What President Obama Should Have Said

Good evening fellow Americans.

Once again I must address the nation after the death of an unarmed Black child. None of us know for certain what happened that night between Mike Brown and the officer, but what we do know is that throughout American history, Black people have often found themselves the victims of fatal police brutality. That is not disputable. That is a reality that we must address as a nation, not only in Ferguson, but in communities of color from coast to coast.

I want to first of all, thank the grand jury tonight for taking on an incredible task.

I want to share my grief with the parents of Mike Brown. Their grace and bravery are attributes we should all try to model tonight.

We are a nation of laws. We are routed in the strength and tenacity of our laws. But we know that throughout history, lynching was once the law of the land. We know that segregation was once the law of the land.  And we know that laws that don’t serve our most vulnerable citizens, our poor, our ethnic, gender, racial and sexual minorities, are unjust laws.

As the President of the United States of America, I am profoundly disappointed in what appears to be a gross miscarriage of justice by the prosecutor in St. Louis County. This display tonight was in no way a reflection of our justice system. And because of that, I have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a full and thorough investigation of the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney ‘s office.

I will also be introducing legislation tomorrow, and am asking for full bipartisan support, of the Civil Rights Act of 2014, which will permit federal grand jury indictment and/or prosecution of any law enforcement official who uses deadly force on unarmed civilians because of the other person's race, color, religion or national origin. This law will call for a mandatory jury selection of 50% reflection of the race, color, religion, or national origin of the victim.  This will require that all law enforcement who are indeed making deadly decisions based on race or color be prosecuted fairly and to the fullest extent of the law.

We will not tolerate, in our America, a system that says to hell with its citizen. We will rise from this. A nation stronger. A nation more united. A nation more just.

Due to the gravity of this situation, the parents who are suffering, the police officer involved, a city trying to reconcile and a nation at a loss for words, I will not be taking questions tonight. 

Thank you and God Bless America. 

A Girl's Girl

Something strikes me about a woman who is not interested in being friends with another woman. Something in my head clicks off when I meet a woman, of a certain age, who says, “I don’t mess with a whole bunch of females.”

Insert a crazy emoji here?

I’ve learned, through not that many trials, that being a friend to a woman is one of the best things I could do. Having the solidarity of gender is comforting, rewarding, exciting and enduring. Women of any sexuality. Women of any race. Women of any social standing and cultural norms. I’ve found that there is something particularly special about being friends with women.

One of my best friends!

And I’ve hit the jackpot.

Ever since my failed high school friendships of the late 90s and turn of the century, that ended in catfights and some girl sleeping with a guy I’d been crushing forever, I realized that the gift of discernment was key in creating mutual respect in adult sisterhood.

When I went away to college, I met many of my best girlfriends in my first two or three months. I entered college and created meaningful relationships with women I shared countless hours with talking about absolutely nothing. I learned the power of sisterhood as I moved to being an emotional wreck, melodramatic, deeply gendered, fearful of life with girls who were too. We ate, we pinched our waists, we watched one another put on makeup, we gossiped, and we kept one another in check. We got on each other’s nerves. But we seemed to move through life seamlessly with one another, always checking in, always filtering our thoughts to ensure we weren’t hurting one another. We took breaks when needed. We sat in silence together. We cuddled one another through breakups and sat silently in intimate spaces waiting for humorous interruptions that never came. And then we grew up, and out, and on.  And though graduation staggered for many of us, text messages saved us. We laughed out loud. We sent one another pictures. We stayed loyal to the history of our sisterhood and whenever we got back together we picked up where we left off. Homecoming was always great. Even when it was bad, it was great. The best part of it all was that I got to spend it with people who knew me. I didn’t have to remind them that I slept walked. I never hid myself when I undressed.  I never coded my words to sound more intellectual. We slept in bed together, as late adult women, updating one another on our love lives. We shared makeup and roamed one another’s closets. I feel like I’m with myself. I feel normal, and safe, and free. When we are around one another, I want to stay forever.

