Brave

The  University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon racism incident , known as  "SAE-OU racist chant incident"  occurred on March 7, 2015, when members of the  University of Oklahoma  (OU) chapter of  Sigma Alpha Epsilon  (SAE) were filmed performing a racially insensitive song that used the word [redacted], referenced  lynching , and implied that black students shall be denied admission into the fraternity. After a video of the incident was published, the SAE's OU chapter was closed and two of its members, Levi Pettit and Parker Rice(the latter of whom was the ‘leader’ of the chant in the video), expelled.   - Wikipedia Image of Levi Pettit a white male in a dark suit and blue shirt and red, white, and blue tie, ensuring he is in close proximity  to Black community leaders in power, issuing a public apology  for his part in the SAE racist chant incident. Screenshot from Source KFOR The SAE racist chant incident ...

The character "Annie" portrayed by white and  Black actresses credit The Daily Show  Rachel Dolezal is the end product of hundred of years of cultural appropriation that is commonplace in nearly every aspect of our lives. Not only is she being allowed to continue profiting from assuming an entire Black identity (now she's published a book), but she goes further by appropriating an African name and appropriating the term 'trans' and hyphenating our race to justify a lifetime of fetishizing and appropriating our entire culture. Not satisfied, she is now claiming to be an expert on racial fluidity, thus perverting that as well. When racial fluidity is Googled, articles about her are at the top of the search results. This is the absolute definition of white privilege in action. Dolezal is trying to revive her career by self-identifying as 'trans-black.' Some claim she is an indicator of the world moving to racial fluidity. Nope! My multiracial children ...

Dear Mr. President, Image of the biracial  brown skinned 44th President of the United States wearing a blue shirt with blue/white striped tie, black jacket with US Flag lapel pin and short cropped hair. He is beginning to smile.  I heard your speech today. Addressing the nation as one would petulant school children after a particularly brutal schoolyard brawl, you reminded us that we were all on the same team and so we must unite behind the KKK endorsed President-elect. You view our rejection of the President-elect as our not accepting Secretary Clinton losing to Trump. You must know it is not that simple an issue. I have had the civil liberty of free speech under your Presidency for 8 years now. I will miss my right to disagree with a sitting President without being jailed or threatened with a lawsuit. Let me avail myself of that right one final time. Respectfully Mr. President, asking me to get behind a man who gleefully accepted the endorsement of the ...

Vista of the Museum from Constitution Avenue, looking across the north lawn to the Washington Monument. Photo credit: Alan Karchmer/NMAAHCcaption W hen the six-month backlog of free visitors passes have ended and all the novelty of having toured the National Museum of African American History and Culture has dimmed, perhaps my family with go there. Maybe by then I'll be able to manage that painful tour. Oprah Winfrey's uttered narrative identifier of the museum as a source of pride and healing thing for us is something I don't entirely agree with. I had pride in myself before  the idea of this museum even existed. So the museum as a pride tool doesn't hold true for me at least. I can't and don't speak for every member of our race in our country. Understand that this is me, Afro-Latina first person singular. I was raised by many mentors to internalize that pride in a period of our history when James Brown could be heard any day on the radio singing Say ...

I used to work as a fry cook at the SONIC. It was a brief stint, mostly working the night shift.  I was hired for the night shift because no one wanted to cook for it. See, all the factories working nightshift would put in evening meal orders right at the beginning of that shift for 60 or more people at a time, and since they were the bulk of the small town business for the drive-in, you had to get each massive order right, keep everything hot and get them out quickly. On a Friday morning,  I went to pick up my first paycheck, happy to be getting a paycheck locally instead of traveling the over 70 miles I did to get summer work as a dark-skinned Black girl in that region. I was clueless about what was going to happen; I only realize now, years later, that subsequent events may be the reason I have avoided  SONIC restaurants since repatriating to the United States nearly 15 years ago. I had signed for and collected my paycheck and was weaving my way around the s...

Add caption  "PHOTO ABOVE-LEFT: Olympic Project for Human Rights button, worn  by activist athletes in the 1968 Olympic games, originally called for a boycott of the 1968 Olympic Games. PHOTO ABOVE-RIGHT: This iconic photo  appears in many U.S. history textbooks, stripped of the story of the planned  boycott and demands, creating the appearance of a solitary act of defiance".- From  "If We Knew Our History" By the Zinn Education Project    " Özrü kabahatinden beter " is a Turkish proverb meaning  the apology is worse than the error. I couldn't get that proverb out of my head after reading an article in the magazine "Good" about a German sports team's photograph in digital Blackface. The op-ed was a whitewashing justification for the incident, based on team assurances that this was done "in support" of their two African teammates. Back in November of 2014, I wrote a blog post about the responsibilities of an ally ...

  THE OTHER AMERICA  A Speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 14 April 1967 Stanford University Dean Napier, Mr. Bell; members of the faculty and members of the student body of this great institution of learning; ladies and gentlemen. Now there are several things that one could talk about before such a large, concerned, and enlightened audience. There are so many problems facing our nation and our world, that one could just take off anywhere. But today I would like to talk mainly about the race problems since I'll have to rush right out and go to New York to talk about Vietnam tomorrow, and I've been talking about it a great deal this week and weeks before that. But I'd like to use as a subject from which to speak this afternoon, the Other America. And I use this subject because there are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful for situation. And, in a sense, this America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This Ameri...

On June 6, 2015, police were called and told there were "too many black people" at a pool party at an all white residential community in McKinney, Texas. This is what happened: When I saw this, what I thought was, Monson Motor Lodge.  "On June 18, 1964, black and white protesters jumped into the whites-only pool at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Fla. In an attempt to force them out, the owner of the hotel poured acid into the pool." The manager of the motel James Brock was photographed pouring muriatic acid into the pool to get the protesters out. "Martin Luther King Jr. had planned the sit-in during the St. Augustine Movement, a part of the larger civil rights movement. " Then the hotel owner called the police. One of whom tried to club a rabbi in the pool with his nightstick:  Two rabbis had checked into the Monson Motor Lodge and the news media had been notified in advance that a "swim in" would occur at...