On Amber Ruffin and the Amazing Disappearing White House Correspondents Dinner

Back in March of this year, comedienne Amber Ruffin was announced as the featured entertainer at this year’s White House Correspondents Association dinner. It was all set in stone. The event was a go. Amber is an incredible comedienne, a pioneer in late-night television (when she joined Late Night with Seth Meyers' writing team, she became the first Black woman to write for a late-night network talk show in the United States), and more than deserving of the spotlight she was offered.

And then, during a podcast appearance, Amber called out the hateful, murderous actions of y'all's president and his cronies and made clear her focus at the White House Correspondents dinner would largely be on the president's actions.

And just like that, Amber Ruffin was out.

And just like that, Eugene Daniels, the White House Correspondents Association's president, said the group wanted to "refocus" the annual event on journalistic excellence and wouldn’t have a comedian going forward.

And just like that, y'all's president declared that the Correspondents dinner was no longer an event that acting presidents needed to attend, defeating the purpose of the whole thing, because he was obviously uncomfortable with his massive flaws being on display.

I posted about this back in March, as I felt it was a red flag for the abuses of Black women I saw on the horizon as well as the deterioration of free speech. Most of y'all didn't engage with that post.

But a whole lot of y'all engaged with my posts around Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel.

And while those cancellations are scary and emblematic of the direction we're going in as a country, guess what?

So was Amber's situation.

Where was y'all's outrage then? Wanna talk about that? Of course you don't. Y'all ain't ready for that kind of conversation.

Y'all also ain't ready to talk about the Venn Diagram of liberal viewpoints, anti-Blackness, and anti-Black woman and Black femme ideologies that so many of y'all be doin' the butterfly and the Tootsie Roll on while patting yourself on the back for standing up for something.

Holla at me when y'all are ready to chat.

[Image description: A picture of Black female comedienne Amber Ruffin, laughing while sitting on a red couch.]

Image description: A picture of Black female comedienne Amber Ruffin, laughing while sitting on a red couch.

On Crossing Streets, Clutching Pearls, and the "Danger" Debate

It's wild to me that people of pallor still do that thing to me where they see me coming and cross the street, clutch their purse, pull their kids "out of harm's way", or recoil in general when they see me in a store, restaurant, or out on a walk, minding my Black business. After 43 years on this planet, with at least 33 of those years spent observing this nonsense, I can't help but be amused by how ridiculous many people of pallor are with these ignorant antics.

People of pallor, I think I can speak for almost all Black people when I say that - and I cannot emphasize this enough - WE DON'T WANT YOU.

We're not out to get you. When we're out and about, living our lives? We don't want to engage with you unless we have to. We don't want anything in your purse.

And we definitely don't want yo' kids.

The overwhelming majority of us aren't out here to "endanger" people of pallor. We seriously don't want to be involved in any messiness with y'all, no matter how miniscule it may seem. We're just out here trying to live in a world that hates us, yet we're always painted as a threat to said world. It's preposterous. It's weak. It's old. And I think I can speak for most Black folx when I say that the less interactions and engagements we have to have with most people of pallor, the better.

In this economy? In this increasingly hostile country we live in?

No thank you.

Y'all are, and continue to be, more of a threat to Black bodies than we are to y'all, and you don't need to Google that to know that it's true.

I'm at the store, pink headphones on, listenin' to Clipse and buyin' some Triscuits, not even thinkin' of you, while you out here fleeing in terror and trying to get the attention of a staff member because melanin has "invaded" what you believe is "your space" and you feel squirmy in your white supremacist, anti-Black tummy.

Chile, please.

Your stomach feels that bad, you probably need to be grabbin' some Triscuits too.

On Rep. Nicole Collier, Texas, Democrats, and Black Women on Sabbatical

Rep. Nicole Collier, a Black woman and representative in the Texas legislature, was locked in a Texas state House Chamber overnight with her colleagues Gene Wu and Vince Perez because she and her colleagues rightfully refused to sign what was essentially a permission slip to be shadowed and surveilled by Texas law enforcement until Texas Republicans got their opportunity to vote on approving gerrymandering tactics that will render any non-Republican votes in the state damn near invalid in every election from now on.

If she signed the illegal "permission slip," Rep. Nicole would’ve had officers posted outside her Capitol office and following her everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. Democrats in Texas have shared that these police "escorts" tailed them on their Monday evening drives back to their homes after spending much of the day posted in their offices and watching their every move. One Texas Dem said their "escort" went with them for a staff lunch and even down the hallway with them for restroom breaks.

