The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

Sandra Bland's funeral was on Saturday. They closed it to the press. Voyerism of black girl bodies, even in a white coffin, likely clad in white, would not be fodder for marketers sells pitches on morning news shows making a buck off black pain. I wanted to bear witness to her life, to stand with her family and her beloved SGRho Sorority sisters. I saw the images of her family members in white, her sorority sisters in white and their signature yellow and blue. The image of her coffin in white with the white roses on top. My place as a black mother of a 28-year-old son wanted to celebrate the life, activism, and bravery of this black 28 year-old-daughter. Her mother said it meant war. It has always been war on black girls. Every since the discovery of Saarjite Baartman and even a couple centuries before through the Law of Maternal Descent, the space and place of black women has always been a place of war for power and control. "Ain't I A Woman?" has bee...

I am sitting in the lobby of the maternity center letting it all absorb that my son has had a son. It has been a very long day with the labor process attended by two grandmothers, one great-grandmother, and of course, his parents. The boy of mixed heritage that is united in culture and sealed in love, entered the world at 7:10pm. What do I feel about a boy coming into a world that may not love him as much as we do? Will they see that he looks like his German/Chocktaw/Cherokee mother? Will they see him with his French/Irish/African/Creole father? Will we get it right and have a world that will not try to put him in a cell when his parents are putting him at a desk? What do I feel in this moment of life entering? Hope. Promise. Joy. Wonder. Love. My son has a son. I am GranméTayé. And the world says that we will go on.

I've been on baby-watch for the past two weeks. My son and his wife are expecting the first grandson, on both sides of the family. This highly anticipated baby will come into a world that may not recognize him as a mixed heritage little boy. They may overlook his mother's Choctwa/Cherokee and German heritage. His future teachers may miss the uniqueness of his father's mixed heritage that is being black in America. They may not catch the subtle hues of the Creole in me that is in him or the ruddy redness of his ScotsIrish heritage from my father's side and my ex-husband's father's side. The world will see a little black boy. So I watch and wait. And hope for change. Like the little twelve year olds of mixed heritages that were naming off their identities like one checks off the school supply list. None of them were just "one thing." All of them would be identified as "black" except for two. All of them were a range of milky white to ...

I am sipping coffee in my cousin's kitchen four hours from my home. They have cable so I am watching the coverage on MSNBC of the Confederate Flag coming down. My teenage daughter said, "Just take it down already." My tween daughter said, "They lost, take it down." It is 400+ years of oppression and 53 years in the wrong since they put that "Confederate Battle Flag" back up in protest of the Civil Rights Movement. It has flown on that state capital since 1962. The flag is a symbol of hatred, racism, and degradation of African peoples in this country.  It is more than just a piece of cloth on a public building. Why did it take the horrendous murder of nine black people, five of them ministers, by a deranged Millennial white man, to make this finally be a discussion among the populace. Bree Newsome scaled that pole just a couple weeks ago and declared, "I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today." They arreste...

What to the Black woman in 2015 is the Fourth of July? I kept pondering today, Independence Day, in light of the last eleven months, in light of the last seven-ten days, in light of my fifty-one years of life. Is there a place in America, in the world, even, where a black woman can truly be free? It is no suprise that this question comes up after Ferguson, after Baltimore, after the afters of so many lives cut short by state sanctioned violence amid the cries of many activists telling the world to wake up. It is no surprise after white allies, including the famous and not so famous, have been writing and teaching about white privilege and the dangers it produces in the black bodies of the country. It is no suprise as voices have been elevated for decades about the private prisons and the criminalization of the country's black children. For years, the clarion calls have been sounding and it seemed like it was on deaf ears. After Trayvon Martin was murdered, several fierce wome...

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...

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...