The Undercover Introvert

Grab ‘Em By the Childcare

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When we talk about the concept of women’s liberation, the conversation often centers around burning bras, shattering glass ceilings, providing the full range of reproductive freedoms, and women no longer allowing men to dictate the conditions of their existence. But there are other ideas that are even more revolutionary than these, and they aren’t what you might think.

Recently, Elizabeth Warren, a candidate running for president in 2020, floated the idea of universal childcare, and it shook the ground beneath my feet in a way that very few policy proposals have done. This is mostly because I understood how much of a game changer a program like this could be for the everyday American female.

Reproductive freedom and the refusal to allow men to continue to control how much women are able to achieve in their personal and professional lives are all extremely important to a woman’s overall autonomy. However, they don’t address a large part of the problem women face when attempting to fully actualize their potential. Since women are the ones biologically responsible for birthing children as well as the ones society still pegs as the primary caregivers, childcare remains a persistent obstacle that so many — especially single mothers, women of color, and women of all races living just above or in poverty — cannot overcome. The cost of childcare is outrageous, oftentimes more than what a woman would earn actually working a 40 hour per week job. The exorbitant cost also keeps women from pursuing higher education or technical programs that could lead to jobs that pay more competitive wages.

When we normally talk about strategies to lift folks out of poverty and into higher wage careers, we always hit on incentives and programs to increase access to education and job training. If the conversation focuses on women, we might also mention access to comprehensive healthcare, inclusive of contraception, in order to provide her with more control over when and if she has children. But once the woman has already had children, family planning, education, and job training are often a day late and several dollars short. What good is access to a wide range of programs if a mother can’t find anyone to take care of her child while she’s earning a degree or learning a skill that will drastically increase her earning potential? Removing that obstacle, that worry, would change everything for so many single mothers and working class families struggling to make ends meet.

Universal childcare is a big, bold idea. And, as with most big, bold ideas, we’re going to hear a lot of grumbling about how we pay for it. These concerns are valid, but it’s important to think of the drain on our economy created by so many individuals who are unable to rise to their full potential because they are drowning in poverty with no sturdy life raft in sight.

A program that offers universal childcare could be that life raft.

The country would reap the benefit of a more educated, more highly skilled, more productive population. We would see the wage and opportunity gap between men and women begin to narrow and finally, after centuries of systemic inequity, to close. Something as simple as providing childcare so women can pursue the same educational and professional opportunities already available to men could be revolutionary, and the return on investment would be beyond our wildest dreams.

**Original article published in Florida Today

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On Doublespeak & Raising Daughters

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The Orwellian way we raise girls — the words we use, how we prepare, warn, and terrify them — upholds each and every component of toxic masculinity.

I say this as a single mother of a daughter, as a perpetrator, and as a recipient of such words, preparations, warnings, and terror. And even in mid conversation with my kid throughout the years, I fully understood how fucked up my words were, but I also fully understood how completely the world was on fire, and that my primary responsibility was to make sure my child wasn’t burned to a crisp the moment she leapt from the nest of my embrace and into the world, her eyes on the horizon, excited to fly solo.

Don’t get me wrong, my daughter and I had all kinds of conversations, and we talked about systemic sexism, the insidiousness of rape culture, and how women had an inherent right to bodily autonomy in all spheres of public and private life. But we still had so many of the other types of conversations — about not being out alone late at night, about not getting too drunk at parties, about not leaving her drink unattended at said parties, about showing up with her squad of girlfriends and leaving with every single one of them, about how I’d pick her up anywhere, no questions asked, if she was messed up (or not) and felt unsafe.

I’d start by saying something along the lines of: you are not responsible for some asshole taking advantage of you and then get into the nitty gritty of how she could avoid putting herself in situations that might increase the chances of rape. The delicate doublespeak of mothering girls. This isn’t your faultcoupled with but here’s how you can avoid the vulnerability in the first place.

I fucking hate the reality of what it means to be a woman in this country. Knowing that at any time, some guy could decide he wants to put something in my drink. Or physically overpower me. Or get me so wasted I can’t say no or fight him off. Or break into my house at night to stand over the sleeping shape of me before striking. These are the scenarios that were placed in my head as a young girl, not just by my mother, but by every adult woman, every movie, every TV show, every news program broadcasting sorry tales of unlucky females who didn’t better protect themselves.

