With each black man’s death I ask: Are you my Emmett Till?

Do you remember that children’s book, Are You My Mother? It’s where a bird goes around asking a kitten, a cow, a dog and others if they are its mother.

I feel like I’m that little bird when it comes to the spate of black men being killed. With each  Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin or Amadou Diallo, I’m asking: Are you my Emmett Till?

Protests in New York City after the grand jury decided not to issue an indictment in Eric Garner's death. By Otto Yamamoto.

Protests in New York City after the grand jury decided not to issue an indictment

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Achieving Martin Luther King’s Dream: Are you doing your part?

Today is Martin Luther King Day, when we look back on a courageous man and the movement for equality. Has King’s dream been realized? No, it hasn’t.

Interlocking fingers with my son.

Me and my son.

Yes, we have a black president, and as monumental as that is, it doesn’t mean we’ve achieved his dream. We are much, much closer than we’ve ever been, but still not there. Not when we’ve got a justice system that unfairly metes out “justice” from racial profiling in arrests to sentencing laws that are … Read more ...

The First Indian Miss America, racism and the bigot next door

When Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America, there was a nasty backlash online. People didn’t like that she was the first woman of Indian descent to win the crown. They told her: It’s America, not India and called her a terrorist, made references to al-Qaeda and whined about it being inappropriate because it was close to 9/11.

My good friend Ruby is a gracious mom of two boys and a wife to a sweet man. They are also Sikhs and she wrote a telling post Read more ...

#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen: Twitter reflects feminism’s problem with race

Did you guys catch the Twitterstorm that was #solidarityisforwhitewomen? If not, it’s still out there, read it.

I was checking out my Twitterstream on Tuesday and first noticed it from @AngryBlackLady, who often has quite a few good gems.

Naturally, I had to click on the hashtag, being the curious cat that I am. And whoa, did I stumble upon some really thought-provoking, painfully truthful tweets.

 

Here are some:

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Reading my piece at BlogHer13’s VOTY keynote

Oh what a night. It’s long been most people’s favorite part of the BlogHer conference: Voices of the Year.

As I’ve mentioned before, I was one of the VOTY winners who was chosen to read during the evening’s keynote. To add icing on the cake, Queen Latifah was the host of the event.

All of the us VOTY readers were sitting backstage waiting for the show to begin. Our nerves were running wild, the funny girls got funnier, the quiet girls seemed to grow … Read more ...