American

Last night I went to listen to a guest speaker at Carleton College. The speaker was M-1, a member of the black underground grassroots rap group Dead Prez, who was talking about the history of the black panthers and hip hop music. I am a quarter black myself and there were a lot of points he made in his speech that really resonated with me, and there were also a couple point he made that I didn’t really agree with.

At one point, in response to a question about the n word and the term African-American, he said “I’m an African first. Period.” and then went on to explain how he is an African, and his ancestors were forced to come here and learn English, etc.

My ancestors came to America on the same slave boats his did and we have the same slave heritage, but I’m an American first. Period.

The main point of his talk was explain the struggle of the black community to gain power in America with the current political system and political leaders, and how we, the black community, have to reach these positions of power for the people so we can give back to the community. Now, I agree with all this, but I don’t think his mind set of being an African first is the right mindset to achieve this. If you want power in America you have to do it as an American. If you want to gain power as an African do it in Africa. By the way, have you ever even been to Africa M-1?

America is part of our legacy. Right now the black legacy is the legacy of the slave and the white legacy is the legacy of the slave owner. I think its time we change that, redefine it. The black legacy is the legacy of America. Even-though our ancestors were brought to this country against their will, they built this country. Slaves built America. They build the infrastructure and even the economy. Now in today’s world we need to own up to this legacy. Our ancestors build this country, America is our right. We build it from the ground up and we should still be playing a key role in modern America. I think this mentality is much more beneficial to gaining power in America the the the mentality of being African first which distances you from America. We are Americans. We are America. When we realize this we can go on to do great things within America. Period.

bye for now…. WoW

My World of Warcraft account expired today. I guess it’s a good thing, because now I’m back at school and winter term has just started.. no more time for WoW. Nonetheless, I’m going to miss it.

I’m gonna miss leveling up my characters, picking earthroot, losing to the horde in PvP, being a gnome warrior, naked dance parties in IF, Night Elfs, quests, XP, NPCs, my guild, and……. everything else…

This is the end of my second month of WoW. I played my first month of WoW last year over winter break and now I’m done with my second month of WoW, which I played this year over winter break. I have to admit the game play is pretty nice… and very very addictive.

I’m glad I only play WoW during winter break because otherwise I’d fail all my classes and have no life… but during winter break I have no life, so its ok…

Oh well, back to the real world for me…

Goodbye Damuscles (lvl 32 Gnome Warrior)! Goodbye Silverskarr (lvl 34 NE Hunter)! Goodbye Halibote (lvl 8 Human Priest)!

Goodbye Urahara Store! Goodbye Alleria!

Goodbye WoW!

Yellow Cake

China Story #1: Cake

FLASHBACK — Summer 2006 — Beijing, China

I recently spent 6 months in China, half of that time was spent studying at CNU (Capital Normal University) in Beijing. During my summer study program at CNU I was living with a Chinese roommate from Hunnan. His Chinese name was 黄登高 (Huang Deng Gao) and when I first met him he didn’t have an English name. His first name 登高 (Dengao), which means climbing high, sounds sort of like the Chinese word for “cake,” 蛋糕 (dangao). So, I started calling him cake for fun. Eventually this caught on with the other students on the program and everyone just assumed his English name was Cake. And that’s how 黄登高 got his english name Cake Huang, or Cake Yellow since 黄 (huang) also means yellow in Chinese.

What’s in a Name?

RebelSkarr

Who is RebelSkarr?

The history behind the name RebelSkarr dates back to when I played my first online game in high school. The game was Star Wars Jedi Knights II and I need to come up a name, an alias to represent me in the Star Wars universe of JKII. At first I couldn’t decide on a name, I could find one that felt right. Some of my early aliases ranged from CrzyCooCat to ThePumpkinKing to Ninj4 to other random names, but none of them ever stuck. Then one day it came to me. There was a character skin in the game with the word “Skar” in it. This gave me the initial idea, then with some imagination I came up with RebelSkarr.

I had even created a complete back-story for RebelSkarr. I told people that he was an actual Star Wars character and If you looked closely you could see his name in the credits of the movie. RebelSkarr used to be a high ranking Imperial officer. He was actually Admiral Skarr and had a whole Imperial fleet under his control until one day when he started to disagree with the Empire’s tactics and defected to the Alliance. Thus becoming RebelSkarr.

That’s the story behind RebelSkarr. A tale of online gaming and Star Wars. The Skarr legacy was recently revived in 2005 with my WoW debut through the Night Elf Hunter SilverSkarr. And now its been revived once again with the start of RebelSkarr’s first blog in 2007.