There are White people who comment on my articles with words dripping with disdain at my audacity to continue to discuss the events of slavery.

I’ve become very familiar with the following statements:

“Slavery was hundreds of years ago. Why are Black people still talking about it?”

“I wasn’t even born. I didn’t own slaves and neither did my family. Why is this my problem?”

“Black people just want to turn all White people into racists and blame us for everything wrong in their lives.”

“It’s not my fault Blacks have a hard time in this country; they just need…

I was abused physically, mentally, and sexually by my ex-husband who was my first real boyfriend and my first introduction to romantic relationships.

I met him when I was an 18-year-old bright-eyed, innocent college freshman. The first ten years of my adult life were entrenched in fear, pain, trauma, confusion, mistrust, and mental distress. Add giving birth and attempting to raise two small children to that scenario and this creates a particularly precarious existence for a young woman under the age of thirty.

Post-divorce and through the healing process, I regularly attended therapy. I loved and loathed my sessions which…

“I don’t understand how I could have been born with privilege. I’ve been struggling as a single parent my entire adult life and I grew up poorer than you did, Jeanette.”

I took a deep breath to gather myself before attempting to have this conversation. I was speaking with a friend and from previous conversations like this one, I quickly learned that friendships with White people rarely survived talks about race and privilege.

“It’s not necessarily about wealth. It’s more about the entitlement that comes with a person’s proximity to whiteness.”

My friend cocked her to the side and squinted…

I get it.

No one wants to be called a derogatory name. We would all like to be regarded as kind, decent, and loving human beings.

But isn’t it more important to actually be a decent person than to be a terrible one who hides from accountability?

I’ve witnessed White people become enraged at the mere suggestion that they may harbor racist ideals, but these same people can witness injustice and not bat an eyelash. How is that possible? How is it that we live in a world where a label carries more weight than actual discrimination, brutality, and death?

…

Critical race theory (CRT) has been a dominant topic in conservative news over the past year and has particularly heightened within the past few months. The concern of CRT being taught in grades K-12 fueled by Republican lawmakers such as Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, New Hampshire State Representative Keith Ammon, Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, Kentucky State Representative Joe Fischer, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has evolved into heated confrontations between parents and administrators in school board meetings across the country.

With all the uproar about CRT, after reading several articles and watching videos on this debate, it is…

Advocating for freedom and justice is not pretty.

It is arduous work that is often done behind the scenes, away from photo ops or recognition. Those of us who engage in this work do not do it for the accolades, we do it to save the lives of our families and future generations. There is nothing glamourous about fighting white supremacy and when we write about it, it cannot be tied into a neat little bow in the end because inequality and death are not gifts anyone desires.

Although the destruction caused by racism in America has never been a…

I first learned of the devastatingly destructive Greenwood massacre in college. My father had given me a brief history as a child, but it wasn’t until I took an African-American studies class as an adult that I learned the true horror that took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma between May 31, 1921, and June 1, 1921.

There was no mention of the Greenwood community in any history class I’d ever taken or in any school textbook I had ever read. It was as if the most horrific tragedy of its time had been completely erased from America’s memory. Instead, my classmates…

May 25, 2020, began as a normal day for George Floyd.

The release of video and pictures from Floyd’s trip to the Cup Foods store during the Derek Chauvin trial revealed Floyd to be in a calm and jovial mood. He stood patiently in line as women, children, and others walked by him and could be seen laughing and joking with some of the workers and patrons. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary that day at first glance, but it would be impossible to know the events that would occur moments later.

In the weeks and months after…