The Undercover Introvert

America, This is Exactly Who We Are

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Last week, I watched an angry white mob storm the heart of our nation’s capital in an attempt to subvert the will of millions of voters. These people came armed, not just with weapons, but with an innate sense of entitlement endowed by their skin color, a certainty swimming in their blood that they could livestream what they were doing with no fear of repercussion. I watched in horror and fury as the foundation of our fragile democracy trembled beneath thousands of angry footfalls, unsure if it would hold after the last four tumultuous years.

In the wake of this failed insurrection, I watched dozens of public figures proclaim that we are better than this as a country, that this is not who we are. There were social media posts aplenty making similar pronouncements, such that they became a persistent drumbeat that was impossible to ignore. Unfortunately, these hearty arguments and entreaties were little more than feel good bullshit.

America, this is exactly who we are.

I’m not sure what part of our history these folks are referring to when they make sweeping judgments that we, collectively, are better than whatever terrible event just occurred. The hundreds of years of chattel slavery? The horrors inflicted upon indigenous people, including genocide, land theft, and broken treaties? Jim Crow? Redlining? The War on Drugs? Internment camps during WWII? Women treated as second class citizens? The exclusion of the LGBTQ community? Lynchings?

Stop me when I get to the parts that prove what we’ve always been wasn’t on full display when hundreds of terrorists invaded the Capitol Building the other day.

Listen, I think America is the land of endless promise. It’s something on which the Founding Fathers and I are in complete agreement. The country is at its greatest during the times when we inch closer to its founding promise, the one that says everyone is entitled to a life lived freely and with dignity. But we are not that country all the time. We need to accept that, because lasting change doesn’t occur unless we do. Pretending that we are better than we’ve proven ourselves to be throughout our history is disingenuous and self-defeating. The idea of America is a shining beacon of freedom and equality recognized across the globe. The reality of America is much less hopeful, though not completely hopeless. Therein lives the motivation so many of us feel to make the reality of this country finally live up to its promise.

This country is comprised of millions of people living their lives within its borders. Many of these people are good. But there are also many that aren’t. Thousands of the latter kind were in the nation’s capital the other day, attempting to disenfranchise about 81 million of their countrymen and women. I could go on for a few hundred paragraphs about the kind of deep seated entitlement one must feel — that this country is yours and always has been — in order to do that kind of thing, but that’s not the point of this. The point is to pull us around to a collective mirror and invite us to really look at what we see there: good, bad, hate, love, forgiveness, stubbornness, hope, fear, entitlement, and pain.

This country isn’t just one thing, good or bad. It’s many things. We are the people that stormed the Capitol Building, armed and determined to keep a failed president in office by any means necessary. We are also the people that peacefully protested for Black lives after the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. We can be both, and a million other things, at the same time. What we can’t do is pick and choose the parts that we use to define ourselves. We’ve done that for far too long, and it’s gotten us into the mess we’re experiencing now.

Refusing to reckon with our complicated past is as American as apple pie. We cleave to the good things, holding them up like gleaming, hard won trophies, and forget the rest. But history repeats itself when we refuse to learn from it the first time, or when we refuse to even acknowledge it. That’s where we are right now: relearning lessons we resisted initially. Pretending the actions of these fellow Americans don’t reflect the country that birthed, coddled, and empowered them just continues this unfortunate cycle. We can be better — I truly believe that — but only if we embrace our collective faults and commit to changing them.

Our democracy suffered a real hit this week after years of repeated blows, and it troubles me to know how delicate it is, how unstably it sits atop layers of air and convention, how much of what we understood to be foundational to the health of our way of governing is more akin to a gentlemen’s agreement. I can honestly say the events of last week shook me to my core, but they also infuriated me. This is my country too. I see it clearly, and still love it, for all it could be if only we keep pushing. But I refuse to suffer those that indulge in revisionist history in order to view this country through the rosiest of rose colored glasses.

We are not better than what happens within our borders or on our watch. We are not better than the things we do. But we can be better. That’s what keeps me going.

