Sunday morning when I logged online, a fluttering ping of status updates rolled into a steady flow of trauma to my feed. Ping “Me too.” Ping “Me too.” Ping “Me too.” Often accompanied with the words: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed and/or sexually assaulted wrote ‘Me too.’ as their status, we might give people a sense …
Given the current state of race relations, the story that I am about to tell is seemingly small. After all, America is currently being governed by an openly white supremacist madman who lacks compassion and empathy for anyone who falls outside of his base. We are in the midst of a dumpster fire called America and the truth is, we …
We can all agree that this country is not perfect. Some parts work very well. Other parts are very broken. Naturally, because we want a more perfect union, we want to fix what is broken. Because there are so many of us, it is difficult for all of us to see all of the problems. The first step in solving …
In these moments, words are meaningless. Here we stand at the moral crossroad as a nation, deeply fractured and in tatters. We are a nation under siege but the enemy is not from outside; it is the enemy within. This enemy has always been with us but until this moment, the vast majority of Americans have been woefully ignorant of …
In America we are currently standing on a precipice: the Flint Water Crisis (still), the shooting death of Tamir Rice and ultimate dismissal of his murderers, the death of Heather Heyer, the daily empowerment of the alt-right, and Trump’s most recent inflammatory comments (none of which I’ll quote because it changes daily). All of these instances, and more, have been …
Experience has taught me that humans notice my brown skin before all else, and see all else through the lenses of what my brown skin means to them. For instance, while walking through a department store with my two young children, one of whom is continuously running circles around our cart and every object within a three-yard radius, the other …
To be a person of color in Maine is to eat sleep and breathe Whiteness. Despite the melanin of our skin, we still live, move, and operate within a reality which centers Whiteness above all things. Because PoC Mainers operate within the long-endured rule of Whiteness, we have little to no opportunities to gather together outside of Whiteness, to address …
Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Chicago, there were neighborhoods and nearby suburbs that I knew, as a Black person, we were never to enter. Bridgeport, Marquette Park, Mount Greenwood and Cicero for starters. These were areas where being caught in them as a Black person could mean your life. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. said the …
Calling All White People, Part 20 (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: Cultural appropriation isn’t some “little” issue and it’s not respectful [To find other …
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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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Your new Black friend explains racism
As a white person discussing race, sometimes you are confronted with a Black person who does not want to explain to you why something is racist. The reason you need this explanation is because you probably don’t have any Black friends. Not definitely, but probably. It’s just how numbers work. It’s also how segregation works, but sometimes it’s also because …
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