I'm blogging a lot today, but I really love it. Now, this paper has the forth of its series on black men up. People from the community are just getting together, and talking about how they can make their community better, what they are doing, what successes they have made. Like it reminds me of how the voices of America are all out there, all around us. There are magazines, and books, and radio shows, and webpages all telling a story of a different America. We don't have to accept what it fed to us- that America is always and only a white male country, and it only belongs to rich white males.

No, America belongs to everyone. If you don't hear the voices of blacks or latinos or Asians or poor people or transexual people or gay people or women or disabled people or any other type of people, their real authentic voices, not just stereotypes and lies, you gotta think about your reception, your choices. Not everyone's got a big internet, but if you're here, you do, there's the whole internet to play with. Not everyone's in a big city, and can talk to different people directly, but there's always something- even a well worn copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in your local library.

With all the good things we have in America, people refuse to hear or see or think about most of the people in America. Only a small portion of America is rich white men who are straight christian and able bodied. Yet we let them set the agenda for all of us- telling us what history is, telling us what we should think about politics, telling us who we are. You can't define yourself by what people who are willfully ignorant of you think you are. You just can't.