I am deeply saddened and dismayed by Harvard Divinity School’s refusal to grant Cornel West tenure. — Below is a brief reflection about my time as Dr. West’s student. His unparalleled ability to make students believe in the magic of their imagination will be dearly missed. “I don’t think I agree with your assertion,” I said, my voice shaking with fear and trepidation. The lecture hall grew quiet and I locked eyes with a friend who gave me a concerned glance in return.

And it is Doing it on Purpose — This story was originally published in The Boycott Times. You can find the article here If You Don’t Have Sick Time; You Don’t Have Sick Time.” At the onset of the pandemic, these words reverberated throughout our staff meeting. My colleagues and I shifted uncomfortably. The room exchanged uneasy glances…

It’s time to stop crying when Black people ask you to be better. — I know the sting of microaggressions, macroaggressions, and overt racism. I know the pain of going home after a long day of class or work with heavy shoulders, shoulders burdened by the pain of interpersonal racism. Not only are experiences of racism hurtful and fatiguing, but advocating for oneself is…

Learning to honor my boundaries and limitations as a Black Woman in the world. — “You hurt your knee, you need to rest, you need to take it easy.” My sister’s voice reverberated through the phone. Her words dipped in stern-love. “But, it does not hurt that badly,” I bemoaned (I am notoriously bad at taking it easy). My sister paused and then with intentional…

Many experts emphasize being present as the key to crushing anxiety. But what if your constant reality is white supremacy and patriarchal violence? — “I know that I am experiencing anxiety,” I told my therapist. “But my fears are not irrational. As a Black woman I am unsafe in America. Not only am I unsafe, I am unsafe by design. The system is built upon the degradation of my body and my spirit. How…

Burn it down, sweep up the ashes, and start over. Here are some concrete ways to support Black Lives in pedagogy and praxis. — My latest article, “Not Just the Syllabus, Throw the Whole Discipline in the Trash” challenges the white supremacist heteropatriachy of higher education. Particularly, I pushback against the notion that scholarship created from white supremacist frameworks maintain some sort of ethereal value, even when the errors of the texts are glaring…

As a Black, queer woman still unlearning the respectability politics of my youth, growing plants has helped me grow, too — My mother, a Black woman, and a single mother of three Black children, demanded excellence for as long as I can remember. Teaching us excellence was her way of arming us against white supremacy. Throughout my childhood, she taught my siblings and I that if we were excellent enough, that…

If you truly care about Black lives, then it’s time to dismantle and rebuild higher education. — Recently the hashtag #BlackInTheIvory trended on Twitter. This hashtag proved to be both illuminating and incredibly disheartening. I know the tumultuous experience of being Black in higher education spaces well. In fact, during my time in graduate school, I wrote about the terror of being Black at a predominantly white…

Before you apologize to your Black acquaintance, pause and reflect on a few things… — Many Black people will tell you that the past ten days constituted a whirlwind unlike any other. For many of us our phones rang (and continue to ring) off the hook, our DMs full of white people experiencing racial revelation. The veil now torn, their eyes newly open to the…