This Week's Opening Thought: June 5, 2023

This week's opening thought: no job, organization, or industry will ever be worth sacrificing your soul and dignity.

I know there is some privilege that is embedded in that statement. You don't have to point it out. I see that sh-- in full color and the highest resolution. I know that sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do. I know that sometimes a job is a job, and you don't feel like you care enough to be tethered to it. And I also know what it feels like to work somewhere to make ends meet and the abuse and stripping of one's dignity that comes with it, no matter how untethered you try to be. I also have had well-paying jobs that looked great on the surface but killed my sense of self, creativity, curiosity, and joy. One such role a few years ago led to depression and almost led to an emotional breakdown.

Nothing is perfect. Every job, company, or industry is flawed. But I've found that If you can't work for an organization, or in a profession or industry, without compromising practically everything that makes you the unique and beautiful person you are or trading in your joy, creativity, and energy for a consistent pattern of personal and witnessed trauma, no amount of money, "perks," or benefits will make being there easier to swallow.

If you are doing work you want to devote your life to, it shouldn't be literally siphoning your life away.

Nothing is worth that price.

This Week's Opening Thought: May 15, 2023

This week’s opening thought: contrary to what many white folx and people of privilege want to believe, there is a difference between self-care and taking care of yourself. That difference lies at the intersection of privilege, white supremacy, socioeconomic status, physical and mental disability, and the generational trauma you endure due to the impacts of white supremacy and colonialism on your community.

This Week's Opening Thought: May 8, 2023

TW: discussions of violence, gun violence, anti-Blackness, distortion of mental illness.

This week's opening thought: I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, in the 80s and 90s. At that time, Detroit was considered the most dangerous city in the United States. Its homicide rate was astronomical, with much of it attributed to gun violence. Growing up, my siblings and I grew accustomed to ducking and seeking cover at the sound of gunshots. As with most things related to the intersections of poverty, classism, systemic oppression, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness, politicians and pundits viewed gun violence in Black communities as an issue of values and upbringing. My community, Black communities, were told that the lack of fathers in our homes, a deficiency in morals, and a lack of “American values” were the catalyst for the gun violence in our neighborhoods. We were blamed for the gun violence in our communities, which increased the danger my community faced.

Then Columbine happened.

White U.S. Americans were shocked when the Columbine High School massacre happened in the Spring of 1999. As the news cycle ran with the story, the white shock became excuses and rationalizations for why two young white men killed thirteen people. White media ran with the narrative that these young white men had “lost their way.” Suddenly mental health and other conditions mattered because these young men “were raised by good families.” They were “good young men” who shouldn’t be judged too harshly for their murderous actions.

Fast forward to 2023, and the United States of America has had 199 mass shootings in less than five months. White men perpetrated all but a handful. The same excuses are used for their heinous actions over twenty years after Columbine. Meanwhile, Black communities are still facing the same hurdles with policing on physical and moral levels as poverty and generational trauma ignite gun violence in oppressed communities.

The wildest part of these two completely different narratives and treatments around gun violence in Black and white communities?

No one ever wants to talk about the damn guns.

In all this, the proliferation of and access to guns are never labeled as the issue they are.

After the past few weeks, with a mass shooting occurring almost every 48 hours, I'm confident that guns matter more than human lives in the United States. I'm more confident than I've ever been. Why?

Because whiteness has proven that it doesn't care about white lives over the right to own a gun and use it as you please.

And if whiteness will make excuses for white people gunning down other white people and white children while going out of its way to look past the elephant in the room?

Then the rest of us are chopped liver.

Once again, if whiteness won’t deal with its sh— and the harm it causes- we all suffer.

But you know, morals and a good upbringing and whatnot.

This Week's Opening Thought: May 1, 2023

This week’s opening thought: on my way home from a job interview, I peered out the bus window and saw a white man in black and red Chinese linens, traditional Beijing shoes, and a straw hat with what appeared to be a sake or wine crate under his arm. He was walking down the street without a care in the world. He strolled down the sidewalk with all the confidence of a mediocre white man who thinks they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. When I saw him, I looked twice because I was honestly taken aback. I don’t know the context or story behind his outfit, but I didn’t need to know any of that information BECAUSE HE WAS A WHITE MAN DRESSED IN A CHINESE STEREOTYPE COSTUME FROM SPIRIT HALLOWEEN.

So yeah, racism, anti-AAPI hate, and cultural appropriation are all still a thing, just in case someone out there thought otherwise.