The Goddess Professor Speaks

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...

As I read " The Novel Frugality " in Vox last night, I couldn't help but think that this "new frugality due to corona" is in large part only experienced by people who have never had to struggle in their lives--apart from maybe Ramen-fueled college years. I'll be perfectly honest, my first thought was "awww, look. Wealthy folks and/or wypipo are joining the rest of the world and being less wasteful. That's cute." People who either grew up struggling or had parents who grew up struggling, and thereby maintained those struggling-life habits, and passed those habits on likely already had habits that prepared us for this. My parents grew up struggling and passed on those habits. My dad lived as a sharecropping family for a brief time as a child. (Then they got the fuck on down because they weren't dumb and no, just fucking no!) One of the most mind-blowing stories I've never forgotten from my dad was that when he was a kid, he and 3 siblin...

A friend posted this article on FB yesterday: " First Trailer for HBO's Lovecraft Country Blends Jim Crow Horrors with Supernatural Monsters ." I instantly watched the trailer, got excited, then instantly paused. I was hella excited to see Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Courtney B. Vance, and Michael K. Williams in a new show in which Jordan Peele and JJ Abrams are the producers. I had to look up Misha Green. She's badass too! She was the creator and writer for Underground and writer for some eps of one of fave shows: SOA . My excitement was on reserve after I watched the trailer because the show (taken from a book of the same name) puts black people in the Jim Crow South in peril from both racists (actual evil monsters) AND fantastical beasts (literary monsters). My first thoughts: "Damn! Wasn't racism, hatred, discrimination, terror, violence, and unpunished, state-sanctioned murder at the hands of racist people and systems monstrous enough? We gotta add movie mon...

We're all STILL reeling from multiple mass shootings in a week's time (Gilroy, CA, El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH) and other shootings ( Wisconsin, Mississippi, Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia, Indiana, NY )  that were still tragic and horrible, but didn't make as much news because 1) low death counts and 2) we had TWO FUCKING SHOOTINGS in 24 hours--El Paso then Dayton. Even by our shitty standards, 2 in 24 hours is a bit much. When I say the Dayton breaking news alert on my phone, I thought my app was glitching. Nope. ANOTHER FUCKING SHOOTING while cops and media were still gathering info on the first one. I've tried to limit my exposure to all the non-stop news about the shootings and only took time to read articles when something truly caught my eye, like the fact that the FBI are pursuing domestic terrorism charges or the fact that Mexico is considering suing the U.S. government since some of the people killed in El Paso were Mexican nationals or this article: "...

College Admissions Scam. Scandal? Scam? Ugh?! It's a hashtag and Felicity Huffman and Aunt Becky's face are plastered all over everywhere. You know what's not plastered? Their damn mugshots because it's been decided that those won't be released publicly . And where the fuck is William H. Macy's face ? He's Huffman's husband, and therefore, assumably, the father of the kids they were bribing folks to get into college. But nevermind that this mom and this mom 's shots were everywhere--BECAUSE THEY WENT TO JAIL for a similar thing. Goodness, their cases and harsh as fuck sentences seem different in the light of March 2019. Let's see what kind of time ANY of these 50 people get for federal FELONY crimes and RICO violations. My guess: NONE But here's the thing: is this really a scam though? Or is this just normal, business as usual run through to its fallacious, slippery slope end? Is anyone really surprised? Because let's be hone...