The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Anonymous Narratives for Black History Month.

Black Voices

The summer of 2020 has become couched in euphemism. While it was the first “COVID summer,” it was also the summer that catalyzed a wave of racial conversation after the murder of George Floyd. Soon, the news became saturated with reports of police violence and protest footage, and social media was flooded with pictures and promises to push for collective action and change. 

Though these images weren’t new, there was something different in the momentum garnered by this wave of protests. The conversations didn't stop after a week passed, and, for once, even mainstream rhetoric went past the usual platitudes. Instead of shallow takes on racism, the conversation pivoted into bigger topics like institutionalized racism, unconscious bias and the complicity of white Americans. 

This new energy was exciting, and it defined the summer. Everybody’s sentences began the same way: “With everything happening around George Floyd” or “The whole thing with Black Lives Matter,” but this time, the euphemisms signified bigger change. Even Angela Davis called it "a very exciting moment," saying, "I don't know if we have ever experienced this kind of global challenge to racism and to the consequences of slavery." For many Black people, these conversations were long overdue and the calls to center Black voices and “pass the mic” led to Black squares on Instagram pages and pledges for all corporations to do better in terms of diversity and inclusion.

As a young professional trying to navigate the Covid-employment landscape, these conversations were encouraging. I’d gotten used to dealing with racial microaggressions before, with years of education in predominantly white institutions leaving me jaded, nihilistic and, at my worst, cripplingly depressed. But suddenly there was hope, and I could see it. Jobs I’d applied for months prior finally called me back—my ethnic name was no longer a detriment, but suddenly an asset—and opportunities to tell my story, and be heard, were almost too bountiful to be believed.

So I jumped at them. In conversations I’ve had since, many of my Black friends and peers describe that time as a strange mix of validation and anxiety, at once feeling relief that we were finally being listened to, even as we looked over our shoulder, expecting the other shoe to drop. But while it was good, it was good—and I was going to grab the opportunities as they came.

Soon, I accepted a job as a “BIPOC Staff Writer” at a digital media company. It seemed like the perfect role: I’d actually be encouraged to write about Blackness and Black representation in media and pop culture.

The company expressed its commitment to “anti-racism,” because that was the buzzword at the time. It effusively promised me the freedom to express myself as a writer, and support to grow in my career. The organization shared a commitment to growth on their end, too. It implemented regular anti-racism meetings, a focus on diversifying sources, encouraging further anti-racism education for the staff, executive team training and more. And yes, it knew these were lofty goals, but it was committed to reaching them. As a media company, it said, it had even more responsibility than anyone to commit to intention and education. And it was determined to make that commitment.

For a while, it was as good as it seemed. My team was full of other young, like-minded writers, all invigorated by the air of change—both in a wider societal context and within the company. People first, they said, not profit first. Though I was only one of two Black writers, I felt welcomed by the team and excited by the energy.

As I got acclimated to the work environment, I learned more about the company itself. My side of the company was just a smaller part of a larger agency. We had relative freedom, sure, but there was the implicit understanding that we were there to direct traffic to the website. My coworkers and even my managers would unashamedly roll their eyes and say snide comments about our parent company.

This clear divide was on display during our infrequent meetings with the other side of the team. While my managers did their best to emphasize the work we were doing and the direction we were moving, the other side just wanted numbers: more clicks, more money. Still, the surprising momentum for anti-racism and social change buoyed our content. Our mission was aligned with the trends, so everyone was happy. But by the time I’d stopped looking over my shoulder, the shoe finally started to drop.

It started with “budget cuts.” After President Biden’s inauguration, the energy for radical change began to die down. With no incendiary comments coming from the White House, and following the void of drama after the insurrection, political news didn’t compare to the Trump era. The public’s social fervor waned.

Suddenly, my managers were meeting with the business side of the parent company more and more frequently, and our jobs were starting to change. Our freedom to pitch and write our own stories waned while more and more assigned advertising content appeared on our rosters. I could deal with this. There were more eyerolls, more sighs and snide comments, but we still had our team.

It happened at 1:03 p.m. on a Friday. I was in a routine meeting with my manager when the company broke the news that half the team had been fired. We didn’t know the state of our own jobs, and instead of answers, all we heard was the repeated refrain: “budget cuts.”

Almost overnight, everything changed. Over the next few weeks, we transitioned almost entirely into ad writing. Though we didn’t have the same momentum we had during the pandemic, our sites were still doing well. Yet, we were still given no explanation for the changing state of things. One second I had a dream job, the next I was stuck in an unrecognizable shadow of that former role—writing ads for brands I didn’t use.

For a while, I thought it might be temporary. Maybe, I reasoned, once things calmed down, we would get answers and I would go back to the job I signed up for. In reality, things didn’t settle down. They escalated. Instead of going back to normal, my job officially shifted to branded content rather than the organic, politically-driven stories I was enticed by the promise of writing. And just when I thought this was the end of it, the remaining few members of my team were let go and the ones that weren’t quit.

Suddenly, there was no creative, passionate team of writers. It was just me, alone, working alongside the team we used to roll our eyes at—with none of the promises of my job title in sight. How did I get here? Doing a job I didn’t sign up for, stuck in the same kind of toxic, profit-first environment I thought I was escaping?

In truth, I shouldn’t be surprised. My career trajectory followed the thing that sparked it. When Black stories were prioritized, I felt like I was at my peak, but as the fervor from the summer faded, social commentary was less in demand and so I was, in effect, obsolete.

I’m sure I’m not the only one. This kind of cycle is in keeping with the more widespread media trend of Black employees becoming the voice of a company only when it’s profitable. For social media clout, for diversity specs or to keep up with whatever is in vogue, companies use the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion to entice Black talent, then parade them like trophies without actually valuing them.

As the only remaining writer on the whole team, my company got to keep their “BIPOC Staff Writer” in title, but turned me into a workhorse, churning out content I never signed up for. And now that the desperate calls of media companies seeking Black stories to “pass the mic” have quieted, where else would I go? So I stay. Any other company would almost undoubtedly treat me the same.

Media

I Was the Only Writer of Color for My Website; Then They Fired Everyone But Me

At a young age, I learned that sometimes the meanest remarks are made out of naivete.

“I heard that Black people are that color because they’re dirty. I wanted to see if it was true.”

My classmate knew that what she had done was wrong, somehow. She looked sheepishly at her fingertip, still clean and pink, and then back at me. We were eight, waiting for the gym class warm-up to start.

