This Week's Opening Thought: October 28, 2024

This week's opening thought: I will always find myself intrigued by the behavior and rhetoric people will defend and play devil’s advocate for as long as they can do so while vaguely covering up the beliefs and feelings they actually prescribe so they can avoid poking holes in the holier-than-thou masks they wear in mixed company.

Living in the United States, I have always been curious about what thoughts go through people’s heads as they justify supporting causes and people who harm communities and groups they constantly claim to care about. I often marvel at the mental gymnastics people engage in to get people to like them and view them as "good people” as they ride the fence between oppression and equity.

Trying to keep a mask on while doing cartwheels to distract the masses has to be so exhausting.

Living in Portland, I regularly find myself captivated by how many people swear they care about our homeless and housing-insecure neighbors while happily voting for every person running on a platform of “public safety” who thinks corralling human beings in need into encampments on the outskirts of town is a sound policy. I'm mystified by how hard those people work to get co-signs from communities in danger because they can't maintain their facades without endorsements from those they don't care about beyond the most surface of levels.

Their arms must be so tired, trying to juggle those chainsaws while ensuring their mask doesn't slip off.

The funny thing is how many people are bad at maintaining the act.

The sad thing is how many people still try it anyway.

The disheartening thing is how many people allow themselves to be OK with these false identities around them, lest they lose their own masks and be subject to owning who they are.

If your beliefs and behaviors are so abhorrent and harmful to one or many communities that you have to put on an act to bamboozle yourself and others into believing you're a “good person” not to own who you really are? You're not the acrobat or juggler you think you are.

You're a clown.

And I have yet to find anyone who has a mask that suitably hides clown makeup.

On Blackness and Being A Team Player

Being Black is being told you're not a team player for not allowing a workplace to place a metric ton of work and stress on your shoulders while you watch your “affable” co-workers of pallor do the barest of bare minimums while being lauded as great people.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player because you don't want to participate in work parties and picnics and prefer doing your job, doing it well, then going home to live the life you've worked so hard to create in a white supremacist capitalist society.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player because you have boundaries that you enforce and reinforce with co-workers who have none.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player because you don't want to be friends with every person of pallor in your office looking to capture a “Black friend” to co-sign their racist nonsense.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player and being subjected to oppressive actions and attitudes in the workplace that aim to break you and push you into assimilation or conformity as a fraudulent means of survival.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player so much that you start wondering if it's your name.

But real talk?

Being Black eventually comes with the realization that most of y'all don't know what a team player is because y'all are too busy being mired in the nonsense of white supremacist likeability politics.

But you know, keep telling Black folx we’re not team players while we're some of the only ones scoring points for the team.

This Week's Opening Thought: October 21, 2024

This week's opening thought: I've had people of pallor and people of color who believe they benefit from white supremacy be straight-up, unapologetically racist right to my face with no qualms about how it might feel for me.

I prefer this over "polite" racism.

I prefer this over people saying things to me like, "I'm a credit to my race," or "You're not like the other ones," and expecting me to feel honored or flattered by their non-compliment.

I prefer this over people saying racist things about other melanated folx right in front of me and then looking at me for a co-sign because they've deemed me as safe.

I prefer this over people thinking that because I'm married to a person of pallor and I work in HR, I'm a willing participant in the oppression and harm of Black and Brown, Indigenous, Native, and melanated bodies.

I find no comfort in racism of any kind. But I find even more discomfort in the covert racism that protects somebody's belief that they are a "decent person" and places the burden of proof of harm on those they seek to directly and indirectly oppress and harm.

And what I just described was 80% of workplaces. UGH.

On Pokemon and Fake Friendships for Clout and Emotional Heavy-Lifting

I used to think that telling people of pallor and melanated folx raised by and in communities of pallor to make friends outside of their culture was sound advice. But the older I get, the more I think this is the kind of advice that should only be given after a thorough vibe check because some of y'all are out here on some Ash Ketchum sh—.

So many of y'all willingly miss the concept beyond the advice: to expand your understanding of cultures and communities outside of what you've been raised in and exposed to while addressing and dismissing the toxic stereotypes, phobias, and isms that you're accustomed to. The goal is to learn, unlearn, and evolve as a person, not collect ‘em all for brownie points and false credibility among those you exchange virtue signals with. The goal is to be a better person by unpacking how your ignorance of other cultures and identities has done harm and to do better, not finding a bunch of melanated folx to “befriend” who will hopefully absolve you of your guilt and do your emotional heavy lifting.

That's not friendship.

That's indentured servitude.

And frankly, my patience is too thin, my intelligence is too high (you do know that we know what you're doing, right?), and my ass is too phat to fit in your Pokeball.

And trust me, I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.

“Pharoah used, ‘Nah, I'm tight.’ It's super-effective!”

This Week's Opening Thought: October 7, 2024

This week's opening thought: Western culture loves talking about individualism until individualism means you as an individual have to own your contribution to an oppressive or harmful state of being. Then it's suddenly, "Well, this is a collective issue," or we're now "all in this together" when five minutes ago you were talkin' about how that one person over there needs to take responsibility for their actions or communicate differently.

Individual actions can and do impact collective survival and societal progress.

The harm you do as an individual harms the young people in your life who see you talk and behave in harmful ways, as they are now going to be carrying your unprocessed trauma and horrible actions in their brains and bodies.

The harm you do as an individual in a community or workplace amplifies the systemic oppressions of those spaces, harming the collective action of learning, unlearning, and growth needed for the collective to thrive and survive.

Being an individual in a society should come with an understanding of how easily individual decisions and actions can suppress, oppress, and damage the collective in micro and macro ways. The politics of Western society, especially over the last decade if you don't want to peer back even further, should clearly show you this, but Western culture wants us to think otherwise.

Being an individual in a collective means owning what you do and how you impact others in ways that help or harm collective progress. That means owning yourself before you go around trying to own others. It also means calling in or out others with humanity, even those individuals who have harmed others.

Be an individual who understands how they contribute or detract from the collective, not a collective of individuals.

There is a difference - and it ain't a subtle one.