News

According to Variety.com, since signing a lucrative overall production deal with Netflix and after years at ABC, “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barrishas lined up his first series for the streaming giant.

Netflix has ordered the single-camera comedy “Black Excellence”from Barris, in which he will also star opposite “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” star and “Claws” executive producer Rashida Jones.

Inspired by Barris’ approach to parenting, relationships, race, and culture, the series is said to pull the curtain back and reboot the “family sitcom.” The series is reported to be similar to HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in tone.

Barris and Jones will executive produce with Hale Rothstein, who has previously collaborated with Barris on his ABC series “Black-ish” and the Freeform spinoff “Grown-ish.” Barris will produce via his Khalabo Ink Society.

Source: https://goodblacknews.org/

Premier Health Urgent Care and OCC-Health Center strives to provide outstanding and efficient healthcare while curbing area youth violence.

Premier Health Urgent Care, the only urgent care facility in the Southside’s Hyde Park neighborhood, and the only Black-owned urgent care possibly in the city of Chicago has opened for business, according to the Chicago Crusader.

With a commitment to providing affordable community care, a portion of profits from the center will be donated to the Project Outreach and Prevention (POP) organization, which aims to prevent youth violence in surrounding neighborhoods by providing resources, services and education to assist teens in making better life-long choices.

Premier’s founders include board certified emergency medicine physicians Airron Richardson, MD, MBA, FACEP and Michael A. McGee, MD, MPH, FACEP and board-certified trauma surgeon and United States Navy veteran Reuben C. Rutland MD, MBA. The facility was launched in partnership with Dr. Gregory Primus, former Chicago Bears wide receiver and the first African American trained in orthopedic surgery at the University of Chicago.

“We are happy to open an urgent care in Hyde Park because the community needs it. I see so many urban professionals who either delay or go without care because of time constraints. No one has 8 hours to wait in the emergency department for a minor illness or the flexibility to wait 3 weeks because their primary care doctor is booked solid. We are here to help fill that gap,” says Dr. Rutland. “We are not in competition with the doctors’ offices or the emergency department. We are a supplement to them both, to help relieve the stress on those two facilities.”

Source: https://goodblacknews.org/

According to Yahoo! Sports, the first of what organizations intend to be an annual event will feature the North Carolina A&T Aggiesand Southern Jaguars at the Chicago White Sox Guaranteed Rate Field. It will join The Andre Dawson Classic as ways to promote HBCU schools, which are slowly watching their baseball programs fold.

Erwin Prentiss Hill, CEO of Black College Sports Group 360 (BCSG), told HBCU Sports he wants the event to “promote education opportunities to urban youth” who may not know of the schools or how to navigate the college admissions process.

 From HBCU Sports:

“Greatness comes from historically black colleges and universities. The bottom line is to get more urban youth back to our HBCU’s, so that talented young men and women can add to the legacy of our outstanding predominantly black universities.”

Baseball’s decline in lower-income communities

The cost of playing sports can add up quickly for families. It’s especially difficult to have to pay for a glove, cleats, bats and even uniform costs, now that there are fewer programs supported through park or school programs.

Participating on a travel team is even costlier and can require more shuttling around from parents, who might already be working multiple jobs to get by. Little League is so high-stakes it’s must-see TV in August.

Billy Witz covered the lack of African-American players on HBCU rosters Monday for the New York Times and noted the decline of baseball through the eyes of Bethune-Cookman athletic director Lynn Thompson. Thompson said places where he played sandlot ball in the 1960s were paved over for basketball courts and parking lots.

Recently, however, the percentage of black players on Major League Baseball‘s opening-day rosters in 2018 was the highest in six years at 8.4 percent. Between 2012 and 2017, 20 percent of first-round draft picks were African-American. Those numbers are in part due to MLB’s focus on its Urban Youth Academies that started in Compton, California, in 2006 and its Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, launched in 1989.

“It’s been a huge investment for us,” Renee Tirado, MLB’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, said last spring. “Obviously growing the game amongst our players is a priority, so that uptick has definitely been from a concerted effort.”

Perhaps a focus on HBCU baseball will bring those numbers even higher in the coming years.

Source: https://goodblacknews.org/

Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old whose shooting death by a neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman set off a national conversation on racial profiling and the inequities in the criminal justice system, formally announced yesterday she is running for local office in Florida.

Fulton became an activist after the death of her son in Sanford, Fla., in 2012 by making speeches around the country as she worked to curb gun violence. She now she aims to do so from inside the government as a policy maker. She will contest the mayor of Miami Gardens Oliver G. Gilbert III for a seat on the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners.

Fulton is a former housing agency employee who believes a new chapter of serving the public is in order for her. “My time as a public servant began 30 years ago at Miami-Dade County. Since 2012, I have advocated tirelessly to empower our communities and make them safer,” she relayed in an Instagram post. “But the work is not done. I am proud to announce that I will run to represent District 1 on the county commission.”

Source: https://goodblacknews.org/

According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln recently debuted an online database of more than 500 court cases in which enslaved persons had sued to gain their freedom. The Dred Scott case in 1857 is the most famous of such cases, but there were many more.

The project collected, digitized, and makes accessible the freedom suits brought by enslaved families in the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Maryland state courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. African-American enslaved families accumulated legal knowledge, legal acumen, and experience with the law that they passed from one generation to the next.

The freedom suits they brought against slaveholders exposed slavery a priori as subject to legal question. The suits in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, raised questions about the constitutional and legal legitimacy of slavery, and by extension, affected slavery and law in Maryland, Virginia, and all of the federal territories.

One such case was that of Ann Williams, who leapt from the third floor window of a tavern on F Street in Washington, D.C., after she was sold to Georgia slave traders and separated from her family. She suffered a broken back and fractured her arms, but she survived.

In 2015, original documents about her came to light at the National Archives. Williams and her husband were reunited and had four more children. Then she sued for her freedom. And won. Below is a short film about her story:

The online database concentrates on cases filed in Washington, D.C. in the 1820s and 1830s. More than 100 of these cases involved enslaved persons who were represented by Francis Scott Key, the author of the “Star Spangled Banner.” As such the database is named “O Say Can You See: Early Washington, D.C., Law and Family.”

Source: https://goodblacknews.org/

Lonnie G. Bunch III, the founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture(NMAAHC), was appointed the new Secretary of the Smithsonian on Tuesday. According to dcist.com, Bunch is the fourteenth person to hold the position in the Smithsonian’s 173-year history, and the first African American.

As Secretary, Bunch will manage the administration of the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, 21 libraries, and the National Zoo. He is also responsible for its $1.5 billion annual budget. Bunch succeeds David J. Skorton, who announced his resignation in December.

“Lonnie has spent 29 years of his life dedicated to the Smithsonian, so he knows the institution inside and out,” said David Rubenstein, the chair of the Smithsonian Board of Regents on Tuesday. The Board met at the Supreme Court earlier in the day unanimously elected Bunch as Secretary.

“He’s also highly regarded by members of Congress and highly respected by our donor base,” Rubenstein added, while also citing Bunch’s “incredible character” and his leadership of the NMAAHC as major assets.

“You’re going to make a historian cry,” Bunch said when he spoke at Tuesday’s press conference. “This is an emotional moment, because the Smithsonian means so much to me personally and professionally.”