“Oh, well, I showered yesterday…” 

I probably tittered nervously as I said it. It’s a habit everyone in my family shares. And then class started, and I never told anyone about the exchange.

I grew up in a small town on the East Coast. It had less than 5,000 people, an "excellent school system” and a development that mixed cookie-cutter cul-de-sacs with 200-year-old farmhouses (sometimes with the farms still intact!). The town has great beauty. Driving down county roads, you can see rolling hills stretching out over the horizon dotted with trees and houses and fields. You understand why some folks stay there forever. Other times, driving down the same county roads, you come across a stop sign with a swastika spray-painted onto it. You understand why some folks are desperate to leave.

At 25, I like to say I'm a New York City “seven” and a hometown “three.” It took me a long time to realize that attractiveness is not an objective quality.

At 14, I started overhearing the boys in my class, who were all white but one, asking each other whether they liked blondes or brunettes. This was a little puzzling to me—are Black girls brunettes? My dad asked, a little harshly, why I cared what they liked. Was I trying to attract white boys? 

At 16, I looked in the mirror and generally liked what I saw. I wasn't "hot" (if you can even apply that word to a 16-year-old kid), but I thought I was cute! And I had a group of friends whom I loved and who loved me. I was having a good time going to football games and school dances, even if I overheard things I didn't like while I was there.

“I can’t believe Melissa’s dating a Black guy. You know how they get at this age.”

“On Friday, someone at Brett’s party called Rachel and her sister the N-word, so they left! I thought the two of them were being a little dramatic, honestly.”

“Well, of course, she’s super good at track; she’s, like, the only Black person on the team.”

By 17, I had a driver's license. My friends had driver's licenses and boyfriends or girlfriends with whom to drive around. Behind the wheel, I had a sneaking suspicion that I would never get a date in high school (I was right). I was starting to realize that race does matter, actually. Not just in a macroscopic, societal sense but very personally. 

When I was 18 and applying to college, my mom and I went away for a weekend to tour schools. I was one of five in my friend group who had never been kissed. That Saturday night in my hotel room, I looked through Snapchats from friends, dancing and drinking and getting up to general shenanigans at a party in someone's barn. “Wiggle” by Jason Derulo pumped in the background as they twerked across my phone screen.

"I hope I get to go to the next one," I thought as I drifted off to sleep. 

The next morning, I woke up to a text from my friend Liz. Four of the five remaining unkissed had paired off and made out with each other at the party. Obviously, I was devastated. I was the only Black girl in the group, and now I had the only virgin pair of lips. "Omg no way, congrats!" I texted them. 

"What the fuck, why doesn't anyone want to kiss me???" was the message I wanted to send. I was irritable and rude to my mom for the rest of the trip. Also, by now, I knew why no one wanted to kiss me. It was because I was “other,” strange, taboo—Black. Good enough for a friend, but not enough to be let into a family. 

I think I always understood that separation on some level, but it flashed into sharp relief during my senior year. I stopped thinking about who I could date or who might like me. I focused on platonic friendships, leaned into sports and hobbies that I liked, learned that I loved going to concerts. Basically, I found the contexts where the internalized racism of others had the least impact on their interactions with me. It was a great survival tactic.

However, I see it was doable because soon, I would go to college in a city, and I hoped that there, I would get to date people who found me and my Blackness to be acceptable. I always say, "My town is a great place to grow up," and in the same breath, "Thank God I don't live there anymore."

Nostalgia

Insiders

I’m a Black Woman From an All-White Town; These Are My Memories

In class, in extracurriculars, and even in my friendships, I always did more than was necessary, and reveled in the fruits of my labor: high grades, incessant high praise and the admiration of my peers. But none of this was for its own sake. Each extra mile I went made me feel a little closer to earning my right to be there as a Black girl in a predominantly white institution.

All my life, I have attended prestigious, white institutions, and all my life I have excelled in them. Racking up accolades for academic achievement, leadership positions and clubs, I did everything right. But all of my moves were practiced and intentional. Both the dopamine hits of approval and the sweet anticipation of working hard to taste the fruits of my labor felt like an adrenaline rush I was in the middle of all the time.

Looking back, this was neither anticipation nor adrenaline. It was anxiety.

I was always restless. Inactivity felt like a cardinal sin; rest was out of the question. Any time not spent chasing excellence was wasted, and I didn’t want to prove that the assumptions people made about me—that I was there to fill a quota, that I was less qualified and less sophisticated than they were—might be accurate.

And it wasn’t all in the pursuit of vanity—it felt like my responsibility. I had heard it all my life: a chorus of voices telling me how proud I was making everyone, what a good example I was. My success was the success of my family, my extended family and my community—it takes a village, after all. They saw themselves in me, and saw my success as their own. My excellence disproved their own self-doubt, too, and reassured them that their internalized notions about Blackness and their own worth were wrong.

So, having been raised with the weight of my “potential” impressed upon me, it was a given that the consequences for not living up to it would not be personal, but dire for the whole community. I carried that burden for years, making all the right moves, getting into all the right schools, reading all the right books and talking with the best of them. “Don’t waste it,” everyone told me, and that propelled me higher and higher up the social hierarchy, fueling my adrenaline and anxiety with each rung.

Yet, as I forayed further inside these circles, they became more complex. I acclimated to the correct cadences, I learned to recognize status symbols and tried to acquire the few I could. Yet the more I tried, the further away I seemed.

There was always something more to be gained, I finally realized—some other mantle to reach. Even if I got the highest grades, people saw me as a scholarship case. Even if I wore the right clothes, carried the Longchamp bag and bought the Moncler coat, the status symbols were wasted on me. At work, people were surprised by my eloquence but still underestimated my ability. I felt like an imposter and no one was mistaking me for one of them. For all my trying, and even my successful attempts, I felt like I was playing a game of catch-up, hoping to reap some vague rewards of outward approval. 

The dissonance between my home community’s perception of my success and the fraud I saw in myself only deepened my imposter syndrome. Suddenly, I felt different than the people at home, and was othered by the people at school. My isolation meant I had no one to turn to, and the fear of disappointing the people who had supported me and nurtured my potential made me feel stuck, hopeless.

So I kept climbing the ladder. I got into a good college. I spent the summers doing prestigious internships where I was, again, almost always the only Black person, or one of very few. By all accounts, this was making it. I tried to feel satisfied by my achievements but they never felt tangible, as though resting on my laurels, even for a second, would break them. My place in these privileged spaces always felt precarious, and my paranoia was taking its toll. Afraid to be exposed for the fraud I still felt I was, I worked and worked and worked in an attempt to prove myself.

