The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

House apologizes for slavery and Jim Crow. The House on Tuesday issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow segregation her laws. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25921453/from/ET/ I have more thoughts on this issue. The apology is a fine first step. I'm waiting for the action. The United States has apologized for its wrongdoing to other ethnic groups. The native Hawaiians received reparations of sorts. The First Nation People (I am a descendant) receive reparations of sort with protected land and gaming rights. The Japanese were compensated for their internment during WWII. What about the African-Americans? Is there a price to make up for over 400 years of enslavement? What price for the people raped (even my family's heritage as Creole people from New Orleans included le plasage - another form of imprisonment). What price for the educated women like my beautiful grandm...

My husband took the kids swimming last evening as a reward for acting up all day Wednesday! I think perhaps it was the rain and they were all stuck inside. Perhaps it was because I made them go to bed early Tuesday night so they were up early Wednesday morning. Perhaps it was a full moon. I don't know what it was but my fourteen-year-old son and six-year-old daughter were at each other all afternoon. Maybe I should've known it was going to be a bad week when my husband was still at home on Monday after taking off last Thursday and Friday to "clean the garage and do some things around the house." My garage is still full. Anyway, the kids go back to school in three weeks so I told them this was a transition week. Tuesday was a work day. I spent the entire day cleaning up, doing laundry, cleaning toilets, moving storage tubs, rearranging the family room. I banished them upstairs so I could just get finished without them underfoot. We had dinner early because my husband h...

I don't consider myself a radical activist by any stretch of the imagination. I do consider myself free, at 44, to be able to share my observations about the world. I am also less concerned about what people think, after all, a few decades ago, I would be considered middle-aged. It is with this disclaimer in mind that I share some thoughts that occurred to me this afternoon as I watched a particular scene from Steven Spielberg's production of Alice Walker's The Color Purple. It was a rare Wednesday that I had a few moments to actually watch TV One. I was doing my daughter's hair and the channel was running an all-things Whoopi Goldberg afternoon. The movie was keeping her quiet while I untangled her curly hair. The scene with Miss Millie and Sophia in the town square really bothered me. I've seen it possibly a dozen times through all the years. I even traveled to Chicago to see the live production of this acclaimed production. Today, I saw this scene through...

So 143 years after slavery, the House is proposing a "non-binding" amendment to finally apologize for slavery. Let's see, it took 143 years to realize that stealing people from their family, their homeland, their lives and transporting them over dangerous oceans to a foreign land, raping their women, beating and maiming the men, destroying families, stealing children, selling husbands from wives, selling sucking children from mother's breasts, using men as studs, diluting the race by continuous rapes, enslaving one's own children as a result of rape, causing division between the different colors of the races, not allowing the people to keep their genuine birth names, destroying their customs, languages, killing them if they read, cutting off limbs if they try to write, imposing a system of institutionalized fear, passing laws to keep them enslaved, using their free labor to build the country, taking out insurance policies in the event of their death, purposely e...

I don't want your guilt...I want your Black Berry! It seems as if white guilt is a "free pass" card for many liberal whites. It allows some to hand out a hot dog at their church's "outreach" in the poor neighborhood but then leaving if none of the "underprivileged" join their youth group. White guilt doesn't serve any purpose except to make some white people feel good about themselves for not being racist. It doesn't level the playing field. Yes, white people in America, whether their family was here at the very beginning or they are a recent European immigrant, have benefited from white privilege. The very essence of whiteness means access. It means opportunity. It means possibility in a country that is still so addicted to racism. I don't want white people to feel guilty of the ease of their lives. I don't want them to hand a poor black person a $10 as they drive by in their Lexus, Mercedes, and BMWs. I want them to hand that poor...

My four-year-old daughter and fourteen-year-old son were overcome with tears this Thursday afternoon. It was heart wrenching ...and funny. The four-year-old is the youngest of a trio of girls - her six-year-old sister and ten-year-old cousin. The two older girls made a game of "club" and "secret language" that decidedly excluded the younger girl. She kept trying to infiltrate this older girlie exchange and finally gave up in a burst of frustration, "they hate me!" She did this while billowing to the floor like a deflated balloon. I was trying to mail a package to my son in Japan so this was a public display of emotion. She wouldn't be comforted. The older girls were sitting down in chairs with the look of Cheshire cats and eyes of mischief. We left the Post Office with hopes that the rest of the errands would be tear free. The younger girl sat in the middle of the two older girls in my old, 1998 Chevy Venture. How they managed to talk over he...

My girlfriend send me some very interesting information. I am a firm believer in turning over black and brown dollars a few times before it hits the mainstream. It is not because I am separatist or racist or elitist, it is because I am a realist. I am also a graduate of the University of Iowa with my Masters of Business Administration in marketing. I know the business of branding, strategy, targeting is to bring in the consumer. There are many big consumer products companies that do a pittance with Black and Brown advertising and there are some who deliberately choose to ignore this very powerful consumer block. This post, courtesy of my girlfriend, conveniently outlines those companies who have labeled their marketing materials with a NUD. This labeling means their Brand Manager are not to pursue multicultural media in favor of reaching black consumers. I saw this trend happening when the 2000 census gave our Brown (Latino, Hispanic) brethren a slight nudge in the population numbers. ...

