I was just discussing with a neighbor (with a PhD in neuroscience) how doctors turn studies about medical racism into more medical bias-- as a Black woman I get treated like my BLACKNESS puts me at more risk for health problems when the problem is the ANTI-BLACKNESS of doctors. Studies on racism in medicine show that compared to whites, doctors think Black people feel less pain, give Black people lower of doses of medicine for pain, believe Black people have different skin, and don't give Black children the same emergency care as white peers.

Since we just celebrated Dr. King and everyone in the news keeps calling for peace about the killing #TyreNichols, here's some words from MLK on peace and protests:

This text is saying in substance Peace is not merely the absence of some negative force—war, tensions, confusion but it is the presence of some positive force—justice, goodwill, the power of the kingdom of God.

I had a long talk the other day with a man about this bus situation. He discussed the peace being destroyed in the community, the destroying of good race relations.

Wanted to share with y'all a news story that has always stayed with me and that I discuss with my students every semester.

In 2008, a 26 year-old mom named Tarika Wilson was at home with her kids and holding her baby in her arms. Police officers in plainclothes burst into her house with guns drawn. Tarika went to a bedroom to hide with her kids. The police first killed their two dogs. Then they shot at the bedroom, killing her and shooting her baby who was permanently disfigured.

Folks know that I love #familyorfiance as a show that features Black family and love, and the importance of therapy in navigating relationships. But in the most recent episode someone raised a concern about abuse that the show just kind of bypassed in a way that felt egregious. The person who raised concerns about the abuse was the bride-to-be's mom, based on reports from a sister who lives with the couple (a sister who they curiously didn't invite to the show, instead bringing family who doesn't know them as a couple at all).

LOL. I really thought that COVID would force us to expand access to paid sick leave & leave to care for ill loved ones.

Of course it just ended up with us making sick people go to work or neglect their sick family, as always.

You'd think I would know this place by now. Maybe I should just make this my chain of "if we had done better with COVID fantasies" and used this as an opportunity to enrich the lives of normal Americans rather than corporations.

For example, what if we used COVID as an opportunity to forgive student debt instead?

I just realized that I can only name 10 Whoopi Goldberg films off the top of my head and I'm pretty disappointed in myself.

Ghost, The Color Purple, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Jumping Jack Flash, Sister Act 1 &2, [Angelina Jolie sociopath movie], Made In America, [Movie where she played a carribean nanny], For Colored Girls (Tyler Perry version)...[Jumping Jack Flash 2?], [Film where she pretends to be a white man to succeed in business] That's all I can think of. I tried to come up with a 24 hour Whoopi marathon list and I petered out.

Just catching up on The Morning Show and the storyline of the young assistant who throws herself heavily at a reluctant male superior and goads him into an affair with her against a #MeToo plot backdrop feels... like a questionable choice. Maybe it gets better, but the whole twenty-four year old subordinate who can't keep her hands off her middle-aged male superior and is hampered by an over-zealous HR feels like a Qanon "what if" fantasy and a red herring #MeToo argument to me.

It's really depressing me that we've mostly decided to turn a public health crisis into an apocalyptic choose-your-own-covid-adventure game. The short-term and long-term impacts of this virus won't be felt privately.

I really wish people paid attention to the ACTUAL experience of Black children in public schools rather than made up white grievance stories.

A thread:

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1455180908114423813

Schools regularly ban Black children from wearing their hair the way it grows out of their heads. Braids have been banned. Covering their hair, too, has been banned.

chalkbeat.org/2020/1/16/2112…

Never forget that nine years ago this week, a Black mother begged a white homeowner to help her and her two babies (4& 2 years old) outside his door during Hurricane Sandy.

Instead, he put his back against the door and the two children drowned.

archive.kpcc.org/blogs/multiame… His response when he found out that he had literally turned his back on a mother and let two kids drown to death outside his door?

"It's unfortunate. She shouldn't have been out, though. You know, it's one of those things."

Since white supremacy in the form of "anti-CRT" seems to be the theme of election night, going to share again:

"Anti-CRT efforts will fail... [They] are not just on the wrong side of history; they are on the wrong side of what—and who—America is today."

slate.com/human-interest… "The truth is that these rules take direct aim at the kind of teachers most dedicated & experienced at communicating about race and racism. The teachers who discuss the tragedies & horrors of anti-Blackness, slavery, and genocide in this country are the exceptions, not the rule.

I'm just sitting here remembering the time when I was arrested in NJ.

I was driving to my internship and racially profiled, pulled over for going 6 mph over the speed limit and arrested for ibuprofen I had in the car. The cops rifled through my entire car looking for drugs and even destroyed cookies I was bringing for co-workers from my second job at a fast food place. They tore each one apart as I looked on helplessly. They went through my trunk as I watched. What triggered the search? Supposedly a small bag of earrings I had in my purse from a recent

Can I be really honest on this thing for a second? I was one of those fools who thought getting a good paying job, having excellent credit, & being debt-free was the key to buying a home.

It's generational wealth, actually.

No millennial has earned $200,000 for a down payment. I mean, maybe there are like 3 who have. But this kind of spending on home-buying that I see where I am?? A lot of this is generational wealth. Parents who can lend a kid $200,000 or even $800,000 to buy a house in cash, and then get paid off by a mortgage later.

What exactly is the worst police department in America? On one hand Chicago police had a secret torture site. On the other hand cops in Ohio killed a Black woman in her own house while she held her infant. Then again, the entire police department of King City had to close down because so many cops were arrested. But then New York cops raped a handcuffed man with a plunger IN a police station. Though Harris County cops in Texas physically "examined" a woman's vagina on camera for 11 minutes during a routine traffic stop. But then Boston cops covered for

I'm a dark-skinned natural hair "inner-city" Black girl with a single mom from the projects raised by folks who believed in me and loved on me.

And today I was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. There are so many folks to thank- mostly folks who made this possible - introduced me to an editor, called a friend at a journal, invited me to be on a panel, told me that my writing was great.

There were so many voices that said I couldn't, but theirs were stronger.

The whole cancel culture thing is the biggest scam because I’m pretty sure Fox News and Breitbart invented the thing where you bring media attention to someone being critical of cops, wealthy people, or white people to get them fired or deluged by death threats. Was Breitbart’s attack on the working people’s org ACORN not cancel culture? Fox and Breitbart’s attack on Black USDA official Shirley Sherrod wasn’t cancel culture? The regular bits where Tucker Carlson & friends secretly record and broadcast a professor criticizing whiteness?

My student is texting me, upset at what's happening. Wondering if it's hypocritical to want to see these guys laying siege to our government leaders treated like they treated protestors who marched in defense of of Black Lives.

Here's what I told her: Be careful of false equivalences here.

Racism and anti-blackness means that Black people are always presumed to be dangerous, even when peaceful.

And white people are assumed to be peaceful, even when they are dangerous.

Just learned my 63 year-old kind, gentle, much beloved uncle was still working at his Pepsi job through the pandemic bc his wife lost her job. He’s been there for over 30 years and didn’t want to lose his benefits.

He died of COVID-19 yesterday. 8 months shy of retirement. This country’s abyssmal, unimaginable failure to control this virus has devastated millions and millions of Americans. Our country is being run by people who expect the worst, do the worst, and make us the worst of what we can be.