The Undercover Introvert

American Math: Black + Female = Unqualified

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After Justice Breyer announced his resignation last week and President Biden confirmed he planned to keep his campaign promise of nominating the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, I knew I’d need to brace myself for the next couple of weeks. Call it stacking up ample frustration in advance of what is going to be an emotionally trying process. Battening down my mental, physical, and emotional hatches. Slamming, then locking the steel door to my internal storm shelter. I could definitely go on but am choosing to spare y’all any additional rhetorical flourish….

One helluva storm’s brewing, and we’re about to experience intense thundershowers of racism and sexism for a solid couple of months. Get ready for power outages. Flash floods. Devastating wind. Y’all might recall a similar storm that raged for weeks on end during the 2020 election after President Biden announced his pick for Vice President: a category five hurricane of racist, sexist bullshit that spread from sea to shining sea, leaving no community untouched.

It’s a tale as old as time in this country. When white and male are the default (yet invisible) standards, no one deviating from those unspoken criteria can ever hope to measure up, no matter how objectively qualified. And if someone different does manage to get into a position of power, the collective snap judgment is that it had to be because of a quota that needed filling, Affirmative Action, charity, or outright dishonesty. In other words, long suffering white people getting the shaft in favor of goldbricking Black folks, all in the name of diversity, or whatever we’re calling it now.

Before we go any further, let’s arm ourselves with a few facts. In the Supreme Court’s 232 year history, there has never been a Black female justice. In that 232 years, the court has had 115 justices total. 108 of them have been white men. There have only been 3 justices of color in our nation’s history, and two of them are serving right now. The other is Thurgood Marshall.

Now, some might argue that we didn’t get the first Black Supreme Court justice until 1967 because there just weren’t any smart and capable Black folks in existence before that time. It just so happened that only white men were intelligent and accomplished enough to be part of an institution created by other intelligent, accomplished white men. It couldn’t have had anything to do with 400 years of categorizing Black people as literal property followed by a system of laws implemented after Reconstruction that purposely excluded Black folks from most civic, educational, and professional life, could it? That’s crazy talk, right? Clearly, Black people just weren’t good enough to sit on the bench…or be doctors…or hold elected office…or teach white children…

Nothing invites intense public scrutiny quite like a Black person breaking down a barrier that has kept folks that looked like her/him from doing exactly what she/he is now doing. Questions abound about qualifications, preferential treatment (this is laughable, given our country’s history, but here we are), and — GASP — reverse racism. This latter charge comes with a quickness as soon as it’s made clear that the position will intentionally be filled by a person of color.

WHY ARE WE SO FOCUSED ON RACE? (mostly unqualified) white folks wail. Shouldn’t the most qualified candidate be chosen, regardless of race???

Well, yeah, in a perfect world, that would be great. In said perfect world, everyone has an equal shot, no bigotry of any kind exists, and one race of people never held another race of people in bondage and then abracadabra-ed racial terror into a system of laws that kept that formerly enslaved group of people from rising too far above what was deemed to be their station. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be looking at a statistic like this: 93% of Supreme Court justices have been white men while only 2% have been people of color. And, just to reiterate, 0% have been Black women.

So, we don’t quite live in that perfect world of lollipops, rainbows, and equality, now do we?

Also, here’s another fun fact for your reading pleasure: Republican’s political superhero Ronald Reagan made a point of announcing that he planned to nominate the first woman to the bench before naming Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981. Reverse sexism, amirite? Where’s the public outcry at this obvious injustice?

Here’s a radical idea: how about we have a high court that reflects what our country actually looks like? And ICYMI, that’s not 93% white and male.

Let’s bring in a few more numbers to break this down, shall we? According to data from the 2020 Census, the racial makeup of the United States is only 76.3% white. But a whooping 93% of SCOTUS justices have been white men. And while the racial makeup of the U.S. is 13.4% Black, there have only been 2 Black justices in the history of the court, a mere 1.7%. I’m the polar opposite of a numbers person, yet even I can see this doesn’t add up.