Bunch was the first curator for the California African American Museum in Los Angeles in the 1980s and previously served as president and director of the Chicago History Museum from 2000 to 2005. In 2005, Bunch came to the Smithsonian to steward NMAAHC from conception. He shepherded both the David Adjaye-designed structure, did tireless fundraising, and helped build up and curate the museum’s collection from scratch.

The museum has been such a huge success that tickets are still largely required more than two years after opening, with visitors staying for hours longer than at other facilities. In its first year of operation, NMAAHC welcomed nearly 2.4 million visitors and was the fourth-most visited Smithsonian institution.

“It tells the unvarnished truth,” Bunch told DCist on the one-year anniversary of the museum’s opening. “I think there are people who were stunned that a federal institution could tell the story with complexity, with truth, with tragedy, and sometimes resilience.”

Over his tenure, Bunch and his team of curators made it a point to continue building a collection for the museum’s future, including acquiring artifacts from the Black Lives Matter movement, and to integrate D.C.’s own rich history into the fabric of the museum.

Source: https://goodblacknews.org/

“It is ironic that a man who used taxpayer dollars to buy a $30,000 dining room table for the federal agency he leads wants to raise rent on poor people,” Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-LA) asserted in a statement on February 25.

Richmond was reacting to a new proposal by HUD Secretary Ben Carson that would triple the rent of low-income Americans receiving federal housing assistance.  A story by a local ABC station demonstrated that the poorest families in the Los Angeles projects in Tacoma currently pays $50 in rent a month. If Carson’s proposal were to pass Congress, that rent would rise to $150 a month.

“Secretary Carson’s immoral, ill-advised proposal is the latest example of the Trump Administration’s war on poor people… thankfully this proposal would require Congressional approval before it can become law, and the Congressional Black Caucus will work with our colleagues in Congress to oppose it and other related measures. The Congressional Black Caucus will also continue to stand up and speak out for the underprivileged and underrepresented,” Richmond added. 

In an April 25th statement, Secretary Carson said that the “system we currently use to calculate a family’s rental assistance is broken and holds back the very people we’re supposed to be helping.” Carson maintains that his new proposal would be “simpler, more transparent and predictable.”

President Trump did not make changes in federal housing policy a particular priority during his campaign. So far, Carson has not offered too much detail about what his overall plans for the agency are.  But anecdotal policy offered indicates a massive rollback on assistance to the poor. There are currently over 40 million people living below the poverty line in the United States. 

“HUD-assisted households are now required to surrender a long list of personal information, and any new income they earn is ‘taxed’ every year in the form of a rent increase. Today, we begin a necessary conversation about how we can provide meaningful, dignified assistance to those we serve without hurting them at the same time,” Secretary Carson added.

Carson, 66, who spent his career as a surgeon, had no specific expertise in federal housing policy before staring the job as President Donald Trump’s HUD Secretary.

In addition to Carson latest proposal, the Trump Administration is proposing making changes to Medicaid and nutrition programs that would result in less assistance to the homeless population in the U.S, and provide less food assistance to children.

Source: http://www.crewof42.com/

Here’s a flashback for you… read this and let Trump’s vacation time sink in.
This was originally published on May 8, 2012.
………………………

“Some of our viewers are complaining, they get frustrated, even angered, when they see the first family jetting around,” St. Louis TV reporter Larry Conners said to President Obama at the White House during an interview on April 12th. So, Conners asked President Obama a pointed question: how much time are you spending on vacation?

“The economy is a big issue and concern for folks,” Conners said to the President.  Viewers complain, “you’re out of touch, that you don’t really know what they’re experiencing,” the reporter said.

On May 1st, Florida Rep. Allen West complained of President Obama’s “wining and dining” at the White House Correspondents Dinner.  GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has also used President Obama’s down time and golf outings as a campaign issue.  On April 27th, House Speaker John Boehner demanded President Obama reimburse taxpayers for trips on Air Force One to North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa.

“This is the biggest job in the world and I’ve never seen a president make it smaller,” Speaker Boehner complained.

But did Boehner, Conners, Romney or West stop to compare President Obama’s vacation time to other Presidents?

Calls to several Presidential libraries reveal that President Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, was on vacation more — 1,020 days — than any U.S. President since Herbert Hoover and possibly more than any other President in history.

Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was in office 12 years from 1933 to 1945, was on vacation less days than President Bush at 958 days.  Calls to several Presidential Libraries reveal that no President can come close to Bush’s 1,020 days on vacation in an 8 year period.  Even Lyndon Johnson, who spent 484 days at his ranch in Texas and at Camp David during his presidency, came in under Bush’s vacation time.  Some claim the cost of Bush’s frequent trips to Crawford, Texas cost taxpayers upwards of $20 million, but the numbers are hard to confirm.

A recession started in 2001 as Bush took office after 22 million jobs were created during the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 2000.  Bush began wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and presided over the loss of 4 million jobs.  The debt when Bush left office was $10.6 trillion.  In 2005, the Washington Post noted President Bush’s frequent vacations in a piece titled Vacationing Bush Poised to Set a Record as Bush took the longest single vacation — 5 weeks — of any President in 36 years.

President Bush spent 32% of his presidency on vacation.

Bush passed Reagan in total vacation days in 2005 with three and a half years left in his presidency. Reagan spent all or part of 335 days in Santa Barbara over his 8 year presidency.  Bush spent 487 days at Camp David during his presidency and 490 days at his Crawford, Texas ranch, a total of 977 days.

When you add the days President Bush spent at Kennebunkport, Maine, he spent a total of 1,020 days away from the White House — close to 3 years.  At 1,020 days, Bush was close to being on vacation more days than President John F. Kennedy’s total days in office (1,036).  Representatives at the Nixon and Johnson Libraries indicate those two Presidents were on vacation less than 1,000 days during their terms.

President Obama has been on vacation 78 days from 2009 to 2011.  At the three year mark into their first terms, George W. Bush spent 180 days at his ranch in Crawford, Texas and Ronald Reagan spent 112 vacation days at his ranch in California.  Of course, staff was around all three Presidents on vacations and all White House aides argue that the commander-in-chief is never “out of touch” with work.

Calls to the Eisenhower and Truman Libraries reveal that those Presidents were not on vacation for more than 1,020 days.  Eisenhower was on vacation for 456 days during his 8 years in office.  When asked on whether President Herbert Hoover’s vacation days could be over 500 for 4 years a historian at the Hoover Library said, “No chance. Everyone agrees he was a grinder — he was the kind of guy for whom a vacation was rare — his vacation days were less than 50.” Hoover was in office from 1929 to 1933.  Frequently Hoover either drove himself on brief trips or was driven by a military attachment or took the train.

President Obama was on vacation for 26 days during his first year in office (2009).  Ronald Reagan spent 42 days on vacation during his first year in office (1981). President George H.W. Bush was on vacation less than his son, 40 days, in 1989, his first year in office.  President Obama was on vacation less in his first year in office than the previous three Republican Presidents.

No President since Reagan was on vacation less than Bill Clinton. Presidents Clinton and Carter vacationed the least of any of the last seven chief executives.

