Over the years, as this site and thus my profile have grown, I have often had to decide if the racial incidents and microaggressions that are a routine part of “living white Black” are worth writing about. Whenever I write about a personal racial incident, it invites a certain level of racial animus from white people lacking in their racial …
People in the city where I live (Portland, Maine) have been rising to the occasion as a welcoming community for approximately 300 asylum seekers mostly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola who have arrived here in just the last few weeks. Some local folks even organized a picnic on the Fourth of July. My own spiritual community, the …
Calling All White People, Part 35 (A periodic attempt to mobilize white people for something other than supporting just other melanin-deficient folks and maintaining a status quo of a nation geared toward whiteness as the baseline and the norm) By An Average White Guy TODAY’S EPISODE: We need to examine why we share pictures of dead or abused Black and …
“If you can believe it, Abraham Lincoln was treated supposedly very badly. But nobody’s been treated badly like me.” – Donald Trump (ABC NEWS, 2019) “Life doesn’t work that way.” – Donald Trump (ABC NEWS, 2019) “These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can …
Even the people who say they are progressive or liberal often become way less open-minded the second a Black person says anything with the word “reparations” in it. It’s always “how would we know who really deserves reparations?” or “how could we make that work logistically” or “but my family didn’t own slaves” or “slavery was so long ago.” (by …
I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that we are no longer a democracy. And no, this isn’t some kind of cute, semantic quibble about how we’re actually a republic or whatever. I mean the systems by which the United States government represents its citizens are no longer functioning. Our current president lost the popular vote. …
I’ve been lauded for my speaking abilities since I was a child. I delivered a commencement speech at a local school when I was just in the 8th grade. I may have been in more speech competitions than I can actually remember, but I know that I’ve never lost one. Mastery of Standard American English and the associated behavioral cues …
Parenting white children (A book review) Co-sleeping or sleep-training? Bottles or breastfeeding? Parenting is filled with complicated decisions. How we respond depends a lot on our backgrounds, our support networks, and our individual personalities. As a white parent of white children, I’ve thought quite a bit about how I want to address race and racism with my children. My children …
We all believe that we’re inherently good. Our histories tell us as much. Unfortunately, history is not a record of factual events so much as a preservation of an identity. Problematic events that conflict with that identity often get ignored and go unmentioned—and can eventually even be forgotten. Evidence of wrongdoing disappears along with any chance of preventing the same …
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Happy Friday! It’s a gorgeous day up in my corner of the world and way too beautiful to be writing a blog post today. So I present you with the Friday Round-Up a list of blog posts this week from other bloggers that blew my mind. Perhaps if you need to kill some time or have a quiet moment you can check them out. http://ravingblacklunatic.blogspot.com/ Check out this cat, I have been a fan of his work forever. http://www.whataboutourdaughters.com/ Good stuff here as well http://sweetersalt.com/ A Maine blogger who talks fashion and food…the best of both worlds http://paganchild-starmommy.blogspot.com/2011/03/keeping-focused.html A new blog that offers words of wisdom for all of us. http://mscleaver.com/ Another Mainer who for Lent is giving up pants, she is also a crafty gal If you have any links to good blogs, feel free to leave em. It’s my hope to make the Friday Round Up a regular feature at my new home specifically I would live to shine some light and love on smaller bloggers. It’s hard out here in this blogosphere with so many good blogs to choose from and so little time so let’s help everyone get a slice of the pie. I will be back on Monday, at that time I will unveil some ideas I have around monetizing things but You May Also Like: No related posts.
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July 4th isn’t really the jam for Black folks
I saw a tweet recently that went something like, “We Black people celebrate the BBQ, the fireworks and the summer shorts. We don’t celebrate Independence Day.” That isn’t true about all Black people but it’s pretty prevalent and, for the record, it isn’t about hating the country or being anti-American. Because, for better or worse, we’re Americans too. But July …
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