You, You Got What I Need

So, if you're even an occasional reader of the blog, you might've gleaned that I'm of South Asian extraction, a fact perhaps made clear--or at least not controverted--by my enthusiastic, albeit controversial, use of "cracker" and "redneck" in quotidian exchanges, but up until the age of 11--hand to teeny tiny baby Jesus in heaven above--I didn't know I wasn't white.

Those sad, awkward days I spent in Mr. Kennedy's 6th grade class, a school term memorable for the vicious literary skewering we--students and teacher alike--executed on school-mandated masterwork, Come Sing Billy Joe (which Amazon sells in whimsical Spanish form as well: Sal a Cantar Jimmy Jo!).

At this point in my life, my goals were three-fold: I hoped to add a Ferrari to my Micro Machines collection, I wanted a pair of Reebok Pumps like Will Rivers wore, and I prayed that I'd wake up one morning in the corporeal form of Shock G, fake nose, honeys and all. Yes, wayward white, suburban youth that I misapprehended myself to be, I prayed at the altar of rap music (the expression "hip hop" would still be a Tribe Called Quest album or two away from seeping into my consciousness).

Fast forward 19 years, and I have no idea where my Walkman-worn copies of As Nasty As They Want To Be or Sex Packets are--though, for the sake of nerdy admission--my original Pakistani record-shop, bootleg copy of Cube's seminal Amerikkka's Most Wanted rocks out in the glove of my '01 Corolla, so don't step. Fast forward 19 years, and the world is a complex place. The black-fetishizing, suburban white boy within me still cries for a pair of Girbaud jeans, but who's he supposed to vote for when 50's telling him that Obama's the path to race enlightenment at the same time that Snoop's saying Obama's fronting for David Duke? If Tone Loc and Biz Markie (see above) don't weigh in soon with an opinion, then I'm at a total loss, and may cast my vote for Marion Barry. What's a poser to do?