Well I am half black and half Mexican but most people see my nappy hair and not know I'm half Mexican until they know my name Beto Lopez. Or they may think I'm Puerto Rican with my hat on and I seem to feel like family in New York as long as I don't speak.
In 1986 when I was in 6th grade during my basket ball games I would fly to the hoop like Jordan or at least try to. As I would go up some racist person would say "Mooncricket!" every time. At the time I thought they meant I look like a cricket jumping to the moon like Jordan gets lots of air. I was always an artist so I started making a cartoon character called Mooncricket who resembled me and looked like a cricket that was cool and hip-hop looking. As the years went by I found out it was a racist word. I was so use to being called the N word since 1980 as a little kid when I first moved to California I had no idea the 2 words related. I was chased by cowboys in Ford trucks and shot at with BB guns, the sting in my arm pit and nipple hurt for many weeks. My first day to a new school in 5th grade I was attacked with fox tales flying into my afro from the school yard that once they go in they don't come back out the same way "AAHH! Mom that hurts!"
The list goes on though out high school and getting in fights over the N word. Can't forget how many times getting pulled over by the police for racial profiling searching weapons and for drugs. I never smoked in my life and I don't even take medicine when I'm sick. Still to this day I can not drive through that old town with out getting flash backs and feeling paranoid.
In 1994 I started Mooncricket Films and by 1997 I was getting my business license and someone said I might not want to use the mooncricket name for my business. So I then changed it to Dream Reality productions. The problem with that many people seem to not read it well as they thought I was a real estate production of some kind. So in 1998 I changed it back to Mooncricket Films.
Still many were confused why and 90% of people loved the title because they never heard of a Mooncricket. Only the elders seem to know what it was. I did my research and found out that the real meaning of Mooncricket was what the slaves were called when they would sing and dance under the moonlight after a long day of working for their master. I thought to my self that is me. I work in the warehouse driving fork lift, scrapping hot tar off of roof tops, poring concrete, working factory production lines trying to keep up and connecting heavy hoses 100 feet on top of slippery winery silos for the grapes to flow and passing out hanging over balcony from to much CO2. I'm living for what everyone else tells me I have to do. But all I want to be is free.
Free to dance at night and emcees rap with my friends and draw and paint my art. I just wanted to continue to write my screenplays and make my films but I couldn't do it as much because all my time was about survival and working underpaid doing dirty jobs.
In the history it also says they were also called mooncricket's because as run away slaves they used the moonlight to guide them through the night for their freedom.
So I see it as that I had to run away from what everyone else tells me what I should be and be free to live my art and be what I want to be. So I see a Mooncricket is a slave who expressed their freedom. Also the moon is a moon and a cricket is a cricket. The "N" word is what it is. A word originating from Spain "Niger" black. Spain is where the original slave masters and they labeled blacks to the "N" word. An older definition of the N word was on who was not educated and could not read written before a slave master named Webster defined the "N" word.
Now today the "N" word is used in ignorance influenced by rappers that the media promotes. My guess is that they have not got a proper lesson from their parents about this word and maybe they have not been called it in a bad way as a kid or maybe they just think it is a cool word of slang used by their favorite rap artist. Now days I hear all kids of color even white use the "Nigga" word like it is normal to use in language. But when I see a little kid of 10 years old like these little Asian kids and white kids I saw at a skate park use it in their discussions I know where they get it from and do not know the history.
I'm not sure if kids are getting the proper black history in school about this "N" word. Mooncricket is a forgotten name and rarely used and many are confused on what it is. It is good to take a name and make it positive by your character. But I don't see positive character when the "N" word is used as slang. My character as using Mooncricket is a part of history that I have seemed to have remind people and explain to the new people who never heard of it and for the curious people who are now reading this after asking me why?
So I'm a Mooncricket who is free to dance when I want and be what I feel to be and to express myself how ever I feel to express in a positive way with my passion for art.
Blessings
Beto "Mooncricket" Lopez
