This Week's Opening Thought: February 23, 2026

This week’s opening thought: I find it very interesting that after what appears to be three instances of a particular Black-centric racial slur being shouted out by Tourette’s Syndrome activist John Davidson at this past weekend’s BAFTA Awards (when Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo stepped onstage to present an award, while Oscar-winning production designer Hannah Beachler was on her way to dinner after the show, and a third was aimed at another Black woman minding her Black business) that suddenly so many people of pallor are experts on Tourette Syndrome.

I’m not an expert on Tourette’s, but I do understand it. I understood it before these incidents happened this past weekend. Unlike the many “concerned citizens” out there who suddenly have an opinion on Tourette’s because Black folx are collectively side-eyeing John Davidson, I didn’t need to become a Google Scholar to understand how it manifests and the struggles that folx who have Tourette’s endure. Still, I know enough about the condition as well as white supremacy to understand that a word like the one John shouted out multiple times to multiple Black people has to be a regular part of your vocabulary to use it so effortlessly three times in one night, so clearly and pointedly during a tic.

Let’s not belittle those with Tourette’s like that.

Let’s not bolster stereotypes of people with Tourette’s as a cover for a person of pallor’s likely ingrained racist beliefs.

Tourette’s targets the neurological filters that restrain language, the same filters that allow people to make concerted decisions about how they word and say things. But Tourette’s is still governed by a person’s vocabulary: words they use casually, thoughts and ideas they routinely chat about with others, beliefs they have about people, race, gender, culture, you name it. Tourette’s affects inhibition, not whether or not saying racist things is something you have no issue with saying.

I’ve known people who have Tourette’s. I’ve known people of pallor who have Tourette’s. Some of them likely had Coprolalia as well. And none of them ever said to me or around me what John said to Michael B., Delroy, Hannah, or the other Black woman he verbally assaulted this past weekend.

John may or may not be racist. That ain’t for me to judge, regardless of how it feels in my brain and body. But let’s not use his disability status as a pass for absolution. He should still be held accountable, and BAFTA should’ve done better. As for the sudden experts? Don’t be hoppin’ online, trying to check Black folx for calling out what we see or act like we don’t understand Tourette’s Syndrome or other nervous system disorders. The majority of us speak truth to power based on facts.

And don’t expect Black folx to stop side-eyeing you if you want to keep throwing another racist apologist log on the fire.

This Week's Opening Thought: February 17, 2026

This week’s opening thought: I’ve spent this month trying to protect my peace, embrace rest, and take care of myself. That has primarily meant keeping my thoughts to myself, processing my feelings, and moving them out of my body. It’s gone fairly well, but honestly?

Being Black, legitimately trauma-informed, actively anti-racist, and actively anti-oppressive while working in HR is not helpful in my pursuit to prioritize all of the aforementioned things for myself.

Truth be told, the years I’ve spent developing and continually learning about my body, my brain, my emotions, my personal, professional, and generational traumas, and the weight of the world around me have lessened how much I end up carrying in my brain and body. But there are days where I watch Black and Brown folx, Black women, people of color, folx with disabilities, and folx from LGBTQIAA+ communities get mistreated or ignored and then get equally ignored, disregarded, or told I’m being “unprofessional” when I amplify their voices and stand with them in real time that literally make me want to punch the air like Tre in Boyz n’ the Hood. And some days it hits like a brick when I’m attacked or mistreated, and no one who witnesses my harm is willing to stand with me in solidarity.

Today has been one of those days.

Real talk? HR, when you’re not doing it “by the book” and upholding white supremacist workplace culture, is a lonely profession.

It’s doubly so when you’re doing it as an empathic, empathetic queer Black person.

If you’re marginalized, invisible, and/or melanated, and living authentically in a world where you don’t fit? I want you to know that I see you. I know there are many days when it’s hard, when this world seemingly finds glee in doing you harm. Please know you’re not alone. Please take care of yourself. Please do not prioritize these workplaces or anyone who claims to love and care about you over your health and well-being. You deserve to be able to be openly, verbally, and physically you. Don’t let them dim your light.

WHEW. Just needed to get that out of my system.

Back to mindin’ my Black business and resting as the ancestors would want me to rest.

Take care of yourselves and each other.

This Week's Opening Thought: February 2, 2026

This week's opening thought, directed toward people of pallor: It's Black History Month. I usually prepare some knowledge to drop all month, some calls to action, things of that nature. But this year?

Nah, I'm tight.

I don't feel like doin' this with people of pallor this year.

I don't feel like educating y'all, or correcting y'all, or dodging online "debates" with y'all, especially the "well-meaning liberals" out there. At this point, the white supremacy has been white supremacy-ing in such visceral ways on this stolen land that I'm not going to spend my Black History Month dealing with y'all and your "big feelings" and "hot takes" about the abuses even the nicest of y'all inflict on Black bodies, how U.S. history is legitimately Black history (whether y'all want to acknowledge it or not), and how y'all don't want to read a book but want to have us teach you for free about the same concepts over and over again.

Nah. I'm tight.

I've educated enough of you. WE have educated enough of you for centuries. We've shared enough of ourselves with y'all over the years with the hope of getting through to you, even during this most critical of times in this country's racist, hateful history, just to watch y'all butcher Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes while making the concept of "helping" melanated people oppressed by y'all's systems sound like a chore you deserve allowance or restitution for. And through all of that, we're expected to spend an entire month - the shortest month of the year - continuing to hold your hands and "giving y'all grace" as you don't learn or unlearn anything?

Nah. I'm good.

And I know I'm not the only one.

So instead of spending the month of February doing what is essentially unpaid outreach work with people of pallor, I'm gonna spend Black History Month chillin' in my beautiful Blackness and embracing joy, giddily bereft of the need to sit with y'all's messiness as the world burns. Maybe I'll see y'all in March? Who knows?