It was inevitable, my burnout, and with it my disillusionment of the systems I had been taught to revere. Why was I working myself to exhaustion when no matter how hard I tried, I was still just the Black girl? And why was I so desperate for the approval of a system I knew was rigged?

The 1:1 value I had placed on my self-worth and production output was a direct function of the capitalist system I know to be flawed and embroiled in white supremacy. Basing my value on my acceptance by elite institutions, from boarding schools, to private colleges, to prestigious companies, was not really validating my community, but validating the hierarchies that oppressed my community. All my work had not been in service of myself, but in service of the institutions which had succeeded in making me feel like I was inherently “less than”—the very function of racism.

In an embodied way, I had given myself to racist institutions in the name of progress and being a credit to my community and my race. And this outdated lie that Black excellence is defined by success in established systems is perpetuated relentlessly. From news highlights on “first Black” milestones, to award shows and the entertainment industry, giving Black artists tiny morsels of recognition while exploiting their output and aesthetics for monetary gain, we’re taught to appreciate these moments of recognition and hunger for them as I had.

However, my experience within the upper echelons—befriending the children of dukes and billionaires, working for internationally recognized names and institutions—proved that there was no space for me there. Marginalized groups are always going to be othered by elite institutions, which were built to advance the white heteropatriarchy and continue to oppress and gatekeep other communities. My place there had only served as an example of adherence, that if one were to work within the system, they would be rewarded.

But after I realized I was working fruitlessly at the expense of my mental health, I quickly realized that I was working at the expense of my community, too. To be a credit to our race is to resist the notion that we need to prove our worth measured against whiteness. To advance my community is to dismantle the systems that I was embroiled in. 

Learning to reject the narrative I had been taught took years of self-doubt, isolation and tireless, thankless work. Finally, through introspection about my values, I realized that the excellence I was striving for was actually leading me away from Black liberation and activism, and further inside the broken system at the expense of my mental health. So many of us are stuck in this cycle but it's time we get out. It may have taken burnout and breakdown for me to get here, but I’m glad I did.

Now I am learning not to look for approval in my work, my output, my purported “success.” I find fulfillment in engaging in my community in a meaningful way, and reading, working and organizing towards liberation.

Mental Health

The Pressure of Black Excellence Was Bad for My Mental Health

I skimmed over the directions, grabbed the small vial out of its box, popped off its cap and I very carefully spit my saliva into the jar. I wiped off my shirt, and then silently questioned the insanity of this approach—I mean, here I am, voluntarily giving my DNA to a company that likely might turn around and sell it later. A piece of me hated that I was taking these steps, unearthing “my story.” My identity had come to this. But, like anyone who had their identity stolen under the myth of the “American Dream,” I was desperate for answers.

Growing up, I always envied white people because of their wealth. I don’t mean monetary wealth; rather, their wealth of information—the photo albums, the diaries, the birth and death certificates, the oral histories—and those priceless artifacts that tell their story. I always wondered why my family didn’t have that, too. My mother should have been able to show me the faces of my elders through frozen moments captured on film. My father should have been able to read me their words from journals and manuscripts passed down across generations. I should be able to give my daughter those moments and words to carry across time.

I can never get over all of the lost stories. Who were these people? What did they love? Did they ever find their dreams? What were their passions? Did they ever dream of me? Did they pray for me? What was Africa like? What tribe do we originate from? What is our true language? Who was our God? When they died, did they have peace? Did they fight? Were they leaders like me? Who the fuck are we?! 

I mean, isn't that the whole point of language in the first place? To communicate the vital and necessary information that we need to survive. Instead, it's been used as a weapon to marginalize and control the masses. Who could have guessed that the cause for so many of my tears could be boiled down to the fact my ancestors were legally stopped from reading and writing, from speaking their native language, from having a family, from loving each other. I didn’t know it was possible to miss so many at the same time. I didn’t know it was possible to miss people I'd never met.

I grabbed my passport, threw my backpack over my shoulder, shoved my cellphone into my pocket, grabbed my suitcase and double-checked for my passport. Then I headed downstairs, climbed into a black SUV and made my way to the airport. I was scared for so many reasons. In a few days, I would be filming as the lead in my first feature film, and we were shooting the entirety of the movie in Lagos, Nigeria. I had never been out of the country before, let alone Africa. I anticipated that I would be rejected by locals, who, in their minds, saw me as an “American,” not a person of West African descent—not one of them, not family. Only as a watered-down version of what’s real.

I knew nothing about Africa—I might as well have been visiting another planet. I recalled what I was taught to believe about Africa, and it inspired this arrogant feeling, this idea that I was better simply because I was raised in the U.S., that I was smarter or better off despite our ugly history. In some strange way, I really believed that and hated that I did. I was embracing thoughts that weren't really mine; like an animal, I was following my basic conditioning without question. I learned not to beat myself up about it, because at the end of the day, it wasn't all my fault. I was just doing what I was told and now that I was asking these questions, I finally had the power to change it. All of these rising insecurities were a byproduct of my need to be accepted and, deep down, I just wanted to go home and feel loved.	

My mind couldn't stop thinking about what was stolen from us. From me. It made me angry to think that I didn’t have a home. I think about my ancestors as a compass, a guide to returning home where people and stories unlock our identity. How many healers, prophets, artists were stolen from me? I always dreamed of home when I was a child, but those dreams didn’t have a language or words, it was all feeling. When I would hear stories of my classmates going home to Mexico to see their abuelos and abuelas, I envied them. I wanted what they had. I wanted to have somewhere to go. I cried as I conjured up those emotions. I used to think I didn’t care about my history. It wasn't that, I was just hurting just like anyone else that didn’t have a place to call home.

I tried to swallow those thoughts and get into character. At the end of the day I wasn't going home, I was just going to work. This wasn't a vacation, this wasn't about me. I was being hired to tell a story. I needed to focus.

I could heavily relate to my character. In his mind, he couldn't identify with being Nigerian—these weren't his people. Taught that allegiance to his country superseded his ethnicity and identity, he was convinced that he was an American. He was sent to Nigeria to learn about his roots and would ultimately end up email scamming others in order to get back home. Our ideas were the same, but we really related in our pain. At the end of the day, we didn’t belong, we were homeless. We had no soul, no identity. For some of us, to be American means to be nothing.

As the plane made its final descent, I listened to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. I wondered if the rapper ever considered if his music could be the soundtrack to a stranger's journey. I kind of felt like Santiago, from The Alchemist, when he set out on his mission to find the pyramids. I was also searching for something that I couldn't even imagine, hoping that I'd recognize it when I saw it. As I stepped off the plane, I felt like a fish out of water, the prodigal son making his return.

