I first want to apologize for the possibility of my work ever being weaponized by those who cause harm. I see the way people are actively attacking DEI and fear my work may lead them to believe I align with their harmful beliefs. I do not.

The NFL is a celebrated reflection of America. This is what America wants and allows to continue.

People who believe in anti-Blackness aren't always able to tout their beliefs proudly and loudly. Most wait in the shadows for seemingly "justified opportunities". When these opportunities arise they run quickly to them and are loud about why Black people deserve to be dehumanized and more. Ryan Ken (@ryan_ken_acts) made a really good video of White people's reaction to Will Smith's slap and how they fantasized of an opportunity to double down on their disdain for us. I can't find it but if you do please send it to me.

WW love a good flip and reverse. They will use anything they can from crocodile tears to quotes from Black leaders to place themselves back on that pedestal.

Using the harm you've caused Black women, and most likely are continuing to cause Black women, as a means to promote your political agenda is not activism. Hope this helps. 

I haven't gotten my hair "done" in years and I completely forgot how differently people treat you. Random White women complimenting my hair was all the push I needed to bring it up in my next therapy session.

The announcement of Dr. Claudine Gay's resignation from Harvard reminds me of the amazing interview I had with Dr. Janice Asare Gassam where she authentically shared she got her PHD to "move closer to Whiteness".

The centering of Whiteness, White experiences and White feelings is excruciatingly apparent in those books. Thinness is mentioned often throughout the pieces along with the tying of monetary hoarding to success. There’s absolutely no mention of race, sexual orientation, gender beyond the binary or life outside of marriage, motherhood, business and?

In my work on psychological safety, I constantly note the needed foundations for safe relationships: trust, honesty, respect and the prioritization of safety throughout. They are all intertwined and it is almost impossible to have one without the other. Yet we see these seemingly basic human needs being dismissed by people in positions of power daily.

This article on how the Holocaust is being weaponized to justify the suffering of others is a glaring example of what happens when we don’t acknowledge and heal from harm that’s been caused to us and our communities. Similar to the way Black communities globally have had our healing excruciatingly prolonged because of re-written history that refuses any true acknowledgement of the atrocities our ancestors experienced or that we continue to experience. In my piece I Want a White History Month, I write about this large gaping hole left in White people that they attempt to fill with appropriation, deceit and more recently the support of genocide. All these uncared for wounds are bound to be internalized or spread to others.

Netflix’s recommendations along with animated shows from my childhood are products of “the Two White Girl Rule” which itself is a product of White Supremacy. It creates imaginary scarcity and pits people who are not White against each other for these usually stereotype-filled roles that often refuse to allow people to exist outside of several binaries. It also almost always doubles down on the big ass racial umbrellas, never giving any depth to the culture, values or traditions of girls featured that are not White because what else is there to know about them other than their skin color and/or eye shape?

According to a study by McKinsey & Company in 2022, 63% of diversity and inclusion leadership roles were occupied by White women. I already knew this before seeing the study but what I want to know is what the hell do they be talkin' about?

Without space for White people to do what they need to do, we are constantly expected to hold this space and to tolerate their stunted emotional maturity around their history. I want and they need a White History Month.

mayed is a design researcher and creative strategist. They bring a critically-informed approach to community-centered design that seeks to advance culturally thriving and sustainably empowering outcomes. Inside and out, mayed is an abolitionist at heart. They seek to articulate the ways in which carceral logics and discourses are reproduced in our lives, and dream of the ways in which we can liberate ourselves and reclaim the freedom to define our own realities.

It’s literally titled How to deal with remote work microaggressions but goes on and on about “allyship”. It basically just lists all the microaggressions they can think of for various communities and drops BIPOC as many times as possible. Who are y’all talking to? Lola Bakare (She/Her) shared similar feelings after receiving an email entitled “Want to Be an Ally to Black Women? from Lean In. Lola shared that “another great way to be an ally is to acknowledge your Black subscribers exist.” Both examples credit the writing to the brand and not a specific writer or group of writers. If your target audience is cis White people, you should say that.

Last year I was a guest on a podcast focused on racial ambiguity, Our True Colors. I shared that “ambiguity only exists when specificity isn’t present and assumptions are prioritized in exchanges.”

In real life people are proud of where they’re from and who they are. In real life people poke ambiguity with a “stick” often. People, White people, are always asking “where are you really from?”

This leads to one of the top questions around Bonnie being about her ethnicity.

The artist, Nadia Snopek, is White and likely did not consult a single Black person before publishing. In the originally mentioned conversation, Ku’ulani Keohokalole (She/Her/‘Oia), shared something I’ll never forget. She shared that “When people say they ‘don’t care if people are blue, purple, or green’, I tell them there are no blue, purple, or green people. People don’t come in those colors, so what are you really saying?”

With Special Guest Dr. Janice Gassam Asare (She/Her) https://www.linkedin.com/in/janicegassamphd/ Dr. Janice is the founder of BWG Business Solutions, an award-winning DEI consultancy designed to help organizations create cultures built on racial equity. She is a senior contributing writer for Forbes having authored over 350 articles.