Sunday, August 24, 2008

Neighbors

Living in a city in which there are so many different ethnicities -particularly living in a neighborhood which has a major concentration of a couple of similar seeming ethnicities- is a real challenge to one's appreciation and understanding of different cultures.

Case and point:
I am working very hard right now, at nearly 2:30 in the morning, to be really specific when I say, "I hate these people" to mean my neighbors in the green house to the left of our apartment building and my other neighbors in the white house to the back of our apartment building and not the ethnic makeup of my neighborhood as a whole.
And when I say, "I hate this music" I mean it specifically in reference to the music that blares loudly, from hours on end and well into the morning (see above and time stamp of this post) which makes it impossible for me to find quiet in any of the rooms of our apartment. And by "quiet" I mean, possible for me to hear my television that I've turned nearly all of the way up or, say, my thoughts.

It would be easy for me, given my ethnic outsider status (as American Black), to make false generalizations about all of the members of my neighborhood based on my limited experience with these specific neighbors because of what appears to be their shared ethnicity (Caribbean).
This is something that I am conscious of and work on diligently. The country, city and neighborhood that I live in requires this kind of work. This is not a bad thing. I honestly think that a little bit more personal frankness about these sorts of thoughts and experiences (and a commitment to work on them) will make a better country, city and neighborhood.

Given all of this, I do think it's fair to say that my neighbors do not help me to like reggae. Or reggaeton.

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