“If we just give them things, they won’t work to support themselves.” Who said this, a white politician in 1865 talking about reparations for slavery or a white politician in 2019 talking about food stamps? Ha! Trick question! The answer is, it’s both. Heard a radio news piece the other day about the Trump Administration’s […]
In tribute to Toni Morrison who passed away this week, I am finally sharing a story I’ve been trying to tell for a year — about how reading Beloved last summer unlocked a part of me that had been deliberately locked away for 30 years.
I am for gun control. (Shocker, I know.) So why am I worrying about the sudden groundswell of support for “red flag laws” that would allow folks to report dangerous people whose guns should be taken away? Because of this: More Perfect’s podcast on how our country’s first gun-control laws were designed to take weapons […]
Earlier this week, I got my mind blown at my organization Southern California Grantmakers’ first-ever conference on disability equity: “Enabling Foundations, Nonprofits and Partners to Include People with Disabilities.” Here are my favorite gems from the day, in hopes they may shine for you as well: “The fundamental question of our country is, who belongs? […]
Team retreat time again! Our theme was “Seeing the Future”, so we walked through a portal of black veils to enter Madame Essie Gee’s Psychic Emporium, aka the SCG conference room. Turns out crystal balls, tea leaves, Magic 8 Ball, and other mystical prognosticators from the dollar store don’t actually work… but fun, food, trust, […]
Morning walk. My around-the-corner neighbor is out washing his car in the glorious sunshine. He glances up as I approach. Do I catch or just imagine a flicker of apprehension? Is he wondering if I’m going to tell him to “go home” because he looks Asian-American, even though he clearly IS home in his own […]
Why am I here? I mean, obviously I’m here on Cape Cod because it’s so beautiful; can you believe this glorious sunset? (#nofilter!) And obviously because it’s a joy to be with three generations of my family in the place that Childhood Me spent all year looking forward to going for two weeks every summer […]
I want to say this with zero snark: of course Mitch McConnell thinks today’s Congressional hearings on reparations are unnecessary. I used to think so too! Because if you ask the question, “What do today’s white Americans owe to the descendants of slaves for things that happened centuries ago?”, it’s pretty easy to think that’s […]
Still stunned from attending the movie premiere of Emanuel about the mass murder at a Charleston, South Carolina church which took place four years ago last night. What hit my heart the hardest was how it suddenly showed me the pattern: these nine Black churchgoers were coldly, deliberately, and heartlessly ripped away from the husbands, […]
“Race-conscious policies are just reverse racism.” “Talking about race is what keeps us separated.” Really? As the brilliant Ibram X. Kendi points out in Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, generation after generation of white people in power in the U.S. were TOTALLY FINE with race-conscious policies that explicitly […]