All Presidents point out that work is being done on vacation.  FDR’s Presidential Library included the following note with their information on President Roosevelt’s vacations: “It should be noted that no sitting modern president, including President Roosevelt, can ever take “a vacation.” Simply being away from the White House does not constitute a vacation.  In President Roosevelt’s case, even while relaxing at Hyde Park, Warm Springs, or on a fishing cruise, he received mail, reviewed dispatches, signed and vetoed legislation, met with political and world leaders, and delivered press conferences and speeches.  During wartime, his periods of true relaxation were even fewer.”

Source: http://www.crewof42.com/

The right-wing-never-happy-always-whining Freedom Caucus joined with more moderate Republicans on Friday to sink the farm bill on May 18 in spectacular fashion. The latest floor fiasco featuring a GOP bill going down was a massive embarrassment for Republican leadership in the House.  

That’s probably a good thing for people who are poor in America and who want to eat.  The bill contained work requirements for food stamps in the same way Republicans have required work requirements for Medicaid expansion benefits in many red states. 

“Republicans are putting forward Paul Ryan’s farm bill to drastically cut funding from food assistance programs dedicated to helping our country’s most vulnerable families. Food is not a luxury. Being hungry is not a choice. I’ll be voting NO on this terrible bill,” tweeted Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) on May 18. 

The Farm bill crashed and burned by a vote of 198-213 as Freedom Caucus demanded a “build a wall” immigration vote in exchange for support for the bill. Speaker Ryan, who is retiring at the end of the year, won’t grant that vote. 

“This farm bill is loaded with corporate welfare and subsidies. It’s a big-government, anti-market swamp creature that puts special interests ahead of the American people. Every conservative should oppose it,” wrote Rep. Justin Amash (R-IL) after voting against the legislation. 

“There’s a grotesque irony that @HouseGOP’s ‘Farm Bill’ will take away school lunches from 265,000 kids. GOP lawmakers top priority – after tax cuts for Wall St – is making more American kids go hungry. No wonder Congress has a 15% approval rating,” wrote Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) on May 17. 

Also on May 17, Rep. Keith Ellison wrote that, “The GOP’s Farm Billwould force as many as 2 million Americans off of SNAP food assistance. We should not be shaming people who are in a rough patch in their lives out of accepting the food they need to get by and get back on their feet.”

The bill was accurately seen by many as a welfare reform package that Ryan attempted to pass before he departs Congress.  Given that that’s what he has spent most of his time doing during his career in the U.S. House, few were surprised.  

Source: http://www.crewof42.com/

Most of my thoughts in the order that I thought them while watching the second season of She’s Gotta Have It S2 E7 #OhJudoKnow on a sunny Tuesday morning in Southern California while sitting —again--  on my pink, velvet couch.  (I’m procrastinating on going to the gym.) 

For the slow folk: SPOILER ALERT!!!!! 

Wait. We’re in Puerto Rico. I’m not mad at it. But like…. How did we get here? Was a trip ever mentioned? 

LOL. Puerto Ricans hate Christopher Columbus too. They’re just like us. 

Mars needs a show on the History Channel. His take on PR history is amazing! I would watch this all day. 

And yes, America, we do need to take down the Christopher Columbus statues. Along with the rest of the confederate monuments. 

Travel note: unless it’s a dude with a proven history of good taste, NEVER let a man pick the accommodations. Men don’t have the same standards as women. 

Winny tried to slip in that handcuffs and Nutella. LOL. 

Also, his jail flashback? I love Fat Joseph Cartenga. 

Mars in day-glo swim trunks is awesome. Also, I need to know more about the tradition of the seven dips in the ocean. And this seems to be a holiday. Cause there are fireworks. Which holiday is this?

Aww. Mars vulnerability in his prayer. “I’m down to learn if you’re down to teach me.” 

Ok. They’re walking around PR giving money away to organizations in Puerto Rico. And this is dope. I’m not mad at highlighting PR, or showing what’s happening on the ground in PR. It’s interesting and the cinematography is beautiful. I’m just trying to figure out how it fits in to the actual plot of the story. 

Ok. We’re picking up the eviction storyline from like five episodes ago. 

ROSIE PEREZ looks great! 

Awww! Poor Shemecca. These butt shots are a never-ending tragedy. 

Wait. WHAT? When did Shemecca become Winnie’s girl? 

“Where did you get a pair of those hazel eyes? Jamestown?” Wait. Is that a slavery joke? 

Ma Duke says Nola and Mars are like honey and molasses. They are. I think they would be horrendous in a relationship at this point. Ain’t a bit of responsibility between the two of them. 

Mother wisdom: The paintbrush must tell the truth of who we are. You are not serving your blessing. Your blessing is to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. As an artist, I receive this. 

Wait. When did Nola’s show get confirmed? I know she was working on it, but like when did it happen? This is frustrating. 

 Free Africans in PR? What?? I need to go read. 

I love learning about the Afro-Puerto Rican culture and seeing all these beautiful, fluffy-haired black people and seeing all the Africa in Puerto Rico. And hearing this soulful music. Spike Lee is learning me something good today. And I need to go back to Puerto Rico and not just walk through Old Town and shop/eat. That said… 

There is no story here. It’s a bunch of beautiful, culture-filled scenes cobbled together. Like, if Spike wants to make a documentary about Puerto Rico as seen through the eyes of various characters he’s created over the years. I’m down for it. But doing it in the middle of another story is…. I appreciate the information. Just not the time/place for it. 

Ok. Mecca is talking about liking Winny and having issues with him running a burlesque club. But like, this conflict NEVER goes anywhere. They keep introducing conflicts and storylines that don’t go anywhere.  Whyyyyyyy?

The woman dressed as Oshun? Beautiful. And I’m probably expected to know who Oshun is, but honest to God, before everyone started making all the references after Lemonade came out, I had no real idea. Like, I knew of the orishas in theory, but not in any detail.  

Everyone keeps telling Nola that she is Oshun’s daughter and I don’t get the significance of this. I do not know what this means. I need someone in the story to spell it out for me. 

What ritual is Nola performing where she is dancing in white. I know it’s a ritual because of the white and the circle and the drums and the chanting. The lack of context is killing me here. Also, Africa is everywhere. 

Nola looks so beautiful. She’s a pretty woman. But something about travelling makes her even prettier. I thought she was extra pretty in the Vineyard scenes too.  Also, the blond in the yellow shirt is gorgeous too. 

These shots of Nola and Mars sitting by the water are amazing. People with melanin look so beautiful in white. The drone shot is amazing. 

I’m so confused by Rosie’s confession that Mars’s father is Mookie. Like you been lying to this man about his father for all these years and he has like no reaction to this? It defies logic. Like, his reaction is to have a question, then all laughs? Huh?

 Also, I get that she’s in character from Do The Right Thing for the father to be Mookie, but this is bizarre. 

I love this scene where Mars pays his respects to Roberto Clemente and other famous Puerto Ricans. 

Yeah. I just need Spike to go ahead and do a Puerto Rico documentary. Cause this was beautiful and informative, but plotless. 

Source: http://www.demetrialucas.com/dlblog/

Most of my thoughts in the order that I thought them while watching the second season of She’s Gotta Have It  S2 E9 #IAmYourMirror on a sunny Tuesday morning in Southern California while sitting —again— on my pink, velvet couch.  (I’m procrastinating on going to the gym.) 

