I didn’t know I was a poor Mexican until the day I started junior high

salomon_y_carmenWhen you grow up in a segregated community and poor, often times, you’re not aware of your ethnicity and class status. Growing up in tight-knit Mexican communities, from Tijuana, Mexico, to East Los Angeles, I didn’t realize that I was Mexican and poor until my first day of junior high school.

As part of federal integration programs, I — along with classmates from Murchison Elementary School in East Los Angeles — was bused to Mt. Gleason Jr. High School in Sunland-Tujunga. Nervous about leaving the notorious Ramona Gardens housing project or Big Hazard projects for a strange place, I braced myself for the unknown.

Mas…I didn’t know I was a poor Mexican until the day I started junior high

By @buttronica: I ramble and maybe I’m too dark at times, but damn!

poniesEconomists say once a person has been unemployed for six months it is highly unlikely they will reenter the workforce.

It’s been a year since I was fired from my job and I feel like a BIG GIANT LOSER.

It wasn’t anything I did in particular. I thought for sure that one time I asked Floyd Mayweather if “he likes to take his work home with him” would do me in, alas, it was far more uneventful.

“We’ve decided not to renew your contract.”

“Um, OK.”

And it’s not like I’m totally unemployed. I regularly walk a dog named Jimmy Fallon — this causes great confusion when I nonchalantly say, “Jimmy Fallon growled at me today,” (though for the most part he is quite lovely, other than eating his own poop).

Mas…By @buttronica: I ramble and maybe I’m too dark at times, but damn!

Local Latina mom tired of people suddenly caring about her, Latinos

(PNS reporting from HOUSTON) María Solis is tired. Specifically, she’s tired of everybody suddenly caring about what she thinks — about anything at all.

Ever since the election and subsequent media obsession with the “Latino voter,” her  life has changed dramatically.

“It’s getting to be a bit much,” she told PNS in a Skype interview Thursday night. “I mean, now everyone is all considerate of my feelings about things. I keep getting asked what my thoughts on immigration reform or gun control are — I’ve had enough!”

Solis, mother of four-year-old fraternal twins Santino and Elise, misses the days when people would crack racist jokes in front of her and her Mexican-born mother as though they didn’t exist.

Mas…Local Latina mom tired of people suddenly caring about her, Latinos

Truth exposed at last! What goes on behind the white door? (video)


If you’re black, you don’t know. If you’re brown, you remain in the dark. Red or yellow? Ditto — the Secret World of White People is hidden from your view. Reporter Ed Murphy goes under cover as a white guy to find out what’s behind the white door. The moral of the story? Be kind to your web-footed friends.