rolling my eyes when gender, class, or race issues arise from a privileged view point.

For example, the opening sequence shows a Latino boy being amazed, presumably because there was a white man in his neighborhood. But there is a lot to be determined. Had the kid never seen this guy before? I mean, he said "You're here". Was that a general statement (white person in the neighborhood) or toward him specifically since he's a regular due to his group meetings. Why was he amazed? Was it really for that reason? Perhaps the kid thought the guy was someone important. Why was it presumed that he ran off to tell his friends about the alien? I think this story is too general to be used for so specific a purpose. Assuming that the interaction meant one thing when it could have been anything (based on the short description and minimal dialogue) puts him in the over-generalization that writers have that he (the author) was trying to avoid (pp. 214). Maybe I'm just reading too much into this...but isn't the whole point of this class that we explore Cultural Dimensions and other outlooks? "I envied my colleagues of color who had grown up in New York, wishing that I could find a way to access their unique ability to connect and understand" (pp. 214). But isn't this the same for every person who finds themselves in a situation that they are unfamiliar with? It's not really a unique ability, it's just the ability to identify with the current population. And I know the author understands this, because he later goes on to write about how recent mental health literature on male development has a Freudian problem; that is to say, it looks at white, middle-class boys and makes it a general experience for all.

Moving on...
The author brings up a valid point in defining "whiteness"; using Javier and Herron's (2002) definition of a "social construction built from the components of economic and and educational status" shows how even people of color can be labelled as 'white' (pp 215):

Twinkie/Banana - yellow on the outside, white on the inside
Oreo - black on the outside, white on the inside Urban Dictionary: oreo

If you are well educated and come from a privileged background, then you must be white, because white people get all the good jobs and money. They can afford fancy education and so forth. They have the options, the opportunities. This is generally true and needs to be changed. Unless there is a role model or an example, kids who are taught to be one way may have trouble thinking that other possibilities exist.

I believe that the author's points on inner-city male youth are valid. Self-protection, dis-empowerment, male role models, and rage are all things that I have witnessed while working at my internship at Rice. Though not about boys, one teenage girl was upset that I was leaving and stated, "I like you because you're half-Puerto Rican like me. I don't have any role models to look up to. People think because I'm half that I don't count, but I do." These kinds of comments are unique in that you rarely hear them from white, middle-class boys. So this article is relevant in that sense. It brings awareness that there is a gap in society and in literature.