Some might argue that when entire groups of people have been systematically excluded from positions of power for centuries, making space for more of those excluded groups of individuals — Black people, women, Hispanic people, members of the LGBTQ community, etc. — is imperative. It isn’t like President Biden is going to pluck the names of random Black women out of a hat and appoint one of them, regardless of their qualifications. In fact, you can bet that whoever is nominated, she will be one of the most, if not the most, qualified individual to ever sit on the bench, man or woman. Because that’s how it works in this country. If you aren’t white and male, you’d better be twice as good if you even hope to be considered for a job that has never been done by someone that looks like you. Actually, make that three times as good, just to give yourself some wiggle room.

Here’s my ultimate question: what’s so wrong with a Supreme Court that looks more like America? It has taken over two centuries to get to this place. To me, that’s way too long. For others, it’s just not long enough, and there’s really nothing a Black woman could do to show she’s sufficiently qualified. Because it’s not about her qualifications, is it? It’s about her race and her gender. It always comes down to that in America. If you aren’t white, every single one of your achievements can be written off as a consequence of Affirmative Action. And there’s no way to prove otherwise.

Suffice to say, I’m buckling in for some rough weather over the next few months. Whoever the eventual nominee is, I’m sending her nothing but good vibes and strength. But I’m sending that to future me too, because this is going to be a frustrating ride, full of microaggressions, impassioned soliloquies on the scourge of reverse racism, and a boatload of misogynoir.

But when those high winds stop howling, the drenching rain subsides, and the sun shines again in a clear blue sky, we’re going to have a Black woman on the Supreme Court. And I’m going to raise a glass to her. But I’m also going to raise a glass to getting one step closer to what this country should be: a place that truly represents us all.

When History Hurts Your Feelings

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We’re arguing a lot about history lately, which seems odd to me, at least on its face. After all, history is nothing more than a narrative we share as a culture about what happened in the past. It’s not definitive or infallible, of course, because someone had to write it, actually more like multiple someones, and the agreed upon version based on those narrow viewpoints is what gets spread far and wide to eager students in kindergarten through 12th grade and beyond. And not just here, but all over, in every culture across the globe. Without history, we would be untethered as a people, anchorless, unknown.

So, why all the recent hubbub over our history here in America? It’s just what happened, right?

Years ago, when my elementary school teachers told me that a group of founding fathers courageously broke free from British rule and created this nation in order to give us all the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I bought that narrative, hook, line, and sinker. Of course, those teachers neglected to mention that most of those founding fathers so thirsty for their own freedom actually owned enslaved Black people, considered women second class citizens, and completely wrote off indigenous people along with all other people of color. So, that original brand of freedom turned out to be pretty limited, and it stayed that way for a long time. It didn’t even really include poor, non-land owning white men. Probably would have been worth lifting that up in class, don’t you think?

I’ve always had a soft spot for history, because it’s a story, and there’s little I adore more. As a writer, I think about the mechanics of storytelling quite a lot. As the author, I have complete control over what gets included and what gets left out. This isn’t usually a problem, because folks reading my work understand it as reflecting my unique and admittedly narrow viewpoint. But if I could somehow manage to pass off my subjective judgments about prior events as objective facts that then get taught to millions of impressionable others, what then? Think about the facts I could have unwittingly failed to include, given the limitation of my life experience and point of view. Even more problematically, what if my motives were darker and I purposely crafted a narrative that didn’t even bother to reflect what actually happened?

This is essentially what’s happened in the construction and retelling of our history. When I was growing up, teachers didn’t spend any time discussing the authors responsible for crafting the history they were teaching us. We were simply learning the facts, Jack. No need to question it or imagine historical events told from alternate viewpoints (imagine the glory of manifest destiny told from the P.O.V. of indigenous people; the American Revolution told from the P.O.V. of enslaved Black folks). It was only much later that I wondered how the authors of our shared, agreed upon history were chosen. Had anyone ever questioned their subjective judgment about the events and people “important” enough to get written into the narrative they cobbled together? Because it sure seemed like a lot of Black folks, women, and other POCs fell short of making the cut decade after decade. Why was that?