In between set-ups, I talked to a man that strangely resembled a distant relative. In an alternate reality, he could be like an uncle or a father of sorts. He spoke to me with a conviction as if I was a lost boy wandering in his village and he was responsible for me. I told him how I didn’t have a home and I knew nothing about the people that came before me. All of those stories, all of that history, all of that love was lost forever. He looked at me like I was a book he was reading, and seemed to know the answers to the puzzle I’d been trying to solve my entire life.								

“You may not know exactly what country you are from and that doesn't matter,” he told me with a soft confidence. “This is your home, your people come from this land. Yeah, you may not know exactly what country you’re from. So, pick one! You need to go to Ghana, go to the village.”				

A few days later, while filming at the airport, I received an email notification. I had finally received my ancestry results. The ethnicity estimate read 31 percent Cameroon, eight percent Ghana, 22 percent Other, and 39 percent Nigeria. A weird excitement washed over me. I felt a little closer to finding out who I was. I had a sense of direction now. I had finally found the pyramids.

There was still so much that I didn’t know, that I wanted to know, but this was a start. We finished principle photography, the film went to a major film festival, and is now on Netflix. But my greatest accomplishment was finding out what home looked like.

Ancestry

On a Trip to Nigeria, I Discovered My Black-American Identity

I was sitting in a 68-man Orange County jail tank, surrounded by the usual chaos. The stench of hopelessness and despair that hung thick in the air around me wasn’t new, but as I sat there, knowing I was about to spend the rest of my life in prison, it seemed more potent than usual.

I was convicted of three counts of attempted murder and three counts of assault with a deadly weapon. At the age of 23, I was sentenced to 32 years-to-life. Nothing made sense. I had no direction. I was lost to my circumstances. I had no idea how I was going to survive my new lifetime of imprisonment.

The sheriff yelling, “Mail call!” snatched me out of my trance. On any normal day, I’d be excited to hear it. I always looked forward to a letter from a family member, friend or girlfriend to give me a taste of the reality I once knew. Today I was numb because any dream I had of one day getting back to them was fading away with each passing second. The sheriff had to call my name twice before I realized that he was talking to me. When he handed me an envelope, I was confused. I didn’t recognize the name in the upper left corner. Curiosity made my hands fumble a bit, but when I finally got the letter open, I was flooded with all kinds of emotions.

The first page was brimming with compassion and empathy.

It was immediately apparent that whoever this was, they felt for me and my family, and the loss we were experiencing. For the first time in a long time, I felt like somebody saw me as a person, not just the worst thing I’d ever done. Then came apologies for the part that she played, and how much guilt she felt for helping turn in my guilty verdict.

It slowly dawned on me that the letter in my hand had come from one of the jurors who’d convicted me.

I was instantly furious. My shirt felt like it was choking me. My body was burning from the inside. A voice from deep down within me screamed at her, “This is all your fault!”

In her letter, the juror—Juror Number Ten, as it turned out—talked about how she held out for three days of deliberation. If she would’ve stuck to her guns, I wouldn't be heading to prison, right? I wanted to rip the letter into pieces, but I couldn't. Maybe some part of me understood that this person was searching for the very same healing I was.

We kept up our correspondence for the next couple of months that I was in the reception center. We spoke honestly about how our paths crossed, and what that meant for me and my family, and for her too. I couldn't dedicate much energy to where this was going, because I had no way of knowing what level-four prison life had waiting for me. That’s what occupied most of my thoughts.

I’d only been at Calipatria State Prison for two days when the guards came to my cell to handcuff me for my first visit. I assumed they’d made a mistake. My mail hadn't even reached home yet, so nobody knew where I was. The guard rattled off my state identification number to confirm and told me my visit would be behind glass because I hadn't been classified yet.

When I stepped in the visiting room for the first time, I had no way of knowing that it would be Juror Number Ten waiting on the other side of the glass. At first we were both overwhelmed by the trauma that we shared. Then she started telling me about her experience as a juror. She said that when she was the last one holding onto a not-guilty verdict, she asked the room how much time they thought I would get. The foremen, full of patriarchal white privilege, slammed his hand on the table and stood over her. “It doesn’t fucking matter,” he growled. “It's not our problem. Just say guilty so we can go home.”

I listened intently as she recalled how scared and small she felt. I flashed back to the day of my verdict, and remembered seeing her cry uncontrollably as the judge asked the jury whether they all agreed I was guilty. She told me that she wanted to change her mind, but felt like she couldn't. It was easy for me to empathize because I had felt the same smallness and powerlessness for much of my life. In my current situation, people were constantly using their power and position to drill into my head that I no longer had agency, even over my own body.

On that day, our healing began, behind thick plated glass while we perched on stainless-steel stools. We cried together, forgave each other and forgave ourselves. There was no room for “juror” and “defendant” in our exchange because our humanity couldn’t be objectified that way. I was able to take full responsibility for where I was because I realized she hadn’t done anything that needed to be forgiven.

She was just as much a victim of this system of oppression as I was. The system didn't care how her experience as a juror affected her, or the countless hours of counseling she needed afterward, as long as she played her part.

Over the next couple of years, Juror Number Ten and I would write often. She sent me pictures of her vacations, giving me the chance to escape mentally. I would share with her the things I was discovering about myself and the ways my paradigm had shifted. She didn’t even know how influential she was in my new journey, as I began to see the power of forgiveness and the capacity of human beings to love without limits.

If two people separated by geography, socioeconomic background, race and gender could find a way to embrace, what else was possible? This was a lesson that would serve me well in a place so hellbent on maintaining those separatist ideologies. Juror Number Ten and I couldn’t control the system, but we had the final say-so on our relationship to each other.

We became so close that years later when her son was having behavioral and substance abuse issues, I asked her to bring him to see me so I could share what I was thinking and feeling at his age. Frankly, I wasn't surprised that her son and I had a lot in common. He was also trying to find his way in a culture where he couldn’t ask for help or being emotionally vulnerable unless he wanted to risk being seen as less than a man. Juror Number Ten told me that after our visit, he cried and prayed for me. Her son and I are still very close.

