Monday's Opening Thought: December 20, 2021

This week's opening thought: your voice in the face of oppression or hurdles to progress is just as important and valid as the voices of those who do nothing with their time but take up space, shout down and drown the voices of others, and add nothing to the proceedings but misinformation, narcissism, ignorance, and hate. These voices that overtake the conversation and overwhelm others are seeking to make you silent, gaslight you, invalidate your thoughts because that is how they aim to maintain their power and comfort. But here's the thing: when someone's voice is a weapon of hate and oppression, their thoughts and words are invalid. Why?

Hate doesn't deserve validation.

Narcissism does not earn you validation or the option to be the center of attention.

Willful ignorance and misinformation do not make your words more valid just because you bulldoze others and speak louder than anyone in the room.

Whiteness, power, privilege all operate on the belief that their voice and thoughts are the most important in any discourse and that the voices of those lacking whiteness, power, and privilege are tertiary at best. This is especially true around discussions centering on hate and oppression. Societally, we have all been either forced to begrudgingly accept this or taught that our skin color, and the power and privilege that comes with it, give someone the dominant stance and viewpoint regarding hate and oppression in any conversation. It does not. Adhering to and perpetuating dated patriarchal, white supremacist, hateful societal norms does not validate your voice and thoughts. They make you a toxic and dangerous person. And harmful people do not deserve a platform.

Speak truth to power. Let your voice be heard, even when dealing with those who prefer your silence and oppression over being told their thoughts and views are invalid in a society aiming to be better than those who came before them. Let the strength of your voice turn down the volume on theirs.

Ain't like they're sharing anything worth listenin' to anyway.

Monday's Opening Thought: December 13, 2021

This week’s opening thought: “I’m set in my ways” is the worst excuse ever for why you’ve decided to maintain being sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, or ableist. “I grew up in a different time” is a close second. Neither statement absolves you of doing and saying hateful and harmful things at work, at home, or in the community. And don’t go blaming the way you grew up, the people you grew up with, or the era you grew up in for your beliefs and behaviors. You don’t get a pass for being older and unwilling to learn and unlearn. Hell, you don’t get a pass for being younger or middle-aged and being reluctant to learn and unlearn either. You have the autonomy to evolve and be a better version of who you are. You’re just choosing not to act on that autonomy.

Monday's Opening Thought: December 6, 2021

This week’s opening thought, for employers and recruiters: Put the salary and all of the job duties in the job posting. Seriously. How are we still talking about this, especially when we’re in the midst of the “great resignation” (*cough* people leaving harmful work environments because they know they deserve better treatment than what they’ve received at work, including but not limited to ambush workloads and low salaries *cough*)?

There’s no excuse for not having the salary and clearly defined work duties present in your job postings. None. Are you afraid that the salary and workload of the role don’t align and that the truth will turn off candidates? Well, sounds like it’s time to re-evaluate your job descriptions, which you should be doing annually anyway, to ensure some level of equity in pay and job duties.

Don’t waste a candidate’s time with salaries that are way below your local salary analysis averages for the role you’re trying to fill.

Don’t waste a candidate’s time with a list of job duties that leave out the messy bits of the position you’re trying to fill. Quit ambushing people with “other duties as needed/assigned” after they accept the role you lied to them about.

Why would you want to start your relationship with someone with lies and disrespect?

Monday's Opening Thought: November 29, 2021

This week’s opening thought: In my work, I regularly encounter white people and people of color with adjacency to white privilege and power. They share with me that they are distraught, upset, sometimes even shocked by the machinations of racism and white supremacy. We inevitably talk about accountability during these conversations, of white people and people with privilege being actively engaged and doing their individual and collective work to evolve and unlearn. I bring up how we all have to call in and call out racism, white supremacy, and oppression in every space, system, and institution we find ourselves in. At this point in the conversation, like clockwork, many white people and people of color with privilege utter the line that often signals we’ve hit their discomfort threshold:

“We have got to do better.”