Try not to homogenize or water down any quotes from Black people to force them to appeal to pallor sensibilities while I'm gone.

On "Survival"

I've seen a lot of talk about what the U.S. will look like if we "survive" this moment in time. And because I prefer to live in the space of an honest assessment of the situation, I'm gonna level with y'all:

The United States of America is not "surviving" this.

If we're honest with ourselves and take a moment to examine the trajectory of the past 20+ years, this moment of authoritarian white supremacist oppression was inevitable. We've been inching toward this moment since 9/11, and we barreled into this after the elections of Barack Obama. These moments in time broke whiteness so severely that whiteness as an entity felt driven to do the one thing its excelled at for generations: preserving its tenuous grasp by vilifying anyone who opposes the comfort of white supremacy and assert that whiteness is the dominant power in the culture. So people of pallor with power and influence began inching toward rigging the legal system and the highest court in the land, removing laws and regulations, enacting policies and laws that exploited loopholes intended to oppress and subjugate, and essentially figuring out how to give an acting president of pallor the powers of a dictator. And now?

White supremacy has reached an apex that this country hasn't seen since its infancy. And honestly?

We will not "survive" this.

We are not coming back from this. There is no "return to normal" or "go back to [insert timeline here]" because we never LEFT white supremacy. What you're seeing right now is quintessentially the United States and its colonizer mentality resurfacing in the ways of the "forefathers" to give people of pallor enough comfort to once again openly normalize them believing non-white citizens are theirs to oppress, blame for the current state of the country (although people of pallor are predominantly in the positions that impact the state of the country), and feel superior to. And it took people of pallor being viscerally murdered by systems they thought were intended to only harm non-white citizens to get some of them to question what many of us have lived with for generations.

Unless people of pallor suddenly have a damn near collective awakening that lasts more than a moment, this is where we're at and where we'll remain: regression with uphill battles that many people of pallor will use their privilege to step in and out of as they see fit, ensuring we never inch forward. And I have no reason to have faith in white U.S. America reaching a tipping point that pushes the majority of them to stand up, keep fighting even when it's hard to see a light on the horizon, and use their power and privilege to help those who have spent their lives fighting to change the system make something happen.

Black, Brown, and Indigenous folx? Most communities of color? We'll "survive." We've grown accustomed to the state of things and we've learned how to fight and stay in the fight for the long haul. But white U.S. America?

Y'all got a long "survival" road ahead.

This Week's Opening Thought: January 26, 2026

TW: mentions of murder, white supremacy, violence.

This week's opening thought, for people of pallor: With everything that has transpired in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it is clear to me that people of pallor are so deeply entrenched in systems of white supremacy and the privilege they receive from them that even their "activism" is swaddled in blankets of white supremacy.

Over the past few days, I've seen y'all saying things like, "This isn't what America stands for", and what's happening is "unprecedented" and that nothing like this has ever happened before. Some of y'all are out here saying wild things like you miss "regular" police brutality. Throngs of people of pallor are calling for Kristi Noem's impeachment and quoting and resharing things from every Black activist and scholar they can find to frame their "this is our moment" narrative and it's equal parts hilarious, infuriating, and banal because it's so obvious that y'all have no clue how to react when the systems that were built to elevate, protect, coddle, and gas you up are being utilized to oppress and kill you if you don't "comply" and get back to being docile.

Y'all are lost right now. Y'all don't know what to do with yourselves because you've grown accustomed to those you've oppressed saving and guiding you to a place where you can continue to feel safe in the cocoon of white supremacy while engaging in, at best, beginner-level activism against the system that has protected you most of your life. Y'all fully expected Black and Brown folx, Black women, Indigenous folx to save y'all and continue getting beaten and killed for your comfort and safety. But we're not stepping in to "lead" you right now because we're taking care of our own. And now y'all are left to figuring out how to mobilize and create plans of action on your own because y'all obviously have learned nothing from us over hundreds of years of us fighting for basic rights and survival and us writing books and teaching y'all how to fight. So now y'all are barely weeks and months into fighting the oppressors and I can see that most of y'all are already lost, already exhausted, and growing increasingly angry at us for leaving you to see how "fun" it is to dismantle YOUR systems of oppression with no collective assistance.

Here's some facts for you:

This is EXACTLY what (the United States of) America stands for.

This moment is only "unprecedented" for people of pallor. There's a few newer twists at play, but versions of this have been happening to Black, Brown, and Indigenous folx, and most communities of color, for centuries on this stolen land. The murder, the oppression, the gaslighting? It's been happening. It just wasn't happening to YOU.

And you only want to go back to "regular" police brutality because it allows you not to feel the inhumanity of the systems that support you when you "behave."

You want us to be fully in this moment with y'all and not focused on just protecting our own and working toward our own liberation and safety?

Then keep your "hot takes" to yourselves.

Save and channel your anger toward upending our mutual oppressors.

Get yourselves prepared for what melanated folx have been trying to get y'all to prepare for and get on board with for hundreds of years.

Show us something that compels us to believe that we should stand by your side against our common oppressors for the long and exhausting battles ahead.

Or put some seasoning on your face for the leopards and wait for them to come to a neighborhood near you.

The choice is yours.

Sad thing is, most of y'all have already made your choice.

Image description: a screenshot of a person of pallor saying, "Can we just go back to regular police brutality, please?" followed by a Black woman responding with "Ahh yes the kind only Black and Brown folx wsere subjected to, right? Girl, delete this."

[Image description: a screenshot of a person of pallor saying, "Can we just go back to regular police brutality, please?" followed by a Black woman responding with "Ahh yes the kind only Black and Brown folx wsere subjected to, right? Girl, delete this."]