Gift Basket

(Some credit goes to the comedian Gabriel Iglesias for the idea)

Last year, there was nothing but open houses. Pretty much every weekend was some kind of party, mostly in the days graduation party, at nights...well, graduation after party. It was free food every weekend, and my family could tell how popular I was just by the sheer mass of invites I received. They had no idea I had so many friends.

There were many games of volleyball played. I got really good at that game by the end of the summer. A crude bean bag toss game where there's a slanted board (probably about fourteen inches to sixteen inches long, eight to ten wide and tilted at about a twenty five degree angle) and the point is to throw a bean bag onto it and get it to stay or even better to go into a hole towards the top part of it. I got pretty decent at that game. Made so many buckets you might as well have called me Charlie! (Charlie Bucket, the kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...yeah, a very esoteric joke I suppose)

There were a couple parties that really stood out in my mind, but there was one thing that surpassed everything. That thing was the racist gift basket.

I have a black friend, he's my only black friend. Now, this isn't due to a racist or prejudice reason, I mean, hell, I am a person of tanliness, but around here, the general populace happens to be that of white like snow. Unless they tan a lot. Then in that case they're just cooked.

So just because I liked foolin' around with this guy, I decided to do a bit of shopping. I had an extra twenty dollars and I decided to make it stretch. I'm very glad everything was on sale. The list flowed as follows:

BBQ Potato Chips - 6 Pack
Funions - 2 Pack
Fried Chicken - Whole Chicken (never seen a whole fried chicken before this day)
Grape Kool-Aid - 6 Pack
Grape Soda - 12 Can Pack & 2 Liter
Watermelon Bubbleyum
The biggest watermelon I could find
Black Gentleman Quarterly - A magazine

The only thing that was missing was 40oz., but I'm not 21 so I couldn't buy it. That was all the money I had anyway and I decided it was adequate enough as was. I decided to wrap it up, everything but the watermelon, and put it in a gift bag.

I know that some of you live in other countries, but to sum up, here in America, these are the things that a stereotypical black man likes. I'm too poor to afford obnoxiously big rims/spinners for his car, can't buy fat white women, and he doesn't like hip-hop so I wasn't going to buy a CD he wasn't going to listen to, even as a joke, so that was what I was going to give him.

I finally arrived at his party, and I inconspicuously left it on the gift table; the bag in front of the watermelon. I quickly sauntered off and joined the rest of the party and started to have a fun time swimming and doing things, eating, hydrating myself, the norm. The moment soon approached when I was filling my plate with more food (I eat a lot, read back through this blog to anyone that's new and you'll see) I heard a roar of laughter. Believing I missed a joke or something, I shoved a piece of chicken in my mouth, threw some fruit on my plate and jettisoned out. I saw everyone around the table and my friend have this smile on his face. One of those smiles where he wants to laugh, but at the same time he doesn't.

I see he has just begun to go through the bag and is pulling out things one after the other. He pulls out everything, the chips, drinks, chicken, and after every time he appears speechless. Everyone snickers or laughs at what seems to be an endless bag of racist foods until he pulls out the magazine with a big black guy staring very threateningly at the camera in his picture and everyone loses it. I have the biggest smile when he looks over at me.

"I...was....", he sighs again, "Was this really all your doing? Did you buy all this?"

"Yeah, it ran me a good twenty bucks", I said after swallowing some grapes.

"A part of me doesn't want me to like this as much as I do...but I know, I know...that all of this is going to be gone by the end of the night", and he pulled me forward for a man hug.

Best 20 dollars I had ever spent.

Racism

I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this at any other time in blog, but I am Hawaiian. I got some Asian and even a bit of Puerto Rican as well as Apache (or maybe Cherokee, I forgot), but I am dominantly Hawaiian. I usually just consider myself a general Pacific Islander in most cases when I'm with my Filipino friends, but that's a different story.

It is said that many people are racist to some degree. Some people are horrifically racist whilst others might laugh at a racist joke or something. I am more of the latter. Someone tells me a black or a white joke, I'll laugh. It's just how life is. Everyone has a different sense of humor. Do I think it makes me a terrible person? No. Do I think any worse of people who don't find racist humor funny? Nah. However, there are sometimes when some people need to be put in their place. I know that some people are really sensitive when it comes to issues of race, so if you're one of those people, you might not want to read anymore.

There was a time when I was at a store. It was a Blockbuster or a Family Video. I was with a couple of friends and we were looking for a good comedy to watch. As we scoured the shelves for something good to watch, one of my friends stopped on a Madea movie. He said his mom thought it was a hilarious movie and this is where I had to stop him and explain something to him.

That was a series created by Tyler Perry. It was a movie that appealed to certain women, appealed to certain black people, but it hit home to pretty much every black woman. Being we were neither black, nor were we women, chances are, we would not find it funny or at least not enough to spend a couple bucks on the rental.

Now that's where it should've ended, that's where we should've been allowed to move on and perhaps go and find something else. If only it was so easy.I had not payed attention to my surroundings and was ambushed by a black woman who was probably going to pick up the same movie I had just scoffed.

