Is it possible to truly move forward in a positive direction as a country, if we haven’t collectively done the work of examining our past, warts and all?
Category: Something True
Piece 16: Hope and Hard Pills
Her style is systematic and unflinching, two descriptors that seem to be missing from too many public conversations around justice and race today.
Piece 15: Anthem
Where or to whom do you turn for comfort and solace? Have you ever witnessed someone else trying to twist that object of comfort and solace into something wicked and unworthy, in order to satiate their desire to maintain a sense of superiority over you?
Piece 14: Where Does it Hurt?
Our babies, the babies they may have one day, and the babies of those babies – all deserve a future brighter than our present.
Piece 13: When They See Us
I don’t know that I’ve ever before seen such a poignant examination of just how short-lived black childhood truly is in this country. Even today, well into their adult lives, there are people who stubbornly refuse to believe that the now-exonerated individuals who were jailed as a result of this case, had nothing to do with the crime that took place that night in 1989.
Piece 12: About This Right to Vote
As for me and my house, I am the only person who can vote. I have young children and an immigrant husband. My vote represents us all. Your vote represents more people than just you as well
Piece 11: Kalief Browder
Browder didn’t take his own life any more than his mother died as a result of heart trouble; rather, our country’s inefficient judicial system killed this young man and by extension his mother as well.
Piece 10: 12 Years a Slave
To study these two stories and the popular response to both is, I believe, to see with fresh eyes the expectation of the dominant culture in America that it is always the expected position of black bodies to be submissive to their pain and struggles while observers who are not themselves on the margins with black Americans cry for a moment and then move on with their lives: never changing, never changed.
piece 9: Get in the Way
This week’s three resources are all about John Lewis, a personal hero of mine whose life’s work was justice, equity, and liberation.
Piece 8: The Blood of Emmett Till
Over all this, I knew of course that black people – even children – could not truly be free around white people without being punished.