Women are in perpetual danger everywhere we go, and the opposite sex is the culprit. Will the guy you decide to go out with on Friday night ultimately turn out to be as nice as he seems at school? Or, once he has you alone in his car, his house, his friend’s basement, will he refuse to take no for an answer? These are the calculations that go on inside a woman’s head from the moment she begins to see the world clearly for what it is: an involuntary guessing game that runs from cradle to grave, and the prize is never being raped. Or not getting raped again.

Not guessing correctly can be dangerous.

Not guessing correctly can be fatal.

Can I trust him?

Should I walk the few blocks home alone after dark?

Is another drink wise?

Am I safe alone with this guy? Where are the exits?

I like this dress, but is it too short? Does it send the wrong message?

These calculations, this guessing game none of us asked to play, is utter bullshit. I hate it. And yet, I made sure my daughter knew how to make split second educated guesses. I made sure she understood the rules. I passed down the toxicity that was passed down to me.

What other choice did I have?

I couldn’t very well pretend as though my kid, by virtue of being mine, would magically be exempt from the way things are. It doesn’t mean I’m accepting the status quo, but while I do my best to tear down the motherfucking patriarchy, I had to prepare her before she stepped foot out of my house. I had to keep up the doublespeak — you can do and be whatever the hell you want in this world together with keep a lookout in the parking lot and make a fist around your keys so you can strike once and run — because if I didn’t hammer the warnings into her skull, who would?

We mothers of daughters act in good faith, but the tools at our disposal — the careful, desperate, conspiratorial words — uphold toxic masculinity at the same time we busily work to dismantle it.

One step forward, three steps back.

I told my daughter I’d believe her, no matter what an assailant told her in the brutal minutes, hours, or days she was victimized. That she could come to me. That boys should be taught not to rape, not to take advantage of an intoxicated woman, that girls don’t owe them their time, their bodies, their attention.

But I buttressed every feminist affirmation with warnings, shoring up her safety, though the knot in my chest, in my stomach, never unraveled. I worry for her, walking around in this world. But I worry for myself too, of what could happen at anytime and in any place. I worry about friends who take what I was raised to believe are unnecessary risks — going home with someone she just met, traveling long distances alone, wanting to stay at a party when the group has decided to call it a night. Women are raised to worry, to assess potential risks in seconds, to take full responsibility for whatever happens to them if they fail at the guessing game.

How do you change a society built for men? How do you alter the rules for a game you’re playing against your will? How do you shift a narrative that forever places women in the wrong when tragedy befalls them? How do you balance fostering your daughter’s magnificently rebellious spirit with the all consuming need to keep her safe? Will there ever be a time when we can stop worrying for our basic safety? Stop checking the locks at night? Leave our keys in our purses on the walk to the car after dark instead of positioning them between our knuckles, our tense bodies anticipating an attack?

I repeat the words, the warnings, the secrets to staying safe as many times as my daughter will listen, and then again. The knot in my chest tightens, my heart breaking a little more with each word. Because there is no magic to staying safe. There is nothing that can be done to safeguard ourselves from sexual violence, not really. Until we alter the culture, the game, the narrative, the way we raise both boys and girls, nothing will change.

Motherhood is a sword that only cuts one way. You open your wrists, that vital warmth leaving you in a rush as you work to raise them in a manner that eventually eliminates their dependence on you. Worry is omnipresent, an heirloom that just keeps getting passed down from mothers to daughters. But we see it now. That makes a difference, right? Please tell me it makes a difference.

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Racism 101: Time is Magical!

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We’ve all heard the old cliche that time heals all wounds. But does it, though? Really?

I think we need to debunk this bullshit idea that time is somehow magical, and that if we only let enough of it pass us by, we’ll forget the wrongs done, and the consequences of those wrongs — if left unaddressed — will also magically evaporate like a stagnant puddle on a hot day.

I’ve had a variation of the following conversation on more than a dozen occasions:

Me: Systemic racism exists and the consequences of it are far reaching and multifaceted.

