Monday, March 7, 2016

Unwinnable Game by Tayé Foster Bradshaw

Does it have to be a game?

All the time.

Why does this feel like we are in some sick game where winner-takes-all and the rest are left destroyed in the competition for control?

The local mayoral and city council elections, the state legislature and governorships, the national elections, everything feels like someone has decided this democracy is a contest with only a few walking away with the grand prize.

Democrats and Republicans have had nauseating debates with the most base of behaviors coming from the boys' in red. The battle of age, gender, and class is racing through liberal, progressive circles that are grappling with the racism they refuse to acknowledge. Have to give it to the Republicans, though, they at least admit they are the party of the old white rich men with the rest as adoring fans hoping for a return on that white currency.

Gamesmanship, over and over, like a bunch of middle school boys trying to flex muscles they don't possess.

Left in the wake are the poor who want to work honorably and decently, without being dredged through society because fate birthed them on one side versus the other.

Women are fighting to maintain control over their body parts that some of would-be-regulators can't even pronounce.

Students, black and rural white, are fighting for the right to an education that will not make them cogs in the industrial wheel.

Seniors, even barely-at-fifty, are trying to make sure this Americanized affair with youth does not leave them pennyless and begging for a drink on the side of the road. They are reeling from a decade of Republican obstruction and destruction from 911 to Bush to blocking everything President Obama proposes. They lost the most in the economic crisis, homes foreclosed, careers lost, student loans for graduate degrees unpaid, and the prospect of thirty more years of the  young forever saying the old does not matter anymore.

Why is it all a game?

Water from Michigan bottled and sent to the Middle East for safe drinking while Flint is poisoned.

Radioactive waste seeping into the homes of Bridgeton while overbuilding makes Kirkwood a destination.

Black kids telling other black kids that they "talk white" while they walk around in the new expensive Jordans but can't read on grade level trying to live past racism and hate. White kids in the suburb with the best education available squandering their privilege for a herion needle now considered a health crisis.

There is usually a timeout or halftime break in most athletic games. A series of rules that everyone knows and follows. A sense of fair play and being a good sport.  None of that seems like the order of the day.

It is barely March, hot in the Primary season when Americans are pledging allegience to a man and raising the Heil Hitler symbol. There is one month before the local elections and eight months until the general election.

Will the players survive?

Will the ones being played even notice?

Is it like the Gladiators meets The Hunger Games meets The Game of Thornes meets The Price is Right?

When will it end?

                                                                                                                                                                   Tayé Foster Bradshaw is a writer, poet, consultant, and community teacher in the Kirkwood area. She can be reached at tayefosterbradshaw@outlook.com or readwritethinkconnect@gmail.com. Find her on twitter @lattegriot or Google Plus at +TayéFosterBradshaw


Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Black Girls Matter Month

by Tayé Foster Bradshaw, Kirkwood MO


I saw a photo of little Zoe.

She is four months old.

Her little flower dress and  headband had all the marks of infant cuteness.

And she was terrorized on Sunday night.

She is a little black girl and her life matters.

Her life has to be worth more than two suspected police officers pulling her family over and holding them at gunpoint.

Five years from now, she will be in a classroom somewhere in this country. Her teacher will likely be a white female. She may suspend Zoe for having an "attitude" because she didn't respond with the queenly deference the teacher things she deserves.

Ethan is Zoe's big brother. He will be in a classroom and might encounter that teacher who wants to put him on the pipeline. Zoe will worry and grieve for him. And a social worker will condemn their mother and assume their homelife is deplorable, in need of white women to come and fix it.

Their lives have to matter.

Black girls in my suburb are suspended at a 10:1 rate over white girls for the same infraction. They are both brilliant and exceptional, yet, they have to continue to overcome their teachers' lack of expectation of them because some of their peers have an attitude.

There are some who have to fight the stereotypes coming at them from society that threatens to end childhood at four months old, like little Zoe.

This is March, Women's History Month.

We have to elevate the voies of little black girls so their brilliance can shine. They create clothing lines to refute bullies who try to call them fat and they gather over 1000 books because they are tired of reading about white boys and dogs. They earn the highest GPA of their cohort and they are chess champions. They fly through the air on gymnastic mats and continue to twinkle despite the ashes thrown at them.

This month, we are celebrating the black girl magic, they matter.