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Close the Door on Your Way Out, 2020

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What can I say about 2020 that hasn’t already been growled between gritted teeth by someone, somewhere on this planet? It’s certainly been a year that defies simplistic definitions. A time warp. A lengthy, shimmering interlude between one moment and the next. A dumpster fire. An extended period of forced, yet not altogether unpleasant calm. A struggle. A hazy, indeterminate dream state. A nightmare. Never ending. Lightning fast. Upheaval incarnate.

In other words, it’s been one hell of a year.

Living through a global pandemic wasn’t something I had on my Bingo card last New Year’s Eve, and the year I thought I was strutting into on January 1st, 2020 didn’t even begin to resemble the year I’m looking back on during this final day of December. But the one thing I’m left with at the end of this strange 12 months is just how damned lucky I am. I did more than live through a year that saw close to 350,000 Americans die and millions more lose their livelihoods. I was able to spend 2020 quarantining with the people I care about most in the world while working full time in the safe, comfy cocoon of my own home. I didn’t struggle with food insecurity. I didn’t worry about being evicted in the middle of a health crisis. I kept my medical insurance and was able to seek care whenever I needed it.

This year has been horrible in so many ways, but I can’t deny how fortunate I am. So instead of shooting 2020 a double bird as it rides off into the blazing sunset, I’m going to give thanks. It just seems warranted, doesn’t it? And it’s an extension of the practice I began at the beginning of the year whenever I started to lament at how awful and uncertain things seemed.

I had all my people with me

At the end of December, I like to write out a list of my goals for the upcoming year, and then I read over them every morning to keep myself focused as the months pass. I did this for 2020 as well. Why am I telling you this? Well, my job is the type that normally keeps me on the move. Florida’s a big state and I’m often driving hundreds of miles every week for meetings, events, and conferences. So, in January, one of my goals was to prioritize spending quality time with my family. Remember that old adage: be careful what you wish for? Seems 2020 came equipped with jokes and thought that it would grant my wish by giving me nothing but family time. Although there have been a few moments when we all considered killing each other, this time together has truly been a gift. COVID slowed my ass down, kicking travel out of bounds and shutting down my usual get togethers with friends. I’m grateful to have been able to weather this stormy year with the people I cherish most. I know not everyone had that, and many now have empty chairs at their dining room tables.

I got by with a little help from my friends

Shockingly, my introverted ass has quite a few friends. And despite my critical need of alone time at regular intervals, hanging with these folks improves my life beyond what I might have earlier believed possible. I’m doubly fortunate that many of the people I consider close friends are also work associates, meaning we see each other at conferences and meetings that then transition into happy hours at various restaurants (yes, all my friends like food; you can’t hang with me if you don’t). My final work related trip in 2020 was for a big conference in DC the first week of March, just before everything shut down. We had a large group from Florida, which resulted in a good time during and after the conference, and a few of us stayed extra days to have unencumbered fun in the city. Before leaving for DC, I’d gotten the chance to see several other friends throughout February, which proved fortuitous, considering the world slammed shut the week I returned home, clearing my calendar of all in person events, both professional and social.

I fell into a virtual happy hour that first Friday of my self-imposed COVID quarantine that became a regular occurrence throughout the remainder of the year. It quickly transformed into the highlight of my week, a wine soaked therapy session that always started with complaints and ended with maniacal laughter. I had many other virtual get togethers with other sets of friends too, and meandering chat threads filled with frustration, profanity, jokes, and memes about politics and the pandemic. I missed seeing my friends in person, sharing appetizers and desserts over drinks, watching movies in the theater, or driving into the city for events or shows. But it never felt like they were that far away, even the ones from out of state. This year would have been insurmountable without each and every one of these folks. We got each other through this, with humor and humility. I can’t wait to see them all on the other side of this long, strange trip that was 2020.

Home was where the work was

I spent years as a freelance writer, followed by work on different political campaigns and then nonprofit organizations, including one I co-founded. Suffice to say, I’m used to working from home. But I’m also used to being able to leave when I want (or even when I don’t want, holding a knife to my own throat to force my feet out of the door), so it was pretty weird to never need to attend in person meetings or events. And it took time to fully assimilate into the Zoom industrial complex wherein what normally could have been a 20 minute phone call transformed into a 60 minute video conference complete with slide deck and unnecessary icebreakers and breakout groups (the horror). But even during the days stacked high with 6 plus Zoom meetings, I knew how fortunate I was.