For the slow folk: SPOILER ALERT!!!!! 

Ok. So Nola’s art show came to fruition. Look. You never know with this series. Just because something is being built up to happen, does not mean it will happen.

My God. DeWanda’s skin look amazing. Shout out to her Mama and whoever is on lighting. 

“Yennifer Clemente” looks like Beyonce circa Austin Powers.  

What is the significance of the face mask?. A guy was wearing one at the Prince Party – was that Spike?—and then someone else, the fisherman, had one on in Puerto Rico. And then now Nola has re-painted Opal’s portrait with a goddess wearing one. 

Miss Ella talking about “don’t worry about the rent” is the most illogical sh— ever. No one who is a landlord says that. 

Awesome that Rockeletta Moss has a nice looking man. But is he really “elusive”? We’ve heard no mention if her love life thus far. This isn’t a reveal to the audience, but it seems to be to Nola. I’m happy she got love in her life, but where did this come from?  I get the feeling that a lot of story was written, shot and cut this season. Time? Episodes? Slow? Something that was supposed to happen didn’t happen.

The reactions to the art behind the curtain are so varied. I guessed that it involved a lynching just because the  therapist mentioned “strange fruit”. And I guessed it was a woman because most of the men—not all—were smiling when they came out the room. 

Source: http://www.demetrialucas.com

Demetria takes reader requests for this week's topics. The result? She muses on Dionne Warwick's questionable statements about Beyonce', Jordyn Woods' first TV role on Grown-ish, Peter Gunz's 11th child, Trey Songz's baby boy, the new season of She's Gotta Have It, and how to make a transition from an old life to a new one.

“I don’t know how you ended up so bougie when we came out of the same family,” said my baby sister one day over the phone.

I was taken aback. Me? Bougie?

And yet I was. Painfully so. And had been, at this point, for several years. But I was still offended. At the time she made this comment, I was living in Washington, D.C., chasing a short-lived stint as a decidedly non-combative TV pundit. It was a cool job n’ all, but it paid zero out of zero dollars. I was, according to my tax bracket, probably the working poor. Yet I had a large basement apartment in Capitol Hill to myself, could taste the difference between a Malbec and a Cabernet, and often frequented rooftop parties in the no-longer-Chocolate City.

She told me how on TV I spoke so “proper.” Wait, what? We’re both the children of an architectural engineer and a school teacher. How am I supposed to sound? This is my real voice!

Yet, bougie. Like, look down on Applebee’s and refuse to eat there bougie. I was bougie. And no one in my family was bougie. I was raised by a man who only purchased cars made by Ford. By a woman who thought “art” was a bunch of ceramic chickens and ducks. How did this even happen? I’m from St. Louis, Mo., spent my formative years in a mostly black working class suburb and enjoy Velveeta without irony. I can’t be bougie? Can I? I just like nice shit! Like, I’m “fancy,” but not, you know, extra fancy. I put on my palazzo pants one-leg at a time like everyone else!

But, you know? I lost this battle with my sister so long ago that I just had to accept it.

Hello, my name is Danielle Belton. I am bougie.

I’m trying to remember when this became a thing.

This bougie thing.

I was not raised to be “bougie black.” I was actually raised to be a “Terminator.” Like the Arnold Schwarzenegger kind, but not murderous. Someone who could easily move around in spaces and find success without the burden of their resume getting thrown in the trash just because your first name happened to be Keisha. I was raised to be polite. And even tempered. And rational. And even slightly boring. But not a bad kind of boring. More like a predictable kind of mundanity that comes from just focusing on career or school and avoiding “The Trap” at all costs.

“The Trap” is racism.

“The Trap” is the school-to-prison pipeline.

“The Trap” is actual prison or being a statistic—like on drugs or dead or worse. I know you don’t think there’s anything worse than death, but … trust me on this one, there are varieties of hells racism can condemn you to where you’ll wish they’d just killed you instead.

But being a Terminator meant the end game was to infiltrate the spaces most black people couldn’t get into, then open all the windows and doors and let all the other Negroes in. My father was essentially this in all his years in the aerospace industry, choosing a career in management, confident in his ability to get black people hired and paid in that lily white space.

All the piano lessons and art classes and reading The Autobiography of Malcolm Xat 13 and watching all of the documentary Eyes on the Prize on PBS when I was 16 was meant to prepare me for my life of door-and-window opening. Of looking like a “harmless” kind of black, an acceptable black, a “respectable” black when in actuality I was going to take over and run everything and free us all … somehow.

My parents had a plan for me. This plan was not to turn me into Whitley Gilbert.

The Whitley Gilbert thing was a side-effect of all their hard work of emphasizing school and career at the detriment of everything else. A boyfriend? Boys are problems. You don’t need a boyfriend. Friends? Sure, you can have them, but c’mon, are you really going to alter large portions of your life for people who aren’t your family? And family? Sure, we love you and all, but we also love you enough to let you go be a successful Terminator. Can’t stand in the way of that. Move thousands of miles away from us and conquer. We’ll still be here whenever you have time.

Time.

My mother died last December from her battle with Alzheimer’s, and all I can think is I gave up living near the people I love more than anything in the world for my career, and they encouraged it. And I’d give anything for just one more day with her, so I guess I better make this career thing count. It better be a great career. The best career. And I better Harriet Tubman this shit and get someone free in the process. Otherwise, what’s the point?

But back to this bougie thing.

The first time I was in a bougie situation I was, ironically, living in the decidedly not bougie place of Bakersfield, Calif. I was invited to a house party and there was sangria. Like really fancy, nice sangria with fruit in it. Like with “Blood Oranges” and other fruits I weren’t familiar with. At the time, I didn’t really drink and was not particularly cultured when I did drink. All I knew were wine coolers and Boones Farm. Sangria? What’s that? Who drinks Sangria, I thought. God, y’all so bougie. Y’all too good for some Bartles and Jaymes.

Then I took a sip. It wasn’t bad. And being a Terminator, I knew I needed to play it cool. To act like I’d had sangria before or knew what it was when I had not and did not. I remember calling my sister, don’t remember which one anymore (I have two), and telling her about this bougie shit these white folks were doing out in Bakersfield. I was not bougie. I did not understand it. And I did not try to.

Yet, I didn’t tell them that I liked it.

Our mother, bless her soul, did not like bougie blacks.

The dislike though wasn’t a real hate. It was a pre-hate. It was this thing where you dismiss something before it can cut you off first. My mom was born into a world of sharecropping and beans every night for dinner. She chopped and picked cotton. She helped raise her seven brothers and one sister as the eldest child in the family. She still remembered how folks of better means looked down on them or called her brothers “bad” or treated her poorly. And she carried this pre-hate with her to college, where the bougie blacks were cold. Then she carried the pre-hate to St. Louis, where she would make her home and meet my father. And she still had the pre-hate long after she became who she was the entire time I knew her, up until her diagnosis of dementia.

This was a woman who dressed up in heels and makeup to bring me my gloves at elementary school when I forgot them. This was a woman who was married to a man who worked so hard and well that she didn’t have to get a job. This was a woman who always wanted to learn how to play the piano so she made all her children play the piano, even though one-third of us was vehemently opposed to it.

