The Power of Women

Posted July 13, 2015

If someone were to ask you what leadership is, I’m sure your responses would be as varied as the responses I have heard when people are asked to define racial justice.  As is true of most things in our lives, our lived experience supersedes dictionary definitions.

Leadership per the Merriam Webster online dictionary is:  1) a position as a leader of a group, organization, etc; 2) the time when a person holds the position of leader; 3) the power or ability to lead other people.  Though I do not argue the definition as it appears, what leadership means to me is more convoluted.

As a child I dreamed of being president.  I wish I had a quarter for how many times I heard I was insane to think this was possible.  It is regrettably not the only situation in my life where I was informed my pursuit of leadership was ambiguously linked and limited due to my gender identity.  So my experience and definition of leadership inevitably became linked to how unattainable I felt it was for me to achieve because I am a woman.

I have been blessed in my life to have incredibly brave, intelligent and resilient women mentor me in my pursuit of leadership. … Continue reading »

My Skin in the Game

Posted March 11, 2014

In reality, when I am fighting with the Justice4All program, I am fighting for myself.

I am fighting for my right to not be complicit in policies that work in my favor but that threaten my peers of color. I am fighting against a system that has invisibly shaped much of my life – that has planted in me fear, ignorance, and disconnection; that has denied me the ability to tell the difference between a threat and a stereotype; that has structured my life in such a way that I possess a radically unfair share of resources and privilege while others are locked up and locked out. I have been taught my whole life that people of color, especially black men, are criminals. I am fed this information through the media, where I consume images of black men labeled as thugs; I learn this when, from the back of the car, I hear the lock click as my white family travels through a black neighborhood; and I am supposed to understand that because more black men are locked away, it means that more black men break the law. But from my own experience, I know this isn’t true. Instead, I know that there is a double standard that benefits white people by constantly giving them the benefit of the doubt, and punishes black people by constantly denying their innocence.… Continue reading »