Four Global Lessons From Locally Driven DEI Efforts - 07.02.19

In order to change the odds for marginalized children, social organizations must root their racial equity work in a commitment to learn from and be led by those who have experienced inequity themselves.

Happy Father’s Day, Frog - 06.17.18

He was furious. Dad was always ready for a good laugh, so the look of disgust on his face was new to me. He sat up straight on the edge of the couch with a beer in one hand and the remote control pressed angrily in the other, all 110 pounds and 5'5" of him leaning into bitterly flicking the channel away from the offending program. I was about ten years old and completely delighted to have learned something new about my father: he passionately hated the Dallas Cowboys.

On “Good” Blacks - 07.14.16

I spent 13 wonderful years in Fairhope Public Schools, where I was valued, lauded and very, very good. I was a gifted student, the spelling bee champion, the student council president; I even won a creativity award at a beauty pageant once.

I achieved these things despite relative economic disadvantage in well-to-do Fairhope, as my sisters and I also received free lunch and numerous demonstrations of support over the years. Generous people funded our school trips and Christmas celebrations; when I won enough scholarships to attend Georgetown University in 2002, I received a standing ovation at Senior Night. I loved Fairhope, and Fairhope loved me.

But my Fairhope experience also took something from me because it introduced me to a puzzling and frustrating paradox. Many of my white teachers and friends saw my blackness as both something that I'd overcome and something that I didn't really possess. This is the trap of the "exceptional black"--the one who is articulate, poised, genteel even. I was so good that at times, people assured me that I wasn't really black at all! While passing a group of black teens, my friends would roll their eyes and tell me, "Thank God you're not one of them."

TRAYVON MARTIN - 05.04.16

Photo: David Shankbone [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

We are nearly halfway through 2016, and yet I remember clearly how I found out that Trayvon Martin had died. I was sitting in my office, chatting to my sister who had called unexpectedly. She told me the story about a boy in Florida named Trayvon who had very recently been killed walking home one night. How he was 17 years old. How he had a bottle of sweet tea and a bag of Skittles on him as he died.

WHY I “LET” HIM GRAB ME - 10.09.16

When one of my best friends told me that she had been sexually assaulted during a job interview, my first reaction was to rage. Yes, I raged against the man who had put his hands on her and asked her to do disgusting things. But I also raged against my friend — against her sitting there, against her decision not to report him and tear his company down, against her “letting him do it.” I cried, I shouted, I fumed. She sat there.