"Excuuuuuse me?!"", she wanted to make her existence known and strong.

I knew that I was fucked, and so I turned around. This woman gave the most dominating glare at me, but I do not back down to intimidation of this caliber and so I just looked her in the eyes. However, I knew that I was in the wrong, so I tried to apologize and be on my way. Unfortunately, she was not going to let me off so easy.

"Yeah, you better be sorry you stupid ignant ass teenager. How dare you be spoutin' off such bullshit!", again, I tried to apologize, and I could see my friends out of my peripherals silently laughing to themselves as this lady lashed into me.

"You have any  idea what my people have gone through?! We've been enslaved by oppressive assholes like you! We've had to fight for our rights from dick faces like you! You ain't got any idea the pain people like me have gone through you stupid punk ass bitch!", now I'm usually a collected person, but against such things like this, I could not keep my lips shut any longer and I unsheathed my sharpened tongue.

"Okay, first of all, I had nothing to do with that shit. I am Hawaiian. Wanna know what  'people like me' when you were enslaved? We were chilling on our fucking island by ourselves. Had to fight for your rights from dick faces like me? I had nothing to do with that shit. In fact, know what some of your people did to mine? You helped those white people you apparently hate so much, imprison our queen inside of her own palace, killed my people just cause we didn't want to give up our islands to you fuckers.", she shrank back a little bit just at that, surprised that anyone actually stood up to that, but I'm a hot head, and I hate it when people do that so I continued.

"You know what we used to do to people that came to our islands before we were accepted to the mainland? We would beat the shit out of them, and eeeaaaat them. And I swear, if you ever get into my face with that weak ass shit again, my primal instincts might just emerge", after that, I just stared back into her and walked away. Sure, I kinda embellished that last part a bit about eating people, but it's not like she knew any better.

Now, in all interests of fairness, I feel like I have to hit white people as well or else this is just going to seem really one sided.

In my school days, there was a plethora of different personalities as I'm sure there are in other place of the world. I'm tolerant of most people, but being a free thinking and expressive person, I don't like the people who are uptight and extremely politically correct. I believe we were given the gift of speech and communication to freely express ourselves. Now, this is not to say that we should just say every god damn thing on our minds, but we shouldn't be hindered by other peoples expectations or feelings.

I was talking to a couple of friends, and we had recently finished a book called Bless Me, Ultima.  It was a book about this young boy of Navajo blood who is sent to live with his Grandma for the summer in order to get back in touch with his roots and his culture. It was a pretty good book. I wouldn't read it again, but it deserves a glance through.

Anyway, I was talking about this book, and I made a joke about Indians (I even implicitly feathered, not dotted) owning all the casinos or something to that extent. I admit, it wasn't the best of jokes, probably wasn't even that funny, but enter the uptight politically correct guy that feels they have to stick up for anyone and everyone.

"You do realize that it's only like that cause we did that to them right? After raping their lands and their cultures and in essence committing genocide against them, we gave them a very sorry excuse for reparations in the form of casinos and reservations", this was one of those kids that I did not even have the patience for. Besides, why do people keep on including me with all these groups of people? I'm not saying Hawaiians or even Pacific Islanders are saints, but still.

"Okay. First off, that is completely wrong", I started off, but they cut me short.

"No, it's not. Maybe if you cracked open a history book and actually took the time to read, you'd know", while I don't consider myself a thousand watt bulb, I do not like levels of condescending such as this.

"Maybe if you took a moment to actually think, maybe you'd see that I'm not exactly like you. I come from the islands out in the Pacific. I did absolutely nothing to the Indians", I could see that they winced at hearing someone call them Indians and not Native Americans, but old habits die hard, "I do know of the genocide that you speak of. Using biological warfare against them by giving them smallpox infected blankets. Sending them on the trail of tears. Betraying them and mocking their culture. I know of all the things that you did. But don't lump me into that when you say 'we'. We were surfing and having fun till you assholes took us into your union. I in fact sympathize with them", I was going to go on, but the bell rang and this kid punked out saying he didn't want to be late. I'm just glad I could put him in his place.

Now, I bring this up only because I needed a story to share and because I couldn't think of any others. I mean no offense to be taken from this, and I hope none did. I'm sure there were much better ways to handle the above situations, but it's just who I am.

Oh, and before I leave, I have two more quick things to say. One, Obama is not Hawaiian. I know a lot of people who assumed for some reason that I was going to vote for Obama because of that. Number one, I am not that type of person and petty reasons like that should never be a reason to vote for someone. The difference between him and I is that his family moved to Hawaii and was just born there. If you were to trace his lineage back a couple centuries, you'd find the majority of his ancestry is located somewhere in Kenya. I on the other hand can trace it back to the ancient Hawaiians that Tito mentioned so many times in Rocket Power.

The other is that I wanna know if there are any Hawaiian stereotypes or if there are reasons to be racist against us. The only things I've ever heard is that we're really laid back and relaxed. Oh, and that according to Family Guy, we're smelly. I always wanted to meet someone who is racist against me because I just wanted to hear their reasons.

Thanks for reading as always! I'll try and think of something more lighthearted to write for next time.