So it used to frustrate me that I was so often the topic of discussion. I am kind of old fashion and believe in keep a good reputation for career and social obligations, but I see that no matter what, you guys are going to keep talking about me and that is fine, I really do not care. These critics have been spreading the same rumors for years, almost decades and many of them have been debunked.

I am not sure if they are aware, but everyone hears you guys. Anyway, so as I was turning off the news, on Hearst Television, I caught a glimpse of a conflict on a soap opera, and it really caught my attention because as a Sociologist, I want to learn more about human interaction, what makes them do the things they do, and get an overview of a conflict from a producers view. You know, I want to see all angels of it.

Anyway, I find it hard to peel myself away from the sofa, to finish my laundry because the storyline was so enticing. There are two guys, who were married, one of them had an affair with his long lost brother, and the scorned husband was doing research and found out that the two are related, but they do not know yet. So this hot storyline got me to wondering, why do people not have soap opera watching parities anymore.

I remember, when I was a kid, my grandmother and her friends used to gossip about the “Stories,” that is what they called them, and it seemed to bring them so much joy. They did not talk about each other. So I called my mother, at about 2pm, and she asked me, “Where have you been hiding all day?” I usually call my mother in the morning, every day, but today something was different, I just got caught up. It is almost like I lost a few hours because the day was moving so fast for me.

So you usually hear about writers moving into murder houses, or houses that are allegedly haunted because it helps them write, they get material and ideas. However, I live in a high rise building and it is a trip. It literally has a killer view and so many people have died here, seven that I know of, since I have been here.

Anyway, we have a new management team and recently got a new group of residences, who have a lot of time of their hands and they spy of you and stuff like that. I used to use the computer lab down stairs, but Jordan, would keep walking back and forth and peaking in the room to see if I was in there, he would do that every few minutes and followed me into the bathroom with a tape recorder once. Jordan supposedly hates men, but that is all he hangs out with and he is secretly gay.

And then there is Dave, who likes to try and get you drunk and take you back to his place, so while you are out, he can have his way with you and pretends he does not know what he did the next day, but when he is drunk, he actually slips up and says things like, “I kicked your ass and will do it again.” And yes, he probably would be dangerous if he did not have erectile dysfunction.

And then there are the house slaves, as I call them. A group of new women who gossip and try to run the building and everyone in, there is a major cause of plantation mentality going on here. And although these people talk about me all the time, have physically assaulted me and taken advantage of me, on a couple of occasions, they all call me “Crazy.”

However, they find it normal to yell at men, for no reason, kick on your door New Year’s morning because they “smell” sex, when all they really smell is a shower and soap, and they also think it is normal to choke people while they are driving and pass out in the lobby drunk.

The building has such a bad reputation that a young man said, “Those are apartments for drunken people.”  So I was talking to my mother today, and she told me that eventually this situation will stop stressing me out, and I will see it for what it is, these people act like slaves.

Back in the days of slavery, the white slave master used to have control over the plantation. And you had the slaves who worked in the field and  the slaves who worked in the kitchen and tried to run the house.

And everyone hated the yellow babies (Mulattos, which are black and white) because of their skin color, hair, features and skills. Also, when it came to auction, the Mulattos were not as valuable because of their skin color, no one wanted yellow slaves, who sometime passed for white because they could escape, and were not typically as strong. So a lot of these new blacks do not like me and some of the whites do not either, and that is fine. The blacks and the whites do not tend to like each other either. These is a lot of racial and sexual tension in here.

And the dynamics of the building are very inspiring and it gives me new ways of looking at things and helps me build theories and case studies. These people do not know if they want to kill me or have sex with me and it is funny. They have such a hard time profiling me because I went to college, I studied overseas, and took college preparation classes in high school, come from a good two parent home, am young, but have a nice car and apartment, dress well and stay clean, so it drives these people bonkers.

