Ever since Norman Mailer penned his essay "The White Negro" in 1957, white people who act black have been alternately studied earnestly and ridiculed by society at large. Mailer called such people "hipsters," while later they were called "beats," "mods" and "rockers." Today, they are known as "wiggers" and near-­universally mocked.

Many blacks resent whites appropriating anything from their culture and wiggers' apparent adoption of stereotypes. Middle-class whites just plain see them as funny — think the "Icy Hot Stuntaz" Internet phenomenon from a few years back.

According to a spokesman from the Houston Police Department's gang crime division, there are a few white Bloods in black gangs, but no predominantly white Blood crews in the city of Houston. What white gangs do exist in Houston, the spokesman said, are either racist skinheads, prison-based gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, or outlaw bikers.

Nationally, nonracist, non-biker white street gangs are most often found in ethnic enclaves in Chicago, and there are reports of white Bloods in New York City's Staten Island. And apparently there are also some in Bacliff, just a couple of miles south of the wholesome family fun on the Kemah Boardwalk.

I Cannot Believe What Some of These Hollywood Stars Did to End Their Careers

Gazillions

33 Heartbreaking Photos Taken Just Before Death

Fitnessmorale

Baz Dreisinger is an assistant professor of English at City University of New York and the author of the upcoming book Near Black:White-to-Black Passing in American Culture. After looking at the MySpaces of several people who claimed 4th Street affiliations, she expressed horror.

"These guys represent the nightmare scenario of modern-day blackface that is based on nothing genuine and everything commercial," she says.

In researching her book, she says, she had never come across anything specifically like this, but that it nevertheless seemed to typify the age. "I feel like the whole phenomenon of the quote-unquote wigger is endemic of our times."

The MySpaces of the 4th Street members put her in mind of Kid Rock and Eminem, to a certain degree. Like them, along with Southern white rappers like Haystak (a 4th Street fave) and Bubba Sparxx, the 4th Street kids equate their poverty-stricken upbringings in or around Bacliff's trailer parks to black poverty in the projects or the 'hood.

"Look at Kid Rock; what's he representative of? The same exact thing: I'm not straight outta Compton, I'm straight outta the trailer," she says. "He's the perfect example of that. Or even Eminem, he's like taking the white identity and saying, 'I'm so poor and white I might as well be black.'"

In her view, there's a crucial distinction. There are about 50 black people in Bacliff. "You have to differentiate these people from people like Eminem or even Kid Rock, I suppose, because they grew up in mixed environments," she says. "They were around black people, they were in the 'hood, they were among those people that they claimed to identify with. But if you are in an all-white place and you claim to identify with something you have only ever seen on television or rap videos, what kind of identification is that? It's an absurd fantasy."

To her, they are merely identifying with a modern-day outlaw, which happens to be a gangster rapper.

"What are their other options in terms of media models? They could admire rockers, but that doesn't have the same cachet," she says.

The whole thing reminded her, she said, of a quote from American literature critic Leslie Fielder: White Americans are "born theoretically white, we are permitted to pass our childhood as imaginary Indians, our adolescence as imaginary Negroes, and only then are expected to settle down to being what we really are: white once more."

In a pre-Christmas Eve press conference, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo urged county residents to stay home for the holidays and limit any Christmas or New Year’s Eve celebrations to within their immediate households given the troubling upticks in local coronavirus metrics over the last few months.

“Right now, in the holiday season, as the virus rages on around the nation and our state, we face the greatest challenge yet,” Hidalgo said. “In our hospitals, the numbers in the ICU have not stopped creeping up. All across Texas, communities are entering danger territory. The current situation where our medical center — the largest in the world — is routinely crossing its base capacity, means that procedures are postponed, that healthcare workers are at risk of burnout, that we can’t sustain a surge in infections beyond where we are right now, and that we’re living at the very, very edge.”

“The way to show your loved ones that you love them this holiday season is to stay home, to put your plans on hold this year,” she continued.

