"I Do See Color" weekly newsletter: May 17, 2023
Weekly newsletter 33: Combination of race- and culture-related posts from "We Need to Talk," "I Do See Color," "BlackTechLogy," "Homegrown Tales" and "Window Shopping"
Welcome to the “I Do See Color” newsletter (with a bonus section of two first-person interviews called “Deuces”).
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Now let’s get into the weekly newsletter!
Each week, eight carefully selected posts will be chosen, which focus on culture, politics, health and race from a black (wo)man’s perspective.
NEW! 1. Don’t wait too late to create your will ~ Black entrepreneurs, prioritize a will and testament early on
The place where funerals are held is the most perfect location for Black people to also discuss wills — even if churchgoers just pop in for Christmas and Easter events, or to pay their respects to a friend who has “transitioned.” The problem is that the Bible and the reception food come up more than wills!
And while every group should prioritize having a will, those who actually do have something to leave behind should be especially dutiful about it, specifically entrepreneurs. U.S. News & World Report confirms that just over 1.2 million African Americans were self-employed in February 2022, compared to slightly under 1.1 million in February 2020. Another study from the website domain company GoDaddy guesstimated that Black people paid for 26% of all websites created for new businesses since the pandemic began, compared to 15% before.
The topic of death may not be fun, but family members, friends and spouses fighting over your belongings sucks far more.
2. Please stop telling me whose eyes are blue ~ ‘Ready to Love’: The balance between pro-interracial dating but not forced interracial dating
There is one thing that drives me nuts in every book from this author. The black characters get glossed over (ex. the guy “with the durag” who saved Ollie from being dragged into a stranger’s car). Meanwhile, every character with blonde hair is a “blonde bombshell” and all the smoking hot people have “blue eyes.” One character in the book who was previously described as no big deal at first — when Ollie thought he had gray eyes — is now jaw-dropping with blue eyes.
It reminds me too much of my take on “That ‘scientific study’ that makes you hate your race.” These little subtle “compliments” can make readers think that is the only feature needed to be attractive. It is not. Making someone look a certain way in order for a relationship to work never works. It is just as possible to be a blue-eyed monster as it is to be a brown-eyed catastrophe. The same can be said for being blue-eyed and handsome, as well as brown-eyed and jaw-dropping. They are not mutually exclusive.
3. The darkest subject change I’ve ever heard: From summons delivery to hanging black people ~ Disturbing things I wish I wasn’t learning about hiring a process server
I’ve always found it strange to meet law school students who would pass the bar and dodge the courtroom like it was COVID-19. It never made sense to me. Why do all that studying and spend all that money to then avoid doing the obvious? I suppose people with literary degrees could say the same thing. Everyone doesn’t want a best-selling novel. There are other ways to use a degree. But a conversation with one lawyer stuck out to me. She absolutely despises litigation, stating it involves “too much paperwork and a lot of waiting around” when she could be making money elsewhere.
Never in my life have I understood her opinion on that more than I do now. The amount of hoops one has to go to in order to just get in front of a judge is so tedious that it’ll make you throw your hands in the air and say, “Just forget it.” I’m stubborn. I won’t. But there was a moment yesterday where I came very close. And I still don’t understand how I arrived at a conversation about hanging black people.
4. Therapy for victims of racism should be tax deductible ~ What if the IRS treated therapy for black people the way it does for “emotional distress” lawsuits?
Twitter didn’t invent racism anymore than Donald Trump did. It just gave a large group of people a place to create anonymous accounts and share their cowardly, dark views with a larger public. Fuck that. I’m staying.
However, a recent freelancing assignment caught my attention and gave me an idea. The article I was assigned to edit discussed how the Internal Revenue Service handles “emotional distress” and anxiety when it comes to personal injury cases. A thought kept coming into my mind: If black people could go to therapy for free and have an outlet to openly discuss the harm that racism does to us, is that tax deduction a reasonable way to get reparations?
5. The art of storytelling … and the accidental racism in the tale too ~ Why it’s a good idea to tell your story in a diverse crowd
To me, the story was harmless. In fact, I would often tell a similar story about how I almost hit a tree during my early driving lesson days with my mother. I tell this story way more than my mother does because she was so absolutely calm while I was zooming straight onto the sidewalk. (Of note, I am a road warrior who rarely likes being in the passenger seat for the past two decades. But at 16, I was sure I’d fail driver’s ed.)
