Does He Look Like a Hero?

On Tuesday morning, a 50-year-old African-American man dove onto the subway tracks at the 137th Street No. 1 station to save the life of a man who looked nothing like him. The teen was not related to Wesley Autrey. The two had not even been conversing prior to the seizure that caused the young man to fall onto the tracks. However, within a split second, Autrey leaped onto the tracks, covered the teen with his own body and held on for dear life as a train roared overhead. Did I mention that his two young daughters witnessed it all from the platform edge?

Take a look at Autrey. He looks like many of the Black men we pass on the streets of New York City everyday. We pass many of them without so much as a second thought but there are those among us that would never suspect that one of these men would be the one to change the start of a phone call from, "Ma'am, I'm sorry to have to tell you this..." to "Your son has been in an accident but is alright".

The video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N2zhu5RH34 shows a man who looks and acts like many of my uncles. He looks like the same man that causes women to clutch their purses. The same man that makes men double check the back pocket. How many people have continuously looked over their shoulder when he was walking behind them after dark while he was simply headed home after work. And we all know that it gets dark pretty early here in NYC during the winter. Some days I swear it's dark at like 4:30p.m.

Long story short...I'm not saying that sometimes that little feeling in your gut isn't right about some of the creeps on the streets. However, the next time you think you have that feeling stop and ask yourself is this intuition or conditioning?

Survivor: Cook Islands

Many of you, like myself, may have missed what is probably the most informative, accurate and eye-opening look at race relations in the United States. This season CBS decided to split the teams on it's hit show Survivor into teams divided by race. Well, initially this just sounded like yet another ploy to drag us in front of the boob tube for more reality television. Had it not been for the fact that my sister was watching it online, I probably would have never seen the show. However, after viewing the first 15 minutes of the 2nd episode, I was hooked.

The contestants are split into 4 teams separated by race (Asian-American, African-American, Latino-American, and Caucasian). Each team composed of five members. Let me just bring you up to speed. By episode 10, there are 8 people left which include 1 Black woman, 2 Asians, 1 Latino and, you guessed it, 4 caucasians. This in spite the fact that white players have mutineed, blatantly lied, and decieved ALL the other players.

Ultimately, this show just shows us live and in living color what many of us already know.

1. We minorities need the validation of white people. We tend to have very little trust in them but we have even less trust in each other.

2. Black people still have not learned to work together and can't seem to break through the light-skinned/dark-skinned barricade.

3. Asian people will work together, won't they?

4. White people stand by there own and no matter how cool some might be with us, their own STILL come first!

If you get a chance, check the show out at www.cbs.com