I’ve written a lot of fiction. In the little worlds I create, I possess godlike abilities. I choose the lens through which the story itself is filtered. I choose the heroes and the villains, the main characters and the supporting cast. I choose what gets included, and what isn’t important enough to mention. But, again, this doesn’t rise to the level of problematic because when you read a novel, you know it’s not real. However, history is taught in a way that discourages the questioning of its authors’ motives. You are just supposed to accept it as what happened. Period.

Since history is a sweeping story of all the things that have come before the present day, it’s natural that material gets omitted. We couldn’t possibly include everything and everyone. So, isn’t it also natural that we are perpetually revising the story to include things that were either omitted due to the authors’ good faith ignorance or, worse, purposely erased in favor of a much rosier narrative? One would think so, unless one were watching the news unfold in the present day. And then one would think that kind of revision is a threat to the very fabric of our nation and wellbeing of our children.

It seems that the story of what happened in America — the good, the bad, the ugly — hurts some (white) folks’ feelings, and they don’t want it to hurt their children’s feelings too. Now, I’ve raised a child, and I can tell you that she never came home emotionally destroyed because of something she learned in history class. Kids don’t really take that kind of thing personally. I’ve also been a child, and let me just say that math routinely caused me undue emotional distress because I hated it and it was hard. Under no circumstance would I suggest we remove math from the curriculum because some students can be made to feel bad about themselves.

To this, some might reply:

This is different! My child is being taught to be ashamed of being white because of slavery or…

Yeah, I let that trail off at the end because it’s such bad faith B.S and repeating it here would just make me tired all over. Feel free to fill in the blanks, y’all.

Let’s get real: the whitewashed version of history, written by white historians, is what we all grew up learning (America is the very best nation in the world and has NEVER done anything wrong), and anything else is a threat to the collective psyche. We can point a finger at the Nazis for the horrors they inflicted upon millions of innocent people, but we can’t accept that our own country imprisoned Japanese people in internment camps during that same period. The systematic genocide of indigenous people is barely discussed. Slavery is mentioned in our childhood history books, but we’re quickly taught that Abraham Lincoln took care of that evil, and the Civil Rights Movement tied up whatever loose ends remained. Problem solved! We didn’t learn anything about the legacy of slavery and how that echoes into the present day, codified in law, attitudes, and culture.

Why is a more robust and truthful version of our history so scary to so many? Why is the inclusion of those that were purposely left out of earlier versions of the story we tell ourselves about America creating such chaos in the modern day?

History isn’t therapy, friends. It’s not a support group. It’s not supposed to soothe your feelings and shore up your self esteem. But it’s also not a personal attack or a value judgment about who you are or aren’t. It should be an account of what happened, and when new events or accounts come to light, we add them to what we already know to improve the accuracy of our shared story.

If what happened in history hurts your feelings, dig into why that is. Because it’s not really about you, is it? Or, at least it shouldn’t be. It’s not about your kids, my kids, or anyone else’s. It simply is what it is.

We really have to ask ourselves: do we want to do better as a nation? Do we want to continue moving closer to the promise laid out in our founding documents? Because if we do, we have to know and reckon with what came before us. There’s no doing better without knowing better. Isn’t that a lesson worth teaching our kids?

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Miss Me with Your MLK Quotes if You Don’t Support Voting Rights

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Another Martin Luther King Jr. Day is upon us and, once again, I’m bracing myself for the dizzying, day long onslaught of self-serving hypocrisy. Ah, yes, the annual online showmanship of Republicans posting key quotes from MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech (because they’ve never read or heard anything else by the man) while they actively work to strip voting rights away from people who look like Dr. King. If the times in which we’re currently living weren’t so terrifying, this would almost be hilarious. Almost.