One of my great adult friends!

They are for me a retreat and I wouldn’t know life well, without them.

And then there are my adult friends. The funny, festive girls I met when I arrived in DC. We all shared a love for our people. A love for sacrificing. To see the greater good met through politics and government action. We weren’t particularly young in our minds, but old in our spirits. They talked me through many of my most notable decisions in life. They’ve kept my spirits high. They counseled me like no one else ever could. They remind me of a secret saliency sisterhood. They are like the navy seals. They do it all, they get it done, no applause needed. They reinforce my hope in the world. They are amazing human beings who do amazing things that no one will ever know about. They are humble, and sweet, and supportive. They are cheerleaders and humility seekers. They are funny and pretty. They get petty and throw shade. And we don’t know every detail of each others lives. We all have other friends. But when we get together, we share something that is unique, kind, and familiar.

And I wouldn’t know life well, without them.

 And then there are the many other, sprinklings of women whose friendships have tremendous meaning. The girlfriend who tells me to go for it. The girlfriend who helps me understand that teaching isn’t about getting a fat check, but a daily struggle with little rewards. And then there’s the girlfriend who rewrites my resume and pushes me toward every amazing opportunity she has access to. And then there’s the girlfriend who texts me every now and again just to see what’s up. And then there’s the girlfriend who loves to brunch. The one who catches me up on her life for hours. Then there’s the best friend. The girlfriend who’s known me since I was a girl scout. Who manages to pull every secret I’ve ever kept hidden deep inside? Who manages to keep me thinking, smiling, and growing in our friendship every year and in better ways.

And so I’m glad I don’t know what it’s like to know life without them. I’ve really had the pleasure of meeting some of the very best girls. They’ve impacted my life. Every square inch of it, in ways that matter impeccably. And I don’t see any of them every day. But they make me believe in the power of amazingly healthy, productive female relationships.

I’d recommend those relationships to all women. 

One of my college friends

I prefer not to be friends with women who don't like or find something special about being in relationship with other women. Sure, women can be catty and all the other stereotypical things that people say of women. But I find that if you lack the emotional understanding to be in relationship with another woman, I just don't trust you. If you have, as a woman, warded off women as some subspecies, then I've got no time for you. I'm not interested in women who've had bad experiences with other women which clouds their judgment of the whole gender. I don't want to know a woman who is so emotionally dishonest with herself that she's separated herself from other women. After all, you are internalizing your own self image and should do some serious soul searching. 

15 Reasons Why You Too Are A Black Hipster

Me at AfroPunk Festival 2012

So, the other day, a kid (probably young 20-something) told me that I must’ve been a Black hipster. Oh, the irony in that statement. After writing and talking about extensively what it means to be a Black gentrifer in a Black community, it’s an interesting mental journey to then think about what it means to be a Black hipster. 

So, I started thinking about all the ways I’m not a hipster, which led me to take this interesting, comical journey on the 15 things that make me a Black Hipster.

1.    You know who Kara Walker and Bansky are. Sure Black hipsters frequent the Studio of Harlem and practically know every artistic director at Alvin Ailey by heart, but true Black hipsters, love abstract and mystery in their art. And Black hipsters love to discuss their love of little known artists as well as upcoming mainstream, critically acclaimed, thought provoking artists like Kara Walker. 

2.    You frequent the Everyday People Brunch. There’s brunch on the lower east side on Sundays at Sons of Essex, and then there’s the hipster haven casual street style brunch that will land you on Chef Roble’s instagram or on the pages of Essence Street Style section. Every Black hipster has to go once, just to say it’s pretentious. 

3.    Solange is your fashion ideal. While Lupita was coming to steal Solange’s glory, before that Met Ball stunt, Solange remains queen. Solange is to Black hipsters, what Beyonce is to the rest of the world. Everything. 