Fighting Diabetes? This Discovery Leaves Doctors Speechless!

Blood Sugar Blaster

33 Heartbreaking Photos Taken Just Before Death

Fitnessmorale

To drive the point home, Hidalgo was joined by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Dr. David Persse of the Houston Health Department and Harris County Public Health’s interim director Dr. Sherri Onyiego, all of whom echoed Hidalgo’s request that county residents stay vigilant through the holiday season and limit their contact with others accordingly.

The Houston Health Department reported an additional 634 cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and two new deaths within the city of Houston. As of 4 p.m., Harris County had recorded a total of 224,245 coronavirus cases and 2,605 deaths from the disease.

Hidalgo and Turner said that they’ve both discussed the possibility of issuing a local curfew order if the coronavirus begins to spread even more rapidly and we get closer to a point of no return, but the two local officials said they agree that this type of sweeping restriction isn’t necessary — yet.

“The curfew is a very blunt tool that we have — pretty much the last tool that we have — and so we want to make sure to deploy that in a very worst case scenario… Right now, we’re at a point where if people do their part, we can still turn things around,” Hidalgo said. “It’s not a foregone conclusion that we’re headed into a completely unsustainable place, but we’re very close.”

“The way I look at things,” Hidalgo explained, “the numbers continue to creep up, the ICU population numbers continue to accelerate, [but] that acceleration is not increasing. So we have a little bit of runway, but we’ll see what happens.”

Turner also had harsh words for the Houstonian who attacked an employee at Grand Prize Bar earlier this week after being asked to wear a face mask as required. The disgruntled maskless patron attacked the employee in the head with a glass, sending the bloodied bar worker to Ben Taub hospital where he needed ten stitches.

“We are aggressively looking for this individual. We want to find this individual, we want to find him and arrest him and bring charges against him,” Turner said. “Quite frankly, I view it as almost like attempted murder, myself. But this type of foolishness is not going to be accepted.”

Wednesday’s press conference came on the heels of new forecasts from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab which projected that Houston could soon become a nationwide COVID-19 hotspot if an expected surge in coronavirus spread comes after the holiday season.

It also followed Monday’s news that the state has ordered nine southeast Texas counties — Galveston, Jefferson, Chambers, Brazoria, Jasper, Hardin, Liberty, Orange and Newton — to halt ratchet-back their reopenings due to dangerous COVID-19 hospitalization stats.

By Monday in that region, the number of hospital patients with the coronavirus had been over 15 percent for seven straight days. As required by Gov. Greg Abbott’s statewide reopening guidelines, areas of Texas that sustain those high levels of hospitalizations for a week straight have to roll back business occupancy levels to 50 percent, shut down any bars that haven't been reclassified as restaurants through a TABC loophole and halt elective surgeries.

“By the time you get there, you’re really in a tough position, and so to see our neighbors reach that is concerning,” Hidalgo said, before warning that if Harris County residents let their guards down, our area could easily hit that scary milestone.

“It is a very real possibility that we could end up facing the fate we’ve avoided thus far. But look, we have avoided it because of our ability to do our part, to take that personal responsibility, to be realistic about how this virus spreads, and that’s why we’re not mincing words today,” she said.

“Please,” Hidalgo continued, “no gathering for the holidays, no gathering for New Year, and continue to remember: the moment you are with somebody you don’t live with and you’re taking off your mask, you are at risk of spreading the virus.”

Twenty years ago, there would have been little debate. Maybe a few people would have complained, but the Texas Department of Transportation would have simply paved them over, if you'll excuse the metaphor. Expanding freeways is the business of TxDOT in Houston and, for as long as anyone can remember, business was good.

Old Texas, meet new Houston.

Just as droves of people turned out to comment on the bizarre and archaic plans from the Army Corps of Engineers to deepen and widen Buffalo Bayou, those affected by the plans to expand Interstate 45, and advocates of alternative forms of transportation and urban planning, aren't willing to be roadkill.

