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Call to Action: We Need Transparency, Not Secrecy, in Selecting New Chief of Police

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In the next few months we will have a new San Diego Chief of Police and I hope that whoever gets the job can do something, for me, no one has been able to do: create an environment wherein I don’t find myself squirming a bit every time a police officer rolls up behind me or next to me. I just can’t help it, though, with my life’s experiences.

Now, hey, don’t get me wrong, I’ve known some good police officers — parents at my schools, guys I grew up with, dudes I’ve toked and toasted with, played ball with — it’s just that the bad seeds among them can be downright scary at times.

Police-community relations have concerned me enough that I’ve tried, every now and then over the years, to make our police department more humane.   [Read more…]

So Proud of My Son and the Dojo Café

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I felt so proud of my son, Carlos, the other day when I walked away from the grand opening of the Dojo Café, a little place on wheels he and his friends, Tayari, Peter, Nancy, and Christina put together for City Heights.

I was particularly wowed because it seems he just got here as I have vivid memories of him falling asleep in my arms after a little baby-dad play.

Then it seemed like it was only a matter of days that I was blown away by his wizardry on the soccer field and the moves he grooved to dancing on stage. On the other side of the coin, I remember wanting to, on family road trips while the van was still moving, climb over my seat and strangle him to release the pressure off that last nerve of mine he had stomped on. Oh, his energy! Dude had no off switch whatsoever. Loved him dearly never-the-less.   [Read more…]

Notions of Love Rising Out of the Darkness in Las Vegas

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I just left Vegas a few days ago, with very fresh memories of how loud and all aglow it was, which makes it particulary difficult for me, in these moments, to fathom a man mowing down people who are having a good time as though they were foes on a battlefield.

Such a tragedy tears at your heart and it came at a time when we Americans are already suffering as we seem to be spinning aimlessly away from embracing each other as fellow citizens.

Like, for example, the situation with NFL players, of all people, who kneeled on one knee, before us and the world, when our anthem was being played to bring awareness to the ongoing racism people of color face – and, instead of “we the people” condemning the injustice these citizen-athletes highlighted, we yelled at them and booed them and called them un-American when protesting is about as American as being an American can be.   [Read more…]

Seeking Equality with a White-Supremacist-in-Chief in the White House

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Some dude on television was trying to make a case that the president is not a white supremacist.

But, hey, I’ve dealt with white supremacists for 79 plus years and I have to say that Donald J. Trump is not only one, he’s the best example of such a being I have ever seen.

Take what he did with Jemele Hill, the ESPN sportscaster, my latest hero. She called him out on his white supremacism and he wants her fired and wants the network to apologize to him for her “untruth.” Scratch the prefix “un” and you see what he really wants her to apologize for.   [Read more…]

Pillars of the Community: Seekers of Unity in a Climate of White Supremacy

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I heard talk on TV about people being “stunned” that the president would say that both sides were at fault when he had “rebuked” (if you really want to call it that) the white nationalists’ stunningly violent and reckless behavior in Virginia just the day before.

Stunned about what? I would have been stunned if he hadn’t taken his words back. What happened was the dude desperately had to get back to his true self, back to speaking from the dark places in his mind.   [Read more…]

Making America Without-So-Many-Crises Again

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I just hurriedly clicked off a discussion on TV concerning how Trump might do in the 2020 race for the presidency.

What little I heard was too much for me because with all I’ve seen of this man it’s idiocy just mentioning his name in regard to his being re-elected. That such a conversation can even take place in our democracy says to me that we are undoubtedly, in a bad place, in a state of social and political disgrace, a.k.a. crisis.

Just look at us. It’s like we’ve lost our way. I mean there’s an NFL quarterback who can’t find a job because he took a knee during the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” without us, for a moment, addressing the crippling racism in our country that he was protesting. No word in defense of his patriotism or against our national shame by the top dog in the Land of the Free.   [Read more…]

A Genealogy Adventure with Slave and Supercentenarian Moses Williams

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Donya Williams, the four-times great-granddaugter of a man named Moses Williams, asked me if I would help draw attention to some research she and a cousin are doing titled: Stronger Together: The Moses Williams Genetic Genealogy Project.

