This week's opening thought: If organizations spent as much time building, maintaining, and cultivating leaders and organizations that are actively equitable, inclusive, and anti-racist while removing toxic and harmful people as they do on writing up mission and vision statements with the "right words" in them maybe we'd all talk about the present and future of work differently than we do.
Just a thought.
Trigger warning: homophobia, anti-Blackness, hate crimes.
O'Shae Sibley stopped for gas at a gas station with friends. He exited the car to dance to Beyoncé's Renaissance, playing in their car. O'Shae Sibley and his friends were accosted by a group of men who "told them to stop dancing" and started using homophobic slurs. During the attack, Sibley and Otis Pena, a best friend of Sibley's, responded to the slurs used by the other men: "Stop saying that. There is nothing wrong with being gay."
During the confrontation, one of the men stabbed Sibley. O'Shae was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead shortly after his arrival.
Otis, who tried to stop O'Shae's bleeding after the stabbing, posted a video to Facebook following his friend's death: "They murdered him because he's gay, because he stood up for his friends. His name was O'Shae, and you all killed him. You all murdered him right in front of me."
O'Shae just wanted to dance.
O'Shae was just living his joy.
But evidently, you're just not allowed to dance, be joyful, and express yourself while Black and gay.
And now O'Shae's life is over, and the just things that need to happen to avenge his unnecessary murder will likely not happen.
O'Shae just wanted to live.
Black queer people just want to live, yet we receive so much violence and homophobia and hate from inside and outside Black communities with such unrelenting torrential force that we drown in the waters generated by the spittle attached to the slurs and...
It shouldn't be this hard to just be, y'all.
It's just too damn hard.
[Image description: An image of O'Shae Sibley, a young Black man, dancing with a grouping of dancers from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. O'Shae is at the forefront of the image, wearing a yellow sleeveless shirt and black pants. He is dancing, laughing, looking into the distance. His body language exudes joy.]
Image description: An image of O'Shae Sibley, a young Black man, dancing with a grouping of dancers from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. O'Shae is at the forefront of the image, wearing a yellow sleeveless shirt and black pants. He is dancing, laughing, looking into the distance. His body language exudes joy.
The week’s Black Poetry Tuesdays piece is from Saeed Jones. Saeed is a queer Black U.S. American writer and poet. His debut poetry collection, Prelude to Bruise, was named a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Saeed’s second book, a memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction in 2019. Jones's work centers on the intersections of the Black and queer experiences in the United States in relation to the world around us. His work speaks of liberation, introspection, trauma, and joy.
The following piece is called “Grief #213.” In this piece, Jones walks through being the token friend, the only Black person in a white person’s life. He talks about being seen yet being invisible in the eyes of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, going through the motions while realizing that your white “friend” will never understand how much of yourself you sacrifice in your relationship with them. As someone who has had these interactions with white “friends” up until 7 or so years ago, I felt this poem in my bones.
Grief #213
I grieve forced laughter, shrieks sharp as broken
champagne flutes and the bright white necks I wanted
to press the shards against. I grieve the dead bird of my right
hand on my chest, the air escaping my throat’s prison,
the scream mangled into a mere “ha!” I grieve unearned
exclamations. I grieve saying “you are so funny!” I grieve
saying “you’re killing me!” when I meant to say “you are
killing me.” I have died right in front of you so many times;
my ghost is my plus-one tonight. I grieve being your Black
confidante. I grieve being your best and your only. I grieve
“But you get it, right?” Right. I grieve that I got it
and I get it and I am it.
You can learn more about Saeed here.
Hey, leader folx! Happy Wednesday! Here's a leadership tip (that you should not need someone to give you because it should be a given) to guide the rest of your week: Show gratitude to your team members every day.
Yes. Seriously. Show gratitude to your team members. Every. Day.
They are bustin' their asses for you and your organization, putting in work that makes you and your organization look good in every arena. They give your team and organization their energy, insights, and skills daily. A chunk of their life is spent in your workplace, and this is time they will never get back to spend with their friends, families, and communities or even dedicate to their passions and healing. Please show them some respect every damn day. Thank them for all the work they do for you and everything they contribute to your organization, even the "basic" things that most of us easily take for granted. Let it be known to every other senior leader you work with that your success is team success, and your team should be thanked for their work. And if you're going to say thank you?
Mean it.
Don't be out here going through the motions and acting like someone is twisting your arm. Don't say thank you because "that's what you're supposed to do." You're not an automaton. You're a human being with a heart and soul. You have feelings. You know what it feels like not to be given respect or gratitude for the things you've done that you don't expect respect and appreciation for. You know what it feels like to bust your ass and have a leader not show you gratitude and take credit for your energy and effort. Take those feelings, handle them with humility and empathy, and don't pass them on to those you lead.
If you think you're leading with humanity, gratitude should be easy, like Sunday morning. And if it's difficult, like dodging a truck while wearing ankle weights?
It would be best if you got your weight up.
The week’s poem is a piece from Countee Cullen. Cullen was a queer poet, novelist, children's writer, playwright, and one of the prominent voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Countee’s work was heavily influenced by the concept of Négritude, a framework of critique and literary theory developed mainly by Black and African American intellectuals, writers, and politicians during the 1930s. It aimed at raising and cultivating a renewal of "Black consciousness,” a (re)discovery of Black values and awareness of the world and its view of Black bodies. This showed in the focus of his work, which was at the intersections of Blackness, racism, trauma, sexuality, finding identity, and self-expression.
The following piece is called “Karenga ya Marenge.” In this piece, Cullen explores language, its applications, and how racism, colorism, and anti-Blackness play a part in how Western culture absorbs words from melanated people, especially when seeking support and community in the face of oppression. It’s an interesting critique of Western culture’s adherence to the “proper” use of language and its response to those who are seen as less than, a struggle that we are still pushing through in 2023.
Karenge ya Marenge
Wherein are words sublime or noble? What
Invests one speech with haloed eminence,
Makes it the sesame for all doors shut,
Yet in its like sees but impertinence?
Is it the hue? Is it the cast of eye,
The curve of lip or Asiatic breath,
Which mark a lesser place for Gandhi’s cry
Than “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Is Indian speech so quaint, so weak, so rude,
So like its land enslaved, denied, and crude,
That men who claim they fight for liberty
Can hear this battle-shout impassively,
Yet to their arms with high resolve have sprung
At those same words cried in the English tongue?
You can learn more about Countee Cullen here.