This Week's Opening Thought: February 17, 2026

This week’s opening thought: I’ve spent this month trying to protect my peace, embrace rest, and take care of myself. That has primarily meant keeping my thoughts to myself, processing my feelings, and moving them out of my body. It’s gone fairly well, but honestly?

Being Black, legitimately trauma-informed, actively anti-racist, and actively anti-oppressive while working in HR is not helpful in my pursuit to prioritize all of the aforementioned things for myself.

Truth be told, the years I’ve spent developing and continually learning about my body, my brain, my emotions, my personal, professional, and generational traumas, and the weight of the world around me have lessened how much I end up carrying in my brain and body. But there are days where I watch Black and Brown folx, Black women, people of color, folx with disabilities, and folx from LGBTQIAA+ communities get mistreated or ignored and then get equally ignored, disregarded, or told I’m being “unprofessional” when I amplify their voices and stand with them in real time that literally make me want to punch the air like Tre in Boyz n’ the Hood. And some days it hits like a brick when I’m attacked or mistreated, and no one who witnesses my harm is willing to stand with me in solidarity.

Today has been one of those days.

Real talk? HR, when you’re not doing it “by the book” and upholding white supremacist workplace culture, is a lonely profession.

It’s doubly so when you’re doing it as an empathic, empathetic queer Black person.

If you’re marginalized, invisible, and/or melanated, and living authentically in a world where you don’t fit? I want you to know that I see you. I know there are many days when it’s hard, when this world seemingly finds glee in doing you harm. Please know you’re not alone. Please take care of yourself. Please do not prioritize these workplaces or anyone who claims to love and care about you over your health and well-being. You deserve to be able to be openly, verbally, and physically you. Don’t let them dim your light.

WHEW. Just needed to get that out of my system.

Back to mindin’ my Black business and resting as the ancestors would want me to rest.

Take care of yourselves and each other.

This Week's Opening Thought: February 2, 2026

This week's opening thought, directed toward people of pallor: It's Black History Month. I usually prepare some knowledge to drop all month, some calls to action, things of that nature. But this year?

Nah, I'm tight.

I don't feel like doin' this with people of pallor this year.

I don't feel like educating y'all, or correcting y'all, or dodging online "debates" with y'all, especially the "well-meaning liberals" out there. At this point, the white supremacy has been white supremacy-ing in such visceral ways on this stolen land that I'm not going to spend my Black History Month dealing with y'all and your "big feelings" and "hot takes" about the abuses even the nicest of y'all inflict on Black bodies, how U.S. history is legitimately Black history (whether y'all want to acknowledge it or not), and how y'all don't want to read a book but want to have us teach you for free about the same concepts over and over again.

Nah. I'm tight.

I've educated enough of you. WE have educated enough of you for centuries. We've shared enough of ourselves with y'all over the years with the hope of getting through to you, even during this most critical of times in this country's racist, hateful history, just to watch y'all butcher Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes while making the concept of "helping" melanated people oppressed by y'all's systems sound like a chore you deserve allowance or restitution for. And through all of that, we're expected to spend an entire month - the shortest month of the year - continuing to hold your hands and "giving y'all grace" as you don't learn or unlearn anything?

Nah. I'm good.

And I know I'm not the only one.

So instead of spending the month of February doing what is essentially unpaid outreach work with people of pallor, I'm gonna spend Black History Month chillin' in my beautiful Blackness and embracing joy, giddily bereft of the need to sit with y'all's messiness as the world burns. Maybe I'll see y'all in March? Who knows?

Try not to homogenize or water down any quotes from Black people to force them to appeal to pallor sensibilities while I'm gone.

This Week's Opening Thought: January 26, 2026

TW: mentions of murder, white supremacy, violence.

This week's opening thought, for people of pallor: With everything that has transpired in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it is clear to me that people of pallor are so deeply entrenched in systems of white supremacy and the privilege they receive from them that even their "activism" is swaddled in blankets of white supremacy.

Over the past few days, I've seen y'all saying things like, "This isn't what America stands for", and what's happening is "unprecedented" and that nothing like this has ever happened before. Some of y'all are out here saying wild things like you miss "regular" police brutality. Throngs of people of pallor are calling for Kristi Noem's impeachment and quoting and resharing things from every Black activist and scholar they can find to frame their "this is our moment" narrative and it's equal parts hilarious, infuriating, and banal because it's so obvious that y'all have no clue how to react when the systems that were built to elevate, protect, coddle, and gas you up are being utilized to oppress and kill you if you don't "comply" and get back to being docile.