I told the gas station tale at a storytelling event a couple of years ago. Everybody in the crowd laughed and applauded but one Asian guy in the corner. He had a funny look on his face, somewhere between annoyed and sad. Even though the crowd loved the story, his facial expression stayed with me. It wasn’t until later that night — and a brief conversation with him where I watched his tone change — that I realized why he was so offended by my story. (He never admitted it openly.)
6. Guilt-tripping black people into liking Elon Musk won’t work ~ Yes, he’s South African. No, that doesn’t make him our hero.
If there was an instruction manual on Black People, there is a massive group of people who left the paperwork in the box. They absolutely don’t know how we operate.
In possibly the strangest guilt trip I’ve ever heard, a Twitter user (because where else?) left the following message to a black woman posting an Elon Musk Karen meme — “One of the richest people on the planet is African-American and you’re making fun of him? He was actually born in Africa too, unlike you.”
I stared blankly at this tweet for a while before furrowing my eyebrows. Yes, it’s true that Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971. I don’t dispute that he spent his K-12 years in South Africa before moving to Canada as an adult. But where on Earth does that make it mandatory for the African-American population to stand guard for him?
7. White therapists for Buffalo shooting? You missed the point ~ When a hate crime against black people happens, white therapists are not the best answer
A room full of white therapists set up to talk to black people after a hate crime: There is no better way to describe obliviousness than that. I’m fairly convinced that this group was organized with the best of intentions, but these are those moments when Mainstream America really doesn’t understand just how stressful racism is on marginalized groups.
Let’s back up to how this started.
In May of this year, on the East Side of Buffalo New York, a white supremacist entered Tops grocery store, killed 10 people and injured three more. Almost all of the ones harmed or killed were Black in a neighborhood that was already 85% Black. Before 19-year-old gunman Payton Gendron pled guilty to murder and terrorism this week, the people in this town had to come to grips with what just happened.
Now imagine this just happened, and one day later, teams of white emergency volunteers and mental health counselors are flocking around the scene “to help.”
8. 'Tulsa King,' 'Creed III' and Sylvester Stallone's anti-'dark space' stance ~ Is the problem with 'Creed III' that there is no white hero to look up to?
What I didn’t see coming was Stallone being so vocal about the third film being “too dark.” From the trailer that Michael B. Jordan shared, it looked like something I’ve seen play out multiple times in my own hometown of Chicago—minus the boxing. I had to attend Northern Michigan University to get an insider’s look at that life. I watched the trailer a couple of times and wondered what Stallone meant by this statement: “I just don’t want them going into that dark space. I just feel people have enough darkness.”
I shrugged. I assumed the boxing star was leaning more into comedies and lighter films—that is, until I saw the trailer for his new series “Tulsa King.” This film is about a criminal (played by Stallone) who spent 25 years in prison after not snitching, immediately got released and started taxing a weed dispensary shop, got shot at, was in a car chase, hired a 25-year-old black guy to be his driver (and insist on him opening the car door like Stallone was Miss Daisy), and referred to a bunch of grown men (including one Native American and two African-American men) as “my children.”
“Deuces” ~ “I Do See Color” newsletter’s bonus interviews:
1. “Therapist Explains Why Chicago Therapists Need Therapy,” CBS Chicago, December 1, 2014
Jinnie Cristerna has one simple rule for finding a psychologist: Don't see a therapist that hasn't already had a therapy session to work out their own issues.
2. “Degree Proves Versatile For Chicago Business Exec,” CBS Chicago, November 24, 2014
While some may wonder how working in the arts can connect to a business degree, one of the managers from for-profit textile recycling company USAgain has the answer.
"I started off in entertainment," said Tobin Costen, who works for one of the national branches for the West Chicago-based company. "I wound up meeting someone while I was in school: Percy Miller, who was just starting a record company."
Did you enjoy this post? You’re also welcome to check out my Substack columns “Black Girl In a Doggone World,” “BlackTechLogy,” “Homegrown Tales,” “I Do See Color,” “One Black Woman’s Vote,” “Tickled,” “We Need To Talk” and “Window Shopping” too. Subscribe to this newsletter for the weekly posts every Wednesday.
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