Author Archives: admin

Who’s To “Blame” For The 2016 Election

November 17, 2016

To say that this 2016 election was and continues to be a waking nightmare is a massive understatement. To say that I am extremely upset and disappointed in the United States of America is also an understatement. I truly believe that over 60 million Americans made the wrong decision for shortsighted, shallow and selfish reasons. And I keep hearing excuse after excuse about how the DNC is at fault, or third-parties, or the media, or Nate Silver, or email servers, or our increasingly growing echo chambers. But let’s stop the bullshit right here. The fact that we now have elected Donald Trump as president rests squarely on the shoulder of white voters.

Let’s look at the statistics: 58% of white voters chose Trump. Take that statistic in. Over half of all white American voters honestly thought that Donald Trump was worth electing. They decided that Hillary Clinton was a hateful distrustful shrew who shouldn’t be allowed in office. They decided that a woman with over 30 years of experience in law is less qualified than a man with several bankruptcies under his belt who has never even been in office or served in the military. And this is a classic white supremacist mentality as any minority who applies for a job that they are overqualified for but gets passed over for a less experienced white male can tell you.

And for those of you saying that minorities also let people down, let’s pull up some more numbers. According to a 2016 estimate, there are 324,720,797 people in America. America is 72.5% white, which leaves 28% nonwhites. Doing the math means that there are approximately 90,921, 823 nonwhites in this country. Again these are nonwhite people, NOT nonwhite voters and after crunching a bunch of numbers I estimated around 50,000,000 (and I’d argue that that value is too high). In order to win, literally every single minority voter would have had to vote for Clinton, which is ridiculous. Also, every ethnic group voted for Clinton over Trump, except one. Guess which one? So let’s put that to rest.

Now, let’s look at the statistics for third-party voters. Approximately 80% of the votes that went to third party candidates were cast by white voters*. Let that sink in. When push came to shove, minorities (namely black women) turned out and made sure to vote for a candidate who isn’t a xenophobic, sexist, racist, sociopathic liar. And white voters who continued to assure minorities that they won’t make the wrong decision decided to cast their votes for two candidates who didn’t stand a chance of winning instead of showing solidarity.

Let me paint you a picture. A year ago, I had an honest conversation with my mother about what a possible Trump presidency could have. We had numerous discussions about this and about the importance of voting and getting involved in politics. And I was able to sway her to care enough about politics to support Hillary Clinton. And I understand that New York is a blue state and that there wasn’t a chance that she would support Trump, but that’s not the point. I worked long and hard to lay out the facts, get her to understand what’s at stake, and not belittle her for her choices and she LISTENED.

In contrast, I constantly hear anecdotal stories from white citizens who decided that after a couple of awkward dinners with their conservative parents, they decided to give up, block their families and say “La la la, this isn’t my fault. I’m one of the good ones.” I don’t know. Maybe you did try your absolute best. Maybe you didn’t. But the point is that you didn’t do like Beyonce and get in formation. You gave up, you dropped out, you left your conservative family’s political leanings as someone else’s problem. And quite frankly, that problem is now ours (ours being me and my POC/LGBT brothers and sisters).

White people love to bang the drum that all Muslims are responsible when a terrorist attack happens or that all black people are responsible for inner city crime. White people love to tell minorities to check ourselves, to not be too gay or too ethnic or too loud. Now is the time for the white majority to look internally and as a society ask the hard-hitting questions. Now is the time for you folks to stop saying “But I’m one of the good ones” and TALK to the “bad” ones. Now is the time to stop with the #NotAllWhites bullshit and assess your culture the same way you ask us to do, because if there is any division in America, it’s not between whites and nonwhites. It’s between white people and themselves.

*I starred this because this statistic is harder to confirm. I am perfectly willing to change this if I find a more accurate poll.

Why Don’t You Go Back To Your Own Country? An Honest Answer

November 12, 2016

Dear Racist Roy*,

Thank you for suggesting that I go back to my own country of Africa. I would sincerely love to but I have a couple of issues with that. First of all, Africa is not a country; Africa is a continent. Also, I wouldn’t know where to go in Africa because your ancestors kidnapped my ancestors and broke apart my family to the point that I have no idea what region in Africa I’m from. But thanks for the suggestion.

On top of that, I was born here. Granted my parents were not born here but they also came here at a very young age and built a life here. Do you think that it’s fair to ask them to leave to go back to a country that they have not associated with for 50 years? Do you think it’s fair for me to go to Haiti and try to learn a language I haven’t spoken with any sort of fluency since I was 4 years old? How would you feel if I went to Ancestry.com and found out what non-English speaking country your great-great-grandparents were from and I asked you to leave your house and all your belongings behind and go back there? I hope you’re not from a country with a Finno-Ugric language because considering English is Indo-European, it’ll be a tough linguistic transition for you. But you probably don’t even know the difference between those two language groups, do you?