4.    Everything is vintage, thrifted, and or from a neoclassical, contemporary designer. Let’s face it, Black hipsters hate Michael Kors as much as they hate Louis Vuitton. If it’s not from a thrift store or a flea market, they probably won’t own it. If they must buy something, it’s probably from Alexander Wang or 3:1 Phillip Lim. They’d scoff at anyone who didn’t know who these designers were. They cringe at the phrase “red bottoms.”

5.    You don’t believe in Brazilian bundles. Your hair is in a natural style (twists, afro, braids, locks).  Because straight hair makes us feel weird, or fancy, or both. 

6.    You love music festivals. Every summer (without fail) you are standing in mud in your Hunter boots (thrifted) listening to Kid Cudi on Roosevelt Island. You live from Afro Punk festival, singing all the words to Common’s “There is a Light.”

7.    You like to brag about your technological inadequacies. Black hipsters love to talk about how unplugged they are. They love to brag about how “late” they started a twitter account. They love to discuss how they don’t understand Facebook. 

Me in the mean streets on Paris

8.    You are Anti-Flyover states. Black hipsters love to vacation on the East Coast, California or the Rest of the World. Black hipsters have little tolerance for vacationing in Atlanta or partying with friends in Minnesota. Black hipsters love to vacation in San Francisco or Los Angeles. If they’ve visited the west coast 3 times too many times, and there’s no major concert happening in Philly, they go frolicking across Spain for two weeks. Most Black hipsters don’t believe Oklahoma is a state. 

9.    You love liberation t-shirts and activist pins. Nothing says, I’m an activist like a t-shirt about Steve Biko. Black hipsters love to protest with their clothes.

10.     You love TravelNoire and  Street Etiquette. 

11.    You live in Brooklyn. Let’s face it, just like our often-disparaged counterparts; Black hipsters love to live near other Black hipsters. While complaining about the original Black hipster neighborhood, Fort Greene, many Black hipsters have moved outward towards Bushwick and on the edges of East New York in search of cheaper rent and more authentic “BK” experiences. 

12.    You have a blog. You may ride your bike downtown to your financial analyst firm, but by night you write abstract things about abstract conversations you had with your equally as abstract friends. 

Somewhere protesting

13.     You’re addicted to Etsy. After you’ve spent countless hours on pintrest and polyvore, you’ve decided to purchase a homemade, unique piece from a little known artist on Etsy. What’s more to love.  

14.     Anti-Kindle. You can always spot a Black hipster on the train by their expensive eyewear deeply immersed in an old worn out, 25 cents copy of “The Souls of Black Folk.” The truth is, we take pride in reading real newspapers and going to real bookstores. To really spot a Black hipster, you will notice the shelves of old magazines they hoard in their home. 

15.     Non-prescription glasses, hats, and skinny jeans oh my!

I’m aware that one can be many labels at once and a different points in their life. This list is meant to be a funny take on my life and ways that I AM a Black Hipster while not identifying as a Black hipster AT ALL. Lol. 

The Best Way to #BringBackOurGirls?

I wish I did, but I did not take this picture. 

So….I read an article the other day about how tweeters using the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag are complicit in the military intervention and presumed future US government attacks in Nigeria. The article also took light this idea that social media campaigns could change ‘anything.’

Let’s just say I beg to differ.

I’m clear that being able to use social media as a platform to raise awareness, is a privilege. I’m clear that being able to organize, whether online or in the streets, without a real credible threat of solitary confinement or death, is a privilege. I’m also clear, that the first world level of consciousness of human rights abuses that happen in far-off lands, allow us to experience temporary rage that will seem unauthentic and careless. I get it. I’ve got privilege all around me and for a variety of reasons.

