This Week's Opening Thought: January 13, 2025

This week's opening thought: I would never say that I’m an expert on everything and anything Black because being Black is not monolithic, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that collectively, Black people are bone tired of people of pallor being so visibly shocked that so many people of pallor traffic in hate, bigotry, white supremacy, white violence, and misogynoir. We’re seven days away from likely a decade of struggles and strife that people of pallor overwhelmingly voted for a few months ago, and yet we’re still seeing shocked faces and “hot takes” of pallor.

Bruh.

When y’all bust out the shocked and dismayed faces, vocal tones, and body language theatrics? It feels performative and disingenuous because it often IS performative and disingenuous. And when it isn’t disingenuous? It’s a clear signal of your complacency and complicity in the harm of melanated communities, Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples, and Black women and femmes. It’s a clear message to Black folx that y’all are choosing to be misinformed and uninformed to maintain your comfort. And it clearly indicates that you think we’re naive or fearful of calling you in or out on your nonsense and leaving you to pick your jaws up off the floor. However, you still want Black folx to think you care so you can maintain fraudulent relationships with us for your egos and “I’m a good person” identities, so you keep trying this weak mess because if just one of us coddles you, you'll get to believe your own ignorant tomfoolery.

Pallor, please.

Black folx ain't got time for that. Never did, never will.

I would tell y’all to do better and examine why this is your default response to the ongoing reality happening all around you (often at your hands), but y'all are too busy engaging in soap opera-level acting and intentional short-term memory loss.

This Week's Opening Thought: December 30, 2024

This week’s opening thought: As I walk away from my current day job and onto better things, I find myself entertained by how often Black folx, Black women, will leave a workplace after being overworked, unappreciated, and treated like less-than-crap for years while every person of pallor and pallor sympathizer who contributed to their harm come to the realization that those Black folx were the glue holding it all together.

Y'all treat us like refuse, and we still show up and show out.

Many of you probably thought that our work ethic and the use of our multi-faceted skillsets symbolized our allegiance to your organization. Nah, son.

That's our allegiance to ourselves.

What do we look like throwing our careers and dreams away because you think white supremacy, misogynoir, and anti-Blackness are imaginary friends?

Believe me when I say we know our value. We know it deep in our souls, straight from our ancestors. We also know you're using and viewing us differently than the mediocre people of pallor and yes-men you surround us with and make us report to.

So we use you while viewing you as what you are: abusers, users, racists, white supremacists.

We learn, grow, and evolve on your dime. Then, we use you as a launching pad to bigger and better things. And we walk away without guilt, knowing you'll learn nothing from our exchange. Of course you'll posit yourself as the victim, like somehow us leaving wrongs you. You lack the intangible humanity threads needed to acknowledge how your hate and ignorance earned your house of cards tumbling into chaos. You won’t see how the dominoes always fall: when one leaves it generates a movement of hope. You’ll begin losing the melanin that drives your organization forward. You’ll start to freak out when the people of pallor and pallor sympathizers you lauded for bending the knee are incapable of stepping up with the high levels of energy and knowledge that just walked out your front door. And you’ll blame everyone and everything but yourselves.

Que sera.

You didn’t “believe in DEI” anyway. You’ll “survive.”

Better go buy some Elmer’s, son.

On CEOs and the Value of Human Lives in a Capitalist Society

Trigger warning: gun violence.

Never forget that a CEO for a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 publicly-traded health insurance company with a horrible reputation for harming policyholders was assassinated in front of the building where he was supposed to be leading a shareholder meeting, and the shareholders were like, “Well, the show must go on,” and went about their day with barely a hiccup.

Oh, and their stock prices went up in the aftermath of the public assassination of their CEO. Don't forget that part.

Well, well.

What a visceral demonstration of the value of human life in a capitalist society built on the blood and trauma of others, eh?

Just something to chew on in case you were internally debating whether you should use or lose that PTO that won't carry over to 2025 while your supervisor tries to guilt you into working a few extra hours.

This Week's Opening Thought: December 9, 2024

This week’s opening thought: As a recovering codependent, I can tell you from experience that there are people from all walks of life who seek out codependent relationships to exploit. In that experience, I can honestly state that way too many people in positions of power in workplaces have a “knack” for finding the codependent people in their spaces and making them feel bad about not helping to “fix the problems” prevalent in the workplace. Those they seek out are, of course, never the people with the power and positionality needed to support and drive change. It’s always those who show up ready to serve and help others.

It's, unfortunately, a level of predatory behavior that we’ve been conditioned to accept that happens every day.

Some folx try to pass it off as delegating, but that's because using jargon as a smokescreen for abuses of power is a tale as old as time that we've also been forced or conditioned to accept.

Placing all of the responsibility on one or two codependent people to “fix” longstanding issues in a company is peak “we’re a family/in this together” energy.

I’m sure many of y’all are how I used to be: you see a problem, think of a solution, and want to get the folx in power to buy into your solution and support you. Then you’re disappointed when they place the sole responsibility of “fixing” their longstanding problems on you without support.

It’s time to stop being disappointed. You live and learn. It's time to pivot away from trying to fix everything. It's also time to acknowledge that these problems are technically not your problems.

Don’t let them make their problems into your problems.

You deserve better than being drained of your life force by people and institutions focused on not addressing issues and passing the buck while swearing they care about you. Real talk?

They would have already tried fixing the problems if they cared deeply about addressing them. They don’t care as much as you do. You can’t be the only one who cares about a broken situation. That’s a recipe for a slow mental, emotional, and physical death.

It won’t feel right initially, not trying to fix all the problems or pitch ideas. You’ll struggle, but I promise you’ll get through it. And when you do, you’ll have newfound clarity on what you can and cannot contribute and who will back you when you propose solutions.

You don’t have to be Captain Save ‘Em for places and people who only want to use you and drain your vitality.

Let them save themselves for a while.

This Week's Opening Thought: November 25, 2024

This week’s opening thought?

Image description: A picture of James and Florida Evans from the classic sitcom Good Times. They are giving someone the side-eye. Above them are the words, “How I’m looking at folks talking about now is the time to come together.”

THIS 👏🏾 RIGHT 👏🏾 HERE. 👏🏾

THIS ENERGY.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now. While there will always be some truth in that statement, and we might all be about to set sail on what appears to be the same raggedy, dangerous boat, let’s get one thing clear: we are not in the same boat right now.

Some of y'all are in the dingy while the rest of us are still paddling in lifeboats tied to the back of the dingy. Y'all just opted to add more sharks and leopards to the waters and arm them with scuba gear and jet packs.

Don’t get it twisted: we are NOT in this together.

So many of us are looking at losing our rights, the little bit of safety we have, our family and friends, and possibly our lives because so many of y’all chose white supremacy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, misogynoir and what you thought would be personal safety over the lives of others.

You don’t get to choose hate and oppression for others, realize you've been duped and will be harmed too because of your choices, and that those you decided to harm don't want anything to do with you; then insist now is the time for togetherness and get angry when those you’ve decided to harm don’t wanna get in the boat with you.

You chose for us not to come together.

You’re getting what you wanted.