The Goddess Professor Speaks

There is rarely a Fourth of July that goes by that I don't think of and/or read Douglass' "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" I typically post it yearly as well. Last year, we were blessed with descendants of Douglass performing parts of his speech and reflecting on who they are and where we are today, as they relate to his speech. Today, I ask slightly different questions: what to the American descendants of slavery (ADOS) is the Fourth? What to any of us is the Fourth? In a year where we've seen the symbolic victory * of federal recognition for Juneteenth while simultaneously witnessing state legislatures across the country and nationally elected folks attempt to shut down any conversations on race, racism, slavery's role in the founding and growth of this country, and real American history instead of American mythology, what to ADOS does this day mean?  At a time when we've lost more than half a million (605,533 as of 11:25a on 7/5/21, accordi

One hundred years ago today, white Tulsa citizens stormed into the Greenwood district of Tulsa and began attacking Black citizens. Like many incidents like these throughout American history, it started when a Black man was accused of doing something to a white girl/woman. I say "something," because it's still unclear what happened on the elevator where the "something" allegedly happened. One hundred years ago today, the Tulsa Massacre began. It would end only a day later ( fortunately just one day because it could’ve been much worse had it lasted longer) once the National Guard was called in, but after hundreds of Black people had been injured, thousands of Black people made homeless due to their homes be burned and destroyed, and an untold number of Black people killed. Untold numbers. Hmm. Some estimates say as high as 300 people were killed. Some records seriously lowball that number, but it's hard to do an accurate counting of the dead when their kille

I saw an article and then watched the trailer for the upcoming film Netflix's  Concrete Cowboy , starring Lorraine Toussaint, Idris Elba, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, and Caleb McLaughlin (the sole Black kid in Netflix's  Stranger Things ). The article from The Root opens with a simple question: "When did you first learn that Black cowboys exist?" In the article, a few of the film's actors offer a few answers:  Bob Marley's " Buffalo Soldiers " (about the all Black calvary regimen of U.S. Soldiers ).  The film Posse (directed by and starring Mario Van Peebles, also related to Buffalo Soldiers ) The film Buck and the Preacher (starring the amazing and incomparable Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte) . The article also mentions the person who was my earliest memory of Black cowboys: Bass Reeves . My dad told me about Bass Reeves when I was younger. Dad loves western stuff AND actual history, and my parents always made an effort to fill in the gap of th

A year ago today, everything stopped. Freedom of movement as we knew it ended. A year ago today, I was googling Covid-19 furiously, trying to understand what was happening, so I could then discuss it in my classes in an accurate way. Students were slowly becoming aware of what Covid-19 was, and I was trying to help them sift through the noise. Because one of our topics that semester was misinformation/disinformation/malinformation, I made sure we had frank and honest discussions about how to obtain accurate info. Discussing Covid-19 would be the second in-real-time event I used as a lesson that semester. Earlier in the Spring semester, after Kobe Bryant's death (rest his soul), I used the information cycle and misinformation as a lesson on how to know which news to trust, how to assess credibility, and confirm stories and information. A year ago today, our personal life changed with a car accident (thankfully, no one was seriously harmed) as the larger world as we knew it changed a

In recent days, many of my white colleagues/friends have been afforded the amazing opportunity of either getting on the wasted doses vaccination lists or being considered as educators by local places offering vaccines. (Wasted dose lists are pharmacy waiting lists that you can add your name to and they will call people at the end of the day if they have doses that will go to waste if they aren't used.) I'm ELATED that so many people I know who have largely adhered to all the covid protocols and thereby been mostly locked away in their houses, have been able to secure vaccine doses OR an appointment to get one soon. I immediately considered jumping on this bandwagon, and then I reconsidered. I feared that once I, a Black woman, showed up with my work ID that suddenly higher ed faculty would not be considered educators--despite EIGHT of my white colleagues already getting the vax, as of this writing. Or that I would be questioned as being a higher ed faculty (people are often sur