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 ...

I am taking classes through a MOOC, Coursera.org, to be exact.  I have become a liberal arts student, a lover of thinking, pondering, and evaluating with over 30,000 other students connected through the power of the internet. This "semester" I am taking History of the Slave South and How to Change the World. Initially, I thought these courses had nothing in common save the fact they were offered for free (or $49 for the Wesleyan one if one wants a 'verified' certificate) and were both from Ivy League Universities (University of Pennsylvania and Wesleyan).  Then, as I often do, thinking about the connections, realized they are not so uncommon to each other. One class, so far, is giving a deep and thorough of the origins of the slave trade and the fact that the first indentured servants in the Americas were white, male, young, unskilled, Englishmen who essentially sold their labor for passage from England to the Virginia colony.  In 1618, the establishment of that...

Today is my second oldest son's birthday.   He is spiritual and lyrical, thoughtful and wise.  I have loved and admired him from the first moment he entered my world.  He was bubbly and had these eyes that would just dance and make you stop to notice that he was in the room.  His personality is equally as electric and he draws a crowd.  He writes, sings, raps, draws, and is self-made. My son and I have had quite a journey through life, he is essentially the oldest, his big brother died on his seven month birthday, so this one, my second born, is the one that I learned the most.  Through grit, trial and error, lots of mistakes, he knows I love him with my deepest heart.  He was the one who was so protective and felt a sense of responsibility, even as a five year old. The day would not be right if I could not pause to reflect on his journey and applaud him for his zest for living, his determination to keep going, and his surety in his purpose....

I was sitting at my desk, thinking, as I always do, about life and my connections in it.  When I thought about how we are all sharing time and space in this universe and what I do here, affects you there, I paused. This earth, this planet that we share belongs to all of us, that "haves" and the "have-nots."  It is a truth, whether that truth is accepted by all 7+ billion people inhabiting it or not. In that truth, we affect each other.  We, here in the West, with our seemingly insatiable appetite for new and shining things, completely affect the lives of those in the East, the keepers of many of those natural resources we cherish. In the East, when we read or hear about unclean water or a young girl's life traded away, it affects me here when I look into the eyes of my own. Pause with me for a moment and think about that. The diamonds on my hand, the gold, the minerals and metals in my phone, these did not come from my own hands, but the blood, sweat, te...

We live in the mundane. The everyday ordinary. Boring. Sameness of life. At times. Sipping coffee or tea, eating a banana, reading a book, loving our families.  Most of life is lived in moment-to-moment boring sameness that is much more fulfilling and exhilarating than the most thrill-filled roller coaster ride. Life is a marathon, one that if one truly admits, will find one with hair of snow, wrinkles etched across the face of time, joints that creak in the winter, and maybe a gait that is not as swift.  Years float by and one realizes that the gift of living, the legacy of living is earned in those moments when you are boiling water in the tea kettle and watching your daughter make markers before going to school. It is ok to be quiet and appreciate the familiar of your sitting room where every book on the shelf has it's own home.  To know that your husband makes great spaghetti and  you know more about fresh food shopping than he does.  That ...