I live in a state that buckled immediately under the pressure of the COVID-19 fueled unemployment crisis. To this day, there are still thousands of people that never received any unemployment benefits and are facing complete financial destruction as they hover on the edge of eviction, unable to afford their basic needs. There are other folks that managed to keep their jobs, but were forced to work outside of their homes. This wasn’t without risk, considering our state never had any discernible leadership from our incompetent governor or something as simple and obvious as a mask mandate. Unsurprisingly, our COVID-19 infection rates soared.

But somehow, inexplicably, I was okay. I stayed employed. I didn’t fall into financial ruin. I could afford food, a roof over my head, medical care. What made me so lucky when millions of others spiraled into poverty, their livelihoods and peace of mind evaporating in an instant? I don’t have the answer to this question. But I do feel an obligation to continue working to create an America that’s freer, fairer, and better for all of us. One with safety nets that actually catch us when we fall…or when we’re pushed. It goes without saying that I don’t want to struggle, but, here’s the thing: I don’t want you to struggle either.

I let words be my refuge

Before I fell ass over teakettle into the exhilaratingly frustrating world of politics, I used to read north of 60 books each year. I just ran through them. I’ve always been a voracious reader, preferring the comfort of tucking into the pages of a book over most everything else. This year, I set a modest goal of reading 30 books, but by May, I had yet to read a single one. What can I say? The year started at a gallop with work and then took a turn into the surreal when the pandemic started, washing everything else away. It was all I could do to keep my head above water. Eventually, I had a come to Jesus meeting with myself, and kicked my own ass into gear. Once I actually got started, I never stopped. I had some great adventures this year, humming along in the colorful space between my ears. I finished my 30th book just the other day. And, more importantly, I rekindled the love of reading that I’ve had since I was a little girl. That’s something I plan to bring with me into 2021.

We flipped the goddamned White House

Y’all know I can’t end a list about all the things I’m grateful for in 2020 without including this one. I’ve been living in a state of persistent dread for the last 4 years, a weight I forgot I was lugging around until it lifted, as though by magic, the Saturday after Election Day when Joe Biden was officially named President-Elect. I’ve never felt more relieved in my life, and I’ve given birth to a child. It’s strange to wish the last 4 years had never happened while also feeling deep, unshakeable gratitude for the person I became because of the gauntlet of stress and terror the Trump presidency forced me to cross. I didn’t have a purpose before this, not really, and now I do. Thanks to the work that millions of us did over the last 48 months, I get to keep the purpose while Trump has to vacate the White House. Beautiful, right?

As we show 2020 the door and lock up securely as soon as it crosses the threshold, lest it change its fickle mind, let’s take a moment to celebrate the small victories and soaring triumphs. If you’re reading this, you made it. You survived one of the worst years in living memory. I hope you also found pockets of joy, had those you loved close at hand, and found other small pleasures that made these odd days pass more easily. On the eve of 2021, here’s to many more years together doing what we love. Here’s to better times. Here’s to you, to me, to us.

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On Being Black, Female, Terrified, & Hopeful in 2020

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I’m pretty anxious about the upcoming election. That’s both the understatement of the century and an accurate description of my current state of being. I spend my day ping ponging between nausea-laced despair and regular despair — despair zero: all of the flavor without any of the pesky calories. If I’m awake, I’m worrying about a few hundred things at once, each one enormous, the cacophony beating along the inside of my skull.

And, yet, I still feel hopeful for some reason.

This is despite being a Black woman at this moment in America.

This is despite all evidence to the contrary.

In fact, let’s take a handful of seconds to go through some of that evidence, and then I’ll make my case for why we should keep on trucking in the direction of the light I’m looking forward to finding one day at the end of this long, strange, narrow tunnel.

