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What Reconciliation Is Not
Reconciliation is not about keeping peace but making peace. And in order to make peace, one has to be willing to put themselves in situations that are uncomfortable, messy and seemingly chaotic. These...
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Preach, Sista! On Why Black Women May Not Be in Your Pulpit
Just a little video I did for #MennoNerds using placards because I was, well, quite literally voiceless. The irony!Filed under: Faith.Hope.Love
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Black History Month and the Precarious White Identity
We are now in the final week of Black History Month.* During this month long observance, Americans call to their consciousness the many contributions of black Americans in our society. Or at least that...
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The Limits of the Liberal Imagination
No matter how much liberals try to remove themselves from the burden of racism, white supremacist ideology – which governs all systems in America – holds them just as guilty to its effects. Like...
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Facing Racism, Embracing Hope Part I
“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America...
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Facing Racism, Embracing Hope Part II
Slavery. Convict leasing system. Sharecropping. Jim Crow. Restrictive housing covenants. Redlining. Eugenics. War on Drugs. Vietnam. Mass incarceration. Police brutality. 400 years of continual...
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Feigning Ignorance
In my brief 33 years of living, I have come across many people of all walks and stripes – conservatives, liberals, Christians, agnostic, men, women, rich and poor – who sincerely believe that blacks...
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The Danger of North Minneapolis’ Single Story: The Way We Talk About Black...
“Show a people as one thing and only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Danger of a Single Story. Dangerous. Crime ridden. Littered with trash...
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Black Gold
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. – Psalm 139.14, NASB I know that my identity as a black woman is affirmed...
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Do We Really Want Reconciliation? Or Are We Just Conflict Averse?
Can we all just get along? If you were around in the early 1990s, you would remember this challenge posed by Rodney King, a black man who was beaten by police officers in Los Angeles. To quell the...
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3 Things I’m Thinking About in Light of Orlando
It has been exactly a year since the horrific mass shooting took place in Charleston, North Carolina. As soon as I heard about this extreme act of terrorism against black bodies, I was quick to rush to...
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What It Means to Be a Woman in a Male Dominated World
Shamed for being too vulnerable, chastised for being strong. No permission to be weak, balancing the world on your shoulders. If you refuse, it just may topple. Few take up the mantle, the burden, to...
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Your Vision of Racial Reconciliation is Inadequate
I see you. I see your facebook posts and tweets calling for racial reconciliation in light of last week’s compounding tragedies. I see your vision for unity and peace, for America to bridge the racial...
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Give Me Faith…Like a Woman
Sometimes I feel like Moses, praying you would send someone else. At times I feel like Gideon, desperately looking for a sign that you have spoken to me. On occasion I feel like Saul, hoping to...
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Feelings
Sadness. Everywhere I go, freedom escapes me. And that hurts, like a thousand paper cuts on the knuckles of the thumb. When will the pain end? When will enough be enough? Link to image >Filed under:...
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Charleston
Your oppressors forced you to carry a cross, That they fashioned with their own hands That killed your loved ones and would eventually claim you. They made you say, “Father forgive them, they know not...
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Dirt
Dirt. Ending up in places you don’t belong. Whoever thought you could be the source of so much unhappiness? What did I ever do to you? Have you come to disturb my peace? Have you come to unearth its...
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Breathe
I can’t breathe. Your unrealistic expectations are suffocating me. But you can’t hear my cries for help, Over the noise of your ego. Maybe my existence clashes with your own. But I don’t need to die,...
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Angry Black Woman
How should I compose myself? Now that you have killed my children, Raped my mother, And beat me beyond recognition? You force me to live in dilapidated housing conditions, Where the rent is higher than...
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White
They told me I was white Because I did not speak like the other black girls So I stopped talking And learned to write instead. I hid behind the written word So that no one would ever call me that...
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