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 […]
“With liberty and equity for all?” Doesn’t stir the heart in quite the same way as “justice for all,” does it? So why have I been using equity and justice like they’re synonyms when I talk about racial issues? Well, because I hadn’t yet read PRE’s introduction to Grantmaking with a Racial Justice Lens. Yesterday […]
SCENE: A couple of weeks ago at a national conference. I’m doing the slow crowd-waddle out of the plenary ballroom with hundreds of my fellow philanthropy professionals when I find myself next to a silverhaired Old-Timer whom I’ve known since I joined the field six years ago. ME: Wow, kind of amazing that they’re trying […]
On the scroll: my name, as a founding Steering Committee member for the LA County Center for Financial Empowerment. Not on the scroll: the names of 42,000 Angelenos who opened checking accounts via our BankOn initiative, thousands more who claimed their fair share of $15 million in EITC tax refunds through our Free Tax Prep […]
I’ve never felt quite at home in the name Amanda, and Mandy was my childhood, so I am leaning into using Andie as my nickname. It just feels more fun and less formal, you know? Amanda is still my real official name (and I’m still a girl!) so no worries if you still call me […]
Woohoo, I’m on spring break in Florida! Time for me to go wild and flash you with my three key takeaways from last month’s SPARCC webinar on Making the Case for Racial Equity with Dwayne Marsh, about how to show government officials the need for systemic change. 1. Racial equity is the business of government, […]