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Why I Write on Race

No, this is not what I wanted to do.  I did not choose this as my path, but it is the path on which I journey. At this time of my life, it is the path that must be acknowledged and no longer resisted. A deep sigh reveals my coming to terms with the convergence of my lived experience, my gift of words, and this moment in time.  As a citizen of the United States dealing with the heinous and flawed construct of race is inevitable. To speak about it requires inner work that I wanted to avoid. Included in the work is one essential question. Has the racial system been designed to privilege or oppress people? While many of my fellow citizens may  deny that race is relevant to them and in their lives, for those of us who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), the truth of our nation's original sin is our lived experience. It is no secret. My parents sought to shield me and my siblings from the oppression that infiltrated our lives in an apartheid system. Even ...

The Conviction of Her Spirit

Darnella did not seek this trauma, but like so many of our ancestors  she was thrust into a situation  forever altering her understanding of humanity and man's grave capacity to embrace evil and disregard the dignity of another. That she had the wherewithal to suspend herself in time and place for eight minutes and forty-six seconds  to capture George's final struggle with death by a callous and cold-hearted aphyxiation,  speaks to the conviction of her spirit .  It is through such selfless acts that lived experience cannot be denied and we choose to bend the moral arc of the universe closer towards justice all because of one person's courage in the face of profound injustice.

Matilda McCrear: The Last Living Survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Upon my birth, the State of Alabama identified me as "colored." In my lifetime, our label has moved from "colored" to "Negro" to "Black" to "African-American." These identifiers were initially used to ensure we would be reminded constantly that in the eyes of the law we were neither fully human nor full citizens. As a child, I remember the sense of pride in proclaiming "Black Power" and "I'm Black and I'm proud" as statements of resistance to the common narrative even if only at home with our parents. The Black Lives Matter movement is a proclamation of another truth long denied as we demand the undoing of white supremacy. My elders affirmed our inherent God-given dignity as they shared their lived experiences of blatant oppression as descendants of enslaved Africans. As a child, the kidnapping and enslavement of my  ancestors seemed parts of the distant past as did the Emancipation Proclamation. Most of my g...