This Week's Opening Thought: September 2, 2025

This week’s opening thought: If you’ve lived a life of unearned privilege and white privilege where you have gone out of your way to endanger others, especially vulnerable and mistreated folx, and have ultimately harmed and impacted so many people and communities over your years on this planet that millions of people are anxiously waiting for you to pass away so they can celebrate your demise like it’s Mardi Gras or Carnival?

Well, I’m no expert on what benchmarks or actions someone should undertake to have their legacy viewed as one that people would consider as living a good life, but I know enough to say that if people are giddy about you possibly being sick and dying because you have spent a significant portion of your life using your privilege to be a clear, present, and hate-filled danger to their lives and the lives of those they care about, then you probably haven’t lived a good life.

But again, I’m no expert.

I just know a few things.

[Image description: A black man can be seen smiling at the camera with their right hand near the right side of their face. The man’s right pointer finger is tapping on his right temple, symbolizing that he’s somewhat bragging about his intelligence.]

This Week's Opening Thought: August 25, 2025

This week's opening thought: In Florida, they've legalized beating children at school.

With "parental consent," of course.

Florida's public school system is literally asking parents to sign off on giving teachers, administrators, and school officials the permission to beat their children, either as a complete thumbs up at the beginning of the school year where they can beat your kid whenever they "deem it appropriate" or on a case-by-case basis where they'll call parents to ask permission to beat their children.

Great.

Splendid.

This won't go bad in any way.

This won't generate a litany of lawsuits, years of therapy for hundreds or thousands of children, or long-term physical harm for children at the hands of adults who have been given the green light to not have their emotions in check. This won't erode the trust children should have in their parents.

Nope. This is going to go just fine.

This is where we're at now. As a country, we've got states changing the age of consent and marriage eligibility to protect adults who prey on children. We've got states drafting laws to physically abuse your children with your "permission." We have states figuring out ways to bring back child labor in full force. And all of this is coming from the political party that swears they care about the safety and needs of children and families.

Every day in the United States is another reminder that the most vulnerable citizens of this country do not matter to those who make the decisions, people who consider said vulnerable populations to be a nuisance or commodity to exploit.

This Week's Opening Thought: August 11, 2025

This week's opening thought: I understand the issues that people have with HR and their criticisms of HR "professonals." I get it. I work in HR and I have the same issues with the industry, its practices, and many of its practitioners. The issues and criticisms many of y'all have are valid. But I want to add something to the conversation that a lot of people don't recognize:

Some of y'all are a WHOLE DAMN HOT MESS.

BRUH.

I have SEEN and HEARD some things at work, y'all, and I am NOT OK.

At least once a month, I see or hear something that someone has said or done at work that makes me wonder about the future of humanity. I have witnessed some horrible people in action, some who have been so heinous that I wouldn't be surprised if I saw them on a future Dateline episode. I've had the displeasure of investigating some heinous, hateful, exploitative, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist situations and interactions and watching in horror and exasperation as all my work and strong recommendations to remove those people from the workplace get thrown in the garbage like someone mimicking Michael Jordan with a wad of paper. Real talk?

It's scary, frustrating, and leaves the people who've been harmed and those trying to support and defend them feeling disregarded and defeated. And it does nothing but add to the narrative that HR folx don't want to help you.

Look, some HR "professionals" are not in the business of helping you. We can all agree on that. But believe me when I say that some of us do want to help you. We are trying, y'all. TRY. EENG. But we're basically swimming upstream against the current in shark-infested waters while getting knives and rocks thrown at us. If it isn't organizational culture and white supremacy it's labor laws that are structured to be manipulated for loopholes because of how vague they are. We're catchin' it from all angles while trying to support and protect people.

Some HR "professionals" deserve the reputation they have. But sometimes? Sometimes people are raggedy, systems are raggedy, and the solutions are raggedy because they're non-existent or neutered to the point where they do more harm than good due to the places we work and the laws we're governed by.

I'm surprised Lester Holt ain't said some of y'all's names yet.

This Week's Opening Thought: August 4, 2025

This week's opening thought: I can see that after Kamala Harris decided not to run for the governorship of the state of California, and her decision to put her energies into other things that don't have anything to do with running for public office, that some of y'all are back on your "Black women need to step up and get in the fight with us" bullsh--.

