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Showing posts from June, 2015

What Must Be Examined

Tonight marks one week since the massacre of the nine innocent South Carolinians who were sitting in peaceful worship at the space of black spirituality. The trauma is real and devastating. It is demanding and commanding an answer.  It will not get over itself quickly. It is perhaps more than the lynching of black men and women at the hand the nation's police, perhaps more than the moder-day-slavery that continues as black bodies languish in the private prison system, sold on the auction block for corporate entities; it is perhaps more than the ten-plus months of shouting that black lives matter; it is more than the destruction of the inner-city neighborhoods and school systems that support young minds; it is the soul strike of an institution that dared to be free. Black churches across this country are connected to Mother Emanuel, the nation's oldest black church in the south, the place where Denmark Vesey spoke of freedom, the sanctuary where countless black boy and girls...

What Do I Write About This? Thoughts on Charleston, Race, Hate, and the Place of Privilege in America

It felt like the collective fears of black people came to fruition on Wednesday night, June 17, 2015. The evils of Jim Crow history were relived in vicereal ways for those who were alive during those tumultous days of hot hate and for those of us who were born the year of the Civil Rights Act's signing. This simply was unthinkable. Yet, it wasn't. The Black Church is a symbol, an institution of many denominations that is the keeper of the black soul space. Through the last thirty years, this institution has had ebbs and flows as new spiritual practices entered the lives of African Americans. Worship became more contemporary in some denominations and staunchly traditional in others. There were some shifts in leadership with more women behind the pulpit and not just on the front row in white suits or standing stoically in aisles with gloved hands waiting to wisk away that chewing gum from a child's mouth. The institution has weathered declines in attendance, attention...

Whiteness and the Issue of Female Privilege in the Aftermath of Rachel: A Real Black Woman's Perspective

 There was something about the month of May and thus far, the first half of June, that seems to have brought out the worse in white female fragility, racism, and appropriation. The news tumbled out as fast as the toys in my daughter's closet, faster than I could grab them all, tumultous in the landing on her bedroom floor, sprawled out for a thorough examination. I had to sit back and consider the space of whiteness and the accompanying fragility, privilege, and audacity that comes with it when connected in black spaces. In it, I am unapologetically black and not wiping any white female tears of manipulation. Space and expectation of the rights of control are what connected the white female encounters. From one trying to always tell black women what to do to another deciding a black woman's dedication to one deciding to be a black woman, all of them came from a place of overwhelming privilege and the assumption of power. On numerous facebook posts, I and others dissecte...