Black Women Demand Reparations & the Right to Live Free BIPOC women leaders have for centuries been stitching our community stories into the US tapestry to correct the white-washed narrative and reveal this nation’s bloody history. Black women have labored to produce and reproduce generations of possibility and freedom dreams, while countering the nonsensical myth-making […]
Category: racial profiling
The Forgotten Ones (For Those Who Survive Black Death)
The past three days have felt like the end times. The sting and stench of death hanging heavily in the humidity of the third summer in a row that will be remembered for murder. Like others, I have been restless, sleepless, and hopeless—speechless. First, because of the unnecessary death of Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge […]
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
“What do you think I want, respect or compliance?” This was the question I posed my class this week, after I asked them to define the terms. For compliance they yelled out things like “following orders” and “obedience.” They defined “respect” as “valuing the thoughts of others” “being loyal,” and so on. I asked […]
Waiting to Exhale
(For Eric Garner, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and numerous others) Wait. Over the past few days, weeks, and months there have been eloquent words spoken, passionate poems and prose written, and thoughtful commentaries and reflections offered about the righteous rage, indignant indifference, fear, sadness and ambivalence that black folk and allies have felt as […]
Say What?: On Speechlessness, Racism and Respectability in #Ferguson
“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” (excerpt […]
Fuck Sears, or When Mall Cops Attack
Anyone that knows me, knows that I do not like the Internet. I just don’t trust it. Too much of our personal information is out there and it is completely out of our control. It took me years to get a smartphone because I thought that having a smartphone would jeopardize my already limited privacy. […]