Connecting Awesome People Podcast Appearance!

Image Description: An encircled picture of HR consultant Pharoah Bolding can be seen on a striped background. The words “Featured in today’s episode” are above the encircled picture in green and white. To the upper-right of the encircled picture in a blue and white circle. In the circle is a white silhouette of a microphone. Under the microphone is Pharoah’s name in green and white letters.

Hey, y'all! I'm on this week's episode of Cinder's Connecting Awesome People podcast! We get real and candid about the trauma of being Black, melanated, and intersectional in the workplace. We also talk about HR and DEI. And, if you know me or follow my work, you already know this wasn't some "baby gloves" conversation.

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/57osaWxRCNIFHEWGegukLX?si=JOonioSyQKGNSWzuJVC38A

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/connecting-awesome-people/id1728583997

[Image Description: An encircled picture of HR consultant Pharoah Bolding can be seen on a striped background. The words “Featured in today’s episode” are above the encircled picture in green and white. To the upper-right of the encircled picture in a blue and white circle. In the circle is a white silhouette of a microphone. Under the microphone is Pharoah’s name in green and white letters.]

Meanwhile

TW: Murder, racism, gun violence, white supremacy, anti-Blackness.

The white woman in this picture is Susan Lorincz. 4 days ago in Florida, Susan used a high-caliber firearm to murder Ajike Owens, a Black woman and mother of four. Why? Susan got into an argument with Owens' children over a tablet, which somehow escalated to Susan throwing a pair of skates at the children and hitting them. These actions were, of course, accompanied by a litany of racial slurs. One of Ajike's children went into the house and told their mother what happened. Ajike went to Susan's place and knocked on the door to confront her about the situation. How did Susan respond?

Susan shot Ajike through her front door, leaving her lying on the front lawn.

Ajike was pronounced dead at the hospital.

It took Florida's Marion County Sheriff's Department four days to book and charge Susan. You read that right. FOUR. DAYS. And let's be honest with one another: Susan was arrested because the Marion County Sheriff's Department couldn't ignore the public outrage from the Black community and their allies in Florida. But Susan isn't facing a trial for murder or a hate crime. Oh, no. Susan is being charged with manslaughter with a firearm, culpable negligence, battery, and two counts of assault. Yep. That’s it.

SIGH.

We're not going to play the "What if a Black person did what Susan did?" game because that game is tiring, and we all know what the answer would be. And we're not going to play the "What if a Black woman did what Susan did?" game because we all know how Black women are viewed by the toxic white supremacist patriarchal anti-Blackness that permeates the roots of the gnarled tree that is the United States of America. Why aren’t we playing those games, you ask? Well, for starters, it's a tasteless endeavor that diminishes the lives of those lost, making them examples for a lesson that most white people don't want to have taught them for various reasons. And let's be honest: unless you're a white person living under a quarry of rocks for the past century, you should know how this goes by now.

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