Fighting Diabetes? This Discovery Leaves Doctors Speechless!

Blood Sugar Blaster

33 Heartbreaking Photos Taken Just Before Death

Fitnessmorale

When the plans for the expansion of Interstate 45 from downtown north to the Beltway and beyond began to emerge a couple years ago, the initial focus was on the radical changes proposed to much of the area around downtown. After all, little work on the freeways around the city's urban hub had been done in decades and the plans were audacious with massive aesthetic changes to the cityscape including wiping out Pierce Elevated and green spaces on top of underground freeways.

It was as shocking as it was ambitious.

We even did a cover story on the planned changes to the east end and businesses were not thrilled.

But, as the dust settled on those plans, a new outcry came from the city's east and near north sides. For decades, both areas had mostly been neglected and, not surprisingly, predominantly populated by people of color. Their complaints generally fell on deaf ears for all the same reasons those sorts of things have always occurred.

This time around, however, there is a new alignment of interests that not only long time residents and business owners, but new investors in the area and a coalition of Houstonians tired of a city that favors widening freeways over alternatives. After all, METRORail's Red Line runs right through the heart of the near north side all the way to Airline.

It is precisely why TxDOT extended the comment deadline at the urging of Mayor Sylvester Turner and other area political leaders. The plan, which would destroy a number of homes and businesses, is still under consideration, but the final design phase is nearly complete. Of particular concern is the number of affordable housing units the city will lose in the construction. Given the limited number of affordable options for Houston residents, it's difficult to imagine losing any.

None of that is good for Houston, but one thing we imagine TxDOT was not ready for was the groundswell of support for taking a different approach to life on the road in the Bayou City.

Most Houstonians know that pouring more concrete will never solve the problem of traffic and growth in Houston even if it is fast and cheap. It's why the Army Corps was so quick to suggest widening Buffalo Bayou. The price was right. But, this is not our parents Houston. Those who live here now value quality of life over the ease of freeways.

The clamor for more rail — fought tooth and nail by anti-rail forces and business interests — the desire for more park space and bike trails, the urging of better and wider sidewalks for pedestrians, and even the call for closing of some streets to vehicles entirely are all part of the city's changing nature on a topic we most like to complain about: traffic.

It has come time for civic leaders, city, state and federal, to realize that the changing demographic of Houston must be considered when it comes to large scale projects that will impact the way we get around for decades to come. This is not the blue collar, refinery town it was when many of these freeways were created. This is particularly true inside the Loop where so much of the construction is heavily scrutinized.

It's also critically important that we address the needs of the less fortunate in Houston. We have a affordable housing crisis only worsened by a recession created by the pandemic. The last thing we need to be doing is demolishing those resources for a bigger freeway.

And we haven't even bothered to broach the subject of flooding, which more concrete will certainly exacerbate.

There are no easy solutions to the problems Houston faces and traffic is most certainly at the top of the list. It is why we must look at every possible option and not just stick with the same old plans we have relied on for decades. They may have worked years ago, but they cannot be the only option for a city poised to become the third largest in the country.

This is a young, vibrant city that wants better for itself and its future. Out with the old and in with the new.

On Monday, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner urged residents to cancel any planned gatherings ahead of the Christmas holiday later this week given the still raging pandemic, and called out Congress for neglecting to authorize any more emergency funding for city governments in the latest coronavirus relief package.

The Houston Health Department reported an additional 777 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday and three additional deaths within the city, bringing Houston’s cumulative total case count to 111,211 and the city’s death toll to 1,530 since the start of the pandemic over nine months ago.

Turner also announced that the local COVID-19 test positivity rate is still rising — the city’s 14-day-average rate increased to 11.2 percent, up from the 10.5 percent reported last week, he said.

4 Sisters Took Same Photo for 40 Years. Last One is Just Sad

Poplively

She'll Never Act Again. Heres Why.

Celebrities

Given that increase and the steadily growing number of COVID-19 patients in local hospitals over the past several weeks, Turner echoed his statements ahead of Thanksgiving and asked Houstonians to keep their Christmas gatherings local and confined to people who they already share a roof with.

