The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

I had an interesting interaction the other day with someone in the movement who was expressing some thoughts about how the movement was being perceived by others. The conversation evaluated the intersection of race and class, race and gender politics, race and respectability politics, race and religion, and race and everything else.  We examined our place in the movement as well as perceptions we had of ourselves and others who stopped everything for 176 days to elevate voice to a real-time issue. Over the course of several weeks, something struck me. We are uncomfortable. Many people are included in that “we” because discussing the system of American education, housing, employment, health care, and policing all coalesce around topics that are not easy to talk about. It made me think about those small talk classes in grad school where we were admonished to talk about the weather or sports – safe topics, never to talk about race, religion, income, or gender politics. In thi...

The universe smile upon me. Unexpectedly. Wishing my oldest living son a very happy 28th birthday. I told him it was absolutely meant that he would interrupt what I thought was my life path and plan. He became the only son of his father, a third generation look-alike. He is a renaissance man, a man that writes, draws, raps, and thinks, thinks, thinks  He is a self-made man, an unconventional man who decided that while the producers came knocking at his door, he didn't want to pay their price to open it.  Instead, he produced and marketed his CD himself, the old fashioned way. My son was my rock when I was a divorced mom in Chicago with him and his little brother trying to make it in the early 90s.  When I close my mind's eye and remember how mature and grown up he was at five, I shed a tear and want to give him back his childhood. He was so protective of his mama and his little brother. They were my world, I closed out the chance to date, focused on them, finishing ...

Last evening my daughters and I went to see the movie, Selma. They chose to sit in the very front of the theatre so the opening scene sent my youngest ducking under cover of our coats. The comfy sofas of The Moolah Theatre could not let her sink as far away as she wanted, the impact felt so real to her. She and her sister were enraptured throughout the movie and kept asking me, "Was that real, did he really say that? Did that really happen like that? Why are they still doing this to people?" I purposed it in my life to raise socially conscious children as well as children who are aware of the truth of their history. I love our West Indian and West African ancestry. It is that backdrop that centers my children with a sense of self and pride in being able to point on a map where their family originated. It is in that sense of self that I also do not sugarcoat the horrific things that have happened to black people in these United States. How can I? We live in a west St. Lo...