But let's be clear, as someone who rallies, marches, protests, chants, etc.-I STILL believe in the power of social media campaigns. Because I know that hashtags and "online activism" has inspired, started and fueled many on the ground campaigns that have resulted in a ton of political changes. It IS valid and it absolutely does matter and most people who are saying otherwise have NO IDEA how social media campaigns (which take a lot of strategy, phonebanking, 'real life' meetings, etc) work. Awareness is power. It is our duty to elevate the voice of the NIGERIAN woman who created the hashtag. People have some nerve on their quest for authenticity. Go somewhere and eat an organic kale chip behind your MacBook Air in your gentrified neighborhood, across the street from your Seattle brewed coffee shop. 

This article does raise questions/address a serious concern we should have with foreign citizens inspiring foreign governments. We have just validated our government's right to intervene in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation. That comes with a price that we don't have to pay. However, Nigeria has GOT TO DO BETTER. I will not stand by, shake my head, and post anti-hashtag articles out of respect for a nation with a long history of corruption and disenfranchisement (not to negate our own historical challenges in these areas). There are amazing people that live in Nigeria and they do not deserve our silence. They deserve our respect and our support in ensuring the lives of these human trafficked girls are not only saved but enhanced. You don't like the method? Put forth, organize and create a new method to ensure this never happens again.

I don't mind playing a backseat to my Nigerian sisters and brothers.  However, as a person of African descent, I will not, in 2014 sit back and watch other people of African descent be enslaved at any level and not raise my voice until the solutions meets everyone's needs. The next step is, and where often the momentum gets lost, how do we best insert ourselves as citizens to hold our OWN government accountable for how they intervene in an international crisis without the proper tools (read: consciousness) for being true helpers rather than military interveners? How do we hold our own government accountable for search and rescue rather than shoot and kill? How do we play good when we are known for being bad? How do we tackle the challenges that lay before us which do not take the lives of marginalized girls (educated or not) serious in our own country and abroad? How do we make our bodies visible when they are not in crisis?

Tweeting is a first step that many people will take. It is a step that will raise awareness for a lot of people. Everyone who’s retweeting isn’t engaged in slacktivism. That second step will undoubtedly include a lot less people. But that doesn't mean the first step is invalid. It also doesn't mean that we've collectively figured it all out but awareness is powerful. Because we do have the power to bring our girls back. What we do with that power, how we propel that power, how we hold that power accountable, the tactics that that power employs, and how we transform that power into a supporting role-is the area we need to seek clarity in. 

It is both alarming and dangerous to think that the kidnaping of these girls justifies any U.S. government response that is militaristic. But it is also equally as dangerous to assume that arm-chair liberalism will save the U.S. from responding to the resounding cry for action. Both are valid points, worthy of extensive exploration. 

The Curious Case Against Poor People’s Parenting

“When are we going to hold these parents accountable. The teachers are great. It’s what comes to them that is the problem. These parents don’t read to their kids. We need to teach them how to parent.”

 -said some self-proclaimed liberal that was not me

My amazing nephews

All I knew was: I was broken. That I had come from a place too wrong; that the good teachers, just like the good pastors, in my neighborhood were going to make me right. The fix: Helping me understand why being a CNA making $10 an hour would be my dream job. That’s what Ms. Jackson told me I should be. That was a “good job” she called it for a Black girl. This was in 1991 not 1931.

 I was broken.

I saw the extra clothes given to me at school. I saw the extra boxes of lunch thrown in my backpack. I heard the whispers from adults around me. They thought we were hungry. They thought we needed counseling because of the gun shots at night. They always wanted to give my mother services-after school, Saturday soup kitchens, free basketball programs. I heard the whispers from the adults in the building that we didn’t know who our father was and that our mother was working so many jobs she didn’t know where the school was.

We were poor, yes. But almost none of those statements many of the teachers in my schools made about me and my siblings were true.