Rep. Nicole Collier was one of only three Texas Democrat who refused to sign. And her colleagues who didn't sign? Also from communities of color. Not a Representative of pallor to be found.

And so Rep. Nicole sat in a House Chamber with two of her melanated colleagues, overnight, standing up for her constituents who live in a majority-Black district that will be silenced with this hateful gerrymandering. Meanwhile, her other Democratic House colleagues, who were happily soaking in the cheers when they landed back in Texas after leaving the state in protest, signed the "permission slips" and left her and her colleagues who are actually about something to sit there, overnight, in a locked room. None of them thought she, Gene, and Vince were worth standing in solidarity with in the face of hate and oppression. Nope. They signed their "permission slips" and moved on with their day. I'm sure Rep. Nicole had things in her life she wanted to get back to and loved ones she wanted to be with last night, but she understood what her presence means for her constituents. So she was 10 toes down while her colleagues bounced.

Later, you can guarantee her colleagues will act like they respect Rep. Nicole's "bravery" before going right back to inactivity and virtue signalling. And in a week it'll be like none of this ever happened. Texas Dems, Dems in general, will learn nothing and apply nothing to how they operate in the future or how they show up for Black women and Black communities.

Rinse and repeat.

And y'all wonder why Black women are on an indefinite sabbatical from saving y'all.

On Adriana Smith, Anti-Blackness, Experimentation, and Disregard for Black Uteruses and Black Women

Trigger warning: Descriptions of anti-Black woman hate and harm, anti-Blackness, and reproductive trauma.

Adriana Smith and her family should've never had to endure this horrible and traumatic public experiment in postmortem childbirth.

What Georgia did to Adriana Smith would never happen to a person of pallor with a uterus. And there's nobody out there that can tell me otherwise, because trying to deny this fact is an openly raised middle finger to the history of the mistreatment and bodily harm done to Black women and Black bodies for centuries on stolen land.

Even in a country that is on the fast track to remove reproductive rights and body choice from every person with a uterus and jail people for making personal choices that have nothing to do with the state, there is no way this would've been allowed to happen if Adriana Smith were a person of pallor. The news would've been running stories every damn day. Reproductive rights lawyers would've been coming out of the woodwork. But that didn't happen, did it?

And we all know why.

So instead of people of pallor and pallor-led legal aid organizations with power and positionality who claim they care about reproductive rights partnering with Adriana's family to fight for her rights, as they would with any cis woman of pallor with a uterus (because, let's be real, that's about all they would stand up for), last Friday, Georgia performed a C-section on a Black woman who was declared brain-dead in February and forced to be on a ventilator to conceive a child because, you know, laws and sh**.

And now, this 1-pound, 13-ounce child whose deceased mother was kept on a ventilator, unable to provide the nutrients needed to fully nurture his growth and development, is now fighting for his life in the neonatal intensive care unit because, you know, laws and sh**.

Cis women of pallor love quoting The Handmaid's Tale to describe the level of danger people with uteruses are in while openly choosing not to sit with the undeniable fact that Black women and Black bodies have always been subject to centuries of Handmaid's Tale-level sh** at the hands of people of pallor since colonizers forced Black bodies into chattel slavery.

Adriana deserved better.

Her child deserved better.

Black women deserve better.

How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported

Image description: a faux cover to a cookbook entitled, "How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported: Authentic Ethnic Flavors for Bigots who Don't Deserve Them."

It never shocks me how much ethnocultural impact communities of color, the Global Majority, Black and Brown folx, have on people of pallor and what they think is the "American way" of life.

There is no "U.S. culture" without melanin building its foundations and giving the whole thing flavor and life.

A whole lot of y'all hate AAPI communities, yet love your Christmas Day Chinese dinner.

A whole lot of y'all hate Black folx but love fried chicken, peanut butter, every bit of southern cuisine on the continent, and hundreds of dishes and food combinations created by Black folx as the original struggle meals that you now posit as "upscale cuisine."

A whole lot of y'all hate Indigenous communities but have stolen their fashion and cultural heritage to use as aesthetics to deck out your bodies and homes.

A whole lot of y'all hate Mexican, Hispanic, and Latine communities but enjoy the creature comforts of the food they harvest, cultivate, and grow.

But, you know, gon' 'head and deport and endanger the legitimate backbone of your country like it's not going to upend the comfy-ass multi-colored tapestry of an existence you live in and benefit from.

[Image description: a faux cover to a cookbook entitled, "How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported: Authentic Ethnic Flavors for Bigots who Don't Deserve Them."]