Category: Columns

by Ernie McCray

Some are saying that
Simone Biles is
a “national embarrassment”
who “quit on her team,”
when the truth is
she’s a
superbly talented gymnast
who, for years,
has mesmerized
the world
with dazzling routines
featuring
an array
of twists and turns and flips
that seem to defy
the laws of physics,

by Ernie McCray

I’m thinking about Frank Cruz.

He’s an old junior and senior high classmate of mine who wrote a book, a memoir, Straight Out of Barrio Hollywood, a nice story of his journey from “the other side of town” in Tucson to co-founding Telemundo, a television network that broadcasts nationally and across the sea.

Before he pulled that off, he was a much loved and highly appreciated college professor of Chicano History and a well-known L.A. TV personality. A true transition from Barrio Hollywood, a Tucson ghetto, to “Hollywood” where the stars glow.

I felt so proud to have known him as I read of his accomplishments, the significant news he covered, and the celebrated names he dropped.

I couldn’t help but think of how he and I, in 1951, were part of our hometown’s history, how we ended up at the same school when Tucson desegregated its campuses. Before then Latinos, Mexican Americans, in Frank’s neighborhood were considered White although they were treated otherwise.

by Ernie McCray

Since the age of three every book I’ve read has influenced me in some way as I’m very much an empathizer.

But no book has resonated with me more than Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

As I absorbed his words I felt as though he was writing directly to me. I mean his declaration that education systems were designed to produce passive non-critical thinking learners, especially those relegated to the lower classes in our society, validated my very thoughts as an educator, making me feel not so alone in a school district that was standardized to its very core.

My man, Paulo, let me know that I was on to something as I indulged my students with notions of justice, wanting them to know how their country operates so they could transform it.

by Ernie McCray

America.
I’ve so had it with
your evil ways,
especially the way
you make us Black folks
slave away
to just prevent you
from taking our right to vote away,
over-and-over-again
ad nauseam.

And what pisses
me off the most
about this is

by Ernie McCray

“What musical artist do you resonate with the most and you feel best tells your story?” was a question posed on Facebook.

I could never answer that with one choice, as there are so many singers and instrumentalists on the list of artists who have, at least, accompanied if not told my story over time.

Billie Holiday immediately comes to mind. Hers was one of the first voices other than my mother’s and my dad’s that I can remember hearing.

I was but a child but the sound of her voice as she sang, that sadness and raspy-ness, touched me all over, and melted into my very being, matching what I, even though I was in my infancy, was already sensing intuitively about the world I had been born into near the end of the 30’s.

Loved me some Andrews Sisters, too, their boogie woogie melodies and jitterbugging and jaunty harmonies that led to harmonizing being one of my favorite things to do.

by Ernie McCray

I see so many memes on social media about “fake friends” as opposed to “true friends.”

They’re posted as warnings by folks who apparently aren’t doing well in the friend department.

I usually just glance at them but this one caught my eye the other day: “Pay close attention to those who don’t clap when you win.”

And I found myself saying out loud: “Come on, now. Really?” I should focus on somebody who doesn’t care diddly-squat about me when I’ve got friends who wish the world for me?

by Ernie McCray

It never ceases to amaze me how we Americans continue to resist discussing the number one problem in our country ever since it came to be: racism.

That resistance has never been more evident than when San Diego City Schools decided to provide students with ethnic studies and anti-racism education and some parents freaked out and decried having CRT, “critical race theory,” taught to their children.

by Ernie McCray

Lost my favorite teammate
of all time:
Marv Dutt.
We haven’t, over the years,
kept in touch
but I have fond memories
of how he could,
no matter what,
get the ball to me
with that instinct
great passers have
of rewarding you
as long as you keep
moving to a great
spot on the floor to be.

by Ernie McCray

When we say to a veteran or to someone active in the military, “Thank you for your service” what are we thanking them for?

I ask this question for the children’s sake, for the many teenage warriors, fresh out of high school, who find themselves off somewhere in a land, that was never mentioned in their schooling, “making a difference.”

I mean after World War II came to an end, has there been any real reason for our country to be involved in war?

by Ernie McCray

STILL, WE RISE.
We, being my people,
Black folks.
Folks out here
living lives of
forever trying
to just be Americans,
free,
de-colonialized,
so to speak.
But, hey,
STILL, WE RISE.

And STILL, WE RISE happens to be a show of poetry and jazz that I put together with some friends: actor extraordinaire,

by Ernie McCray

I owe an apology to L. Todd Wood.

I wrote about an article he had written in my recent OB Rag piece, “Wishing a Classmate Would Say ‘No to Racism.’”

His essay was sent to me via email by a high school classmate of mine who, as I wrote, is always trying to prove me wrong regarding race issues Black people face in America.

Apparently, my old school chum added information at the end of Wood’s writing that wasn’t the author’s.

Now, Mr. Wood wrote a lot about Black people that was alarming and concerning to me but he hadn’t written any of the things that I attributed to him after I wrote that he had brought “his rant to an end with an assessment of the benefits to our society if Blacks suddenly upped and left.”

by Ernie McCray

I got an email from an old high school classmate that read: “Here’s a really good look at the problem of race in America today” in reference to an essay written by L. Todd Wood.

I seriously doubted that it would be a “good look” at racial matters as my old school chum finds pleasure, for some reason, in sending me articles that “prove” how Black people go about trying to fit into American society in the “wrong way” – and every way we try is the wrong way.

But I read the writing anyway, a bit curious as to what an ex-special forces helicopter pilot with a degree from the Air Force Academy had to say. And right-away I could see where this man was heading