The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

Yesterday, I was an election judge. I woke up at 4am, sleepy, but eager to play a deeper role in the quest for democracy. My polling place was across the other side of my suburb, on the affluent side.  I was not only the only black person working the polls, I was also the youngest.  It proved to be an interesting observation for the long day. The people I worked with, by county commission rules, were equally democrat and republican. The two party system continues to prevail.  The entire group was amenable and enjoyable to spend the many hours processing literally two voters a minute through the procedures to gain access to the thing that makes our country envied and hated - the ballot. It was at the polls, watching diamond ring after expensive watch sign the voter card that I realize something I always knew - one party over another always voted and wanted to make sure their needs were met.  That party, the republicans, prevailed in most of the major national ...

Remembering Today is the 32nd anniversary of the death of my first born son. He was killed by the hands of shame, rejection, and fear that gripped my parents after their perfect teenage daughter shattered their illusion of respectability. The Backdrop I was 16 when I was forced from my home to live with my father's relatives because my step-mother threatened to kill me.  Imagine my crime to cause her 9 years of constant hate and hazing - I look like my deceased mother, the wife of my father who died when I was 4 years old. It was against the backdrop of her rant that I was literally pushed out the front door in Missouri and driven several states away to Michigan to live my life in safety. Naive doesn't even begin to describe it.  I was not allowed to hang out with friends like my 13 year old daughter just did last night with her crew of friends.  We were not from Jefferson City and therefore not part of the inner inner circles.  My family separated us, othe...

I am sitting in the dark of my dining room, preparing my heart, mind, and soul to engage in protest during #FergusonOctober. I attended training this past Thursday night as a de-escalator, an appropriate role for this Jones Generation Mama who benefitted from the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement and the relative non-movement of my late 80s-90s young adulthood, when live was discovering me and I was enjoying the spoils of a Clinton Presidency in a city I adored. Something happened to the promise of the dream. As a woman who celebrated a jubilee birthday this year, the symbolism was not lost on me I know my parents were not anticipating that I would be the adult, the elder, watching, engaging, and talking with the young Millennials, my children, on the front lines of hate in the city of my birth. The symbolism of so many born during Freedom Summer who are now organizing, supporting, and advising the young ones leading Freedom Fall.  I can not let the comfort of my wel...

Ferguson. My next door neighbor are tired of hearing about it and were caught on tape cursing after an interruption at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra performance this past Saturday night. My daughters know all about what I have done up there and I have formed relationships (even if virtual) with some amazing young activists who are striving to make a solid change in the system of racism. My friends have been made uncomfortable in their privilege and have had to face the mirror, one apologized to me so many times, I reminded her of the power she had to be an ally and effect change. My sisters told white mothers about "the talk" and are planning another one on this coming Monday. My connections are engaged in a buycott and thinking more consciously about where they spend their dollars. My organization has sat with other clergy while young people were wrongly jailed for chanting This is What Democracy Looks Like. Ferguson. The quest continues to expose a racist...

In the past week, I  have written two drafts of something I thought I wanted to say about being the survivor of domestic abuse, about acknowledging myself as Janay Rice. It also seemed like I could not say what I wanted to say because my children are still alive, because, because, because the words may seem opportunistic, jumping on the reporting bandwagon of all the other articles written, or because it is a shame I still carry. My story is not unlike that of other women. Abusers of any sort - rapists, child murders, physical abusers, sexual abusers, emotional abusers, financial abusers - never come with a sign on at the first date saying that you will experience all those things dating, courting, or being married to them.  These were things that happened to me in my life. The writer, teacher, scholar in me sought a definition.  I went to the Centers for Disease Control who bring the definition more closely to what it is - intimate partner violence. It was agai...

My husband always tells me we are "broke" whenever the subject of money or one more purchase comes up.  Sometimes he makes me so angry when he says this because I know we are not "broke." But it got me to thinking this morning as I sit in this black-owned coffee roaster, enjoying my blackberry latte and looking at my bags of exquisite beans to take home, that perhaps he is right. I am privileged (and at times, if I am honest, annoyed) to be in a one-income family.  There are sacrifices made, like the five year old jeans I have on today and the "vintage upcale resale" jeans I work yesterday being regular parts of my "mom" attire, but those sacrifices pay off in the dividends of our children.  I know that as a woman, period, I am in a special place or a sexist place, depending on who is controlling the narrative. Once-upon-a-time, it was white women only who had the space of simply being "the wife" and "the mother" with al...

Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner, Mike Brown and the Marketing of Black Fear Yesterday, the parents and over 600 family members entered the cavernous building of the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church on the west side of St. Louis to do what no family of an 18 year old ever expected to do.   They entered to eulogize and bury their son, their brother, their grandson, their nephew, their cousin, their friend.   The world watched and Leslie McSpadden, Michael Brown, Sr. and their respective spouses had to be yet another long list of parents doing what is the unnatural.   WhY? And When will there be an end? The past two weeks in my city have included protests met with tear gas, rubber bullets, militarized police, innocent and opportunists.   There have been forums, marches, candlelight vigils, churches raided for Maalox and water, all because a white police officer shot ten rounds, landing six in the giant body of young Michael Brown, all ...