“I’m asking people to cancel your holiday gatherings if you plan to gather, especially outside of your immediate household,” Turner said. “I’m asking that you delay those activities. To avoid a surge on top of a surge, postpone traveling until sometime next year.”

“I know a lot of people are flying from here to there. I just don’t think that is a wise thing to do right now,” he continued.

Turner said that HHD and the Houston Fire Department will each receive 3,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine — the second coronavirus vaccine to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — within the next week or so.

HHD Director Dr. Stephen Williams stressed that we’re still in the very, very early stages of vaccine delivery, and explained that the state still hasn’t even determined what groups of Texans will be prioritized to get the scarce vaccine next once frontline healthcare workers and nursing home residents are taken care of.

Turner urged all Houstonians to take any available vaccine for COVID-19 “when you have the opportunity,” and said he plans to take the vaccine himself “once my number is called.”

Regarding news from the last few days about a new mutation of the coronavirus running throughout the United Kingdom that’s caused England to enact sweeping new lockdowns reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic, Dr. David Persse of HHD said that the good news is this latest variation of the disease doesn’t appear to be any more deadly than the old variant, although it does spread much more rapidly.

“The new version of it is not more lethal, it does not make people any sicker at this point, and also importantly… it appears that the vaccine will still work against this new mutation,” Persse explained.

In terms of preventing this new British variant of COVID-19 from getting to Houston, Persse said that’s above the local health department’s pay grade, unfortunately. “At this point, there’s not a lot that we can do differently… It would be up to the CDC to put in whatever provisions at the federal level to restrict movement of people from the U.K. to the United States, but if they’re going to do that, that’s not our call,” he said.

Turner got the most animated when asked about the latest federal coronavirus relief package passed by Congress over the weekend, which contained funding for checks of at least $600 to most Americans and extended unemployment benefits, but no additional money for cash-strapped local governments.

“I cannot tell you how disappointed I am with Congress that they did not include local government in the stimulus package,” Turner said. “They say that they’re gonna come back later on. It may or may not be included, and for us, our budgets are due [and] have to balance by the end of June, so it may not even be in time for the City of Houston.”

Turner said that the city is currently facing a budget shortfall after losing out on an estimated $150 million in sales tax dollars thanks to the pandemic, and said that there’s a real chance that city-provided services like trash pickup, fire department service and policing might be affected if the feds don’t come through with some assistance for local governments sooner rather than later.

“I’m glad that they did something,” Turner said, “but I am very, very disappointed that local governments did not receive any assistance in this package.”

Well, that didn't take long. The first game of the NBA season lost to COVID-19 just happened to be the first Rockets game of the season against the Oklahoma City Thunder at Toyota Center. The reason? The Rockets do not have enough players available.

James Harden was deemed unavailable due to a violation of the league's COVID protocols for starters. The disgruntled NBA guard was apparently out recently at a club with friends (he even took to Instagram to say it wasn't a strip club and later removed the post) and it was captured on video. Given this is the second violation he has had — the first delaying his return to training camp — there is no way to know how long this will keep him out. The NBA is not messing around with its protocols, so don't be surprised if Harden is suspended.

As for the other players, three players returned positive or inconclusive tests and four others are being forced to quarantine for contact tracing — they were near someone who tested positive.

4 Sisters Took Same Photo for 40 Years. Last One is Just Sad

Poplively

She'll Never Act Again. Heres Why.

Celebrities

It marks yet another chapter of the ongoing saga of the Houston Rockets as they fall ass backwards into the new season. The first game postponement is particularly disappointing given it was the first chance for fans to get a look at new and exciting players like John Wall and Christian Wood.

Since the Rockets are not on the slate of NBA Christmas games, we will all have to wait until Saturday when the Rockets visit Portland to face the Trailblazers, assuming they can cobble together enough players for that game.

Stay tuned.