The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

by Tayé Foster Bradshaw, Maplewood MO The sunny morning started with tear drops of sad news. The St. Louis Missouri Police Department pulled over a young woman because the passenger looked at them as the car drove by. There wasn't a traffic violation. There was nothing but someone looking out of the window, something I do when my husband is driving, something my daughters do all the time. We are writers, observers of the world, the car window is our observation deck and reflection of daydreams, we just lay our head and stare. This is how I imagine the scene. This time, however, was different. On the south side of St. Louis, one can not be young, black, female, and driving with her children in the car without the expectation of terror or death. Two white police officers pulled them over, with guns drawn, approached the vehicle. They terrorized the family.  The babies started crying, the police aimed guns at them and told them to shut up. How is a two year old and a...

by Tayé Foster Bradshaw, a proud black woman of AfroLatina, African, and Creole ethnic heritage, proudly wearing her crown high and living that "black woman thing." There was an interview on NPR with a young African-American woman talking about being black in the tech industry. She talked about the opportunities that women of color are waiting to capture with their ingenuity and innovative ideas. Her interview mentioned some collaborative efforts taking place in Atlanta and Portland to help these emerging entrepreneurs discover what they can do with their creative genius. Then she talked about the well-known whitening of Silicon Valley and perhaps why that exists. A venture capitalist said he didn't want to do "the black woman thing." I was driving when I was listening to the radio and had to stop a bit longer at the stop sign and ponder what in the world that meant. Thirty years on the other side of my professional work life and we are still exper...

The only thing we ever get is that dash. That space between birth and death. It is hopeful, promising, wonderful. If we use it. Time does not wait. Every last one of us is given a certain gift, thing, that only we can do. In a biblical sense, there is a scripture that celebrates our uniqueness, declaring that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made" like clay in a potter's hands, sculpted as a wholly and completely one. Isn't that to ponder? In the west, in America, we tend to celebrate those early unformed days of the dash. We celebrate youth, especially that ratings-and-trend-setting coveted 18-25 age range. That young adult who is still deciding who they will be apart from parental guidance and teenange angst, they get to put on "adulting" and decide who they will be. The Millennial activists have turned the nation on it's axes and boldy declares existence and acceptance for who they are as individuals. They do not want to be swamped in lik...

Tayé Foster Bradshaw, Kirkwood, Friday,February 19, 2016 Two days ago parents and supporters in the Hazelwood School District stood outside schools with signs of support for the students. They set up a facebook page and urged everyone to come to the Tuesday, February 16, 2016 school board meeting to protest the proposed budget cuts that would affect PE and music, among other cuts, including cutting maintenance staff. Parents were understandably upset that this suprise cut was announced without working information presented to the public. Questions were asked all around from the high salaries of the superintendent and assistant superintendents to the catered meals at the board meeting. What about the students remained a constant underpining of what the parents were asking. On Friday, they wanted the media to be present at an all-district orchestra concert to highlight the importants of the arts in education and urge the district to not cut the program. They have been quite voc...

The past few days were a swirl of events that all lined up to somewhat say what I have been trying to say for a while. First, the community where I live has an inflated view of itself as a wanna-be-country-club estate inner suburb of nine square miles. We have the superintendent who has the gold platted package, the school board that doesn't seem to be listening, the massive budget cuts that have riled up the students and have seen a twitter war between a board member and a beloved journalism teacher. That was all against the backdrop of strongly worded emails from the administration to editorials in the newspaper that chastised the voters for their "willfullness" in not passing their tax increase. Second, this same community has a huge race problem that gets hush-hushed. There may be rumblings of it during the task force meeting to discuss "the African American Achievement Gap" or other things that cause the all white teachers to wring their hands. Meanwhil...

I live in a city that can go from the tropics to the frozen tundra inside of one week. It happens almost within one day. Sometimes, it catches one off guard, they leave home thinking of the warm and fuzzy morning, only to return home in a frigid atmosophere. The political climate in my little suburb is alot like that. We  moved here, my husband chose it here because of the community support of the visual and performing arts from illustrators and sculptors to instrumentalists in band and orchestra and dancers. The high academics helped create an atmosphere that fostered learning. Our youngest son graduated from the local high school and is a senior in college. Our daughters are on their way to Carnegie Hall, in middle school, and each is on the honor roll. So, what was the wind of frosty change in my little piece of America? It was a combination of the curtain being pulled back from the land of Oz to expose the little man behind the microphone. It was a ruse, a lie, an ima...