[Aug 9, 2016]

I was equal parts excited and dismayed.

I volunteered to speak at my church’s career day and engaged with the youngest crowd I’d met thus far. Youth ranged in age from 5–15.

I did my typical spiel (what’s a doctor do? what is the name of the doctor who works with your mind?) and then got to the question that I didn’t think was going to land well because of their age.

“When you turn on the TV, what’s the biggest problem you see?”

And, like clockwork, the first answer was always what I want them to say as a foray into my work.

“Racism!”, I hear shouted out.

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[Jul 21, 2016]

On a holiday weekend, you cannot pry me off of my couch. You could not pay me to look away. When that instinctive DING DING comes at the top of the hour, that is my cue that the next 59 minutes will belong to the astute detectives and lawyers of Law & Order. (Don’t you judge me for re-watching that one episode 11 times — the outcome might be different this time!)

I am always amazed at how adeptly they find evidence, solve cases, and situate the show within the greater contextual space in society.

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[June 24, 2016]

I went to the Sprint store in December (thank you for your prayers and well wishes) and was minding my own business (as the employees struggled with a seemingly basic request — sigh). All of a sudden, I heard something very strange. Someone asked for an upgrade, but it was the way she said it that made my ears perk up.

“I believe I’m entitled to an upgrade — it’s been 2 years” said the White woman next to me.

I furrowed my brow.

I searched for the term that I’m used to.

“Eligible!” I finally recalled.

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[ April 27, 2016]

When I walked into the office on Monday, it was an unusually somber tone. Our Racial Empowerment Collaborative at the University of Pennsylvania is involved in various programming throughout Philadelphia, and I was informed that a student in one of our groups was murdered over the weekend by gunfire. The youth was a former classroom student of the group leader so he was particularly affected.

When the office cleared out, I looked at the large computer monitor that I promised to fill up with words and figures and statistics. But it kinda mocked me in that moment. “What does your paper have to do with the realities of these families and kids on these streets? How does a paper that takes 2 years to hit actually do any good? What’s your purpose? Riana??”

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[ February 18, 2016]

“I feel like I was robbed of my happiness.”

Many of us are familiar with Kalief Browder’s story: a young man was walking home, apprehended by police for allegedly stealing a bookbag, and remained in a combination of prison and solitary confinement at Rikers Island for 1,110 days.

Say it. One thousand, one hundred and ten days.

Without a trial.

After his release, he indicated to an interviewer that life on the outside was much more difficult than he imagined, particularly because of the paranoia he felt at every turn. This could be the day he was jumped. The people eyeing him could be talking about him behind his back. He would never reach the heights his friends reached, so they didn’t really care about him.

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[December 4, 2015]

When I was live texting about The Wiz with my friend last night (I have Twitter — I just don’t know how to use it. Don’t judge.), every flash of my childhood came streaming back to me. You couldn’t stop my singing, dancing, and precipitation in my eyeball region for the solid performance by some amazing talent.

But then I remembered that, earlier in the day, some folks were tweeting about the lack of “diversity” in an all-Black cast and noted a riot would ensue if an all-White version of The Wiz came out.

You mean — like — The Wizard of Oz? Like, the production that The Wiz was based on that first aired in 1939 (the same year, ironically, Hattie McDaniel would play “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind *pops bubblegum*)?

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[November 24, 2015]

Last year, during a NYC protest affirming Black Lives, a Santa cut in front of my group. Santacon, which is a festivity where people dress up in their holiday best and go from bar to bar, just so happened to coincide with the march borne out of the frustrations of shootings of Black people and non-indictments of cops and/or vigilantes.

It made for some good laughs. That was, until, Santa cut in front of my group. (Not pictured)

He didn’t want to just get across the street, he wanted to remind us that it wasn’t our street and angrily barked, “Go home”. I saw red — and not just his suit. It sounded like, “Go back to Africa” or “Go home nigger” when it was processing in my mind, and the next thing I knew, I yelled back, “YOU go home!” and started walking towards him. Thankfully, my homegirl yanked me back and we kept marching (peacefully and purposefully), but in that moment, I felt a need to respond to the perceived threat.

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[ November 20, 2015]

While reading an article about a Black Mississippi man who was reversed over in a parking lot by a group of White teens (for sport) in 2011, I noticed a line from the judge in the case that really stuck with me. The judge, while attending the University of Virginia law school in 1993, recalled that he saw a fraternity party flier that said, “No Jews, No Wops, and No Nigga Babes”.

Fast forward: a Yale fraternity indicates that no Black women will be allowed in a Halloween party some 22 years later. It seems as if our history is really just being microwaved, although some people think these “individual” phenomena are not related to each other.

And then there’s the timeline of resistance to these events.

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