About this time last year, right before COVID-19 confined us to our homes and screens, I went to see activist and author Layla Saad on her book tour for “Me and White Supremacy.” The event, hosted by a local Black-owned bookstore, Uncle Bobbie’s, drew a primarily white audience. Sitting in…
This week, I met a young white woman named Jess, who was deep in her feelings. Michelle and I were speaking (virtually) at a company’s Juneteenth event, and when we entered the conversation part of the presentation, Jess was one of the first to volunteer with a question. Participants don’t…
My teenage sons watch a YouTube series called That’s Cringe, where Cody Ko and his friend Noel Miller watch people doing and saying things that are so awkward, so uncomfortable that they’re almost unbearable to watch. So this week when I saw the celebrity “I Take Responsibility [for racism]” video…
You may not know my name, but you probably heard about what I did.
In 2018, when my video of two Black men unjustly arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks went viral, I was thrust into an international conversation about race, and as a middle-aged white lady, I was overwhelmed, confused…
As I watch her speak to a live audience of many millions (14.6 million just on the three major networks and at least 20 million more on YouTube), that’s the first thought that comes to me. It’s not because she’s wrong. It’s because I’m imagining what lots of white people…
Yesterday, my DMs, inbox and texts were flooded with the same link: Utah Jazz player Kyle Korver’s piece in The Players’ Tribune entitled simply “Privileged.” Korver penned a piece about how, over the years as a white player in a mostly black league (over 75% percent of NBA players are…
I had a very specific goal in mind when I bought a ticket to billionaire coffee mogul and potential 2020 presidential candidate Howard Schultz’s book event at the Free Library of Philadelphia on February 13. I had been trying to get a meeting with him ever since I shared the…
