This Week's Opening Thought: September 12, 2022

This week's opening thought: Real talk? I have no energy to put into debates with white people and Global Majority folx who are unwilling to untether themselves from white supremacy's anchors about topics like Queen Elizabeth II's passing. Her family has all the right in the world to mourn her passing. But if we're all expected to collectively front about what the Royal Family has, does, and will continue to represent on a global scale and act like the now-deceased Queen wasn't someone who capitalized from and perpetuated colonization and hate, then we're trippin', y'all.

We're supposed to all be mourning the passing of a person with a title that doesn't matter anymore who didn't want melanated children in her family, obviously looked down on most people and communities of color across the world, and has hundreds of white supremacist colonizer photo ops on the books. Y'all serious?

Nah. I'm tight. Miss me with that.

No debate.

I will put some energy into debating with y'all Jay-Z's "God Did" verse, however. Frankly, it's not his best work, yet some of y'all are acting like it's the verse of the year! What's up with that?

Discuss.

This Week's Opening Thought: September 6, 2022

This week’s opening thought: people change when they feel it is worthwhile for them and the people in their lives to change and evolve, to be better, more equitable, and humane individuals.

The homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist, racist, classist, white supremacy-driven, religion-bashing people in your life could change if they felt it was worthwhile.

But they don’t.

Real talk? No matter how much you try to reason with those family members, parents, long-time friends, and co-workers to help them see how their hateful views harm you and others, you’ll walk away sad and frustrated. No matter how much empathy you try to hold for them, those people send you a loud and clear message: changing their beliefs for you isn’t a worthwhile enough endeavor.

Yeah, that sounds harsh. I know it does. And I don’t mean to harm anyone with these words. But I have been on the journey you’re likely on right now, trying to “reform” hateful people, and that journey is a long and painful one that rarely yields positive dividends. Some people in your life will never stop being harmful to you, no matter how much they swear they love and care about you. Who you are will always be in direct opposition with their comfort and need to be hateful to avoid processing their traumas.

You deserve better relationships than that. We all do.

Don’t allow co-dependence and the “eternal hope” that someone will change and evolve to stop you from seeing that it is time for your energy to be placed elsewhere. You deserve warmth and sunshine, not a reasonable facsimile thereof.

This Week's Opening Thought: August 15, 2022

This week’s opening thought: I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it is more than OK to just go to work, do your job, and go home. Don’t let white supremacist patriarchal workplace culture tell you otherwise.

You don’t need “family.” You’ve got family at home. Work ain’t the Olive Garden unless you work at the Olive Garden. And even then? When you’re there, you ain’t family. It’s a job, yo.

You don’t need to participate in workplace gossip and be privy to John in Accounting not liking Cheryl from the Development team. That sh—ain’t got nothing to do with you, and contrary to popular belief, knowing all the goings-on in the office doesn’t build team chemistry or camaraderie. It creates animosity and a lack of trust and faith in others.

You don’t need to attend every after-work extracurricular activity, like the happy hours, company picnics, and holiday “celebrations.” I can tell you from experience that going to those things won’t give you an extra step up over someone for a promotion or pay raise, especially if you’re Black, Brown, or Indigenous. I can also tell you from experience that hanging out with work acquaintances while they drink and say and do the same ignorant things they do at work is not fun. And besides, they ain’t paying you.

Some of y’all probably read the above and thought, “That’s pretty antisocial Pharoah.” Is it, though? I’m not saying not to build working relationships that allow you to complete your workload in a cohesive and timely manner. I’m not saying you shouldn’t care about the people you work with 40 hours a week. I’m saying that the “social norms” of white supremacist patriarchal workplace culture isn’t being sociable – it’s a culture of enmeshment that causes short and long-term harm. What most workplaces consider a “family culture” is, in actuality, a busted rickety toxic family system that has only ever worked for a select few.

White supremacist workplace cultures breed a particular “we’re a team of soloists” mentality that echoes the collective heteronormative society. Most workplace cultures thrive on divisiveness and pettiness. They thrive on belittlement and scapegoating. Their lifeblood is using others to get ahead and supporting a lack of empathy and care from the top down. And real talk?

Nobody needs to spend more time in those environments than they already do.

It is OK to go to work, do your job, and go home. The people at your job are not your “family.”

You’ve got family at home, whether “conventional” or chosen.

