Race

Category

Not content to live with tokenism

Tokenism is being the one black student in a classroom full of white students. It’s being the only Hispanic employee in a predominantly white organization, and it’s when that historically white school or organization says it’s diverse because of that one black or Hispanic student or employee. For me, it’s meant being one of two black students in my class at my Connecticut private elementary school, St. Thomas’s Day School. It’s meant being the only black person in most of…

Is Jesus for Poor People?

[caption id="attachment_1053" align="alignright" width="296"] Me and Celebrity Christian Donnie McClurkin. I wonder if he's rich.[/caption] This morning, I dreamt that Keegan-Michael Key, of the TV Show Key & Peele, kept clotheslining me. He kept hitting my neck in the right place to make me lose my breath. He thought it was funny, and he was trying to make the people around us laugh. I wasn't laughing. I was starting to panic in the dream because I didn’t know how to make him…

Election Grief

Denial. Bargaining. Anger. Depression. Acceptance. I am grieving. Yesterday I took lots of naps, ate macaroni and cheese and cookies, and started lots of fist fights on Grand Theft Auto. While I am disappointed that President-Elect Donald Trump will be my next president, I am more upset by my peers who supported him throughout this season. You have disappointed me. Yes, I actually mean you…as an individual. You – the former classmates, the former coworkers, the people I’ve danced with,…

AfterBirth

When you go see the movie “Birth of a Nation” and then return home to “your” city that’s 8 percent black; where your upstairs neighbor, a white male, continually tries to convince your black dad why he and other black people should vote for Trump, a misogynistic man with a history of racial discrimination lawsuits; where another neighbor who’s a white cop, has only spoken to you once in the 3 years you’ve lived next door to him - that…

Will and Ashley

[caption id="attachment_633" align="alignnone" width="471"] "Will" and "Ashley," on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air[/caption] “You’re dead to me.” For the longest time I thought that phrase was too dramatic and should only be used in Mob movies and reality shows. But as I’ve gotten older, there are a few people in my life that I’ve had to push to the outermost limits of my brain, almost like the deepest, darkest, coldest parts of the sea. They can no longer live in the most…

Cory’s Mom Died?!

[caption id="attachment_603" align="alignleft" width="232"] Cory and her mom. (Courtesy of Cory's Facebook page.)[/caption] Monday, I was driving to the the trail, where I usually run. I parked, and before I got out of my car, I checked Facebook, for nothing in particular, just like I always do. Then BAM! One of my closest friends in middle school, posted a picture of her mother. My friend, Cory, had her arm draped around her mother’s neck. Her mom, had her head tilted in Cory’s…