Psst, white friends! Did you start hearing the slogan “defund the police” a couple weeks ago? Me too! And you’re like, hm that’s interesting, I’ve read some articles and I get it, I even support it, but jeez the name is confusing people and there’s gotta be a better way to say it? I think […]
“Oh absolutely, I promise,” says the police officer in my local park. It’s my coffee walk on a beautiful sunny morning, about a quarter-mile from ritzy South Coast Plaza mall, and she’s in a pickup truck parked on the grass. Another female officer in another truck is parked across the concrete walking path 12 feet […]
This bullshit coroner’s report at least partly blaming George Floyd for his own death has me remembering how I learned from my daddy that sometimes the police lie. If you know me in real life, you might have heard me tell the story of how my dad — we called him Nurn — helped bring […]
Today is the 99th anniversary of the infamous Tulsa Race Massacre. On May 31-June 1, 1921, mobs of white people burned Black Wall Street to the ground and an unknown number of black people, at least in the hundreds, were killed. Hundreds more were injured, and thousands were left homeless. The city finally agreed earlier […]
Everywhere I go, all my life, all across this country, people smile and welcome me. They never seem to realize I’m a criminal. I break the speed limit to smithereens nearly every time I drive. I trespassed through the park last month when it was closed for quarantine. I’m deeply ashamed to say, I shoplifted […]
PSA: As we’re starting to see news of staggering racial disparities in COVID-19 death rates, watch out for perspectives that place blame on individuals instead of systems. THIS IS NOT ABOUT… It’s not about Black people making poor individual choices re: diet, exercise, self-care. It’s not about ostensibly neutral characterizations like “suffering higher rates of” […]
Beloved nonprofit friends. Beloved small-business friends. I beg you to believe me when I say the new federal CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program is not coming to save you. Speaking to you from my heart and from the best of my direct personal knowledge and experience so far: we must act in the belief that […]
The first day of Black History Month seems like an excellent occasion to share how Marcus Walton, the new President & CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, inspired a roomful of Los Angeles philanthropy sector folks this week. Myself included. “We need to be transformative in our transactions — but to what end? Thriving communities.” […]
New Racecar Report in honor of my birthday today! I’m a couple of chapters into The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, by Ellen D. Wu. Ever wondered why the infamously racist Chinese Exclusion Act was finally repealed in 1943, aka less than 30 years before I was born, […]
Whenever I heard the phrase “grandfathered in,” this photo was always what I imagined: the upstairs unit of the middle Cape Cod beach cottage that was my family’s rented little slice of heaven for two weeks every summer. I thought it just meant situations where the rules had changed but things that had been approved […]