This was a woman who lived in a lovely mid-’90s ranch house, who didn’t worry about money, whose favorite hobby was to go to the mall and shop. She was college educated and a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. and used to be a school teacher and was beautiful and petite and exercised constantly. She didn’t curse, always used proper English and wanted her children to do the same. She was, in fact, the ladiest-Southern-lady-to-ever-lady. We had a living room no one ever sat in and a dining room we only ate in twice a year because, she, the neat-freak, didn’t want me, our father or my sisters dirtying it up. She couldn’t use an ATM or pump gas—these were my father’s jobs. And she was the star of her family and the light of all our lives, but she was scared to death of bougie black people.

Even though, by all appearances to those who were not bougie, she lived like one.

But she was not bougie.

She was just a country girl who happened to like nice things.

The one time during my childhood she was invited to do some bougie shit, I had to beg her to go. It was for a women’s networking group in the then fancy pants, everything-named-for-horse-racing neighborhood we’d just moved into in North St. Louis County.

Back then, there were not many black families in this new neighborhood, so the few black women living there made a little club and invited her. But my mom, being my mom, missed the old working-class neighborhood we’d lived in and her old friends who were all school teachers or letter carriers or custodians. She did not trust this new group of black ladies.

My mom fretted. She hemmed and hawed. I could look in her eyes and see the fear. That old pain of rejection. But I was ambitious, even as a child. I wanted more for both myself and my mother. Even though she’d denied me when I desired to do status humpy shit as a child. Like she wouldn’t buy us name brand clothes—my baby sister and I once had to share a Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt she gave us for Christmas that both our parents made us feel guilty for even wanting. She also was opposed to me being in the National Honors Society, Inroads or Jack and Jill, or participate in a cotillion. Despite this, I still wanted this for her. If only so she’d make some friends (my mother was a charmer, but painfully shy at times). I also didn’t understand her fear, because as I child I didn’t get that whatever happens to you as a kid sticks with you forever. Those old shames. Those old hurts. Those old rejections. It didn’t matter that they all lived in the same suburb or that she was just as smart, if not smarter than those other women, or that unlike nearly every woman in that group, she was among the few who lived a life of relative leisure.

Bougie black people had this way of making all that melt away for my mother, filling her with a panic.

“What would I even talk about?” she asked me.

“Talk about your kids! Talk about politics!” I said, knowing my mother LOVED reading the newspaper, going to the library every weekend to check out more books to read and loved to argue about whatever was going on politically in this country.

My mother, after all my peer pressure, went to a grand total of one women’s networking group meeting and never went back.

Even though they had begged her to attend.

All she did was complain. And she ultimately did what she always did—she chose to reject them before they could reject her, even though most of the women had a background similar to hers. But she didn’t see that. She only saw fancy cars and designer labels, even though she, too, had nice clothes and drove a Lincoln.

When I named my old pop culture and politics blog The Black Snob, it truly was a joke. A girl I went to college with once told me that I “looked stuck up” based on how happy I looked on my 19th birthday when all my then-friends brought me presents in the school’s university center. She was pregnant at the time and only 18 and felt left out, and I was just some fancy-pants kid living that whole “not pregnant” life. Once she actually met me, she realized I was pretty chill. So chill in fact that for some reason, I constantly volunteered to watch her kid when she went out to party with our friends. Again, I was raised to be blandly predictable and safe, meaning even though there was only a year difference between us, I didn’t go to clubs, drink, smoke or do anything but go to class and run the student newspaper. Of course you could leave an entire baby with me! And at that age, I adored children and could play with them for hours.

But the whole snob thing was a joke. Originally.

Still, people made their assumptions based solely on the name and my uptight, prudish nature. Plus, I had all these random things that made me seem like I was more connected or posh than the raggedy Midwesterner I actually was. The first “sign” that I was not quite as I seemed was when I, coincidentally, met Donna Brazile during her book tour back in the early days of the Obama administration. At the time I was going through a period where I’d forgotten how to dress (it happens) and was fond of just wearing whatever was comfortable. I’d just come out of a deep depression and had lost a bunch of weight. I thought, literally, nothing of the photo I published of me meeting Brazile for the first time, but one of my readers commented that I did not look how they expected me to. Namely, I did not look like the stylish daughter of upper middle class parents, let alone someone who would call themselves “The Black Snob.” I looked like, to be honest, a giant nerd, which is what I actually am.

This was my first glimpse into what would eventually become my life—the highly competitive world of fancy-pants people who regularly went to the Obama White House and enjoyed “day parties.”

What I found was since my blog’s name alone invoked an air of superiority, people were more than happy to tell me that, they too, were “black snobs.” And I, being a Terminator, just sort of let them think that I was too, for better or worse. I eventually would move to Washington, D.C., blow a bunch of money on a slightly better wardrobe where at least I looked like I cared, and rediscovered the same girl who once argued with her parents over…well, to be honest, literally everything...as I desired more than they could ever give me, coupled with my own desire to be a highly competitive black nerd in a magical land of bougie black nerds in D.C.

What was “magical” was that since everyone was basically just a well-dressed nerd in the District, I finally, for the first time since never, felt seen and heard. People wanted to be my friend. People wanted to hear what I had to say. People wanted to get to know me, for me. My experience with the status humpers and the elites alike was not negative, as it was for my mother; it was affirming. In me they saw a sister, a friend, a colleague, a peer. Or, if nothing else, a fellow overly educated black in the land of overly educated black people. But for the first time since never, it seemed like it was a good thing to be Danielle Belton, in all her “snobbery,” whereas in St. Louis, it had been bad to be me.

St. Louis was a tough experience for me growing up. I didn’t fit in. I was ostracized and bullied in school. I was an outcast for almost my entire time living there, until college. And, again, in college, I was boring. The only “un-predictable” thing I did was join Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., which, considering both my mom and eldest sister are Zetas, shouldn’t have been surprising, but it was to people, as I’m not really a joiner, thanks to feeling like an outsider most of my youth.

But as an adult, making friends is easy, as I am chatty and sociable and people seemed drawn to me, no matter my many moods. My adult friends are a varied sort. Not all of them are bougie. Not all of them are intellectuals. Not all of them are nerds or geeks or from financially stable backgrounds. But the one thing everyone has in common is a love for learning and a fondness for nice shit.

The learning is obvious: they are all well-read and up-to-date on the latest debacle in the news. The nice shit, though, could be much more varied: a limited edition Marvel figurine or a pair of Gucci shoes; a springtime venture in France or a summer trip to Martha’s Vineyard; a delicious meal at some place you’ve never heard of or a handcrafted cocktail at some speakeasy; a first class plane ticket or a nice hotel they saved up all year for. Some are great with money. Others are in debt due to their fondness for whatever their fancy vice was. Some seem to solely survive based on the kindness of their better off friends and family. But, god, they are all easier to talk than my former childhood tormentors, who also liked various signifiers of wealth but thought that’s what made a person, not, you know, actually being thoughtful or kind.

I think if my mother had tried, she would have found that not all bougie people are terrible. Don’t get me wrong—there are plenty of shallow, ridiculous people in the world of the bougie black. I just don’t befriend those assholes. I chose to surround myself with fastidious, fabulous, fun, frank and fancynegroes, as you can find those folks in absolutely any city, any state, any place and any tax bracket.

