Monday's Opening Thought: February 8, 2021

This week’s opening thought, for HR folx, recruiters, and hiring managers: If you’re interviewing candidates for any position in any organization, at some point in your interview process your interview questions must ask the candidate to share their personal understanding of anti-racism. You also need to ask questions to get an understanding of their personal work around dismantling their connections to white supremacy, as well as their views on being a part of an equitable and inclusive workplace that is a safer and braver space for more than just white cishet staff. And if your white applicants or non-white applicants with privilege give answers to these questions that are toxic or show an unwillingness to unpack their white supremacy?

They do not deserve to move on to the next round of your recruitment, qualifications be damned.

There’s enough racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, ableist white people and non-white people with privilege who harm others daily in our workplaces. We don’t need to hire any more. None of us do. We all need to normalize making being a hateful uncaring person an automatic exclusion from being in the running for a job. Qualified or not, skills do not trump hate, intolerance, and a lack of interest in being a better person. Recruit and hire like you actually want decent people to work for you.

Oh - and while I have your attention, take some time real soon to address the fact that those who can do something about it haven’t done anything about the racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, ableist white people and non-white people with privilege who harm others daily in our workplaces. Get on that.

Monday's Opening Thought: February 1, 2021

Monday's opening thought, for Black folx only: It's Black History Month. Take each of this month's 28 days to be proud of who you are and where we're going. I know, this being Black in the United States thing ain't easy. It's often downright exhausting and it always has an element of danger to it. Blackness can sometimes feel like a pendulum. But I want y'all to look at the photos below. Yes, these are all pictures of struggle. But they are also pictures of pride, of a willingness to fight for freedom even when we're denied it. These are pictures of an unwillingness to let hate dim our internal lights.

No matter what, Black folx, we are a proud people. We will always fight for those that come after us and for those we walk alongside every day. We will fight even when we don't directly benefit because we know that equity and equality ain't the same thing. That is what being Black is. And that is something to be proud of every day, not just during the shortest month of the year.

Take the energy of our ancestors in this struggle and keep on pushing for better from your country, your neighbors, your workplaces. But make that push happen while you take care of yourself and your families and communities. Center your self-care, whatever that may be. Live for joy and hope and dreams. Make this Black History Month your new launchpad for taking care of yourself so you can take care of others. Our ancestors, our elders, would want that.

We all we got. Let's make sure we got each other and ourselves.

Monday's Opening Thought: January 25, 2021

This week’s opening thought: Education does not make you “less racist,” white people. You can read books, watch documentaries, and attend seminars and trainings around anti-racism and white supremacy, and still think that Black and Brown folx are “taking your jobs” and decreasing your neighborhood’s property value. You’ll still clutch your purse or your kid’s hands when I walk by.

You see, education only goes so far. You have to actually believe what you’re reading, watching, and attending. You have to believe it without trepidation, without caveats, without “Yeah, but...” popping into your brain and tumbling out of your mouth.

You cannot intellectualize hate. This is and will always be a dangerous practice. Intellectualizing how you grapple with hate and your connection to and perpetuation of white supremacy does nothing but reinforce hate and white supremacy. At some point you have to get beyond clinging to numbers and data and taking in information in a surface way and actually feel what you’re seeing and hearing. Until then, you will basically be just another white person who knows a whole lot of things about stuff but actually knows nothing that pushes you to actively help your neighborhoods, workplaces, family, and society be better.

Monday's Opening Thought: January 18, 2021

This week’s opening thought: Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States. It’s a holiday that was signed into law in 1983 by a President who led a “War on Drugs” that disproportionately harmed, killed, and imprisoned Black bodies. It wasn’t observed as a federal holiday for the first time until 1986. It wasn’t officially observed and celebrated in all fifty states simultaneously until the year 2000, with Utah becoming the last state to recognize MLK Day by name.

Until 1999, MLK Day was known as “Civil Rights Day” in New Hampshire until the State Legislature voted to change the name. But guess what? It’s still not quite named MLK Day - it’s “Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Day.” Arizona uses a similar name for the day.

Alabama and Mississippi still observe MLK Day as “Martin Luther King’s and Robert E. Lee’s Birthday,” because observing a national holiday on Robert E. Lee’s birthday was somehow sacrilegious. Virginia took it a step further, combining MLK Day with a celebration of the lives of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson until the year 2000.

Wyoming calls it “Martin Luther King Jr./Wyoming Equality Day.” Liz Byrd, who was a trailblazer in her own right as the first Black person elected to the Wyoming Legislature, tried to push for the state to recognize the day as a paid holiday. The compromise? The naming of the holiday as MLK Day. You see, her colleagues would not agree with passing the bill to make MLK Day paid unless they got to keep their chosen name for the day.

I could keep going but, well, there’s no need to.

White America has made a celebration and observation of the birth and life of a civil rights leader who died fighting for equity and against white supremacy into a push-and-pull scenario for countless decades because acknowledging a Black person and their work against systemic oppression on a national level in an honest manner is a bridge too far.

So my apologies white folx and uninformed people of culture with adjacency to white privilege. You’ll have to miss me this year and every year with the misquotes and distortions of Dr. King’s words and vision that y’all are so quick to post on the third Monday in January of each year. It’s obvious y’all do this without researching your quotables for accuracy or with a willingness to open your eyes and minds to developing an understanding of how this country views men like Dr. King. Y’all can do better than you do. You just don’t.

It’s well past time to acknowledge that the way this country viewed a Black man who had a 75% national disapproval rating prior to his assassination only to turn around and act like he was “one of the good ones” long after his passing is the true story of how many of y’all feel about Blackness and Black activism in this country:

Better dead and fondly remembered in whitewashed history now than supported in dismantling white supremacy while breathing.

This isn’t just a day off to me. It’s a mirror. Y’all just don’t wanna look into it.