Communities in Kitchens

MEN BECOME FEMINISTS, PLEASE!!

So Upworthy had this video inquiring whether they were for women's rights:

What really irked me is that men still equate the word feminism with some less than manly feeling. I don't know if it's word association because feminism sounds like feminine and they just avert the whole word or what, but I tell you one thing, my future husband, WILL BE A DAMN FEMINIST AND PROUD OF IT! That's all I have to say! :)

The Exhaustion of Racism...

“Black people are normal people deserving of the same respect afforded to anyone else, but they often aren’t given that respect due to the machinations of white supremacy.” -Cord Jefferson

Today, when I thanked President Obama for signing an act to cap the amount students have to payback on student loans to 10%, I received this hateful Twitter response from screen name @joeboogersbiggz that called for "death to our nation's leader and all politicians...to have their blood run through the streets..." Thankfully it was deleted by Twitter, but "what's seen can't be unseen."

	Joe Booger Biggs (@JoeBoogerBiggz)
6/10/14, 9:37 AM @awakenlibrarian Continue to kill Obama supporters and Obama voters! Kill all the politicians now! Spill their blood in the streets now!

And, now I worry...for our leader and country, for my sons (who are mixed race) and I get an unsettling feeling. Who knew some of our citizens would turn a simple "thank you for your help" into an atrociously ugly moment? This Aquarius of violence and hatred is seeping out at a rate that stifles my revolutionary thoughts of improving the daily injustices done unto anybody. Though I don't like a lot of what our elected leaders are doing, never once did I think to murder them...to return to a barbaric mode of thinking that toppled kingdoms and wiped out civilizations. And though I'm a rebel, with just cause, my philosophy is somewhere in between Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, John Locke and Gandhi. I have to believe reason and enlightenment will change the thoughts of radicals and simmer the unjust passions of the ignorant, who use racial slurs, slain the innocent and call for the blood of our leaders.

This is the preface I will use for my latest find by Cord Jefferson, who poignantly penned my exact frustrations regarding racism. You see, I've always been the token "black" friend, the girl who's twice as intelligent if not more than her Caucasian sisters but still can't land a "dream job" by word-of-mouth like my paler peers, or a woman, who dates a guy based on the manner in which he treats me and not just because "he's Black." (or White, Asian, Indian, British, French, etc. because there's good and bad of every race. So put whatever label you want in the blank!)

WE, AS INTELLECTS, ARE EXHAUSTED DISCUSSING THE INJUSTICES OF RACISM...OR SEXISM...OR ANY "-ISM" THAT FITS THE UNJUST TREATMENT OF ANY PERSON, ESPECIALLY REPEATED DISCUSSIONS WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT CHANGE!

To use Jefferson's words from his latest article on "The Racism Beat":

I’m ready for people in positions of power at magazines and newspapers and movie studios to recalibrate their understanding of what it means to talk about race in the first place. If America would like to express that it truly values and appreciates the voices of its minorities, it will listen to all their stories, not just the ones reacting to its shortcomings and brutality.

If this doesn’t eventually happen, I wonder how many more writers of color will come to the conclusion, as my colleague did, that this life we’ve made for ourselves is unsustainable. How many essays can go up before fatigue becomes anger becomes insanity? How many op-ed columns before you can feel the gruesomeness of trying to defend another dead black kid slowly hollowing you out? How many different ways can you find to say that you’re a human being?

If you’re black and your beat is to offer your thoughts and opinions on the degradation of black Americans, you’ll never want for steady work. A steady mind is not guaranteed.

Cord Jefferson, I thank you for your thoughts and inspiring this blog post. I hope to get the word of "exhausted racism" out there with you! Be well everyone!

Why Libraries Rule the world

This info graphic dictates the UBER importance of THE LIBRARY!

The Choke-hold: Why Urban Schools in Public Education Are Failing!

A Librarian’s Retort: Why I Despise Urban Public Education

I am torn. Part of me believes that hard working poor Americans want an education for their child. Not just an education but all the successes that come along with it. Then there’s the other half…cynic row, as I like to call it. This part believes no matter how much we try to move forward and progress the urban poor, they are stuck in their tortoise shell. Hoodies on, Jays (Jordans tennis shoes) clean and tracks hidden—the woven tracks of hair in her head, the dried tracks of sorrowful tears or the tracks from drug use, your choice—and that’s where the tear in me occurs. Not all the students in urban neighborhoods are downtrodden. A few are thirsting for a quality educator. As positive as I want to be daily, the "bad apples" drain the positiveness, the joy and the grit needed to endure an urban school setting.

At the moment, I’m questioning my career choice, my country and my life-goals. I had the obvious warnings signs that spoke loud and clear to me before I moved to an urban, poverty ridden school—unreturned phone calls, no functioning computers in proximity to my location on campus, kids that curse educators and a principal that hadn’t had a librarian in at least five years-- but because of my militant conviction that I can make anything succeed, I’m now burned out a week before Christmas break, thankful my kid has the flu and praying something miraculous to happen to prove to me that the last 5 months were all worth it in the end.