It's been 16 years since my first letter from Juror Number Ten arrived, and I’m proud to say that since then we’ve become family, sharing love, connectedness and a motivation to heal. Although our paths crossed because my actions produced trauma and pain, she was able to see and appreciate my humanity. I struggled early on to see how our “justice system” provided justice to anybody involved. The system only seemed concerned with subjecting me to a lifetime of isolation and trauma. Still, through the actions of one woman, I learned that everybody is entitled to the opportunity to connect and heal. I carried that throughout my time of incarceration. Now I am no longer serving life in prison, but living a life in service to others and building a community that supports one another in making positive decisions.

Justice

Number Ten and Me: How I Bonded With a Juror Who Convicted Me of a Felony

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

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Money

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Best of 2021

Since the pandemic began, service workers have been deemed essential. We’ve kept working through COVID or were fired for staying home. In restaurants, this has created a strain between workers and guests that has only gotten worse as the pandemic has gone on. 

Service workers have always had to let go of petty moments, like the person asking them 15 times for something extra or the one constantly sending back their food. But the new issues that have come up over the past year and a half are different. They can be life-threatening. And even knowing that, people continue to push back. Not only do they push back against rules that are supposed to keep us safe but they become violent and unhinged in a way that I do not get paid enough to deal with. 

For example, someone comes into a restaurant with signs up clearly stating to “wear a mask, even if vaccinated, unless eating or drinking,” and they see that as a challenge, or worse, that they’re exempt and if we say otherwise, it’s “discrimination.” Then, we have to coddle them and convince them to do what we need in order to serve them, all while they hold up a line of 56 other reservations.

Since being back in restaurants, I think people have forgotten how to be human. They’ve become semi-feral animals who want expensive wine and food as quickly as possible. Before the pandemic, it seemed like everyone was calmer about service and knew how to behave in a restaurant. Of course, we had occasional problematic guests, but they were easier to ignore, especially because it wasn’t a life-or-death situation. Pre-pandemic restaurants were easy-going and leisurely compared to what they are now. We spent most of our time saying the customer is always right and putting aside the fact that sometimes they’re not. 

And you, the guest, could go out and receive services at an amazing level of performance every single day. There wasn’t the same fear, burnout and anger like restaurants today, which are understaffed, underpaid and have no medical insurance or paid time off. Food service workers today are gritting their teeth to the bone daily just to survive. 

When my restaurant reopened after lockdown, we had made a lot of changes that made things extra hard for staff. Our menus were now digital so that they could be updated with 86’d items and new dishes on the spot, but they weren’t incredibly functional. The downside to not having paper menus was if you didn’t have a phone, you were stuck having to look at someone else’s. I had a guest ask to use my personal phone, to which I told him no, and then he proceeded to pitch a fit about it. I still didn’t let him. (He eventually used his friend's phone and wound up having a great evening.) 

The owners also changed the restaurant from one style of cuisine to another and hired an almost entirely different staff. They had done this many times before, so it only blew a few minds, but the people who weren’t aware of the changes often got grumpy with us for not matching our online presence, which hadn’t been updated. Since our new staff was small, starting off, our service was slower, and of course, that became an issue. 

On one of my first nights at work, I had a guest berate me over a mistake that he made and that he refused to let me fix. So, in a dining room full of people, he began yelling, cussing and carrying on about how stupid I was and how I didn’t deserve my job. Management promptly told him to leave and never return, but experiences like that happen at least once a month these days. If it's not to me, then its to someone else on staff over something as small as a beer not being as cold as a guest prefers or someone trying to order food long after the kitchen has closed.

I have had my fair share of pandemic problems, and many started before we reopened. While we were still trying to iron out our "post-apocalyptic” plans, we were just doing to-go orders and we weren’t fully staffed, so I did a number of to-go orders alone. I wasn’t used to being by myself on a shift, but it was nice to work silently and appreciate the normality of showing up to work at all. There were no chairs set up for seating, but I still had to chase people out of the bar. No one would respect the idea of not standing around me without a mask. One man left us an angry review because we forgot his salsa. We were doing our best, but the negative reviews about masks and the fact that we weren’t allowing people to sit kept coming in. Restaurant guests spent tons of time berating us for new rules to keep ourselves safe and the restaurant open. We still have to defend ourselves against people who merely look at us as their personal (and poorly tipped) servants. 

I have personally seen a number of service workers who tirelessly worked through the pandemic quit their jobs on the spot, usually over the combination of low pay and high stress. Most of the time, the final straw is experiencing some kind of abuse from guests or the other staff. It’s brutal out here. Once, I witnessed a co-worker have to yell at someone about masks. This co-worker wasn’t a mean person, but he was scared and wanted to make sure he wasn’t being taken advantage of. He hadn't had many days off during the lockdown. The bar had reopened for seating, but it was still too soon. Mentally, we weren’t ready, and we were still understaffed because some people refused to come back. We had been told we wouldn’t continue to receive funds if we didn’t come back to work, so many of us begrudgingly returned.

Unfortunately, almost 70 percent of our staff got COVID and the other 30 percent went on to run the restaurant instead of the owners closing and having us all get tested. One of my co-workers who'd had COVID got into an altercation with a guest who wouldn’t wear a mask. Then, he was fired, followed by everyone else on staff who had voiced any anger about the lack of safety in our workplace. We had put ourselves on the line for a job that replaced us within months of reopening for patrons who wouldn’t follow the rules and didn’t care that we were risking our lives for less than minimum wage.

Over time, your servers, bartenders, busboys and chefs have been worn down to the bone with ridiculous questions, assumptions and entitlement—not to mention the stress of having to put our lives at risk just to work. We want you to enjoy your evening but to also be reasonable about expectations. The pressure you add to our jobs during the pandemic, with your demands and your refusal to respect our safety, makes us hate you. When the world is on fire, the last thing you need to do is light matches in other people’s lives. Learn some decent restaurant etiquette, because you guys suck.

Food

Your Server Hates You: Working in a Restaurant During COVID Is Infuriating and Exhausting

Slipping into shoes other than my go-to casual sneakers has been a rare sensation as of late. Heck, seeing anyone do the same has been, too. When I watched Rihanna bounce confidently into an L.A. grocery store in March this year in towering heels, along with a designer mini fit, Versace sunnies and a neon green face mask to match, it was almost too much to take. I was glad to see the style queen return to form. Witnessing more and more moments of people enthusiastically dressing up again signified something deeper to me. It got me buzzing, especially since lockdown reared its ugly head.

This past year, the fun approach to fashion got lost in the serious concerns of the pandemic, and I’ve missed it. As restrictions ease and we find purpose in being presentable again, some have returned to showy stylings outside of the house. But while some might have favored the switch from suits to sweats in March 2020, for me, being confined to home for endless months (with no need to fix myself up to go anywhere) left me with a sense of lost identity. I fell deeper into the cycle of putting on a hoodie for the next errand run, and my mourning got heavier as I tried to remember the essence of who I was before this pandemic began. 

