You know how you find yourself in a small circle of people and you begin having a conversation about something rather tender? Everyone appears to be comfortable with it because the circle is small. There is safety in numbers. Especially small ones. The issue is, naturally, race. It’s a topic that I’ve come to be comfortable talking about and it appears that people are comfortable speaking about it with me. Curse or blessing? Some days it’s both. But I’ll never shy away from it when it comes up in conversation circles.
One of the questions I got asked most often (by white women) at the BlogHer conference was:
“Should I come to your session? Or is it just for women of color?”
I only cringed during the first few conversations where I was asked that question. I willed my brain to remain inside my head and prayed for the neurons to connect. Please, God, let not my brains ooze out of my ears right now. Then I came up with a stock answer:
“Are you interested in diversity? Because this is a conversation about diversity and the marginalization of our sister-writers of color who have been forgotten. And quite frankly? We’re tired of having this conversation by ourselves.”
As an educator who attends many conferences during the school year I cannot imagine a teacher who sees a session with the title “diversity” or “students of color” and then decides to stay away from it because they don’t look like the very students they are going to learn more about. They run to it. They want to find out more about culture and the role it plays in schools. BlogHer is an occasion of professional development and I’m sad for anyone who decided that they weren’t Black enough or Latina enough or Asian enough to attend our session.
This isn’t a recap of the session that I presented with Heather B of No Pasa Nada, Stefania of City Mama and Karen of Chookooloonks. Even though it was, in my humble opinion, the session with the absolute best participants during the whole weekend. Some of the backstory can be found here with the post I wrote two years ago. It was a conversation that was in dire need of happening and it was standing room only. Some very good friends came to support us in that session and I was more than pleased to hear Mir ask the question about whether or not companies and marketers know who our demographics were. Do we have all Black or all Asian readers? Absolutely not. This is no more true than me reading all Black blogs. Mir and I are both readers of one another and I appreciated her offering that up to the session. (If you’re so inclined to leave a comment here today please feel free to state what demographics you fit because these marketers and PR folks need to see who’s reading me and it might be a wake up call for them.)
As I surveyed the crowd to see who would be participating in this session I realized that Donna Byrd from The Root and Ilene Chaiken, the creator of The L Word were standing in the back of the room. These creative, powerful, talented women were listening to this conversation and at one point I had to cross my legs to keep from jumping off the stage to tackle them. Instead, I handed each of them my oh-so-classy card. (Note to self: bring two sets of cards from now on and even bring one from my day job for bloggers in the education world.) (You have to know this, though, both of those women took my card and laughed when they read it.) (No, I will not tell you what it read. It was a location joke. You had to be there.) (But if you weren’t there I really missed you! Yes, YOU.)
Many of the women I came in contact with this weekend also got to hear about how much I detest the word “post-racial”. What does that even mean? Why are we throwing it around as an excuse to no longer recognize racism? It irritates me to no end to hear, “Well, we have a Black man in the White House. We’re post-racial!” It’s all folks can do not to jump for joy as all of our problems with race have magically disappeared! Please. Tell me what color the sky is in your world because I want to live there.
The issue of discussing race is that diversity conversations have been happening in silos. Certainly, there is a time and place for some of them to happen, but please, if I could make a request when considering joining in a conversation of race, don’t shy away from it. It’s twitchy and fraught with many shades of awkwardness. Most of the time we don’t come away from them feeling as if we’ve solved every problem, but we’re talking. Keep talking. The only reason we got here is that we kept asking the questions. I’m am of two minds on the issue of marketing: first, that as a blogger, there is inequity in the pitches that women of color get. While that’s changing, I have to wonder just where my influence lies if companies are still finding it difficult to speak with me. Rest assured, this isn’t with everyone, but I can only share my experiences. The other mind I am of this is that as a writer I want to remain scrupulous in my content. Both of those things happen in this space and there is a balance out there for me. There is a balance out there for everyone.
Last summer I was honored to be contacted by The Washington Post. In fact, I thought it was a fluke. Me? You want me to write something for you? An editor worked with me on several drafts of something that never got to see the light of day. It was bad timing for this opportunity because newspapers began a movement of radical change at the time. Oh, how I wish that would have worked out for me. I’ve been embarrassed to admit this missed opportunity because I mentioned that I had some secret news and then it never came to fruition. Yet, it remains for me a reason to keep going and to keep writing and to keep talking about those things we need to talk about.
This is a small circle. It expands, contracts, moves out again and there are some problems that need to be addressed. Keep talking and having this conversation. Race won’t go away. Neither will my writing. It’s here forever with or without big magazines or newspapers.
Truly, keep talking. I’m listening.