The dreams many of our teachers had for us were crushing. Many of them found compromising careers for us because well “…everyone can’t go to college, after all.” Our parents, many of whom, never graduated high school and couldn’t find a university on a map, were accepting of teachers’ professional career advice. My parents, and many in my neighborhood, sent us to school in good faith. My mother never questioned an A. She didn’t know an A in my inner city elementary school was not the same A on the other side of town where the white children played. And yet we rose, she sent me to school always on time. She sent me there fed and clothed. And when there were gun shots outside she turned the Cosby show up louder and we watched from under the bunk beds. And she scrubbed me down until I smelled like Ivory soap. And she read stories to me at night and would pop our hands if we lost focus while reciting multiplication problems. And when she worked nights, my father would make us veal parmesan while reading us stories about Langston Hughes. I wanted to be Langston.

The truth was, we ate pretty well. Sure, we were poor, but during tax time, we were riding high. My mother was and is a hard working, God fearing, union member, who believed that if she just sent her children to school and they worked real hard, they would go far. Very far. Because that’s what we do in America she would say with naiveté.

My mother, and my father for that matter, sent us to school with full faith in the system. That not only what we were learning was preparing us for college but for some amazing career. My parents, to their knowledge were engaged parents. They didn’t think that their neighbors or pseudo-intellectuals, or the people that sat on their pews in church were making judgments about how they parented.  They didn’t realize that they were fodder and gossip for teachers during lunch time who made gross stereotypes about how poor people parent. My parents had no idea that they, and parents just like them, were subject to so many debates on parental responsibility.

They didn’t know that there were people, real people, many of whom consider themselves liberal, who believed that if my parents and parents like them just had the sense enough to read to their children, instill values in them, reinforce a culture of learning, then that would change the trajectory of our lives. That somehow if they, as parents, could be held accountable, then the drop out rate for African American children would drastically reduce. My parents would be shocked to know people thought that way about them.

Some people call it respectability politics. I call it bullshit. Condescending bullshit. In fact, there is nothing more conservative and bootstrappy than to blame poor people for having poor people problems like faith in a failed system.

When did this vicious rumor start that poor people don’t read to their kids!?!?!

What’s even more fascinating is this liberal condensation that it’s not about teacher accountability but parental accountability. Because people love binaries. It’s about holding the entire system, which has failed generations of people (including the parents) accountable.

I continue to struggle with this embrace that my newly minted middle class sisters and brothers have with blaming parents. Because they had parents who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and were deeply invested in their education then somehow people who didn’t “make it” parents must have not? Many of them, light intellectuals, but intelligent nonetheless believe whole hardly that poor people, very specifically, poor Black and Brown people inhabit a culture that prohibits them from valuing educational success. I suppose that’s a daring statement if you take it straight like that. And yet I hear it in insensitive statements, calling into question poor people’s judgment for even having children at all. It is also a common theme that is echoed in the whole “Education starts at home.” They mean poor homes, because they just assume it starts in middle and upper class homes already?

How do you expect to change an education system, a system you find uniquely insurmountable, by denigrating the millions of poor parents who rely on it as their only service for education? I suppose educational excellence and the expectation of high results from a public system is a middle class value that poor and minority people must not know anything about?

That is fundamentally classist and deeply harmful. And I am not torn on that fact. There is the undercurrent of disdain for poor people, especially Black poor people.  There is a need to want to fix them. There is this myth that if we fix the way poor Black people parent then we will have fixed the problem of education in America. I would venture to say that there is such hatred, such a need to want to fix as if they are uniquely broken, poor Black parents.

What is liberal about finding disgust with how poor Black people parent? And please explain to me how the decision to chose parental accountability over systemic failure, which should not be a choice, is progressive?

If you are looking for something to be mad at, a place to point your rage, a place to expend your critique of what is wrong with the educational system, you should investigate the policies of bureaucracy and the politics of the status quo. You would find that there are people who are deeply invested in your blame of poor parents. You will find that there are people invested in your desire to want to legislate parenting.

And if I were to blame my parents for anything at all, I’d blame them for not challenging, standing up and marching in the streets against an education system that not only failed them but their children. If I were to blame my parents at all, I would blame them for not understanding that all teachers are not created equal. I would blame them for not understanding that having good faith in a broken system is not going to fix it.