The story is old. A white woman’s fear costs a black man his freedom. The story is old. White woman sees black man where she does not want him to be and tells him to leave. You don’t belong here. Used to be a sidewalk. Now it’s a coffee house. Implicit bias? Overt bias? It […]
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“It’s not fair.” The first words out of my seven-year old’s mouth after leaving a birthday party turned barbecue at the home of one of her classmates. She had a great time, and her brother too as he tagged along for the party. I sort of knew what she meant when she said those words, […]
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The Sunday after the Charleston Massacre, churches all over the country prayed for the victims and their families. Taking their cue from the Emmanuel AME Church itself, pastors, reverends, and deacons encouraged their congregations to seek solace in God’s embrace. In addition, they implored their flock to show compassion and forgiveness. Their message encouraged togetherness in […]
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I’m just gonna compile my thoughts here given the conversations I’ve seen today. This will be updated as I think about it more. Initial thoughts: So I got thoughts on this NAACP lady. But this is a situation where I need more facts. But, to put it simply, I feel really uncomfortable with making people […]
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Cross posted on CocoaMamas Watching Ava DuVernay talk about Selma. Seeing black bodies beaten by white police officers. “That was the past. They should get over it.” You might think that these words came from the mouth of a conservative white male who is tired of talking about slavery, tired of talking about Jim Crow, and […]
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Hi all — Have a new post up on CocoaMamas. Photo: Me! All rights reserved. Our school district has recently started a new task force looking at minority achievement. In such a resource rich district, but also with many social inequalities, its unsurprising but still really angering that we have disparities in the rate of […]
Read MoreI wrote this at the end of August, after the murder of Michael Brown. Still relevant now. To my Beautiful Black children, This week you returned back home from spending the summer with your grandparents. For eight weeks, you engaged in what so many of our people have done for generations: spent the summers unburdened […]
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The beauty of black people is that tomorrow, we’re gonna get up. We’ve been here before. We’re gonna shower, get our children ready for school, and go to work. We’ve been here before. We’re gonna smile at our boss, at our co-workers. We’ve been here before. We’re gonna do our jobs. We’ve been here before. […]
Read MorePrayer works. I talked to God, I meditated in stillness, I listened for His still, small whisper. And He moved through me, and through the advice of others. During my ten days, I cancelled all kid’s evening activities going forward, and consolidated all our credit card debt with our credit union. Saving money + saving […]
Read MoreToday was an inspiring, thought-provoking, and exhausting day. I traveled from Stanford to UC Berkeley to attend a festschrift honoring a prominent, if modest and humble, legal scholar. Festschrifts are usually reserved for scholars who are retiring, or are held after a scholar has passed away. But the organizers of this event felt that this […]
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Doctor Mama Esquire 