But would my mom pre-reject me, her now bougie child? Absolutely not. I was, and will always be, the Terminator she raised and poured all her love into. I don’t think my mother ever once called me bougie, no matter how high I climbed on the black social ladder. I was just Danielle, her middle daughter, her baby. It pains me that by the time I was finally stable—financially and mentally—she didn’t really get to see it, as dementia had robbed her of her memories of me, my sisters and her husband, our father. For her, my story would forever be unfinished, me riding off to live in D.C., again, in 2013, after a brief stint at home, to a fate uncertain.

But she would never say I was bougie. Because bougie is bad and nothing that ever came from my mother could ever be bad in her eyes.

She simply created a child who liked nice shit.

She simply created herself.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

1. Well done.

2. Home run.

3. I cried.

4. Seeing again.

5. Hulk fun.

6. Ironman, fam.

7. Captain America!

8. Slow clap.

9. Fast clap.

10. Endgame proper.

John Singleton passed Monday, April 29, 2019. After suffering a stroke that left him in a coma, his family ultimately decided to take him off life support. To say it was a life gone too soon is an understatement, especially for a figure who has had such a tremendous impact on the black community at large. I grew up in a movie family, so I became an avid watcher from a young age. And as a hip-hop head, I learned a lot, visually, about the worlds I only knew from songs, thanks to John Singleton. To that end, artistically, he is easily one of the most influential artists of my life.

When Boyz n the Hood dropped in 1991, I was 12 years old. Thanks to (and probably unbeknownst to) my older sister, I was already up on NWA and Ice Cube, an early favorite rapper of mine. But listening to those tapes and occasionally seeing music videos (I lived in Frankfurt, Germany, at the time; any videos I saw were on VHS tapes sent from cousins and family members in the States) didn’t expose me to Los Angeles and the South Central Los Angeles I’d heard about in song. Just for the record, I was an extreme L.A. hip-hop head. If it was coming out of L.A., there’s a better than 75 percent chance that I was all over it, even if I didn’t quite realize those were my tastes.

But 12-year-old me didn’t know what L.A. looked like. I didn’t get it. I didn’t truly understand any of the gang culture I’d heard or knew what the streets referenced in songs looked like. I could tell you all about Compton and the police, even though I had absolutely no real-life reference point for what the city looked like. Singleton changed all of that for me. Boyz n the Hood was a look inside South Central. It was a look at the palm trees posing as the backdrop for poverty. It was confusing. How could such a beautiful place be where the rappers said so much bad shit happened?

My first time in Los Angeles was in 2004, and I was mesmerized. I wanted to see if it looked like Poetic Justice. And I wanted to see if the streets looked like they did in Boyz n the Hood, and Baby Boy, one of my absolute faves. Because we watched a lot of movies in my family and because Spike Lee was a looming presence and because so many movies were set in New York City, and Harlem in particular, my vantage point—even if unintentional (I was young)—on most things artistically, especially black, was of New York. The black world of the South I knew because of family, and where I lived largely centered there. Singleton changed all of that. He added a setting to what I thought I knew. I could visualize the world.

I saw black stories I wasn’t familiar with. I saw a world I had heard of but couldn’t place. I saw people living like me but differently. I saw people who, up to that point, were mythical. I knew Southern black life, both city and country. And I vaguely remembered Detroit. But I was in college the first time I ventured up the East Coast and was a graduate of college by the time I saw New York City and Los Angeles in person. But the art I consumed, especially once I was looking for it on purpose, was inspired by those visuals gained as a preteen and teenager.

My favorite thing about art is how it can transport you into places you might not otherwise be able to go. It’s why I’m such an avid reader. My imagination builds landscapes and buildings that house characters. Much of that is inspired by the films I’ve seen. I saw The Color Purple as a child, and Coming to Americathe same. New Jack City, too. But those weren’t worlds that I fit into or even seemed real. Boyz n the Hood and Poetic Justice were worlds not too far removed from me, just as director Doug McHenry’s Jason’s Lyric would be when it showed me the Houston I knew from The Geto Boys.

Boyz n the Hood has been a looming influence on my life ever since I first saw it. I learned about gentrification. Every time I hear The Five Stairsteps’ “O-o-h Child,” I think of Furious Styles and a young Tre in the car. Even though my grandmother lived 10 minutes driving slowly from the campus of Morehouse College and Spelman College, Boyz was the first time the schools were put on my radar. I didn’t even see the campus until I’d already decided to attend, then taken on a tour by my older sister who was living in Atlanta in my grandmother’s old house that same 10-minutes-but-world’s-away distance. Oddly, Boyz drew me to Los Angeles, convincing me that somehow, I was supposed to be from there. Art is funny that way.

When John Singleton passed away, my first thought was about how much his films, the game-changing ones, affected me. Because they did, and their influence has been present ever since. I’ve never lost the feeling of how Boyz made me feel. I’ve written about it several times for that reason. John Singleton influenced my life with his vision and storytelling and desire to spotlight the world he knew. From Boyz to Poetic Justice to Higher Learning and much later to Baby Boy, John Singleton helped me see black life from new and different perspectives, and I’ve been better for it ever since.

John Singleton, you are appreciated. Rest in Power.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

At the beginning of this year, I saw a meme on Facebook where a young man mentioned that over the past year, he had learned to stop “aspiring to sit at tables where he had to bring his own chair, squeeze in between folks and repeatedly convince people that he deserved to be there.”

That was the most accurate description I had ever read about being an undesirable demographic in information technology.

 You’d think I would have figured out that by virtue of being a black woman over the age of 40, it would have occurred to me during the nearly two years and 40-plus interviews I endured before being promoted to my current position that I am really not the demographic employers are currently searching for. In all honesty, I did start to get the picture around the one year mark when I noticed that I and one other older black female were still interviewing long after most of the other people on the “promotional” list had been hired by other departments.

In civil service, you are interviewed in groups based on your score, so you tend to see the same people repeatedly until you, or they, are hired. I could tell when we were now interviewing with candidates from the “open” list, people not currently employed by the city, who tended to skew younger, male and mostly anything other than black, most of whom got hired before I did. It also did not escape my notice that I was hired by someone that knew me by reputation, knew several of my past supervisors and thus knew what she was getting in terms of my skillset, experience and work ethic. Sixteen years after I first started on my path to systems analyst, I had finally arrived.

You would think I would have caught on that in IT, what I do (end-user, deskside support, or Break/Fix) is thought to be a young man’s game. Ideally, the young man will be Asian, Indian, white, Hispanic, rarely black, or if so, generally African or Afro-Caribbean. There is also a current belief among hiring managers that the millennials they so crave are willing to work harder and for less money than more experienced job seekers.

Female personal computer techs are rare; I saw my first in 2001. Craig, who brought her on at the bank where I was working as a temp clerk, also saw in me a capacity for working with computers. By the time I had been working there for a few months, Craig caught on that I was eager to learn and began to teach me to do simple support for my group. He was the first person to encourage me towards a STEM career, which I was going to find out was very rare, and for that I will always be grateful.

