A fertility clinic and a Chinese restaurant stood side by side in the plaza across from a bus stop. Sounds like the start of a weird joke, but this story isn't funny.
All tagged race
A Word or Two In Defense of Black Women
I don’t know when it happened, but someone declared it open season on black women and shots are being fired with extreme prejudice. I can’t tell you the last day I went without reading or hearing some pathetically unfunny joke about black women, but I can tell you this – I’m sick of it. I am tired of Black women being the butt of jokes that belittle, demean and devalue us. It upsets me most because a lot of those jokes are being made by Black men who, if no one else, should understand the value of Black women. So “brothers,” this is my open letter to you.
Before writing this piece, I was tempted to say that I don`t care about Black men who hate Black women, simply because I feel that if you can`t appreciate me for what I am, beyond what stereotypes or appearances suggest, it’s really your loss. But in the case of the degradation of Black women, this is too widespread to ignore and I feel obligated to care.
We're Mad Now: Why Social Media Activism Matters
I was standing at the bathroom sink with my Lysol spray bottle in my hand when I first found out about the Zimmerman verdict. If I’d been cleaning instead of procrastinating on my Twitter timeline, I might have delayed the sick, sinking feeling I experienced when I learned that Zimmerman was found not guilty on all charges. I might have delayed the way my hands shook as I read the tweets of outrage and disbelief. I might have delayed the chill that overtook my body as I saw Zimmerman smile when his attorneys congratulated him. But even if I’d stayed in the bathroom and scrubbed my sink until my hands turned raw, there was no way I could have avoided the news – George Zimmerman, the man who killed a young black kid, not much older than my little brother, was walking free. My heart bled (and still does) for the family of Trayvon Martin.
My immediate reaction was to call my mother, and she listened very quietly as I ranted and raved. Then I took to Twitter to rant and rave some more. I could barely contain my hurt and my anger, and the sympathetic tweets of my counterparts, white, black and otherwise were like fuel to a fire that burned in the pit of my soul. Another black life, gone down the drain, and not a soul was going to suffer for it. How could we not be mad? How could we not be hurt?