Elon James White is on a Roll

I spend a lot of nights being awake. That’s partly because of my work schedule; I’m generally at work from around 6:30 PM to around 2:00 AM. I’m on air for three hours, and the rest of the time I’m doing production work (editing promos, on-air vignettes, booking guests) or just enjoying the feeling of peace I get from being alone in an office at an ungodly hour of the night.

But lately it’s veered into a bit of insomnia. I think I can say, without overstepping any boundaries, that I miss my ex-boyfriend and my ex-common-law step-cat. When you miss people and animals who used to be a part of your sleeping regimen, that throws you off a bit. I’m not saying that to whine or to insinuate anything; it’s just the plain truth. It’s a healthy and necessary kind of missing, and it will heal and pass over time, but the fact remains that at the moment, I’m having trouble sleeping.

All this preamble is to say that I get to do some reading at night, generally on the Internets, and I’ve been trying to read stuff that has to do with politics and culture (not my usual professional diet of comedy and girly fluff–enjoyable though those things are.)

And I have to say, my friend Elon James White has been killing it in the blogging front lately.

I strongly suggest reading A Message From the Average Black Person. Elon is one of the few HuffPosters who actually engages with his audience and debates with them in the comments section. And I do recommend reading the comments section. It’s eye-opening even for people who consider themselves to be fairly open to the notion that race is not monolithic. I grew up around mostly Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans, so I have a decent understanding of the class differences that exist within those groups, but people of Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Hispanic descent were exotic to me until I became an adult. Hell, people of Dutch descent were exotic to me until I lived in the Netherlands for a few months.

A really interesting, mostly-civil dialogue takes place in the comments (rare on HuffPo.) My favorite part is getting to read people’s individual stories and learning small bits of illuminating personal information about strangers.

Anyway, maybe that Klonopin pill is finally kicking in and I’ll get some rest. But I just wanted to point you in Elon’s direction today. He’s also on Twitter.