This Week's Opening Thought: August 12, 2024

This week's opening thought: just because you can cook doesn't mean you should be passin’ out plates to everyone.

Everyone doesn't deserve a plate.

Everyone hasn't earned a plate.

Proximity does not make getting a plate a given. Neither does blood relation or history. Real talk? Those things often make it very clear who has and has not earned a plate.

You get to determine who gets fed from your well of knowledge, experience, and empathy in all areas of your life, not the other way around. You get to decide who deserves to be nourished and who doesn't nourish you. Don't let any person or workplace tell you otherwise.

Stop letting people and workplaces invite themselves to dinner.

They better go warm up a Hot Pocket.

This Week's Opening Thought: August 5, 2024

This week's opening thought: Every cishet man who has ever said to me that they’re uncomfortable with being alone with a woman that isn’t there spouse or partner because they don’t want to be accused of sexual harassment, lewd acts, or psychological abuses never seem to realize that the feeling of discomfort is mutual.

You’ve got icky energy, homie.

If your brain automatically turns to thinking someone will report you for your actions when you’re left alone with them?

Methinks thou knoweth thou art a creep.

You’re telling on yourself.

This Week's Opening Thought: July 29, 2024

This week's opening thought: I recently turned 42.

I'm not one to celebrate birthdays, achievements, or milestones. It has always felt wrong. For decades, I thought I disliked celebrating little moments because I felt they weren't worth the time and energy. Real talk? I walked across the stage for my high school graduation and ran to one of my two jobs without fanfare. I graduated from college and was like, "Meh," when my wife wanted to celebrate my achievement. I stopped celebrating landing jobs or opportunities long ago, looking at them as blips in my timeline.

I have spent most of my life lumping these situations into not being worth my time. "I've got sh-- to do" is one of my favorite lines to mutter when people want to celebrate me. But as I get older, wiser, and healthier, I've unearthed why I don't celebrate birthdays, achievements, or milestones.

I'm Black in the United States, and everything feels like borrowed time.

I didn't start embracing joy until my 30's. I didn't start doing anything for my birthday until my mid-30s, and I'm still reticent to do more than some meals at cool restaurants. There's a trauma that I've spent time unpacking over the past few years, one that is deeply embedded in my soul. At its root is a simple yet complex question:

Do you celebrate today if it always feels like there is no tomorrow?

I find it hard to celebrate much in a society that allows police officers to walk into my home and murder me without provocation. It's difficult to tap into joy when I could be lynched at a moment's notice, and my family would get no justice for my Black body. It's unsettling to know that for every high, racism and white supremacy are dangling over my head like the sword of Damocles waiting to "take me down a notch."

I'm learning that I don't want to live that way anymore.

White supremacy does not get to dictate me taking a victory lap every now and then for how awesome I am. (Yeah, I'm feelin' myself.)

I've embraced joy. Now, I know I need to embrace that regardless of how dangerous the world is around me, I deserve to be celebrated. My achievements deserve to be honored and acknowledged.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I deserve a fresh huckleberry lemonade.

To all my Black people: celebrate you, your people, and your achievements. Don't let this "white-a-betes" that systems of pallor want to inflict you with take away from honoring your family, friends, and your achievements in the face of a system that has never believed we should exist.

Enjoy your lemonade.

[Image description: This is a picture of me at Solstice Restaurant in Hood River, Oregon. I'm making a whimsical face while holding a freshly made huckleberry lemonade.]

Image description: This is a picture of me at Solstice Restaurant in Hood River, Oregon. I'm making a whimsical face while holding a freshly made huckleberry lemonade.

This Week's Opening Thought: July 22, 2024

This week’s opening thought: If you weren’t willing to defend, stand with, and support Black and Brown women before now or were waiting on the “right opportunity to be an ally” to Black and Brown women in the United States, guess what?

The f—-g time is now.

I mean, I don’t know what the hell was wrong with you before now (what were you waiting on, a formal invitation?). Still, if these unprecedented times (side note: I am SO TIRED of “unprecedented times.”) we’re likely about to enter into during this presidential election don’t have you ready to step up and chin check every raggedy, racist, sexist, anti-Black person in your workplace, family, and neighborhood that tries to drag the Vice President, Black women, and Brown women through the mud with unfounded accusations and discredited stereotypes built on racism and white supremacy that have nothing to do with their skills, intelligence, and insights then you should keep your “thoughts” to yourself and own that you never intended to get off the bench and get in the game.

Sh--’s about to get more real and dangerous for many communities than you could ever imagine.

Yo’ ass should've been in the game, but you're still milking that “ankle injury” from practice to cover up your affinity for bench warming and participation trophies.

P.S.: This is not a conversation about the veep’s record and past. We’ve had that conversation ad naseum and we’re not going to rehash that in this space. We’ll revisit that conversation at some point. This particular conversation is about standing with and supporting Black and Brown women in real-time as the threat to their overall safety inches into dangerous territory. This includes offering your support to Kamala Harris. Yeah, I said it. I asked for it. Some of y'all are gonna want to drag me for it, but I will always stand with and support Black women, period, especially in the face of people who would prefer to go back to chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and no rights for anyone but wealthy people of pallor.

This Week's Opening Thought: July 15, 2024

This week’s opening thought: All that violent shuckin’ and jivin’ this past weekend, and there still won’t be one piece of realistic and tangible gun legislation drafted to try and ensure this kind of thing is mitigated or outright eliminated.

If they weren’t going to draft and pass bipartisan sensible legislation to protect children, they sure as hell aren’t to protect people like you-know-who.

Meanwhile, this high-profile event was one of four mass shootings in the United States this weekend, bringing us to 37 mass shootings in July alone. As a whole, 430 people have been killed, and 1,405 people have been wounded in 341 shootings in 2024.

But you know, the right to bear arms and whatnot.

And the beat goes on.