Also, I know you think I shouldn’t be here in your country taking your money but your ancestors raped and pillaged my homeland, stole all of our valuable resources and brought it back to your country. So I kind of have to be here now to make any sort of money, or rather to make the money that is ancestrally mine BACK from you. This is a product of colonialism. Do you know what colonialism is? This happened because your ancestors decided that you had a right to own the entire world and not care about anyone else’s humanity. All this despite claiming to be God-fearing all-loving Christians. And they when your ancestors realized their hypocrisy, they arbitrarily drew up boundaries and created untold high amounts of animosity between ethnic groups before washing their hands of the problem after lining their profits with our ancestors’ wealth. Oh, and on top of all of that, your ancestors then drew up lopsided and unequal trade policies to benefit themselves that still unwittingly benefit you today.

So in sum, I can’t leave until I get what I’m owed. But I really appreciate your poorly thought question and I ask you this: Why don’t you go back to living under a bridge?

XOXO

Calvin S. Cato

*Name is not real, but seriously does it matter?

fuJane – It Happened To Me: I Saw A White Person Buy Jerk Chicken and I Couldn’t Handle It

August 21, 2014

January is always a funny month at jerk chicken restaurants. For some reason, people are just hungrier for white meat with a little kick to it. A few weeks ago, I went into my favorite jerk chicken restaurant Fire Fowl and I saw an older heavyset gentleman walk in. He was slightly balding and had a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young T-shirt on. He glanced around awkwardly, looking bespectacled and Caucasian as he ordered the jerk chicken with rice and peas.

And then he sat down, took one bite and started to sweat profusely! Oh no, I thought. I could see him looking panicked and frightfully alone. Within the first few minutes, he was frantically gulping at his water. What could I do? Here I was, sitting in a booth with my tastefully tacky Izod sweater and my three seasons ago Beats By Dre headphones around my neck and here was this guy sweating through his hopelessly outdated shirt. Because I was directly across from this guy, I couldn’t help but stare at his poor pale out-of-shape man pain and it pained me.

Even though I had zero evidence, I could feel his eyes burning into my head as he stared at me calmly eating my peppered rice and peas. And I thought, what did I do to deserve this??? I became aware of my perfect mahogany skin and an ideal weight of 160 pounds as I continue to fork up the chicken. And I could feel his hostility, could virtually hear him shouting “Damn your Jamaican genes!” I thought about offering him a glass of milk, but…I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. So I turned away and deliberately avoided the eye contact that I don’t think I received but I’m pretty sure I received.

At the end of the meal, I went straight home and my eyes welled up with tears. Primarily the tears came from the burning sensation on my tongue, but there was also the guilt. The guilt! I thought of all the times that black people thoughtlessly oppressed white people. I thought of the pain white people felt when Macklemore was criticized for co-opting rap music and gay rights for a Grammy. I cried thinking of how I oppressed Miley Cyrus by complaining about her terrible twerking and use of black people as props. I beat my fists against my chest as I thought of how unfair it was that Lupita Nyongo stole that SAG award from a well-meaning white actress.

I’m sorry, you guys, I just broke down. Jerk chicken restaurants are a safe space for me and they’ve helped me through difficult times like when I skipped lunch and needed to get dinner before running off to do a comedy open mic. Now everything felt deeply suspect. Could I eat chicken again, knowing full well what my ingestion of it can do to the psyches of those poor defenseless white stomachs? I couldn’t believe that this is how it feels to get a glimpse of the spice-shaming that I put white people through on a daily basis.

I’ll still go to that jerk chicken restaurant though, but I’ve opened my eyes to the feelings of white people. I once was lost but now I’m found. In conclusion, America.

Alcoholic Gamer Podcast!

August 21, 2014

I know, it’s been a month – where have you been? Well, Hurricane Sandy derailed me a bit but I promise there will be a new blog series coming up soon. In the meantime, I never got to say that the video podcast I co-host with Justin Murray has moved. The new URL is below; go and catch up with the last few episodes for all your video game news and reviews: http://alcoholicgamer.tumblr.com/

And look here’s a handy hyperlink for you!

I’ll be off featuring in Rhode Island but expect to hear more from me soon.

List Of Things I Should Be Too Embarrassed To Google But Did Anyway #1

August 21, 2014

(1) How To Make Scrambled Eggs

(2) Barry Manilow Gay?

(3) How To Clean A “Tobacco” Pipe

(4) Signs of Depression

(5) Argyle Socks To Wedding Okay?

(6) How To Know You’re Depressed

(7) Cost of Flight to Heaven

(8) Kristen Shaughnessy NY1

(9) How To Spell Embarassed [sic]

(10) Friendships at 30?

(11) Depression Warning Signs

(12) Best Places To Run Away To

Pod-Cast-A-Tron Podcast – Free Video Game Podcast!

August 21, 2014

Actually to be honest, it’s more like a belated #17. But I wanted to put it out there that I and my comedy cohort Justin Murray produce and drunkenly ramble on a video game podcast called Pod-Cast-A-Tron (the dashes are necessary to avoid a connotation with the act of removing genitals).

If you haven’t listened or subscribed to it, please listen AND subscribe to it. Below is the link and we’re also searchable on iTunes. Do it, if not for me, then for poor Larry who never knew of true love or Metroid.

Pod-Cast-A-Tron direct link, aqui!