White Person: I’m not racist. I voted for Obama. Twice.

Me: That comment is problematic in and of itself, but I’m talking about the way our institutions were built and how they work to hold some people back and give others advantages, all based on skin color. This isn’t really about individual racists.

WP: Slavery was a long time ago. Get over it.

Me: *gets over the conversation instead* Next.

There are white folks who honestly believe that just because slavery is no longer legal in the United States that racial equality has been achieved. For them, it’s as though the years 1865 to 1965 (and beyond to the present day, if we’re being absolutely honest) just didn’t exist, and we’ve all been living in a post-racial paradise. As evidence, they like to cite the presidency of Barack Obama. How could he be elected (TWICE!!) if racism was still a problem? As though the whitelash of Donald Trump’s election didn’t rise up and smack us back to the harsh reality of what this country is and how we all play into a system of oppression and advantage based on race.

Despite the oft mentioned cliche, time does not heal all wounds. Slavery isn’t like your dog dying, y’all. Time does heal that wound, because you learn to live without Skippy or Fido, or whatever your dear sweet furbaby’s name was. Time brings peace because it separates you from whatever tragic way you lost that pet, and it eventually gives you the space to think fondly of the times you spent with Skippy, Fido, etc. You never stop missing the pet, but you do stop disintegrating into a puddle of tears every time you think about her/him.

That personal tragedy is quite different from a system of oppression, based on the color of a person’s skin, in which one group of people owned another group of people for hundreds of years. And then, after the actual ownership ended, that group of people in charge of everything — who had been able to build power and wealth for hundreds of years on the backs of members of the other group, who toiled for free as inferior human livestock — created laws and crafted institutions that would serve as roadblocks to the newly ‘freed’ group of former slaves to keep them and their descendants from ever achieving power, wealth, or true freedom. This ruling group had the advantage of education, land ownership, existing wealth, and monopoly over every governmental office.

We only have to look to history to see how everything unfolded. Even the thoroughly whitewashed versions of the American story tell most of the tale through its obtuse avoidance of the abject brutality of what occurred.

If I get to set up a contest in the exact way that suits me best, and I also get to set the conditions in which you get to challenge me (or if you get to challenge me), it makes it extremely difficult for you to succeed, especially since I’ve kept you from practicing whatever skills you’ll need to use in order to win the contest. Now imagine me and people who look like me doing this for 400+ years using varying methods, all with an aim to purposely handicap you and block your success. And the minute you say, wow, this contest is set up for me to fail, I respond with, maybe you just need to work harder. Everyone had the same opportunities. Quit bitching and just learn to compete better.

Bullshit, right?

Because, for centuries, people like me have made sure people like you are at a perpetual disadvantage. Telling you to get your shit together is worse than dismissive. It’s indicative of my refusal to understand history and how the last few centuries have helped me rise, on the backs of people like you. Maybe neither one of us were born into slavery, but because some of your ancestors were owned by people who looked like me, that leaves you a few hundred miles back in a race I’m currently ‘winning’ because I was born way ahead of you to begin with, based on the color of my skin, and perhaps on the combination of my gender, sexual preference, etc.

So, let’s talk about history, and why time isn’t really the answer to how we heal something as far reaching and insidious as systemic racism. Because this was no accident. This system was purposefully put in place by white folks to keep black folks under their bootheels. And it’s still working like gangbusters.

Let’s take a quick walk through the last few hundred years:

The first Africans arrive in colonial Virginia in chains in 1619. Welcome to what will one day become America! The land of the free, but not for y’all, of course!

In 1808, the slave trade officially ends, but black folks are still property of their white masters, and there are thousands upon thousands of them in chains.

In 1865, the Civil War ends, the 13th Amendment becomes a thing, and black folks are essentially free after more than 200 years of enslavement in North America. Hello Reconstruction! Oh, and also hello Black Codes! These are laws passed by southern states to restrict the rights of newly freed black slaves and to make sure they are still providing cheap or unpaid labor. Black Codes are mostly crushed by federal troops during Reconstruction, but, like a bad racist penny, they turn up again…

In 1877, Reconstruction ends (meaning federal troops hightail it out of the south, leaving black folks to fend for themselves in the not-too-happy-and-even-less-friendly south), and the Black Codes are back with a vengeance, this time wearing the visage of Jim Crow. Enter codified segregation, obstacles to black folks voting (oftentimes deadly), and laws that make certain activities illegal for blacks in order to put them back under lock and key or working on farms and chain gangs as free labor reminiscent of the antebellum south. Jim Crow laws stay in place for nearly a century, y’all. And defying these laws means beatings and death for black Americans.