I’m just here to say: miss me with your fake fuzzy feelings for Dr. King if you spend the other 364.9 days of the year suppressing voting rights, undermining our democracy, or promoting the Big Lie.

It feels good to get that off my chest. Not that I expect anyone to dial down their hypocrisy on my account. But it just seems especially bad this year, doesn’t it, considering these “leaders” could vote on bills at the federal level to secure the voting rights of every eligible American and instead are choosing to do nothing while a slew of states pass legislation making it even harder to vote.

That’s exactly the world Dr. King was talking about in his famous speech, though, right? The one in which he mentions doing whatever’s necessary to concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy few while the lowly masses go unheard and uncounted.

I don’t find it hyperbolic to say that I fear for our democracy. I worry about how weak it has been revealed to be in the stark light of day, how easily it could crumble beneath the jackboots of those who are willing to resort to shocking violence in order to subvert an election and get what they want. These people, and the politicians who purposely whip them into a nationalist frenzy, are the ones who wouldn’t have stood with Dr. King when he was alive and advocating for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They are no great supporters of equality, or voting rights, or racial justice. Are we supposed to believe that they care about the words of Dr. King or what he stood for, even for a single convenient day out of the year?

We’ve run a terrifying, demoralizing gauntlet of death and disease over the last 2 years. In that time, these so-called “leaders” have more clearly revealed and defined themselves, their motives and beliefs on display in a way we’ve not seen before. Some of these “leaders” have stopped even giving lip service to the sacred ideal of one person, one vote. They no longer bother with pretense. I have to admit, I appreciate their candor, though I find it chilling, because if these people had their way, I would lose the ability to cast a ballot, as would millions who look like me. But, despite their cheerful chipping away at the foundation of our democracy, these people (or their staff) will still find a few seconds to indulge in performative reverence for one of the greatest Civil Rights leaders this country has ever known.

To them, I ask: why bother, after everything you’ve done and said? After everything you are doing and saying right now, in this moment? Leave the duty of remembering the brave Americans who fought for freedom and equality under the law to those of us still fighting to bring these ideals even closer to fruition. If you don’t love what Dr. King stood for, then stop pretending to love the man himself, even if it is the carefully whitewashed version. You would have been repulsed by who he was in life, and he would have been repulsed by what you are: people who would oppress anyone, tell any lie, tear down any cherished institution in order to cleave to power.

So instead of playacting respect for Martin Luther King, Jr., just keep his name out of your mouth. Leave the celebration of his legacy to those of us who actually celebrate it with our whole hearts and weary bones besides. Those of us who are the beneficiaries of the work he did in his lifetime. Those of us who cherish his legacy and strive to honor it in all we do. Those of us who are in this struggle and won’t stop until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Until one person really does mean one vote.

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A Journey Through Time and Space

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History is a funny thing. It’s behind us by definition, but it also never leaves us, even when we willfully shy away from it. And there are times you can feel the weight of centuries taking up space, intruding on the present, a physical force that quickens your heartbeat and cools the blood rushing beneath your skin.

A few years ago, I found myself in Washington DC for several months for work. I’d never spent much time in our nation’s capital, and I decided to make the most of it. That meant an aggressive schedule of museum visits and as many trips to historical monuments as I could muster in 90 days. My second weekend there, I booked a boat ride to Mount Vernon, the famous home of George Washington. I’m a history nerd going way back, so I was truly excited to finally visit the sprawling estate of a central founding father. I also possess the ability, fostered by 12 years of public K — 12 whitewashed education, to fawn over our country’s rich history with one breath and then criticize it with the next. You can’t grow up in this country without developing this ability, a kind of compartmentalizing that allows me to bask in the carefully crafted glory of our collective past while also acknowledging that I, as a Black woman, wouldn’t have lived very well outside of the last 50ish years. Even within those 50 years, it can be a crapshoot.