This past year, the enthusiasm to put on a presentable outfit was dampened by not only the removal of social engagements but job losses brought on by businesses shuttering in lockdown. Aside from work uniforms, the detachment of purpose from ensembles altogether in the earlier period of the pandemic made fashion suddenly a foreign interest and ultimately seem pointless even to me, someone who has worked in the industry as a copywriter and journalist for many years. Considering my innate love for fashion, I was concerned with my initial detachment and for the industry itself, as shows and collections stopped and design schools shut down, crushing students’ routes to career success.

It just felt like there wasn’t a place for it all in the midst of the pandemic’s chaos, and I felt guilty even directing worry toward the industry as people were, if not dying, getting seriously ill. In this general rejection of fashion that occurred, it became simplified as superficial, which made sense. Certain aspects of it are. However, I realized this was not the part of fashion I missed—it was the creativity and personalization behind it. These factors fuel the element of style, which has led me, along with countless others, to discover our identities and find true self-fulfillment. Here lies the difference between happiness and depression for some, and in more dramatic cases, life and death. 

Losing grip on self-identity can be detrimental to mental health, which I discovered battling this throughout lockdown. For many working from home, the temptation to live in sweatpants never sat well with me. My mood was tied to how I dressed, and so, having worked from home since before the pandemic as a freelancer, I made sure to dress presentably in my routine—visiting the gym, attending meetings or working in the coffee shop. With all these appointments wiped away by restrictions, I succumbed to wearing joggers like everybody else, letting a melancholy steadily arise within me as my proactiveness waned. Paired with not seeing people parade their personal styles out on the way to somewhere, I was left feeling uninspired and stagnant creatively.

There’s an energy in expressing style that people draw from, that boosts positive attitude. Through style—defined as a unique way of arranging one’s appearance—we seek references of individuality that inspires an inner confidence I’ve long been chasing. Rihanna emotes this best, taking to the streets unapologetically dressed, as she establishes looks that aren’t subservient to trends or people’s opinions of what’s “hot.” Seeing her strut into that grocery store not long ago reminded me how I’d neglected my own sense of style, associating it with an occasion or destination, when it should really be about how it makes me feel and how I identify with myself.

For some, it might not be an important part of life—irrelevant, even. I even thought I was supposed to consider it meaningless during this pandemic. It’s perhaps why I’ve felt so low at times, casting aside something of personal value to me. Fashion has led me to a sense of self-discovery, happiness and escapism in the trying moments life has thrown along the way, which has made me realize that, if it holds such importance to me or anyone else reading this, then it’s worth preserving. 

Seeing style return to the streets as more people reconnect with themselves through fashion has been a positive development. It’s also reminded me not to neglect my own self so deeply as we rediscover a life that we’ve all been so desperately deprived of this past year.

Style

As the Pandemic Fades, Street Style Is Back: I Couldn’t Be Happier

I come from a polygamous home. I have two older, beautiful sisters and a really tall, masculine, younger brother. This means that I have three maternal siblings. As is the case with most people, it was assumed that my effeminacy was due to the femininity of my elder sisters rubbing off on me, considering I was born immediately after them. Naturally, I spent the most amount of time with them, and I remember constantly wearing my mom’s laces and scarves when I was way younger. I was a pretty young boy, just over 7 years old, doing things I loved, without caring about the circumvented effects of what I did or the interrogations I would receive from others. I just wanted to be happy—and I was. 

After wearing my mom’s clothes, I moved on to my elder sister’s wardrobe— I still wear her clothes, by the way. I like to tell people that I was pretty blessed to come from a family of amazing people who never questioned my effeminacy or how and where I found happiness. All they cared about was that I kept my very chirpy demeanor without hurting anyone in the process.

I then transitioned into wearing a pair of jeans because, after 24 years of my existence, I realized that the average Nigerian has to follow stereotypical social conditioning and that impacts our modes of dressing. Anything other than conformity is seen as immodest, and those who perpetrate such are regarded as outcasts.

As I grew older, I began to find myself loving the ideas of fashion. The creation process, the inception of ideas, the sourcing of fabrics, the illustrations, the symposiums and seminars and even the fashion programs and shows. When I wasn’t on the streets getting inspired, I was either looking at the clothes of street dwellers or dissecting them in my head, thinking up ways that the designs could have been different. Half of my time was spent watching iconic designers make show-stopping, artsy clothes. One time, I sat in awe for hours watching Valentino’s AW18-19. I am still shocked at the amount of work that collection consumed. 

Watching men in these shows made me understand that I wasn’t alone and that my effeminacy was something to be embraced rather than discarded. It helped me see the need for self-expression. So, I made a conscious decision to attend fashion shows here in Nigeria. I look at myself these days, and I thank the fashion industry for the growth and self-love it has allowed me to harness for myself. For a lot of us, these shows are a time when we can fully express ourselves without worrying about social conditioning. They’re truly a time to live freely and aloud, making all forms of elaborate and exaggerated poses in front of the camera. Although this can be done outside the shores of shows and exhibitions, they’re undeniably one of the platforms that spearheaded living truly and authentically.

For a visibly effeminate Nigerian man like me, with loads of criminalizing laws hovering over my very existence, one has to be careful when expressing themself, even with fashion. The country’s Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act is a draconian law set by the Nigerian government to police queer people in the country. Showing any form of relationship with the same sex or showing any stereotypical ideas of queerness in the way you dress could mean looking at a 14-year imprisonment term. You could get profiled by Nigerian police for painting your nails or changing your hair color as a man. You could also get profiled for putting on anything that doesn’t show conformity—skirts, earrings, platform shoes, anything. Worse still, you could get beat up if anything matches a display of effeminacy or "womanish behavior."

I know of the blatant stereotype that there are loads of effeminate queer men in the industry. Maybe this is true, maybe it isn’t. However, one thing that is certain is that queerness and effeminacy have found comfort and space in fashion. For a long time, I’d struggled with acceptance, thanks to the rigid standards that men have been forced to live within. Fashion shows helped me see and meet others like me—young, wild, free, nonconforming, fashionable people.

I now look forward to attending these events because they have allowed me to see that I’m not alone—I can surround myself with people who share the same story as me. I have managed to build a community of really talented, fashionable young men who made me appreciate myself more, and I hope that others do too.