Y'all are lost right now. Y'all don't know what to do with yourselves because you've grown accustomed to those you've oppressed saving and guiding you to a place where you can continue to feel safe in the cocoon of white supremacy while engaging in, at best, beginner-level activism against the system that has protected you most of your life. Y'all fully expected Black and Brown folx, Black women, Indigenous folx to save y'all and continue getting beaten and killed for your comfort and safety. But we're not stepping in to "lead" you right now because we're taking care of our own. And now y'all are left to figuring out how to mobilize and create plans of action on your own because y'all obviously have learned nothing from us over hundreds of years of us fighting for basic rights and survival and us writing books and teaching y'all how to fight. So now y'all are barely weeks and months into fighting the oppressors and I can see that most of y'all are already lost, already exhausted, and growing increasingly angry at us for leaving you to see how "fun" it is to dismantle YOUR systems of oppression with no collective assistance.

Here's some facts for you:

This is EXACTLY what (the United States of) America stands for.

This moment is only "unprecedented" for people of pallor. There's a few newer twists at play, but versions of this have been happening to Black, Brown, and Indigenous folx, and most communities of color, for centuries on this stolen land. The murder, the oppression, the gaslighting? It's been happening. It just wasn't happening to YOU.

And you only want to go back to "regular" police brutality because it allows you not to feel the inhumanity of the systems that support you when you "behave."

You want us to be fully in this moment with y'all and not focused on just protecting our own and working toward our own liberation and safety?

Then keep your "hot takes" to yourselves.

Save and channel your anger toward upending our mutual oppressors.

Get yourselves prepared for what melanated folx have been trying to get y'all to prepare for and get on board with for hundreds of years.

Show us something that compels us to believe that we should stand by your side against our common oppressors for the long and exhausting battles ahead.

Or put some seasoning on your face for the leopards and wait for them to come to a neighborhood near you.

The choice is yours.

Sad thing is, most of y'all have already made your choice.

Image description: a screenshot of a person of pallor saying, "Can we just go back to regular police brutality, please?" followed by a Black woman responding with "Ahh yes the kind only Black and Brown folx wsere subjected to, right? Girl, delete this."

[Image description: a screenshot of a person of pallor saying, "Can we just go back to regular police brutality, please?" followed by a Black woman responding with "Ahh yes the kind only Black and Brown folx wsere subjected to, right? Girl, delete this."]

This Week's Opening Thought: December 22, 2025

This week’s opening thought:

"In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”

- J.D. Vance, vice president of the United States of America and blatant white supremacist.

People of pallor, I’ve gotta ask: Did I miss a memo that stated y’all had to apologize for not being sun-resistant?

Oh, wait - what we’re actually talking about is the centuries of harmful actions and systems you and your ancestors have benefited from.

Got it.

People of pallor and the outright refusal to atone or apologize for oppression, terroristic actions toward non-pallor cultures, colonization, genocide, and chattel slavery go back like spinal cords and car seats. Collectively, pallor has never been willing to atone or apologize for past and present harm. Hell, most of y’all are actin’ like your ancestors, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and even yourselves weren’t benefiting from - or aren't still benefiting from - participating in systems and championing and espousing beliefs that aren’t harmful or dangerous for Black and Brown communities and communities of color in general.

So like I said, did I miss a memo, newsletter, or something else about y’all being forced to apologize for being people of pallor?

Or is that the insecurities and fragility around what you represent and support talking?

This Week's Opening Thought: December 15, 2025

TW: Mentions of mass shootings, assault, murder, domestic terrorism.

This week's opening thought: how horrible does a person have to be for you to not back or support them?

How horrific does a person's words and actions need to be for you to not back or support them, even if you believe you'll receive some kind of benefit from backing and supporting them?

When does a person's words and actions become so vile, so repugnant, that you are unable to disregard, whitewash, or ignore their words and actions, even if ignoring their heinous behavior could lead to you getting some privilege or power you think you deserve?

What's your tipping point?

What is it that someone has to say or do that will make you decide it's something you can't ignore?

Is it when someone you've given your undying devotion to is willfully destroying employment opportunities in your town or city and making it harder to live? Is it when this person tells you that you saying that you're not able to afford to live, survive, and take care of yourself and your family with some comfort is propaganda, even though you know you're being gaslit?

Is it when the person you idolize goes out of their way to minimizie and disregard mass shootings, no matter how many people lose their lives?

Is it when the person you support relishes his ongoing, seemingly gleeful, pursuits of the mass kidnapping of hard-working citizens and their children?

Is it when your messiah openly uses language that empowers their most hateful and violent followers to unnecessarily terrorizing cities and immigrant communities?

Is it when your chosen leader constantly makes fun of people who have been attacked or murdered, especially those he believes are "deranged" for not being on board with his views, actions, and language?

Seriously - what's your tipping point?

And if you back the current president of the United States and you’ve witnessed everything he has said and done - not just in his life but over the past 11 months - and you haven't reached your tipping point yet?

Why does your tipping point have such a high bar?