Your allegiance is to you and yours, first and foremost. Your allegiance is not to the toxic environment that pays your bills. Your allegiance is to your joy, happiness, and harnessing the energy you want to have to be present in your life outside work.

Clock out on time and throw up dem deuces on the way out the door.

This Week's Opening Thought: August 1, 2022

This week’s opening thought: once you understand how white supremacy operates and how it manifests in the actions and beliefs of people starting from an early age, you can’t unsee it. You can’t unsee how it plays out in your workplace, community, and city. You can’t ignore how it permeates the politics, policies, and laws we see our local and federal politicians and lawmakers weaponize daily. To know of white supremacy and the generational harm it has caused, even if your understanding is in its infancy, and to still consider it not to be “that dangerous” or not a danger at all? That’s not ignorance.

That’s a choice.

If you are white and you see harm being done to non-white people, to white people, at the hands of white supremacist ideologies, and you understand that these ideologies exist and have existed for generations? There’s no way you can reverse unseeing it and acting like it’s not happening?

That’s a choice, regardless of the generational trauma your white ancestors have passed on to you.

If you are a member of the Global Majority and you witness harm being done to non-white people at the hands of white supremacist ideologies, and you understand that these ideologies exist and have existed for generations? There’s no way you can reverse unseeing it, especially if you’ve been on the receiving end of white supremacy’s blade or watched someone with your skin tone be hurt or hurt someone who looks like you. Acting like it’s not happening to others? Gaslighting yourself?

That’s a choice, even if that choice is prompted by current and generational trauma that has been passed on to you, having a hand in you passing harm on to others.

You get to choose if ignoring the white supremacy running rampant around you and perpetuated by you is, in your opinion, in your best interest. I will not add quotations to that last part because that is your choice. But please believe that your choices have consequences – in the present and future.

People get to choose not to be a part of your life, workplace, and the communities you live in and try to build relationships with them as a response to your choice to be a white supremacist or to openly or passively aid and abet white supremacy.

Choose wisely.

This Week's Opening Thought: July 25, 2022

TW: Discussion of hate crimes, anti-Blackness, murder, lynching.

This week’s opening thought: Emmett Till would’ve been 81 years old today.

Emmett Till should’ve been celebrating his 81st birthday today with friends and family.

But he’s not.

Instead, we’re five weeks away from the sad, traumatic 67th anniversary of his torturing and lynching at the hands of white supremacists at the behest of a white “damsel in distress.”

But, you know, according to many white people, “these things happened so long ago,” and “we [Black people] need to get over it.”

My mother is 67 years old. Does that sound like “a long time ago” to you?

Emmett Till should be having a birthday breakfast right now, possibly with his grandchildren. Maybe some pancakes with a side of hand-drawn birthday cards.

But he’s not.

In September 1955, a few months after his murder, an all-white jury found Emmett Till’s murderers not guilty. Protected against double jeopardy, the two men publicly admitted in a 1956 interview with Look magazine that they had tortured and murdered Emmett Till, selling the story of how they did it for $4,000. That was 66 years ago.

But, you know, Black folx need to “get over it.”

Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman who was the spark for the lynching and murder of Emmett Till, evidently wrote a memoir that was never published. In this memoir, Carolyn claims that SHE was a victim in all of this. She claims she pleaded with her husband and his brother, Emmett’s murderers, not to hurt Till. This is the same white woman whose accusation that Emmett Till made improper advances toward her prompted his subsequent kidnapping and murder. For decades, Carolyn declined to retract her disputed account of the events leading to Till’s murder until recently.

Carolyn has lived a long life with family and grandchildren, joy and happiness.

Carolyn is 87 years old.

Emmett Till would’ve been 81 years old today.

But, you know, Black folx need to “get over it.”

Emmett Till was lynched and murdered on August 28, 1955. We’re coming up on the 67th anniversary of his murder.

My mother is 67 years old.

Emmett was a baby when he was murdered, a 14-year-old whose whole life should’ve been ahead of him. But he’s not here today because whiteness is a persistent and present danger to Black bodies. We, as a community, as a people, never get to fully mourn our lost loves and heal our souls because we’re still being lynched and murdered 67 years after Emmett.

Emmett Till would’ve been 81 years old today.

Emmett Till should’ve been celebrating his 81st birthday today with friends and family.

But he’s not.