LC, Lil’ Cut, was like a little cousin. He was the youngest, a scrawny twelve-year-old who was all business. He’d plan out the buses he’d hit at the start of a day: the 43 to the 6 to the 7 to the 71 to the N to the K back to the 43 for another lap. ROME would show me his sketch book during history class. I studied his tags. His letters had depth, vigor. The legs of his M slanted inward, and sprouting upward from the foot of his E was a curved line, a whip in motion. There was CLUE. We called him Black-C. The first time I met him we were supposed to fight. He’d been crossing my name out, so when I saw him at a bus stop, I stepped to him, though if it weren’t for all the damn people watching, I would’ve ducked away. He was six foot and wore a puffy trench coat. Luckily, he offered a truce. Said he’d just wanted to test me. See what I would do. From then on we were cool as shit.
These were the guys in my tagging circle. We’d bus-hop around the city, take a break at a hilly park, trudge up to a bench with a view of the city, and puff puff pass on a honey-coated blunt. We’d coordinate what we stole at Safeway. One person would get the bread, another the meat, another the cheese, another the sodas. We’d have a picnic at the bus stop. We were always in the same crews: PE, TFB, KSF, but 3F had seemed off-limits.
I didn’t reside in the Fillmore, so how could I claim Fresh Fillmoe Funk? I couldn’t even pronounce the neighborhood correctly, which is to say the way they did: Fillmoe. When I would try to say it, it came out “Fillmore,” as if I had an English teacher stuck in my head. I’d resort to the monosyllabic version, the Moe. But more than living in the wrong neighborhood—I lived in North Beach, the housing project near our high school, which had to count for something—what made me most uncomfortable with asking to join 3F and simultaneously what made me most want to join, was that everyone I knew in it was Black.
I had a confusing relationship with Blackness. It nurtured me, and to a degree, raised me. The parents of my homies in North Beach were my second mothers and fathers. It wasn’t uncommon for friends to say, “Dickson’s Black.” I’d hear this enough that at times I’d forget it wasn’t true.
I’d refuse watermelon because I didn’t want to play out a stereotype.
I existed in-between. A homeboy, in reference to other Chinese, would use the word “Chinamen” but immediately afterwards, say to me, “No offense, my nigga.”
I’d never heard anyone state that 3F was intentionally or exclusively a Black tagging crew, but it sure seemed like it in a city where the majority of writers were white or Latino. If there was one thing I wanted to respect, it was Black unity. It was a year after the Rodney King verdict, and in the aftermath of the riots, I sought answers. I tuned in to daytime talk shows. An audience member on Oprah called for revolution. Said we shouldn’t fear the word. All it meant was change. Others clapped in support.
Flipping channels, I stopped on a Black-owned public access channel when I heard the word revolution again. It was Malcolm X giving a speech, a reenactment. Malcolm argued that Black folks were using the word revolution too loosely, that if they understood what it really meant, they’d think twice about using the word. Revolutions, he said, are bloody, based on land, not loving your enemy. He cited an article in Life magazine that he had read in prison. A nine-year-old girl in China is pictured aiming a gun at a man on his hands and knees, an Uncle Tom to the revolution—her father.
I became a Malcolm groupie, but I was an undercover groupie. I didn’t wear an X hat or a shirt with an image of Malcolm. The only Malcolm X paraphernalia I had was a book cover. On the front of it was a quote from Malcolm arguing that history was the most important subject to study. I’d skip class after lunch to plow through history books at the main library, books that illuminated a neglected past, George G. M. James’s Stolen Legacy.
Malcolm simplified my life. He gave me dos and don’ts. When a white girl showed interest, I’d ask myself, WWMD? I told my mother no more Spam. No more cans of Vienna sausage. No more steamed spare ribs. The pig was part rat, part cat, part dog. Chi seen, she decried. What kind of Chinese person doesn’t eat pork? Who’s telling you this garbage?
What Malcolm said that stuck with me the most was that my father was not my father. “Just ’cause you made them, that don’t mean you’re a father,” he said. “Anybody can make a baby, but anybody can’t take care of them.”
Malcolm believed Black folks needed their own space, and I agreed. I had never pushed to join 3F. More than anything, I didn’t want to come off like a wannabe or worse, be rejected as one. Honorary status was bestowed, not begged for.
In 1966, a year after Malcolm was assassinated, the Black Panthers were formed. One of the original members was Asian, a Japanese American, Richard Aoki, who supplied them with their first guns. You can find black-and-white photos of him from that era, dressed in shades and a beret. In one picture, a cop wearing a riot helmet has a baton in one hand and grips Richard’s arm with the other, the guy much larger than Richard, who stood only five-six, but Richard isn’t scared. He doesn’t even look mad. He looks tough, seasoned. Though he’s facing the cop, Richard’s
