The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

She asked the question then, and I ask it now, Who will revere black womanhood? When can we live with protection of our innocence and celebration of our beauty? When can we be seen as wholly women and not a caricature of some imagination that stretches back to the 1662 Virginia Law of Maternal Descent? When will our white sisters stop being angry at us for the color of our skin and the bend of our curl, the tell-tale testaments of their white husband's dalliances in the quarters that created hues as milky white as their own skin?  When? When will our daughters be protected against the unwanted glances from their men who buy, sell, and travel to exotic places to indulge their appetites with black and brown poor women?  When will we simply be alive without being considered loud or wanton or militant because we wear our hair without poison?  When will the value of our motherhood be deemed enough for us to invest in our children the way the white mothers at home are champione...

I was angry, angry, angry at yet another black teen being murdered by yet another white man who claimed to be "afraid" for his life.  He was the one with the gun and the Florida man with murder in his eyes over music!  Rap music that is purchased and enjoyed by teens of all cultures! I am a mother of sons, when will the lives of our sons matter?  What would change if black men were indiscriminately gunning down white male teens?  Would the lives matter then? Tim Wise, noted writer, essayist, and social commentator on the issues of white privilege, racism and discrimination, has penned a thoughtful rhetorical essay on the Saturday verdict.  He took my emotional space and put to words thoughts that maybe white America will hear from a white man who gets it. http://www.timwise.org/2014/02/choosing-whiteness-or-humanity-jordan-davis-and-the-minimizing-of-black-pain/

I contemplated and thought and mused for a couple weeks about a couple things. First, the tenth birthday of Facebook that has connected the world.  Even as I sit in my office writing this blog on a site that wasn't possible a decade ago, I thought about the Jewish heritage of Facebook's founder and the confidence he had as a college student to transform the world. Second, I thought about the tragedy that took place in my suburb.  Six years ago, the quaint Mayberry-ness of my suburb was splashed across the nation's newspapers as a place of a racially motivated mass murder.  It wasn't all good in county.  Then the majority were all wringing their hands wondering how this happened, without realizing how much they ignored the other side of the tracks.  The community spent the immediate weeks and months talking across race and culture, desperately trying to understand each other, clearly one side trying to hold onto their unearned privilege.  Eventually, it ...