 You would think that I had started to figure it out when I enrolled in a trade school in November 2001, shortly before my 30^th birthday. During the seven months I spent there, learning PC repair and networking and earning two beginning certifications for PC repair, I started to notice that women were already unusual in this career field. In my class of just over 20, I only recall there being three women. Being a socially awkward introvert, I could easily pick up on some slight discomfort with my presence in a space not traditionally thought to be one for me. My nerdy side did most of the talking while I was there. I had no issue with either the work or displaying my mastery of whatever new concepts we learned, which does NOT help you win friends or influence people, especially in an industry where networking is crucial. And no one likes to be shown up by someone they think shouldn’t be there, even if the intent was not to show anyone up. The experience of being spoken over, or conversely, ignored, would come up again in four years, as I finally started working in Systems.

In IT, perception is everything. I am still taken aback when people are surprised that I am essentially a PC tech. I started by learning basic code on an Apple II series in 1985, but I didn’t stop there. When my older sister brought her first PC home from college, I entered the world of software installation and minor repair. Every assignment I accepted as a temp during the ’90s, I made it a point to learn everything I could, until that fateful day I was told that there might actually be a career in this for me.

Of course, no one knows your history when they first meet you. They can only work off of their perception and expectations. No one expects to see a middle-aged black woman when they call for computer help. Your co-workers and bosses don’t always know how to respond either. I’ve had my assistance refused while an employee waited for the real techs (i.e. younger males) to arrive. I’ve had work I had done consistently and well for years taken away from me and given to a male co-worker, with no explanation. I’ve had work I was doing overlooked because of a younger male colleague’s relentless self-promotion. I’ve been shut out of job-critical information because while my co-workers had no issues sharing resolutions to common issues with each other, whenever I asked a question, I was considered incompetent.

These are just the incidents that would fit in this word count.

It is exhausting to be in a space where you constantly feel that you have to prove yourself. Such is life for those in career fields where your presence is not only unexpected, but mildly unwelcome. But I am blessed because I love what I do, and God granted me the perseverance to endure to get the job I wanted and a thick enough skin to deal with the frustrations that come with it.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

Legendary filmmaker John Singleton was laid to rest this week after he passed away at the age of 51. Naturally, it has many reflecting on his filmography. For me, I’m specifically thinking about his most important film.

We know Singleton’s most famous works: Boyz n the Hood, Poetic Justice and the under-appreciated Higher Learning, a film that still rings true—just visit any predominately white college or university. But to my mind, his magnum opus came next, a film that will probably not be deeply discussed in the wake of his going to be with the ancestors, but should.

Rosewood, released in 1997, dramatizes the 1923 massacre of an all-black town in Florida. John Singleton, at the height of his powers, shines a light on something that has been kept in the dark for too long, centering themes that are as timeless as racism in America.

We know the story. An economically struggling white town is next to an economically prosperous black town. A white woman in the white town is viciously attacked in her home by a man with whom she is having an affair, and instead of allowing her husband to discover the truth, she blames it on a black man, starting a chain of events that leads to white folks destroying the all-black town.

This is Singleton’s best, most mature work. Instead of judging this woman for her misdeeds, he is intentional about exploring the way patriarchy simultaneously deifies her as a victim of domestic violence while still viewing her through the lens of misogynistic suspicion. And despite the fact that few people believe what she says (characters say as much toward the end of the film), they still use her claims as an excuse to engage in brutal violence against the black people in the film. White people are viewed as a destructive, colonizing force—they only used her claim as a reason to unleash it.

That story resonated with me. The fact that a black man would be accused of sexual assault by a white woman is something I was warned about as a kid. From the age of 15 until I went off to college, my grandmother would tell me to “leave those white girls alone.” They “had a history of screaming rape” if things went wrong, she warned me. This was the first film I’d ever seen that dramatized this black urban legend to great effect—but that is not all Singleton wanted to say.

Esther Rolle gives the best performance in the film as Aunt Sara. If a white woman had played a role with as much conviction, this performance would have garnered, at least, an Academy Award nomination. She sees what happens, knows the truth and remains quiet. When she finally speaks the truth, she is shot, killed on her porch.

Singleton masterfully shows us how the psychological trauma of racism unwittingly causes black folks to participate in and internalize the violence that is visited upon us. In his portrayal of Aunt Sara, Singleton shows us how many of our matriarchs went to their graves holding the secrets of the white families they worked for and how those secrets can hurt and, at times, kill. A great deal of research has been done that explores how hypertension, cancer and other ailments are the result of this internalization.

Rosewood is not a perfect film. The performances from some of the young actors in the cast leave much to be desired, and the movie could have been about 10 minutes shorter. But those are small quibbles. I simply do not understand how a film like Django Unchained was so successful while this shorter, more thoughtful film lost money at the box office. Perhaps it was because the former was a fantasy that did not indict white viewers while the latter told a story that happened all too often (especially during the Red Summer of 1919), and did not let its white viewers off the hook. America has not truly dealt with the race massacres that happened far too often early in the 20^th century, and this filmmaker, aware of that, did his part to raise awareness.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

I’m one of those people who live in a neighborhood where anytime I get an “out for delivery” email/text/raven for any package that won’t fit into my mailbox, I know it means it’s time for me to head home. I will either receive the package personally or be present to witness it NOT being delivered even though the particular carrier says it has been. And this isn’t just because packages in my neighborhood grow legs—they have—but, as noted, I’ve been on the receiving end (this is a pun) of a “delivert” notice for a package that absolutely was not delivered. I could be sitting on the front steps and get a notice saying that a package was left at the front door literally while I was sitting there.

But also, packages in my neighborhood can get held for ransom, in a sort of “your package was safely delivered” extortion plot. Allow me to tell you a ridiculous story. Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it go.

I bought the house that I currently live in back in 2012. Like most people who buy homes, especially in expensive areas like Washington, D.C., I was a little house poor at first and it took a little while to fully outfit my house. Because I already lived in a two-bedroom apartment before buying my three-bedroom, three-floor home, I had most of what I needed, but at some point, I determined that I needed a much bigger desk in order to build out the space that housed all of my music production equipment, i.e., keyboards, MIDI controllers, interfaces, etc.

One of the homies had a similar setup in his home with a very nice and spacious L-shaped desk, so I took to Al Gore’s internets to try to find me something reasonable after scouring furniture stores and realizing I wasn’t finna pay $1,000 for a sturdy, high-quality desk. Nope. I needed a functional, mid-to- “won’t fall apart in the next 5 to 7 years” quality desk. That brought my price range to under $2o0. I didn’t see anything at IKEA and I checked out every manner of Nötah;dlfj;o777gn. I hit up Target because, let’s be real; even God probably shops at Target and I know if I can’t find it there, it doesn’t exist.

Well praise Jehoshaphat because sure as shootin’, I was able to find a reasonably priced, L-shaped desk, online, for $149. I ordered it, paid the cost to be the boss and received my delivery date. I was told it would come in two parts. This is very important.

Day of delivery, I went to work because I had a job that required me to do so. I got an email that told me my package was delivered. It didn’t say that package one of two had been delivered, just that my package was delivered. I assumed that the whole thing was dropped off as one. I got off work and moseyed on home only to find no package at the front door. Or the back door. Or inside my house (granted, I lived alone so that one was a stretch but I was looking for it like that was a possibility).