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act passes, putting a legal end to the Jim Crow Era, meaning segregation on the basis of race is technically no longer allowed, but, of course, we all know that simply passing a law doesn’t change the culture. Because redlining exists. Targeting of black communities by law enforcement, both in the south and north, although southern law enforcement also has wide scale entwinement with the KKK. The rise of the Law and Order Era (thanks, Nixon!) that eventually leads to the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, which has resulted in more black folks being under lock and key than were ever slaves.

But let’s pretend that everything has been hunky dory since the Emancipation Proclamation, y’all. Let’s act like black folks and other POCs are on equal footing with white folks, who have been running shit since the 1600s when black people arrived in chains via an involuntary transatlantic cruise from hell.

Do you see? Can you understand that time can’t heal anything when there has been a centuries’ long plan in place to keep one race from achieving life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all to benefit members of the ruling race?

Let’s stop pretending that time is magical, and that if enough of it passes, everything will come out okay in the end and we’ll be absolved of doing any of the hard work to dismantle widespread systems of oppression. Time belongs to whoever wields power. It’s a tool, same as the narrative we’ve gotten into the habit of calling our history, same as everything else that matters.

Before you tell a black person that slavery was a long time ago, educate yourself on the full dirty, terrifying, and ugly thing that is the history of this country. Slavery is one part of a story that is still being written today. And that inequality was hardwired into the plot by authors we pretend had everyone’s best interests at heart. That inequality takes a hit and rises again, stronger than ever. From slavery, to black codes, to Jim Crow, to the prison industrial complex.

It. Just. Keeps. Coming.

And its greatest trick lies in our collective refusal to admit that it exists. We play nice and pretend that some of us aren’t being purposely crushed in a wheel of oppression that has been turning since the 1600s.

I get it. This is some heavy shit. There are times I hang my head and want to lie flat on the ground from the weight of the knowledge that everything about this country was constructed so folks who are my color and gender would not succeed. America was not built for me, though it was built by people who looked like me. I was never meant to enjoy the fruits of this nation, and yet I’m here. Time won’t heal this shit. Only action will.

Don’t tell me to get over slavery. Don’t tell me we’re on equal footing. There are people who toiled, bled, wept, and died to get me where I am today. There are still people toiling, bleeding, weeping, and dying. I act to honor them, to lift them up. My skin color doesn’t give me a choice.

And if you’re ashamed of history, of what people who looked like you did, then get in this fight. Act. Do something besides pretending that everything is fine. Nothing changes by staying willfully ignorant. Wake up. Stand up. Goddamn it, do something.

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Let’s Get Real About Identity Politics

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The 2020 race is heating up, at least on the left, and I’m already annoyed by much of the same lazy and disingenuous commentary that annoyed the hell out of me in 2016. I realize this means the next 18 months are going to be challenging (already planning to deploy ample amounts of selfcare until the election is safely behind us), but getting something straight right now should assist with the management of what is likely to be an overflowing pool of my highly combustible frustration.

Identity politics, at least as we have come to understand the term, is complete and utter bad faith bullshit.

Whenever I hear some white male politician decry the use of identity politics, I roll my eyes and consider writing this exact blog post, which I would then shout from the rooftops. According to these men, we should be dealing with the so-called kitchen table issues — like buoying the economy, protecting public education, or tackling rising healthcare costs — that affect everyday Americans, not pandering to ‘fringe issues’ like racial justice or ensuring reproductive rights. Why must we always turn the conversation to race and gender, these politicians exclaim, standing well above the fray on soapboxes constructed of white male privilege as the rest of us watch from below. There are so many other more pressing issues! Focusing on gender, on race, derails us from dealing with the real challenges facing this country and how we can fix them.

Ugh.

