A Friendly Game of Pick'em: Exploring the Inconsistency of "Harmless Jokes" on Social Media

This has not been an ideal Olympic run for Team USA's Gabby Douglas, the darling gymnast extraordinaire of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.  Douglas was arguably robbed of defending her title in the individual all-around since each country can only send through two representatives in the final.  A costly mistake on a handstand along with other deductions not only kept her from getting a medal in the final on the uneven bars, disappointingly coming in seventh place.  Her only part in any medal was when the team notched gold in the team all-around, but during the medal ceremony, she was excoriated for not putting her hand over her heart during "The Star Spangled Banner" despite Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump doing the exact same thing and receiving little to no flack about it.  However, among Black women in particular, the constant ridicule since 2012 has been about her hair--which has been called "crunchy" and having dandruff while her edges have been criticized for being "straight disrespectful".  Of course, there have been a lot of folks running to her defense, saying things along the lines of "she's competing at the Olympics, while you're at home".

Get Down or Sit Down, Part 2: The Great Distraction and the Erasure of "Black"

The need for understanding and recognition is as natural for human beings as eating, sleeping and dropping three hot ones a day.  (BTW...if you're not doing the latter, then step your whole grains and water games up, slim.  I drop PSAs within PSAs.)  However, Black people, who weren't even legally considered 100 percent human for 78 of their first 246 years in this country, have struggled mightily with those basic human needs more than most other races in American society.  Between erasing and replacing our entire heritage, language, religion and culture, it was clear from the outset that we were a disposable people.  Pepper in some of the most heinous acts in world history including but not limited to all of American slavery, the Black Wall Street Massacre of 1921 that killed over 3,000 Black people and the gruesome murder of 14-year-old Emmitt Till and it was even more apparent.  So when you have groups of people who insist on changing the hashtag as well as the narrative from #BlackLivesMatter to "#AllLivesMatter" or "#BlueLivesMatter", Black people are once again faced with the harsh reality of living in a country full of revisionist historians who don't understand why we've been saying variations of "Black Lives Matter" since forever.  Hence, as I soldier on with Part 2 of "Get Down or Sit Down", I will attempt to unveil how these assertions of which lives matter cunningly detract from Black people's issues...

Get Down or Sit Down, Part 1: The Loud Pack and the Silent Killers

Although Black people have constantly burdened the brunt of racism and discrimination since being brought to the Americas against our will, it feels like it's been open season on Black people since the death of Trayvon Martin in February of 2012.  However, since last week's senseless murders of 37-year-old Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and 34-year-old Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota by police officers, there appears to be an uprising in the making because Black folk just aren't having it anymore.  The pain of constantly being reminded that our lives don't matter has stirred up the need for urgent solidarity among our people to send messages to the establishment that we are no longer just marching or protesting, although none of that will cease or desist until justice is achieved.  The problem is that while some of us are heeding to the "all aboard" call, there are many in our own ranks and outside who are either inadvertently or purposely subverting the spirit of the movement and the efforts of those trying to make progress for our people.  Chalk it up to disingenuous behavior, apathy, confusion, distraction, ego, cynicism, ignorance or flat-out negativity, but either way, the attitude is simple: either get down or, like Jesse Williams insisted in his 2016 BET Awards speech, "sit down".  Hence, this series is dedicated to helping folks identify whether they truly care about justice and the advancement of Black people or if they're just in the way...

The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé, Part 4

YouTuber Tashya Tummings had perhaps one of the most interesting quotes of the year on the sneak: "The more public you are, the less talent you have."  If that's the case, then Republican presidential candidate and famed businessman Donald Trump is the most talentless hack in the 2016 presidential election.  Even with the candidates remaining on the GOP side, Senator Ted Cruz or Governor John Kasich aren't the "sexy picks" because they aren't as entertaining as Trump.  Sure, they could write tangible policy in their sleep with their hands tied behind their backs, but because Trump and Cruz have been too busy taking shots at each other's wives and giving news outlets even more fodder, nobody cares.  With the help of the media, Trump has effectively turned the GOP debates and town halls into nothing more than reality television for politics without having any teeth to his bombastic claims of making America "great again".  With that said, Trump isn't a lone ranger when it comes to giving the people what they want.  The difficulty in filling an arena with people interested in watching a science experiment versus the ease in packing those same stands with football, basketball or boxing fans immediately comes to mind.  It's not to devalue the greatness of sports or entertainment because, obviously, I have made a living from writing and discussing those things ad nauseam.  Nevertheless, when Americans turn on their televisions, log into their social media accounts and turn on their radios and media players, they often want a show, not a lecture.  Hence, in the fourth and final installment to "The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé", I will manifest the last reason why he is merely a byproduct of a society that routinely values style over substance...

Five Reasons Why Snow in the D.C. Area Annoys My Life

When my mother, my brother and I moved to Elmira Street in Southwest D.C. in 1994, we were blessed with a decent snowfall in December.  After my brother and I built a snowman named Paco, a few of the neighborhood girls saw him and immediately declared war.  Let's just say Paco couldn't withstand the fury of the snow fight and neither did one of my soon-to-be best friends--one of the war declarers who got hit in the head by one of my schoolmates with a hard snowball that sent her in the house.  (We all laugh about it now, but she wasn't laughing then.  Come to think about it, she doesn't really laugh that much now.  Maybe the rest of us just laugh at her.)  Fast forward three years later to college and that signaled the end of my love affair with snow.  Being in upstate New York where they get snow like Seattle gets rain, they couldn't care less about three feet of snow on the ground; you just better have your butt in class because the professor that lived in nearby Ithaca was going to expand your mind through rain, hail, sleet or snow and make it before the end of that 15-minute grace period.  Heck, there was snow on the ground two weeks before my graduation in mid-May of 2001.  You grow up and you realize that you don't get to be the teenage kid defending the honor of your pitiful looking snowman anymore.  Unfortunately, you have to be the responsible adult who has to lace up his Tims, walk 15-20 minutes to get on the subway and trek to work because you live the second closest out of everyone designated as emergency staff.  You get to watch the neighborhood kids sled down hills and snow embankments and play with shovels while you're actually using every muscle in your body with yours while A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory, Royce Da 5'9" and DJ Premier's PRyhme or Freddie Gibbs' Shadow of a Doubt albums are just about the only things helping you to ignore slowly losing the feeling in your fingers and toes.  Add insult to injury: you live in a region where schools close if it rains hard enough--except in D.C.--so imagine being told that a snowstorm of historic proportions is on the horizon.  Thus, as we deal dig out of the aftermath from Winter Storm Jonas (someone in one of my Facebook said that she didn't realize that they gave names to winter storms), allow me to trudge through five reasons why winter weather in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area bothers every piece and portion of my existence...