Before Furgie switched gears and began singing about her "humps" and being "Clumsy," I had a deep appreciation for the Black Eyed Peas. A couple of years ago, BEP came out with the song, "Where is the Love?" One of the lines that struck me most was, "Overseas we try to stop terrorism, but we still got terrorists livin' here in the USA."

Flashforward to a few weeks ago. I was heading home at night, as I observed a lady take a stronger hold of her purse just as an African American teenage male came into her periphery. Almost instantaneously, she caught sight of another young African American boy, this one no older than five years old, smiled and commented on how "cute" he was. Funny how that same boy, whose innocence had captivated the woman's attention, would in a couple of years, through no fault of his own, be defined as a person to feared.

Headlines of Hollywood icons, including Madonna and Angelina Jolie, adopting children overseas, may have mistakenly been misinterpreted as being trendy. Forget about the newest Burberry bag or latest pair of minolos-- adopting a child from a country you can't even spell, let alone locate on a map, is what's in. 

I have nothing against adopting children overseas. After my recent trip to the Philippines, I witnessed first-hand, the magnitude of poverty and deprivation that my brothers and sisters abroad face. Yes, a country as wealthy as ours, where our "thin is in" and Americans, can afford not to eat, should increase its international humanitarian efforts in a culturally-sensitive manner. Nevertheless, just as I read about Madonna and Angelina Jolie, and remember the faces of the children I saw in the Philippines, I can't help but recall the faces of Junior and his friends from my neighborhood in San Francisco. What about Junior whose single-parent mom works two jobs, comes home tired from work, and can barely afford to keep feed Junior beyond what's on the dollar menu. To aggrevate the situation, as Junior grows into his adolescence, society's ill-perception of him being "the feared man of color" will hinder the understanding of the effects of his immediate environment.

So, where is the love? Hopefully, just as our hearts reach out to our brothers and sisters abroad, we can also grow in deeper love of fellow human beings within U.S. borders who ironically, are living in a Third World within the First World.