So I started reading a bio she sent me of their work and can’t help but think they already know what they’re doing.

I was barely into reading other information when the names Strom Thurmond, 50 Cent, Al Sharpton, and L.L. Cool J jumped out at me – names I wouldn’t ever expect to appear in the same sentence.

I mean what could a white Southern senator who loves the KKK and a man who raps, “There’s no business like ho business” and a melodramatic Baptist preacher “Keepin’ it Real” and the creator of “Mama Said Knock You Out” possibly have in common?   [Read more…]

Millennials Are a Beautiful Sight to See

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Millennials. So many of us see them as lazy, naïve, un-motivated “Me-Me-Me” kinds of human beings who somehow threaten to bring the world to an apocalyptic end – all while taking a selfie.

But from all I’ve ever seen, it’s the millennials, the 20 year olds and 30 year olds — and to think of it, the 40 year olds — of any time who are at the forefront of societal change.

I mean, Thomas Jefferson was thinking, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” when he was 33.

On behalf of the Lakota Sioux people, Sitting Bull — a spring chicken at the time, and being no Tonto — said to the powers-that-be: “Reservations? I don’t think so!”   [Read more…]

Everybody’s Talking About the ‘I’ Word

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Hey, y’all, have you heard?
Everybody’s talking ‘bout the “I” word.
“Impeachment,” in other words:
throwing The Donald to the curb;
finally fed up
with him on our last nerve
like a cowboy riding a wild bronco
wrangled from the herd;   [Read more…]

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

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By Ernie McCray

Tina Turner once sang “What’s love got to do with it?” And, ordinarily, as one who is a “love my neighbor as thyself” kind of guy, I’d answer: “Everything.” Giving my love is pretty much how I’ve managed to survive in the Milky Way. I don’t know any other way.

But how loving am I? Really? I had never asked that question before receiving an email recently from an old friend, a high school classmate — in response to something I had written about The Donald. She wrote:

Dear Ernie. I believe that Mr. Trump is a deeply disturbed man. The only way I know of to soften that pain in my heart and gut is to send him love.
Love, Katie

The words “send him love” jumped out at me like a very well smashed tennis ball coming at me at the net. I had to duck as I sat at my iMac. The thought of sending this president love practically gave me a heart attack.   [Read more…]

Stream of Consciousness as a Brief Getaway

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By Ernie McCray

PRELUDE: What’s written here are words that poured from me when I tried to, just for a few moments in time, air my mind of all the mania that seems to come from the White House from time to time aka all the time. It’s as written, word for word, with punctuations added to tidy it up a bit.

Ready, set go! Whew! What a world! What’s up, girl? Hard to breathe, easy to see, and hear, though, don’t you know. But it’s a mess at best. Some kind of crazy ass test. Lord have mercy on all the rest that has to exist with whatever this is. Whatever this is. Some crazy kind of show biz. Tis. T-I-S. Tis. What is the universe to think of this experiment that’s run into a ditch, a sink hole, where there’s a risk of not getting out?   [Read more…]

The Truth Can Set Us Free

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Jim Comey. My man! I wish I could shake his hand. I mean I’ve got to put aside my deep deep deep disdain for the FBI to give props to a man who has come through with something I’ve so much wanted somebody from a high place to do – call Donald J. Trump out for what he is: a liar. For all the world to hear and see.

Of course he was stating the obvious but it needed to be said just as he said it: out loud – because some of us and the media keep cutting him slack with witty intellectualizing about what a lie really is, how a lie might not be a lie if it wasn’t intended to be a lie. What a lie all of that is.

Now, to be fair, I’d say that kind of logic might be the case with your typical run-of-the-mill fabricator, but Donaldo is a master liar. He can’t open his mouth without lying, the lies flying off his tongue like bullets from a machine gun, it seems. I mean forget “liar, liar, pants on fire” this man’s entire wardrobe is on fire. His closet is ablaze.   [Read more…]

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