Who is back on this B.S., you ask? I won't say...*cough* faux liberal people of pallor who expect Black women to save the day even though they treat them just as badly as everyone else does *cough*...

Sorry about that. Allergies.

Anyhoo, where was I? Oh, the B.S. has boomeranged back around. With that in mind, I want to emphatically remind people of pallor that BLACK WOMEN DON'T OWE YOU NOTHIN'.

Zip. Zilch. Nada. Goose egg.

300,00+ Black women have lost their jobs, their careers, since y'all's president got back in office. For the past three months, that increase has been even more pronounced, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (likely the last honest numbers we're likely to obtain for the foreseeable future).

From June to July, the unemployment rate for Black women increased from 6.1 percent to 6.7 percent. The only other racial subgroup with an unemployment rate that keeps climbing? Black men. Black men saw a significant increase in their rate of unemployment from June to July as well, from 7.5 percent to 7.7 percent. And you shouldn't be shocked to know that these unemployment numbers are twice the rate of workers of pallor and much higher than the unemployment rates of every other racial subgroup in the United States.

Simply put, Black folx in general are drowning in this economy. Still, Black women are bearing much of the brunt of the instability of a white supremacist society that has historically disregarded, subjugated, and harmed them at every turn.

So explain to me how Black women owe you their blood, sweat, and tears, their bodies, in a time in history where y'all made your bed and don't want to lie in it?

Yes, we are in horrible times. Scary and dangerous times. But Black women have ALWAYS been in horrible, scary, and dangerous times, and still showed up and fought for everybody to live and be free while most of y'all sat there and watched them putting their bodies and souls on the line. Historically, generationally, and currently? Black women have more than earned the right to sit this one out. How about you fight for them for once? You seem to care a lot about what they're doing or not doing, so I'm gonna take that as genuine concern for their needs. That's what it's about, right? Not about treating Black women like workhorses but as people you care about, right?

That's what I thought.

You'd better get to work.

This Week's Opening Thought: July 22, 2025

Trigger warning: anti-Black woman hate and harm, anti-Black violence, murder of Black bodies, transphobia, white supremacy.

This week's opening thought: Brett Hankinson, one of the Louisville police officers who murdered Breonna Taylor in her home on March 13, 2020, is due to be sentenced this afternoon. As we wait in unity with Breonna's family for a verdict that somewhat resembles some kind of justice, never forget that y'all's president's hateful and racist Department of Justice has recommended that Brett serve just one day in prison and three years of supervised release for his violent actions, a sentence that will likely never be served due to time served. Also, never forget that this recommendation was pushed forward by the chief of the Justice Department's civil rights unit.

Yep, you read that right.

The Justice Department's civil rights unit is pushing for a violent man of pallor to get a slap on the wrist for his contribution to the murder of a Black woman whose home was invaded and riddled with bullets.

And who was the person tasked with the responsibility of submitting this request to the Louisville courts?

Harmeet K. Dhillon, an Indian woman who has led a privileged life defending people of pallor's "civil liberties" through private practice and her legal nonprofit, the Center for American Liberty. What kind of "civil liberties" are Harmeet and her team fighting for?

Harmeet was the main leader of the legal fight against California’s stay-at-home order during COVID. Harmeet has also supported such wonderful people as a group of "non-transitioners," people who feel that they made a mistake during their transitions who now want to stop everyone from seeking gender-affirming care, a young male of pallor in Texas who claims he was racially discriminated against in school due to showing up every day in his MAGA hat while espousing MAGA talking points, and multitudes of "concerned" parents of pallor who believe their children are being indoctrinated with DEI and LGBTQIA+ "ideologies."

The truth is, Harmeet could care less about actual civil rights but, evidently, her "tireless" work defending and supporting people who want to harm other people because they think it's their right to do so - and fragile people of pallor in general - made her y'all's president's top choice to lead the Justice Department's civil rights division.

And why does Brett Hankinson deserve such a non-sentence? According to Harmeet, Brett's life has been ruined and he's already paid enough for his actions so why punish him more? Because, you know, Breonna Taylor's life is worth a day in prison and some supervision.

Breonna deserved better.

Breonna's family deserves better.

Black women deserve better.

But we live in the United States of America, so none of us should be shocked that a man like Brett's "suffering" matters more than the life of a young Black woman whose life was taken due to hateful action from violent police officers.