To bring you up to speed, I’m a former English Language Arts teacher, who has taught everything from high school English, English as a Second Language and Literary & Creative Writing. That right there ought to show you how complex and diverse of a teacher I am. As an additional additive, I’m a young Black woman that grew up in a white middle-class suburb and attended a private university. I’ve had privileges, but by no means exhibited the status of wealthy. As a babe, I ran before I walked and electrocuted myself at 5 because I wanted more super-powers like the vacuum cleaner. Regarding education, I always wanted my answers to be different from my classmates and took like a songbird to the arts: cellist, chef, and creative writer. I despised (and still do) any structured box others tried to place me in. Who wouldn’t fight a choke-hold grip on your natural creativity?

However, those attributes are for not. As a recent article published by Slate.com –Inside the Box: People don’t like creativity—remarked, the powers that be “don’t like creativity.” They prefer agreeable, inside the box thinkers. Get as close to the boundaries of the box as you want to…hell we’ll even make you a star for that because you’re edgy! But once you cross that line, “your ass is toast!”

So naturally, as an original thinker, my creative arse was in violation of that rule and labeled uncooperative and resistant to coaching! Go figure that! You mean I went to college, inherited tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and can only achieve wide-range success to pay off those debts if I align my brain along the rest of the “No waves, Dave!” mentalities?

So my next best option was to get out of the classroom (while my test scores were still admirable) and go back to school for a masters degree. Hmm…how about I become a librarian? I can read my assets off and still enjoy influencing the minds of the future. Plus, NO DAMN STANDARDIZED TESTS! Fate brought me a grant opportunity and I seized it. In the mean time, I needed to exit suburbia hell and go to where I was needed.

Therefore, off to urban school! There, the need was great for creative and ambitious minds! I can inspire and assist the economically challenged but aspiring youth. Furthermore, I could be of great use. Leech from me as much knowledge as you can! But, what I found was oppression in its modern form. I jumped from one misery into the lair of hell. All I can tell you is read the article “Four Reasons Why Teachers Avoid or Leave High Poverty Urban Public Schools.” It is a bright light into the new hell I find myself in.

So after months of listening to students being cursed out by professional colleagues—“because that’s the only shit they respond to”—and covering classes for sick, depressed or newbie teachers—“because you’re a librarian, you don’t have a class right now and you’re such a strong teacher”—I’m hiding out in my home-office, nursing a flu-ridden son, hoping he stays ill for the remaining two days of this week so that I don’t have to return to Satan’s liar! Did I just wish for a SLOW recovery for my own child? Wth? And, by the way, all those quotes are literal remarks from co-workers! Again, wth?

So what’s the point? The point is this: corporations and districts alike want to blame educators for the flaws in public education, when the accountability is with one group, the American family…all of us. Corporations that lobby for standardized tests and refuse to raise minimum wage that keeps the rich rich and the poor struggling. Teachers, who learn several pedagogies, just to toss them all out the window in order to survive with urban hellions. Parents, who didn’t take advantage of an education when they had one, so now they work multiple jobs just to make ends meet and don’t have the proper time to bond and raise their children! Lawmakers, who forget those that elected them because the corporation’s lobbyist sweetened a sway in their favor, and school districts that cater to the laws established by agencies that are made up of non-educators or educators that have been out of the classroom for so long they don’t know the first thing about it. Voters that BLINDLY put these buffoons into office. And, the rich, who have enough money to remove their children from public education and let the “scavengers fight amongst themselves… where up here!”

Hell if I’m honest, I believe every decision maker, in the realm of education, should as part of their contract serve one paid week in an inner-city urban public school twice a year. They must be in the classroom and can have no assistance with lessons, classroom management and/or technology. Then, and only then will those haughty wanna-be intellects know the plight of my kind. Plus, it’d give those white-collar twits a bonafide reality check!

We all have accountabilities in public education. However, the only resolution I can come to grips with right now is to leave public education. Or, some kind of way, find an authentic version of the MIB (“Men in Black” movie) memory eraser and make everyone stare at the light. And, start the public education system all over again.



Nevertheless, I need to find some career that supports my desire to be around kids, as well as home-school my own. No buckets of cash over here! No money-bags husband! No faith in public education…at least not at the campus I work, presently. Perhaps, I will open my own private school one distant day. However, unless I win the lottery, I will still have to deal with opinionated investors, who want it done their way or the highway. Now, my arse is right back to those haughty wanna-be intellects! What a vicious circle!

P.S. It’s safe to say that these ideas are all my own, in case the powers that be connect the dots and fire me for having an honest refelection.

It's all a facade! Find out who OWNS the media!

Don't just glance at this...READ IT because it does matter. Perhaps because I'm a librarian or simply because my parents taught me to question everything in order to form my own opinion because "the Lord gave you your own brain, NOT someone else's!" but citizens, all folks alike, need to stop being apathetic and investigate what's presented to them. This is proof of hidden agendas by big corporations. Please, WAKE UP! Click here for a bigger image of below!