After limping through the last four years of an incompetent megalomaniac occupying the White House (when he’s not occupying various golf courses, that is), there appears to be nothing to look forward to, no reprieve, no magic bullet, no hope of any kind. We’re living through a global pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 people in this country and sickened many more, kept us away from family and friends, turned our economy upside down, and financially destroyed millions of American families. Even before the pandemic bulldozed its way across the country, we lived in a state of perpetual dread at what irresponsible, bigoted, and/or outrageous thing the so-called leader of the free world would do next. Racism isn’t new, but Trump sure has managed to make it great again, hasn’t he? Ditto for sexism. And homophobia. And transphobia. And Islamophobia. And xenophobia. You get the point, right? It’s a truckload of isms and phobias. Not to mention the courts are packed to the rafters with conservative judges, we’re not doing one goddamned thing about climate change, and we’re the butt of every joke on the international stage.

But, here I am, hopeful. Nauseous as I maniacally check every election related metric imaginable, but still hopeful.

Part of this hope is directly related to what I do for a living. Back in 2016, as I watched the political train careen off the track and into the canyon below, I had absolutely no way to influence the process past my vote. Don’t get me wrong. One person’s vote is important. But back then I believed voting was all an American needed to do in order to claim engagement in the process.

I learned how wrong I was the hard way.

I felt hopeless and scared the morning after Election Day, and when that despair turned to anger, I didn’t really know what to do about it. By the middle of November, I’d found my people — other pissed off folks (mostly women) that hadn’t been involved before but wanted to fix that lack of engagement in a hurry — and that started me on a path I’m still traveling to this day.

Another reason I’m hopeful is that I finally understand the full extent of my power now, how it’s amplified when I stand shoulder to shoulder with other people like me who want things to be different, fairer, better. Not just a return to the pre-Trump era, but a reimagining of what we could be as a country if only we eradicated racist and sexist systems that have been in place since the nation’s founding.

Every time we lose a fight or take a hit that should leave us down for the count, I feel that abiding, stubborn flicker of hope intensify, and we get back up again. If you’d told me 4 years ago about this persistent little flame, I’d have waved you off, disbelieving. How could such a thing exist, I’d ask, given everything that’s wrong? But now I think it only exists because of what’s wrong. The fixing is fuel, and there’s so much that’s broken.

So, what about this election?

I voted weeks ago, and we’re shortly running out of work that can be done that might influence the direction of this election. But I’m going to keep pushing. I plan to leave it all on the field this year.

Before getting sucked into the world of politics, I’d never experienced the feeling of helping to shape history. Of being part of a movement that could bend the arc of the moral universe a little further towards justice. I feel that now. We’re making history, all of us, together. And we’re a few short days away from the fruits of our labor. I really believe that. I have to. That little flame demands it.

And after Election Day?

We keep going, fighting, pushing to create the country as it should be. There’s so much damned work to do, but I’m grateful to be able to do a small part of it, and I’m even more grateful for the people that are doing the work right along with me.

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The 19th Amendment: 100+ Years of Black Women on Their Own

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First, let’s set the table.

Yes, I am that person that interjects with white women whenever someone mentions that it’s been 100 years since women gained the ability to vote. And if I don’t interject, I’m definitely thinking it. That might cause some folks to roll their eyes, but that doesn’t make my clarification any less true. We can celebrate an achievement while also pointing out how that same achievement fell well short of enfranchising the diverse range of women that lived in America in 1920.

History is a funny thing, isn’t it? Especially in this country. Instead of learning from it, we stubbornly choose to sand down its rough edges in order to draw our collective gaze to the loveliest smoothed over parts, completely avoiding the dry rot underneath that just keeps spreading. Maybe it’s because human beings are the kinds of creatures that crave rich narratives with beginnings, middles, and (happy) ends. Sweeping tales of heroes and heroines, all white, with the occasional person of color in a supporting role. The movement for women’s suffrage is no different.