How Fashion Shows Helped Me Find Myself and Build a Community

I don’t think that I’m more pessimistic than the average person. I’m certainly prone to a mercenary kind of pragmatism in my more introspective moments, but I consider myself a fairly “glass half full” kind of person. Having said that, I think Clubhouse is contributing to a breakdown in the healthy formation of relationships. This is not a new sentiment, and it has been levied against any number of social media apps currently plaguing the masses. But Clubhouse is a specific kind of bleak, foisted on us at the most opportune moment of isolation and craving for human interaction. I’m not given to indulging in conspiracy theories (unless they’re so entirely ridiculous they have a ring of truth), but its explosion as the newest, shiniest, most exclusive app at the height of pandemic paranoia feels sufficiently suspicious to me.

Clubhouse is a mobile-only social media app that allows users to create audio-only chat rooms. It allows users to host these rooms in a live format where thousands of people can join in as listeners or active participants, subject to the whims of room moderators. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like The Next Big Thing in social media. There’s no endless timeline to scroll, no "like" counts to silently scrutinize, no virtual marketplace to peruse. Android users couldn’t join until May 2021. But its user base now numbers more than 10 million, spanning the globe despite its limited feature set. Clubhouse’s soaring popularity has inspired copycats from competitors with far more longevity like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Slack.

How did Clubhouse become such a runaway success in such a short period of time? What experience does it provide that so clearly and consistently draws people in? 

By my estimation, Clubhouse has managed to capture our collective attention by perfectly mimicking the natural experience of forming relationships at a time when our ability to do so has been severely hindered. Clubhouse has removed the screen and impersonal text, reintroducing tone and context to conversations. It returns tonal variety, texture, timbre and even humanity to conversations—while global health and science bodies tell us to avoid these things for our collective safety. Clubhouse was the closest approximation to in-person interaction that was available when the world was locked down. 

I can’t explain why predecessors like Google Hangouts, Skype or WhatsApp didn’t capture the public’s imagination during the pandemic in the same way. Maybe it’s solely the appeal of something new and relatively exclusive, or maybe it’s because we’ve stopped trying quite so hard and we’re all getting too ugly to look at. Maybe it’s the ability to see a list of the room’s participants before joining a conversation. This, combined with Clubhouse’s demand for a functional cellphone number and its beta status (which it just recently evolved out of ), encourages a feeling of exclusivity and privacy. Whatever the reasoning is, Clubhouse is the hottest, newest thing, and I hate it.

I’ve limited my Clubhouse usage since my initial obsession began in June 2020. I joined Clubhouse that month after being invited by a fellow photographer. I intended to use it for networking purposes, but I was quickly sucked in as more and more friends, colleagues and the occasional nemesis joined. I would spend hours on the app, searching for rooms about photography or sex work or organizing that I could join, either as an active participant or just to listen in.

My greatest frustrations, borne from my experience being cyberstalked and a long-running fear of police surveillance, were the rooms where sex workers frequented. It’s no secret that social media platforms have targeted sex workers following the passage of SESTA/FOSTA and the recent press surrounding SISEA. Secretive algorithms, vague content moderation rules and an inconsistent appeals process for account deletion have left sex workers scrambling to find and keep communities, build networks and offer material support to each other.

The appearance of Clubhouse, a new app with little to no guidance on allowable content, and its wider strategy for longevity, was like a beacon—a beacon that eroded all sense of apprehension and basic rules for internet safety. A beacon that encouraged strangers to admit to felonies to each other, with no real assurance as to who was listening beyond a phone number whose true ownership could easily be changed, manipulated or otherwise concealed. 

After the initial honeymoon period, I started feeling an apprehension about what I was doing that I couldn’t explain. Opening the app felt like a chore, another opportunity to monetize my existence. One room after another boasted titles like “HOW TO BECOME A CLUBHOUSE INFLUENCER” and “GETTING PAID TO HOST THIS ROOM” or “FREE IG AUDITS WITH PR GURU TO THE STARS.” Even rooms related to photography or writing were touting claims like “MAKE $80,000 YOUR FIRST YEAR AS A PHOTOGRAPHER” or “SEO TIPS TO MONETIZE YOUR BLOG.”

Inside rooms that were supposedly an opportunity to connect with others, I was admonished to add my Cash App to my bio so I could receive tips for sharing hard-won advice. I’ve felt this malaise before with other apps, but this was different. It was a tangible drag on my mood that eventually led me to block notifications at the iOS system level and eventually stop using the app altogether. 

After a measured return to Clubhouse—joining in very specific rooms at predetermined times—I get it now. I’ve done my best to limit my exposure to it, but there’s just something about Clubhouse that inspires people to overshare and trauma dump without knowing exactly who’s on the other side. The app encourages a false sense of intimacy—everyone on there is a friend of a friend. By keeping the app invitation only and tying those invitations only to numbers saved in your contacts, Clubhouse has created an environment where every user is possibly one degree of separation apart.

There’s a devious ring of truth—albeit a surface-level one—to the experience. The world doesn’t seem that big on Clubhouse, unless there’s a global finger wag in your direction if you aren’t staying as isolated as possible. In a new world, where it’s possible for public figures to lose work and favor for not embracing COVID distancing and safety guidelines, the need to connect is greater than ever. The idea that anyone on an app with 10 million users could be in the contacts of your best friend has to do something to your psyche. Combined with being trapped alone with your own thoughts—plus maybe a husband, kids or an overbearing in-law—for 18 months, it’s a recipe for a perfect emotional storm.

Is it any wonder then that, despite knowing the general insecurity of social media and the danger of saying anything in a roomful of strangers, people will unload their trauma on Clubhouse without a second thought? I felt a twinge of this discomfort with the rising popularity of Tabitha Brown, the vegan cooking “internet auntie” on TikTok. Brown’s content is usually focused on creating vegan alternatives to common Black Southern dishes, working as an actress and interacting with her family. Occasionally, however, Brown will reply to a comment or message, usually thanking her for her soothing voice and kind spirit because it made them remember a parent or teacher.

Those made me uncomfortable—first because I don’t like when it's assumed that a Black woman, particularly an older one, is assumed to be willing to take on the emotional labor of any and everyone who finds them sufficiently comforting. And secondly, I didn’t like the idea of teenagers and young adults flocking to an adult on the internet with their deepest insecurities, shame and concerns for the world. Again, this is my own post-stalking paranoia speaking, but it made me feel weird in ways I wasn’t sure how to articulate. Is her voice soothing? Sure. But not enough to unload a running commentary on my ever-present anxieties. But when I voiced this, the most consistent feedback was that I should stop trying to play pop psychologist. So I did, even after learning that her husband was a cop.