What if I told you that there’s such a thing as white identity politics too? Even white male identity politics? But because of the way issues have been historically framed, we’ve just gotten into the habit of calling that politics. Meanwhile, the rest of us get pushed to the margins right along with the issues that most deeply impact our communities. If we find the audacity to bring up these issues, we face massive pushback for daring to upset the apple cart of the white male political agenda as it rolls right over our backs.

Still not picking up what I’m putting down? Well, let’s come at this issue from a different direction.

How do you separate your color from what matters to you?

How do you forget your gender?

Because that’s what we’re being asked to do — separate who we are from the political conversation, as though such a thing is even possible.

I’m a black woman. Therefore, everything that happens in my life, everything I see and experience, the very way I move through the world, comes through the lens of being black and female. I can’t separate my blackness or the fact that I’m a woman from how I think about the issues that matter to me. There are, in fact, policies that affect me more because I’m black and/or a woman. That’s just the hand I was dealt at birth. And when I approach an issue, I’m bringing my unique perspective right along with me.

Despite what the bulk of history might urge us to believe, the situation is no different for white men. They see the world through a lens that is unique to them too, but the kicker is that they have made their lens the one through which all business gets done in the political sphere. They set the agenda. They get to judge what issues are important, and which ones will remain on the political periphery. The rest of us are just along for the ride…at least, that’s how it used to be. Times, as the folk philosopher Bob Dylan famously crooned, they are a-changin.

When I hear a white man complaining about the rise of so-called identity politics, I know that’s really code for the triggering of his insecurity at seeing folks who don’t look like him sitting around a table that used to only welcome those who matched his race and his gender. The country is changing, and power is becoming more equally distributed. We aren’t where we need to be yet, but we’ve certainly come a long way. The knee jerk reaction of those who used to hold all of the power is, of course, to find a way to cleave to that power, to hoard it as they’ve done since before the founding of this country. The only way to combat this is to continue adding diversity to the process.

As always, representation matters.

I can’t say it enough. More women are involved in politics, more people of color. Naturally, we are hearing more about the ways these communities are affected by various policies. We are hearing more about ways to dismantle racism in our institutions, how to deal with inequity in pay and rampant sexual harassment, and the need for a complete overhaul of our criminal justice system. Before people of color, women, LGBTQ folks, and the disabled were allowed to be part of the process, their voices and diverse perspectives were silenced. They had no true representation because they were perpetually kept on the edges of the discussion.

But that has changed.

Our voices are starting to be heard now that the number of representatives in government who look like us has increased. But because power is never freely given — it must be wrenched away from those who stockpile it — we are forced to deal with the inevitable backlash, which is this bullshit uproar over identity politics. The way this conversation is always framed makes it impossible to have it in good faith. Because the conditions in which we’re expected to converse involve the tacit acceptance that white men don’t have a racial identity. That they don’t identify as men. We’re expected to act as though everything isn’t about white men being white men all the time from the beginning of American history until the present day. We’ve been drowning in white male politics, y’all, and yet we’re asked to pretend that this has not been the case.

What’s vital is that we don’t lose sight of what’s truly at stake. Because the real issue is that the dominant group is watching as their stranglehold on power and policy slips, and that makes them uncomfortable. No one is pushing them from their seat at the table. We’re just setting down our folding chairs and joining them without waiting for an invitation. And now that we’re at the table, it’s harder to keep our voices from being heard.

All politics is identity politics, because it always comes through the lens of whoever is speaking. White, black, brown, gay, straight, trans, male, female, or nonbinary. There is no objective realm of politics. Every issue is personal. Every fight is a matter of life and death for someone. We’re richer when more voices contribute to the narrative because we’re all only seeing things through our own lenses. No one has an inherent right to decide which issues are ‘important’. Let’s stop pretending only certain people can be objective while the rest of us only care about our skin color, gender, disability, or sexual orientation. We’re all locked inside our own perspectives, which is why we need more diverse involvement in the process. Anything less is unacceptable.

