I am thisclose on getting all ghetto on your ass. I want you to stop and I want you to stop now.

I was born in East Harlem and raised in Puerto Rico. Before being a black woman, I have the qualitative Puerto Rican come before it. I don't pick or choose sides when it comes to my ethnicity or my race most of the time --unless you are Alberto Gonzales or Condoleeza Rice.

Right now, I am thisclose to choosing.

Which is why, as much as I have reasons to smack Markos upside the head for the kind of very public fall out he and I have had, I will get all ghetto on anybody's ass who tries to use my name to discredit him.

Do you get that?

I don't give a shit whether you are black or white. What I give a shit about is your true commitment to progressive political action.

What are you going to do to move forward a progressive agenda that will help everybody in this country equally?

Puertorriqueña I am siempre. I am black because I come from slavery; but my mother, who's white skin and green eyes I have taken in with love since the day I was born, comes from the Spaniard equivalent of white niggers. My family were both slaves and indentured servants and I was raised to never forget that.

The father of my children is as white as he can be through his Irish and Polish ascendancies. I have one child who is dark skinned and another one who is white. They both could pass as non-latinos and non-black if we were those kind of people.

Last, but not least, I happen to have blogs where the majority of the posters are white. It's not what I intended at all, but that's what it is. At least here at culturekitchen I have women on the front page. At the The Daily Gotham? It's all white men.

Are you going to call me a racist if the majority of people who have turned down my invitations to post on these sites are black americans and latinos?

Let this be a warning to not just to you, the person who has prompted me to write this post, but to all who use the services of this site.

Do not take my name or the name of any of my blogs in vain for any of your petty vendettas.

It is one thing to use the services of culturekitchen or any of my blogs to exercise your right to freedom of expression. This place is after all a service built with the intention of giving its users access to the political discourse of our country. This is a place, free of charge, meant to empower people by participating or agencing political discussions or calls to action.

It is an entirely different thing to come here, post in the forums, have someone agree with you in the comments section and then publish all around the web that "so-and-so at Culture Kitchen Confirms Blatant "Racism" at DailyKos" or adding on every freaking blogpost you've spammed all across the web "cross-posted at culturekitchen", so as to validate your vendetta.

Even though Markos Moulitsas-Zuñiga and I do not see eye to eye on a lot of issues pertaining the political activism and the blogosphere, I am not in the business of ennabling people's anger towards him. I am in the business of finding common ground in our activism. We are after all on the same side of the political blogosphere.

But more importantly, it should behoove a black man to go around spreading this kind of shit against another colored man. In the end, you are offering nothing to the issues you are supposedly trying to address. On the contrary, you are just getting off on stirring the shit and taking in its stink.

And in the process you are perpetuating the system of exclusion that you are supposedly trying to battle. The more you do what you do, the more you will be pushed out and ostracized. Do you get that?

When I got pissed off at the kind of racist bullshit the woman of FireDogLake put out and then the Clinton incident, I was excoriated by many around the web. But you know what, I was proven right in my first line of contention : Just because you think certain colored bloggers are not influential it doesn't mean it is true. It just means you didn't have the facts when you made the decisions you made. Why? Because my blogging informs my activism and there is a lot of work I do that does not get reported here but that have been positive contributions to the progressive movement in this country.

I don't just talk the talk, I walk it too.

I have met enough of the influentials at DailyKos and YearlyKos to say they have earned my respect. That they are all white people ... well. What can I say.

It is disheartening there is not more diversity in the mainstream liberal blogosphere. Look no further than Huffington Post.

But this is an issue that not only affects people in blogging about politics. It is also an issue that happens in the technology and business side of blogs as well.

Yet, just because more people of color are not part of the mainstream it doesn't mean they are not doing it for themselves.

There are incredibly vibrant blogospheres of color with huge audiences. People looking for hiphop, fashion, business, technology, even political wisdom in the African American, Asian, Native American and Latino communities could spend a whole year in these blogosphere without setting a foot on a site like DailyKos.

Do you want to know why? People in our communities are so used to being in the fringes in meatspace they expect not to be part of the mainstream political discourse in cyberspace. So they have taken to the web to build it all for themselves without a care about who acknowledges them for what.

We don't need validation from The Man if we don't seek it since seeking it seems to empower it more.

It is as simple as that.

DailyKos is not the end all of end alls. It does not have to be the go-to blog for issues oriented politics if you don't want it to. But there's the rub.

It amazes me how many people complain about that site but fail to make other community sites, this one included, the necessary alternatives.

David is the managing editor and Lorraine is the senior editor here at culturekitchen. If they need to ban your ass, they have my blessing. Especially if you fail to understand the point of this rant :

You are not here to complain about other people's blogs. You are here to help find ways to get more colored people into the mainstream political blogosphere. The way you do that is by empowering sites like culturekitchen and bringing more people here to participate. If you are incapable of understanding this very important mission then I think it's time for you to move on.