They cannot figure me out, many of them have never met a nice, who is a nerd and not trying to hound them for sex. Even the management and some of the staff is extremely unprofessional, they gossip with and about tenants.  Pretend not to know who you are after they have been looking at you for seven years, and even go around asking people what they think about certain people. This is a highly unprofessional atmosphere, and the leases are not enforced, which is why there is so much chaos.

These people do all kinds of bad things, and that is normal to them. And the less money they make, the more racist they tend to be, and yes, even the black people are racist. And yes, you may have been able to run a game on me one, when I was unaware what type of people I was dealing with, and a second time after the management was investigating me and harassing me (they had me investigated two before Christmas and twice right before Valentine’s Day, and nothing is private around here, but they think I do not know it was them, and everyone knows it was), which lead to me being depressed, but by the third time, it was not going to work. I did not report him to the police, and felt sorry for him, but I am not dumb, just bored, so I went out with him again, and nothing happened because I watched how much I was drinking.

He is the type of guy to pressure you into drinking them talks about how much money he spent on you, you know the type.

And as you may know, Sacramento, California is a very beautiful city, the mainstream culture is professional and nice, but you get hot beds of drama and factions of corrupt politicians, who like to ignore what is going on and pretend everything is perfect, until it blows up on their face and they are left with a crisis. For instance, Jerry Brown has been governor of California four times, which many are saying is illegal.

Back in the 1970s, when he was governor, there was a bad drought in California. And again in the recent times, Jerry Brown was reelected and is now serving his second term in this decade, and the state of California had not been getting rainfall, Brown was warned that there would be some devastating problems in the near future, but he ignore the warnings, and kept restricting water usage. The problem is not people are using too much water, but instead, it has not been raining or snowing and California is running out of water.

NASA scientist report that we may only have a year of water left in California and there was no measurable snowfall.  So now Governor Jerry Brown is looking like a fool, and has no idea what to do. Usually ignoring problems will leave you looking ignorant.

So more on this plantation mentality, beginning in 1619, a small number of Africans entered Virginia and Maryland to labor in the tobacco fields alongside white servants. However, as late as 1671, when some 30,000 slaves toiled in English Barbados, fewer than 3,000 served in Virginia. They were still outnumbered there at least three to one by white indentured servants. The transformation of the southern labor force from one in which many whites and a few black servants labored side by side to one in which black slaves performed most of the field labor began only in the last quarter of the seventeenth century.

First, the rising commercial power of England, at the expense of the Spanish and Dutch, swelled English participation in the African slave trade. Beginning in the 1680s, southern planters could purchase slaves more readily and cheaply than before. Second, the supply of white servants from England began drying up. Those who did arrive fanned out among a growing number of colonies. Finally, white servants unrest and a growing population of former servants who were landless, discontented, and potential challengers to establish white planters led the southern elite to welcome a more pliable labor force.

Consequently, by the 1730s, the number of white indentured servants had dwindled to insignificance. Black hands, not white, tilled and harvested Chesapeake tobacco and Carolina rice. Nothing had greater priority in starting a plantation than procuring slave labor. “If any one designs to make a plantation in this province, the first thing to be done is cut down a few trees, to split palisades or clapboards and therewith make small houses or huts to shelter slaves,” reports Thomas Nairne from Southern California in 1710.

So that is what is going on in this high rise. The white slaves are represented by the management. They are trying to get rid of many of the white tenants and anyone who will not buy into their plantation mentality. Many of the new blacks they are moving in this place tend to be very dark, extremely poor, overweight, and desperate. So they have a resident’s advisory board to make them feel more important and like they are in control of the building, but not everyone buys into this plantation mentality, which creates tension.

So it is amazing that by looking at history, one can understand the present and the future. I know one thing for sure. If you are doing wrong, using and abusing people, it will eventually blow up in your face, and you will be left looking extremely ignorant. There is a renewed spirit that consciously and proudly sets itself apart.

The galvanizing shocks and reactions of the last few years are making by subtle process of internal reorganization a culture out of its own disunited and apathetic elements. We have nevertheless concentrated upon self-expression and the forces and motives of self-determination.