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Don’t Forget to Tip the Writer

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I make things up. That’s the definition of what a writer does. Some things spring from my head out of nowhere, fully formed. Some things come more slowly, coaxed with hours of careful research and focused thought. I move words around the inside of my skull all the time — when I’m reading, showering, running, driving, staring oddly into space while other people are talking. I look at a blank sheet of paper and put down all the lovely, helter skelter chunks of sentences and bits of half-formed imagery, adjusting, editing, deleting until I have something that rings true to my own sharply critical ears. And then I edit again. At that point, it’s ready for public consumption.

There’s a funny thing about writing, though. Because it’s literally described as ‘making things up’, folks seem to think that my words, as well as the time I spend crafting them, aren’t worth very much at all, if anything. On more occasions than I can count, I’ve had people request hundreds of words worth of content at no cost because, as they casually comment, it will only take me a few minutes.

While it’s true that I can often knock out a thousand words or more in under an hour, that ability didn’t arise from the same nothingness in which I find most of the sentences I cobble together. I’m a damned good writer and I enjoy doing it, but I’ve been writing daily since I was in middle school, penning short shorties, articles, essays, and novel length projects, grinding out words that were subpar as well as spectacular. I’ve devoured the work of other authors for decades as I honed my own particular voice — anyone who wants to write but doesn’t read like they need books to live should not be taken seriously, IMHO. I’ve worked for well over twenty five years to get where I am right now, and I’m still working.

I write, I rewrite, I make things up, ad infinitum.

I started with all that so I could say this: creative work product has inherent value. Full stop. Digest it. And here it is again for those in the back who might have missed it:

CREATIVE WORK PRODUCT HAS INHERENT VALUE.

Now that we’ve established that, let’s establish this: if you want someone to write content for you, or take pictures, or paint a picture because you recognize their talent, then you should fucking pay them. And if you reference something they wrote, or use a picture they took, then you should fucking give credit where credit is due. Plagiarism isn’t just a no-no for high school and college students. Another word for it is theft. Just. Don’t. Do. It.

Think of what you do for work. Would it be appropriate for me to ask you to perform that task for me pro bono because you are good at your occupation? Or because it would take you much less time to perform said task than it would take me? For some reason, writers and other creative individuals are routinely expected to perform on demand and without pay. And when we rightly request payment, we face short and snarky responses like:

But isn’t writing easy for you?

I thought you liked writing.

Can’t you just throw together a quick paragraph for me? How hard is that?

This is all shit I’ve heard over the years (including this year), y’all. And, it’s true: most of the time, writing is easy for me. I also happen to fucking love it. There’s nothing more magical than having a tiny spark of an idea, sitting down, putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), and whipping that flame into an inferno of ideas, with my words as the kindling. I live for it and always have. But that doesn’t mean my words are worthless things that I should give away to you for free. If you want them specially crafted and on demand, then pay for them.

There’s another fun thing that happens to creative individuals when folks find out what they do best: people request other related services, also for free.

Can you teach me how to write? (NEVER doing this again because no good deed ever goes unpunished).

Would you mind looking over this doc and giving it a quick edit? (‘Quick edit’ always translates to complete rewrite, as well as research to fix gaping holes in the document; I’ve had a ‘quick edit’ end a friendship before, y’all, no joke).

Do you want to coauthor something with me?! (From the grammatical and spelling errors in this person’s various social media accounts, it’s best to back away from this in a goddamned hurry. Don’t just walk, run).

I don’t want to teach you how to write. I don’t want to edit your term paper, short story, or novel length project. I don’t want to collaborate with you on a project if we don’t have an existing relationship that involves a mutual respect for each other’s writing. Even then, I have to be intimately acquainted with your process and commitment to the craft.

I know not everyone can write, but just because I can ‘throw a paragraph together’ rather quickly doesn’t mean I should do it without being paid. I’ve watched mechanics change my oil before and it only takes about 20 minutes. I still pay for the service, because that’s how that person makes a living, and I’m paying for the mechanic’s skill as much as I’m paying for his or her time. It’s really that simple.

So, the next time you approach an acquaintance or stranger who writes, paints, takes pictures, plays music, etc. for a living, understand that what they do has value and takes skill. If it didn’t, you could do it yourself. The fact that you can’t proves my original point. Pay people. Credit work when you make use of it. Be a decent human being. We’re all trying to make a living over here…

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