My cousin-in-law sent the following information to our family website. It is the economy all the way around. The United States is a consumer-nation. We don't produce anything. The stimulus checks that were sent out didn't stimulate the economy. How could it when Wal*Mart was promising people they coud cash them for free and then spend them on their Chinese-made goods? We are in Biblical times, it is like the years when famine hit and Joseph wisely stored up grain (remember the fat cows that ate the skinny cows, well the nation under President Bush is in the skinny cows!). STORE CLOSINGS AND LAYOFFS If you have gift cards, hurry up and use them!! Just passing this along - FYI Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide A company spokeswoman said thecompany hasn't revealed which stores will be shuttered. It will let thestores that will close this fiscal year know over the next month Eddie Bauer to close more stores. Eddie Bauer has already closed 27 shops in the first quarter ...

Gas has hit a national all-time high of $4.11 a gallon. IndyMac bank has been taken over and other banks stand on the brink. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake testified before Congress about the state of the economy. President Bush in response to the state of the economy said, "I'm not an economist. I'm an optimist...I do believe we are growing." The rest of the nation doesn't see this growth. We've spent $750 BILLION on the Iraq War. We spend more than that on importing oil. The Consumer Price Index is at the second highest rate in 26 years. The nation's leading economist and architect of Former President Ronald Reagan's supply side economics and trickle-down theory was on NPR Tuesday, July 15 th . He stated, "this is deeper and longer than the last few recessions . They lasted a year, then recovered." That was from Professor Martin Felstein . http://www.npr.com/ President Bush, in the waning days of his failed presidency, wants to e...

I woke up this morning and thought about all the black women writers/poets that have picked up pen before me. I looked in my Norton's Anthology of African American Literature and found something quite appropriate for this election year. "Aunt Chloe's Politics" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) Of course, I don't know very much About these politics, But I think some who run em' Do mighty ugly tricks. I've seen 'em honey-fugle round And talk so awful sweet, That you'd think them full of kindness, As an egg is full of meat. Now I don't believe in looking Honest people in the face, And saying when you're doing wrong, That "I haven't sold my race." When we want to school our children, If the money isn't there, Whether black or white have took it, The loss we all must share. And this buying up each other Is something worse than mean, Though I thinks a heap of voting, I go for voting clean. Written in 1872

He's not perfect...far from it. There are moments he gets on my last nerve like when he drops his size 13s in the middle of the walk-way or when his work-out-clothes could win the contest for smelliest clothes. He spends too much time listening to old school jams on his laptop and snacks more than I'd like, no, he is not perfect, but he is a good father. The greatest gift I've given my girls beyond life and a knowledge of Christ, is a secure relationship with their father. I am married to a "in-the-house" black man. He cooks Sunday breakfast and dinners, he lets the girls play "beauty shop" with him and he always gives them a big, burly bear hug. The girls scream in delight and glee when he walks in the door. They run and jump in his arms with the assurance that his 300 lb frame will hold them tightly. He has given them honor in not only his name and his presence, but in his unconditional love. He has changed their diapers from the moment they took their...

What About Our Daughters?: 22 y.o. Black Woman to 11 year-old Black Girl Gang Raped By 20 Men and boys: "That girl, knew What She Was Doing"#links I read about this and wanted to simultaneously throw up and cocoon my two daughters! I am sick to my stomach about the behavior of our black men and our black women in the poor neighborhoods. It is timing in a way that I came across this post after (1) spending my Saturday with a couple girls I mentor who live in a poor neighborhood, (2) watching the HBO documentary about Douglass High School in Baltimore MD, and (3) thinking about Come on People by Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Pouissant. What is wrong with us!!!!!!!! I am a member of this black community. I don't want to be. The color of my skin makes me part of it, but I don't want to be right now. I hate this! Rape is so brutal and then to have it happen to an 11-yar-old. Where are the real men to stand up and protect this baby? Where are the real men who will beat the...

God has not given us a spirit of fear! People! Wake up! It is time to put fear where it belongs - in the trash can! Better yet, shred it! We have become a nation of cowering, teeth-chattering, covered-eye, fraidy-cats! Parents are afraid to discipline little Johnny in the grocery store for fear of the security-cameras that will be turned over to the CPS. Women are afraid of their husbands if they stay home since the man makes the money. Men are afraid of their wives if they work because their masculinity is in jeopardy. Whites are afraid of the "big, bad, black man." Blacks are afraid of "The Man" And the devil is standing back watching the chaos with glee on his face! Stop being afraid, it makes the heart race and the breath skip. As a fearful people, we are watched from satellite, from cameras everywhere, and from our neighbors. As a fearful people, we are deemed "unpatriotic" if we don't wave the red-white-and-blue or wear a flag pin. As a fearfu...