Monday's Opening Thought: March 21, 2022

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This week's opening thought: The U.S. House of Representatives passed the CROWN Act on Friday. The CROWN Act is a bill that provides federal protection against hair discrimination with a primary focus of combating racial discrimination against Black citizens for hairstyles like braids, cornrows, and locs in federally assisted programs, housing programs, public accommodations, and employment.

The bill was passed along mostly Democratic Party lines 235-189.

Mostly Democratic. Mostly. House Republicans were practically unanimous in their nay vote. House Democrats, part of the party that swears it cares about Black lives while doing performative things like wearing kente cloth and saying horrible things like thanking George Floyd for "sacrificing himself for justice," were not all on board with getting this passed.

Another version of the CROWN Act was previously introduced in Congress and subsequently passed in the U.S. House but has failed to be passed in the U.S. Senate. This one may likely face the same hurdles.

While hair discrimination affects the majority of Black and Brown folx in the United States, Black women and femmes are the most affected when it comes to employment, social service access, and federal assistance.

What does this all mean?

Even when this country doesn't say it out loud, it says "Black women don't matter" loud and clear.

You don't even have to listen that hard to hear it.

Monday's Opening Thought: March 7, 2022

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Image description: Three images of women at protests across the United States, holding protest signs. From left to right: a white woman holding a sign that says "Our lives are on the line"; a Black woman holding a sign that says "We are stronger together"; an illustrated protest sign with a Black woman, her daughter on her shoulders holding a sign that says "Our feminist future." The mother and her daughter are flanked by a Brown woman and a white woman holding up signs that say "Power to the Polls" and "Tax the Rich."

This week's opening thought: This month is Women's History Month in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Tomorrow, March 8, is International Women's Day. We should all celebrate the impacts, achievements, and the drive and determination of the women in our lives and the women throughout western and world history. They have made our world the rich and lush tapestry of art, ingenuity, passion, empathy, resiliency, and strength that shape our lives.

But then we should all take the words resiliency and strength out back and put them out of their misery so that they never pose harm to another woman ever again.

And when I say "another woman," I mean ALL WOMEN. Don't @ me.

Women have to be resilient and strong because societal cultures are built on patriarchal hate and oppression.

Women have to be resilient and strong because we live in a society that thinks the Weinsteins, Cosbys, R. Kellys, Kanyes, Epsteins, and Trumps of our world should be given the benefit of the doubt when they harm women.

Women have to be resilient and strong because we live in a patriarchal culture that pushes the narrative that it's somehow a woman's fault if they are sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, fetishized, or objectified.

Women have to be resilient and strong because we live in a world that views women as secondary and tertiary citizens undeserving of rights and autonomy over their lives, choices, and bodies.

Women have to be resilient and strong to live, to survive. There is no choice for most women to be anything other than strong or resilient because the patriarchy only offers two options: assimilate and be docile or be harmed until you assimilate and become docile.

Resilient and strong are what women have to be to make their own choices in a world that offers them none.

We need to collectively work toward a world where resilience and strength can be viewed as positive acknowledgments of women's achievements and power and not definitions that box women in from being their whole selves. And the only way to work toward that is to dismantle the patriarchy and build something better.

And that work is not just "women’s work.”

Monday's Opening Thought: February 28, 2022

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This week’s opening thought: sometimes I don’t have an opening thought. Sometimes all I can do is suggest that we all take care of ourselves to take care of each other. No hot-takes or clever banter. Sometimes the best thing we can all do is disconnect from engaging with the steady stream of trauma playing out all around us and center our mental and emotional health and well-being.

Take care of yourself today to be here to help others and fight for humanity tomorrow.

Everybody needs a day off.

Monday's Opening Thought: February 21, 2022

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This week’s opening thought: Someone tells me I’m “unprofessional” at least twice a month.

I’ll let you guess the race and melanin (or lack thereof) of the people who say this to me.

Sometimes it’s in an email. Now and again, it comes up in a meeting. I see it when I’m in a meeting, and I’m not wearing business casual, opting instead for a Kamen Rider t-shirt and jeans. I know how white people feel about when I’ve had an afro or facial hair that didn’t fit their belief system. I can see it on their faces, read it in their body language. I see them cringe when I use words like “y’all” instead of “you guys.” I sit and listen as they try to find the right words to make me uncomfortable with how I show up and exist in what they view as their space, trying to use broad general statements that say “we are professionals” when they really mean “you aren’t a professional.” I observe y’all going out of your way to push me into conformity with “professional standards” to inform me that I need white validation to be viewed as good or great at what I do. Here’s the thing, though:

I don’t need white validation to feel like a “professional.”

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Monday's Opening Thought: February 14, 2022

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Image description: a pepperoni pizza in the shape of a craft heart can be seen resting on a wooden cutting board. A bouquet of pink and white roses are laying to the left of the pizza.

This week’s opening thought: some of y’all treat being present and accountable for your perpetuation of and connections to racism and white supremacy the same way y’all treat your partners and spouses on Valentine’s Day. You don’t think about it until you’re confronted with the prospect of being held accountable for not doing anything. You then frantically scramble to maintain feeling like a “good person”, stopping at the gas station or Walgreens on your way home in some last-ditch effort full of limp roses and gimmick teddy bears. And when your big phoned-in gesture isn’t received in the way you wanted it to be, you lash out for not being seen as a “good” person who was “doing something to show that you care.”

Hope you enjoy sleeping yo’ ass on the couch ‘cause that’s gonna be your bed for some time to come.

Happy “Captain Cook’s white colonizer ass got what he deserved” Day. Save a slice of that heart-shaped pizza for y’boy.