Um. OK?

I only have one response for that statement to people who go there with me: what does “better” mean? Better yet, what does “better” mean to you? Because often, this sentence is thrown out there for camaraderie, not action or accountability, and not self-accountability or self-action. It’s the kind of statement that allows someone to feel like a decent, caring person, to show a semblance of care and concern without taking tangible steps actually to be better. That is the danger of hollow statements: They sound nice, but they contribute to nothing but the good/bad binary of the person saying them.

Sure, we need to do better. Of course, we do. On multiple fronts. The question is, what are YOU going to do to “do better”? What is your responsibility to yourself, your friends and family, the children in your life, the community you live in? How are you going to take accountability for your actions and unlearn a lifetime of white supremacist ideology? Where are you going to start with your self-work? When are you going to start your self-work?

“Do better” sounds nice. It’s a sentiment with which we can all agree. Being better, though? Being better in a concerted way that supports marginalized communities? That supports Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities? That supports AAPI communities? That forces systems to evolve and change and calls in and calls out people for their harmful words and actions? That’s putting YOUR words into action.

Live a life of action verbs.

Monday's Opening Thought: November 22, 2021

This week's opening thought: I'm not going to scold you or go out of my way to make you uncomfortable about celebrating the U.S. national holiday coming up this Thursday. What's the point?

At this point, most U.S. Americans know the actual origins of the gentrified and white-washed history of white people with no survival skills harming and killing the rightful and original stewards of the unceded land that makes up what we call North America. We all know that this upcoming national holiday's "roots" were taught to us in a series of lies in our formative years. We all made headdresses and hand turkeys in kindergarten. We all participated in some horrific school pageant or holiday program where we sang racist stereotype-driven songs about Native Americans in elementary school. As adults, most of us recognize the number of fallacies we were told about the "relationship" between the pilgrims and Native Americans. With all of that in mind, many of us still celebrate this national holiday for whatever personal reason we make ourselves OK with. Some folx view it as a gathering of friends and family, a moment of gratitude, a big shopping day, maybe even an opportunity to eat decadent food and watch U.S. American football. If you decide to celebrate the holiday this Thursday, that is your choice. I am not going to judge you or begrudge you. I hope you go into the Thursday holiday with legitimate gratitude and respect for the Indigenous people murdered and harmed in shaping the "history" of said holiday, regardless of how you choose to celebrate. But I will ask you to do a few things for me during your holiday observations if you consider yourself an active anti-racist and anti-oppressive person:

• Don't put marshmallows in the yams. That sh—is diabetes-inducing enough without marshmallows.

• Quit gentrifying mac and cheese by putting random items in it that don't need to be there. Seriously. Mac and cheese does not need to be gentrified. Straight-up delicious mac and cheese is more than sufficient.

• Take a moment during the holiday to understand that this holiday and its parades and white-centered celebrations are painful and traumatic for our Native and Indigenous friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues. Take a moment during the holiday to sit with yourself and reflect on the historical context and pain of the holiday, especially in the face of the ongoing global pandemic—just an acknowledgment of how we got here to keep you grounded. If there are things you don't know about the history of this holiday, take a moment to learn something – and unlearn something else.

• Call out your racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic, ableist family members. Or don't invite them to your house. Or don't go to their house. You're an adult. You don't have to do anything that causes you harm or be around harmful people; familial relations be damned. If you say you're an “ally,” that you’re about that life, be about that life. Stand for something. If not now, when? Because if you aren't willing to step up now and stand for something after the pain and trauma of the past 24 months for so many marginalized communities and communities of color, then you're likely never going to.

Well wishes to many of you and your families if you observe and celebrate the holiday as a time of gathering and gratitude that respects the owners of this land. May you acknowledge and reflect on the sacrifices and pain that have brought this holiday into existence.

My eternal condolences, respect, and gratitude to the rightful stewards and owners of this land.