Growing up, the story I learned about women’s long fought battle for what would become the 19th Amendment was fully housed in towering white champions like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. My small eyes scanned pictures of women in flowing white dresses and sashes, marching and demanding equal access to the ballot box, not a Black or brown person among them. No one mentioned Black women, who absolutely did not get the right to vote, despite their contributions to the movement. No one mentioned indigenous or Asian women either, who weren’t even allowed to be U.S. citizens at the time. Latinas were also left completely out of this victory for all women, as we’re taught to celebrate it today. This was a movement powered by white women, my history books assured me, without ever explicitly stating it. But you’ll be a woman one day, and so this was your victory too. Cool, right? I didn’t question this narrative, because what kid does? We ingest what we’re fed, until we’re old enough to realize that some crucial ingredients have been left out of the stew.

Throughout the month of August, folks have been talking about the 19th Amendment, leaning heavily into the Stanton-Anthony industrial complex, as they’ve always done. So I suppose it’s no surprise that this centennial of white women gaining the ability to vote has me lowkey annoyed, an undercurrent of unrest that buzzes directly behind my eyes. All month, I’ve been thinking about feminism’s historical inability to negotiate the intersection of race and gender. And this unwillingness to embrace intersectionality persists to this day, carried forth by generation after generation of women. I left a rather famous women’s organization in 2017 because of the blatant racism and toxic white feminism I saw and experienced there, a suffocatingly clique-ish environment dressed up as ‘sisterhood’. It was okay to have Black women and other women of color toiling for the organization and peppered into group photos, but it wasn’t okay for them to be in leadership roles or to ever point out racism within the ranks. In that way, it was very similar to the movement for women’s suffrage.

The betrayal of Black women by their so-called white suffragist ‘sisters’ caused a fissure in the feminist movement that’s still a gaping hole to this day. It always seems a little too easy for the concerns of Black women and other women of color to get indefinitely delayed or outright ignored so the group can focus on more pressing matters. Pressing always means what’s deemed important by the white women in charge.

When we learn about the battle for women’s suffrage in school, we never hear about the deep seated racism of its white leaders. We don’t hear about the tokenization of Asian and indigenous women, or the erasure of Latinas. We don’t hear about how it was just fine for Black women to do the work, but unacceptable for them to expect a seat at the table. Back in the day, ladies like Stanton were enraged at the thought of Black men getting the right to vote before white women. This is despite the fact that Frederick Douglass was an avid and vocal supporter of women’s rights, even showing up at the convention at Seneca Falls.

Racism was in the DNA of this movement. That much was evidenced by the racist rhetoric of its leaders. And the scope of the movement was narrow: push just enough to enfranchise white women, then stop. In the same way that Black men weren’t magically able to practice the voting rights set forth for them in the 15th Amendment until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black women also weren’t able to access their right to vote after the passage of the 19th Amendment. But did newly enfranchised white women continue to fight for them? Of course not. Because this was never about the rights of all women. Black, Latina, indigenous, and Asian women were on their own, despite how hard they’d labored to make the ratification of the 19th Amendment possible.

The 19th Amendment didn’t do anything about the intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests, and violence Black women faced when they tried to register to vote, just like the 15th Amendment didn’t protect Black men from such treatment. But Black folks had to figure this out alone. No help arrived from white suffragists. And, years later, these same white women would be lauded as heroines that contributed to the great American story while the suffragists of color were fully erased from my history books.

As so often happens in my adult life, I feel terribly cheated out of learning crucial parts of the American story during my first twelve years of education. It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned about Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, and so many others. I lived nearly two decades without understanding the crucial role Black women played in a battle for equality that I’d been led to believe was fought only by white women. American history is a story of white achievement, and all but a few people of color are erased by the centuries of white folks that have carefully constructed that narrative, from the ships arriving on Plymouth Rock to the present day.

Racism played a central role in the movement for women’s suffrage, and I’m not here to celebrate that. What I celebrate are the thousands of Black women and men that never stopped fighting for voting rights until they were signed into law in 1965. I celebrate the folks still fighting for these rights to this day, because the suppression never stops, it just takes another form: purging of the voter rolls, voter ID laws, polling locations closed without notice, etc. This month, I celebrate the perseverance of Black women, the way they keep rising, no matter how hard this country shoves them down or erases them from its history. We have a long way to go, but we’ve also come so far. I celebrate that too.

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A Black Woman’s Guide to July 4th

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In 1776, a group of wealthy white men officially declared independence from a tyrannical monarchy. This collective of learned individuals stated boldly:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness.