The morning was brisk, but the boat ride on the Potomac was lovely as experienced from my warm seat nestled safely below deck. Upon our arrival, I stepped out into the chill air and took stock of my surroundings. Besides the boat, everything was much the way it might have looked back in the 1700s when Washington was still alive and kicking. I felt transported hundreds of years into the past, which was thrilling, and then I felt something else as we disembarked. It was visceral, and it stayed with me for the rest of the trip, niggling at my insides, casting shadows in the far corners of my eyes, as though the very space I inhabited was crackling with all that had come before this moment.

I had to walk up a path through the trees to get to the mansion at the top of the hill. I went quickly, stepping around groups of people as I tried to identify that nagging feeling. It twisted in my gut and settled on my shoulders, a heavy sensation that followed me as I climbed higher. By the time I reached Washington’s tomb, I knew where the feeling was coming from, though I couldn’t name it. The heaviness trembled in the air around me. It was everywhere.

I wasn’t welcome here.

No one was yelling at me or telling me to leave. No one was even looking in my direction. And why would they, when the grand, brick-enclosed tomb of our nation’s first president was right in front of us? But the unsettling un-at-homeness of the place was filling my lungs as I inhaled, and it didn’t leave me when I exhaled. I wandered away from the tomb, craving a bit of separation from the cluster of tourists excitedly snapping pictures of Washington’s final resting place. In a shadier, much quieter spot, I found a more modest marker, dedicated in 1929, which read:

In memory of the many faithful colored servants of the Washington family buried at Mount Vernon from 1760 to 1860. Their unidentified graves surround this spot.

I glanced around where I stood, alone, my eyes tearing. In that space was no trace of the generations of men, women, and children that had toiled on this land. No marker naming them. No place for flowers or remembrance.

Faithful colored servants.

It struck me that the biggest difference between these Black folks and myself was the passage of time. There was another difference that weighed on me: I had come here willingly and would leave without obstacle as soon as my tour of the main house was completed.

I went on to the house at the top of the hill and my tour, that sense of being unwelcome, of sharing space with the nameless, faceless people that had come before me never lifting. It had been these people, bound in slavery, that made Washington’s life possible. Beneath his every success, the ones we read so much about in school, there were these folks, tending the land, cleaning the house, cooking the food, caring for the animals, making the place hospitable for a never ending stream of guests. Yet, the history I learned in the first 12 years of my education never made a single mention of these so-called faithful colored servants. They stayed in the background of history, and, upon their deaths, were buried in unmarked graves, taking their names and stories with them. But I could feel them in that space, on that land, where I wandered, a little stunned to be in a place where they had walked, and lived, and wept, and dreamed. A place that had not been their home, not really. A place that was never meant for me to visit, free as any white person.

On my way back to the boat, I stopped again by the hallowed ground where so many people had found their harsh freedom from a life of forced servitude. I stood near the marker, sharing space with them one final time, letting the air vibrate with that feeling of unwelcomeness. These men and women had built this place, had turned it into a thriving estate, a destination for millions to come and stand in reverence of the great George Washington. But I would never know their names. History would never tell their stories. Still, I could feel them as that heaviness pressed into my shoulders, a sense of the past bleeding into the present, of hands reaching across the void of time.

I went back to the boat, and my life, that otherworldly feeling staying with me long after I returned to DC. In many ways, that visit mirrors the experience of being a Black American. People that looked like us toiled for centuries, building a country that was never meant to belong to us. And, yet, here we Black folks are today, left to reconcile the brute expanse of history with the realities of our daily lives. It catches us off guard, rising up and settling heavily onto our shoulders: millions of stories, of lives, of experiences and shared spaces that bind us together, but are unknowable. What else can we do, besides carry the weight of that shadowy past along with us into the future?

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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