When I write about contentious subjects here at The Writing Desk, I try to make sure that I use a tone that comes across as collaborative and inclusive. I know what a minefield sociopolitical topics are -- especially on the Internet -- and you can find someone shouting another person down anywhere you can find … Continue reading (Politics) What I Want From White People
Tag: self-reflection
(Personal) My 2017
Happy New Year! Congratulations to all of us for making it through 2017 with our sanity mostly intact. It was a really rough year, wasn't it? I don't know about you, but just when I thought I was getting a handle on things, something else would come along and knock me off my feet. There … Continue reading (Personal) My 2017
Kwanzaa, Day 5: Nia (Purpose)
Habari gani, brothers and sisters? Today's principle is Nia, or Purpose. This is another one of those blue-sky concepts that could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and that can make it a little difficult to talk about. What context should we place Nia in? How does it fit … Continue reading Kwanzaa, Day 5: Nia (Purpose)
Kwanzaa, Day 2: Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
Habari gani, brothers and sisters? A depressingly common refrain we tend to get whenever we make the attempt to center blackness for a time is "Why don't we get WHITE (pride, History Month, superheroes, etc.)?" My response is this: Has this ever happened to most (if not all) white ancestors in your family? … Continue reading Kwanzaa, Day 2: Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
Kwanzaa, Day 1: Umoja (Unity)
Habari gani? You might not know it, but today is the first day of Kwanzaa! A lot of people tend to dismiss Kwanzaa because it's a made up holiday, or because it promotes divisiveness by centering the African diaspora, or because the whole thing sounds so silly. But all holidays were newly made up at … Continue reading Kwanzaa, Day 1: Umoja (Unity)
(Writing) Writing and the Anxious Rabbit
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is a mental illness that can be difficult to talk about, mostly because it looks like one of those 'special snowflake' disorders that someone claims to have in order to justify certain behaviors. Even with an official diagnosis and some significant time in a group therapy class, it's the aspect of my … Continue reading (Writing) Writing and the Anxious Rabbit
(Personal) Moving Forward, Looking Back
The picture on the right is a sankofa bird, a symbol from the Akan art culture of West Africa. Sankofa is a word that comes from the Twi language, and it roughly means "Go back and get what was left behind." The sankofa bird has been a big symbol for a long time in Africa … Continue reading (Personal) Moving Forward, Looking Back
(Writing) A Future With Me In It
It's getting harder for me to look at the news these days without feeling like I'm staring into the void of our own self-destruction. The current US administration seems obsessed with assuaging the bruised ego of the President, making the lives of the poor and working class as difficult as possible, and letting the rich … Continue reading (Writing) A Future With Me In It
(Personal) What I Brought Back From Texas
After two weeks in Belgium, I flew to Dallas, TX for the final week of my training. It was a pretty wild swing from one place to the other -- Belgium is almost stereotypically European, with tons of small stores, few chains, narrow streets and close spaces; Texas, on the other hand, is wide and … Continue reading (Personal) What I Brought Back From Texas
(Personal) What I Brought Back From Europe
In August and September, work sent me one of their headquarters officers in Belgium for training on the product we support as part of an effort to foster more collaboration between the Support teams in Europe and the US. I was there for two weeks, with a "gap weekend" in Paris visiting a dear friend … Continue reading (Personal) What I Brought Back From Europe
From the Desk of Jakebe T. Rabbit 