More than 200 years later, many of us are still waiting for the full realization of this cherished ideal, our ears straining to hear freedom ringing from sea to shining sea. The great American fairy tale — that we were all in chains until the Declaration of Independence and the triumphant end of the Revolutionary War, which solidified the creation of this nation — always fails to mention that the United States was constructed to exclude most people from this pursuit of life, liberty, etcetera. Black people remained slaves. Indigenous people had no place in white society. All women were excluded, and only select white women could benefit from the power wielded by their landowning husbands or fathers. At the birth of our nation, very few people living within its borders were actually free.

And now?

I am a Black woman. I have a job I love that earns me a good living. I have a family and friends and live in a sleepy suburb along the coast. My life would have been unimaginable to the Black folks that toiled, enslaved, on plantations and in the homes of rich masters. But they are part of the American story too, integral characters that too often fade into the background. They built this country. They yearned and dreamed and pushed for freedom. They fought to bring the nation closer to what its founding documents claimed this land already was: a place where life and liberty were to be cherished above all else. A place where all men were created equal.

The relationship Black people have with this country is complicated. But we don’t learn about the depths of this complication in school. We learn that slavery happened, though we aren’t made to look closely at its abject cruelty. It was just a thing that occurred a long time ago and was absolved by Abraham Lincoln. We don’t learn that he was no great champion of Black people. We only learn about the Emancipation Proclamation, and not even that it only freed slaves in the confederate states. And after that? We aren’t taught about Reconstruction’s shivering crescendo and how, sparkling with promise that wouldn’t be rekindled until the 1960’s, it ended with abrupt finality, plunging Black folks into the dark ages of Jim Crow. All of this is glossed over as we join our teachers in leapfrogging from colonial times — the British are coming! — to the end of slavery — let freedom ring! — to the Civil Rights Movement — I have a dream, y’all! And now, here we are, living in an entirely civilized, post-racial America — we’re so great that we don’t see color anymore!

I was raised in a military family, and a fierce love of this country was the undergirding of my entire childhood. I still feel that love today, though not as pure as it was when I was a child waving a flag at airshows, because I see the object of my affection much more clearly now. This is my country, though the Founding Fathers never meant it to be mine. It is imperfect, unequal, and unwelcoming to anyone that doesn’t fit the description of the Founding Fathers themselves: white, male, rich. I’ve been told that if I don’t love this country, I should go back to Africa. I’ve been told that slavery was a long time ago and I should get over it. I’ve been told racism no longer exists in this country — BECAUSE OBAMA — and that I am the one who seems to be practicing the dark arts of reverse racism. I have watched as Black men and women are killed in the streets or in their own apartments by police officers whose sole job is to protect and serve the community. And why? Because Black people were never supposed to be members of the community. We could live in America — actually, it was compulsory — but we couldn’t be Americans. The founding documents weren’t talking about us, though the success of the nascent nation depended on us: our labor, our sweat, our tears, our babies, our blood.

Today, 244 years after an Independence Day that did not include people that looked like me, I assert my own independence, and I claim this country as mine. I stand on the backs of giants, the generations of Black folks that toiled and fought and stretched their fingers towards a freedom that still lies on the distant horizon for me, hundreds of years later. But I’m closer than they ever were, because of them, and the next generation will be closer than I am, because of me. That is America. This striving to be better, freer, more truthful about who and what we are. That is the spirit I celebrate today, and it’s what I honor in the work that I do, creating change that will make this country closer to what it claimed to be in 1776.

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…

We aren’t there yet, not even close. But I celebrate us — those that were never supposed to be part of that so-called perfect union. I honor those that made it possible for me, a Black woman, to be sitting in my own dining room, tapping away on a computer while my dog snores beside me. The people who looked like me are mostly hidden in our history, but nothing we celebrate today would have been possible without their invisible labor, their struggle, their thirst for freedom that I still feel at the back of my own throat, an itch that never goes away. Tonight, while I watch fireworks explode in the distance, I will think of them, running towards the North with only the stars to guide them.

That is the America I celebrate.

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