I waited. I called Target and they basically said, “You got got, huh?” I love Target so instead of being mad I just told them, “I hope not. I’ll never leave you, btw.” The next day, my doorbell rang early in the morning and I got what amounted to package two of two, and another notification saying my package was delivered. So I had one of two boxes, half a desk and no idea what happened to my other box.

That was until a few days later when I saw a note on my door that said, “I picked up your box for you, give me a call!”

Le whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?

I called the number and it was a neighbor who didn’t live on my street who I’d met twice. What he told me over the phone is that because packages have a tendency to grow legs in our neighborhood that he drives around and picks up packages for folks he knows (even loosely) and then drops them back off when he can tell folks are home. But I never seemed to be home, which was odd for me because I had been home every day that week. Then he hit me with the point of it all.

“You know, most folks appreciate that I pick up their packages for them. It’s a service that I think makes us feel like more of a community. Since I helped you out, if it wouldn’t be too much, I sure could use a six-pack of something ... Beck’s.” Yes, my package was held hostage over a German lager. And because I wanted my package and wasn’t sure how a person who did something I didn’t ask for asking me to pay for a service I never ordered would respond, I took my happy ass on over to the grocery store and copped me some Beck’s, took it to him, got my package and my desk is still standing to this day.

What’s the lesson to learn from all of this? I’m glad you asked. I’m not sure there is one. Sometimes packages grow legs, other times the delivery service just doesn’t. I’m not sure you can game-plan for extortion. I did let him know that I wouldn’t need him to get my packages moving forward.

Mostly I just wanted to share. I got a “your package has been delivered” notice today and was upset I missed the “out for delivery” and sped home praying it would be there. It reminded me of the time it wasn’t and how that turned into friendly neighborhood nonsense. Sharing is caring.

Always keep a six-pack of Beck’s.

Source: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/

For most of my adult life, I’ve been the kind of slim that inspired a stranger to tell me “If you could just eat a pork chop sandwich, you’d be alright!” In the fall of 2017, when my husband and I learned I was pregnant, I figured this baby would be that sandwich—but not anything more than that.

Nevertheless, during the first two trimesters or so, I snapped on anyone who attempted to tell me that I would likely “snap back” right after birth. “Don’t put that pressure on me; snapback culture is made up by Instagram anyway.” I reminded my husband, playfully at first, and then with more gravitas, that he had to stick with me no matter what. He joked back that he’d never leave me, but that he would start hiding food if it became necessary. As the pregnancy progressed—40, 50, then 60 pounds later—I would waddle down to Shake Shack on my lunch break, sometimes holding onto the wall, as people jumped out of my way.

I didn’t feel like a glowing giver of life. I felt like a sweaty blimp taking up more space on the sidewalk than was appropriate. I also felt invisible. I’d heard stories of women being hit on while pregnant, but somehow, I dodged that bullet. Once I was visibly with child, even the guy outside of my grocery store who typically asked for money averted his eyes and found another victim. (Small victory, perhaps?)

And so when someone I’d dated years ago texted to say “Hey, long time no speak,” I felt a dangerous thrill at the thought of someone who may not know I was pregnant talking to me. I couldn’t articulate why, but I also felt guilty, even if it was just a harmless text from someone who had no idea that I could no longer wear shoes with laces. We caught up on the basics and he congratulated me and my husband on my pregnancy, and I figured that was that.

As the weeks continued, we’d chat sporadically. “What books are you reading?... How was the baby shower?” and I reveled in the attention of this person unable to see my cheeks plumping, my ankles swelling and yet still able to see me, as trite as that sounds.

Eventually, as people from your past tend to do, he crossed a line. I’d like to say that I blocked his number, but I didn’t. Instead, I changed the subject and then stopped responding to his messages. Meanwhile, my husband constantly reminded me that I was beautiful, but I didn’t see what he saw. I just saw a swollen, carb-inhaling machine. Plus, he’s obligated to say it as my spouse and the person who knocked me up in the first place; how do I know it’s real? 

I gave birth to a beautiful, baby boy and for a while, our family of three was so wrapped up in each other, I didn’t care what I looked like. As the weeks went by and I settled into motherhood, like many predicted, I began to shed the weight I’d picked up.

Yet, when I met new people, I felt obligated to work into the conversation early “I just had a baby by the way.” I wanted everyone to know “This isn’t my real body; this is my body after a baby. Did I mention I just had a baby?...That’s why I look like this.”

Almost a year later, due to the demands of working by day and chasing a deceptively fast crawler at night, I am back to pre-pregnancy weight, but I feel like a deflated balloon, limp and stretched out. My navel is now a sort of valley between my abs that separated (yeah, this is totally a thing). I am softer, lacking the lean muscle mass I had before, and while I feel proud of what my body was capable of doing on my son’s birth day, there’s a part of me that wonders if I will ever feel the blissful joy of rocking a crop top without layering a jacket on top of it again.

So when Ayesha Curry, wife to one of the most recognizable professional athletes alive, author of cookbooks and also of one of my least favorite tweetsappeared on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk and said,

“Something that really bothers me and has honestly given me a little bit of an insecurity is the fact that, yeah, there are all these women throwing themselves [at Steph], but me, like the past 10 years, like, I don’t have any of that. Like I have zero, this sounds weird, but like, male attention. And so then I begin to internalize it, like is something wrong with me?... I don’t want it, but like, it’d be nice to know that…someone’s looking.”

I got it.

For a moment, Ayesha Curry wasn’t the eye-roll-inducing lady in a tax bracket light years away from me. She was a wife and mom who knew that in many ways she’d changed since she was 20. While I was having a moment, Ayesha Curry was learning what many women figured out a long time ago—whether you’re Mother Theresa or Amber Rose, you can get dragged for an entire news cycle or two.

Ayesha sat with her family, moderated by an Oprah-inspired Jada Pinkett Smith, and she did what black women have been doing for years when we get around a kitchen table; she used the safe space to share self-admitted insecurity, one only heightened by the public nature of her life. Maybe, for a moment, she forgot that while those at the table could empathize with the toxicity of snapback culture, unrealistic body ideals, the glamorous trophy that she is expected to be, and a thirsty media wholeheartedly committed to reminding the world of who hasn’t quite lost the baby weight, puerile meme-makers on the world wide web could not.

The critics saw a wealthy woman who previously complained about catcalls now complaining that she no longer had catcallers. I saw a woman envisioning her stock going down and questioning her value. They saw a woman who has it all—a beautiful family, light eyes, and an enviable career, including her own line of pots and pans, whining about attention she doesn’t need anyway. I saw a mother examining herself in the mirror wondering what we all wonder—“Do I still have it?”

I saw me.

In a world that sees nuance as nuisance, women are not allowed to both despise the man on the street that compliments your ass AND also feel invisible in the shadow of a man who is showered with adoration, praise and the attention of countless women.

But I’m noticing something I haven’t quite seen articulated yet.

Maybe the shade rooms are subconsciously realizing what they always suspected: even a handsome, wealthy and successful man isn’t the silver bullet to happiness for women, not even the alleged gold-digging NBA wives. Maybe women are beings with passions and insecurities that a ring and Instagram followers can’t squelch. Maybe, just maybe…women are people too.