While Clubhouse mimics the intimacy of a person-to-person conversation, it cannot replace the experience of building a true relationship. It cannot replicate the building of trust needed for true vulnerability between two people. And so, the tenuous beginnings of a relationship are fractured at the first sign of conflict. Simple miscommunications and natural disagreements are pathologized as abusive or manipulative by a rapt audience of spectators.

I should admit that I came of age on Tumblr. I’m no stranger to internet friendships that fade into nothingness or those that result in extremely public, extremely embarrassing fits of pique. I’ve spent years attached to my phone, at first because I was being paid to, then because I’m mentally ill. But after years of therapy, a lot of edibles and a stint of freelance writing, I am proud to say that I think I’m getting over my internet addiction (or maybe I’m just getting old). The constant churn of social media, now with its new trauma-dumping feature, is getting to me. Then again, here I am telling all of my innermost thoughts and feelings to the internet at large.

I’m hesitant to say “everyone go to therapy” because, in essence, that also means telling all of your secrets to a stranger, but I don’t have any other answers. Unlike seeing a licensed professional, one trained to help guide you through the admittedly painful process of understanding yourself, Clubhouse has become a designated zone for trauma dumping. One where unsuspecting, unconsenting audience members are treated to a full-color reenactment of a strangers’ worst trauma. The audience is given no time to adjust or decide if they’re willing to take on the role, the intimacy of being in possession of this knowledge and the resulting emotions. And there’s no plan in place for any emotional distress felt by the audience, no mitigation strategy for anything these stories might trigger. Whatever tender feelings the false exclusivity of Clubhouse may generate, there is no guarantee that everyone in these rooms is a friend or one step removed. 

Friendship is not conferred by proximity or shared space. It’s grown alongside time spent building and resolving conflict and cultivating trust. The intimacy of real friendship is more than temporary because it is hard-won.

Collection

Science & Technology

Clubhouse Is Creating Toxic Online Relationships

“Have you seen Glee?” one of my high school classmates asked my friend and me as we sonorously sang “Telephone'' by Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. We both shook our heads. “How can you not have seen Glee when you look so much like some of the characters?” But wait! I look like an actor? As in someone on TV? Unbelievable! 

At the time, as an effeminate man in an extremely conservative and femme-phobic country, people like me were being raised to constantly question what we thought and felt, and dismiss any ideas that there were others like us. This had, in more ways than one, put an image in our heads that we were alone regarding certain things, and that we'd be alienated from all environments and rewards if we didn't "act right." 

On my way from school that evening, I hopped into a movie store to purchase the DVD. I needed to see that person who looked like me. It felt important. Why? Well, I was a really young but not-so-naive boy who was just trying to play and navigate through life, subtly fighting for acceptance and against the insecurities that came with being young, effeminate and Nigerian.

At home, I slotted the disk, and there it was: a very beautiful young man who sang to the admiration of everybody. He was effeminate, struggled with toxic masculinity, had a very supportive father, didn’t make very close friends (at least until later on in the series), lied to stay invisible, and had a relationship life that didn’t quite fall through (at least until the story further progressed). I was stunned by how the scenes made me feel. Every piece and play was a reality I'd struggled to live with in my early teen years—a total reflection of all my experiences, so much so that I could not tell the difference. Too good to be true!

The next day, I went to school feeling refreshed after watching about eight episodes. I honestly couldn’t stop, but there was really no way I was going to skip school. Because why would I? I needed to show these verbal bullies—since physical bullying had strict rules—that I had found strength in something, and this might just be the birth of a bolder, stronger person. (Also, because my mom would literally sweep me out into the street if I’d refused to go to school.) That was indeed the end of it—or if not totally, then at least to a reasonable extent. It felt brand new and refreshing.

As I grew older, into a season of newness and awakening, I began to seek out movies that had a level of cultural inclusion and expression to them: Black, indigenous, queer, marginalized. I found that these movies projected the courage and knowledge I needed to wedge into an argument—critical arguments, I mean. 

My next queer-dedicated movie was Freak Show, based on the book by James St. James, where Alex Lawther effortlessly plays Billy Bloom, a nonconforming teenager who pays endless tribute to the words and life of Oscar Wilde. Freak Show was such a great watch. I obsessed over Billy’s androgynous style, how he wore a wedding gown to class and ran for homecoming queen. He had the level of confidence and awareness I needed. I googled his looks and the designers he wore, learning what that style was and how to boldly pull it off. In doing so, I inadvertently found the power of fashion and realized that we're limited only by our minds. I found confidence in the beauty of expression, and I totally needed it.

Because Nigeria is a country filled with very dense ideas of what should and shouldn't be, it was difficult to not conform. Here, there's a template of how to live, how to react, what attitude to show, how to process and how to receive information. Anyone who doesn’t show the desired level of conformity is harshly shoved to a corner. This way, they kept everyone on their desired tracks, and in so doing, purposely kept the keys to expression, exploration and nonconformity. No one wants that, especially a growing teenager. 

Although I do not remember sequentially all of the queer movies that came in after that, I do remember that Alex Strangelove and Love, Simon—and the beautifully talented actors Daniel Doheny, Nick Robinson and Keiynan Lonsdale who starred in them—made me find strength in love and communication. I played more than a few scenes in my head about my crush after seeing those movies. There’s so much beauty in queer love and culture, and I truly cannot wait to have a genuine lasting experience.

Also, after 24 years of existence, I am finally finding true strength in the power of family and friendship after seeing the movie Boys in the Band and the TV series POSE. I’m pretty sure these were the first times I saw and understood what a ball or a house mother was, and now I’m all the more intrigued by how queer culture experiences and celebrates itself. I didn’t even think we cared so much about ourselves to organize hangouts, parties and houses just to rejoice in our existence. Those movies and shows had a lot of twists and turns, but they were exactly what I lived for: the untethered, unscathed truth, the very raw and unrefined exposure, the renderings of queer life. They are everything for me.

These things need to be displayed more on our screens. Young queer folks and the successors of queer ancestors need to have some sort of guidance because whether or not these truths are accepted, all of these things we see on-screen are like a life manual for us. There’s so much to learn. A lot of us are finding ourselves, defining our own paths and feeding off the experiences we see represented. There’s an obvious truckload of experience, and it is up to everyone to follow through. It’s inspiring, to say the least. Please do not stop!

I Found My Superpowers in Queer-Inclusive Movies and TV

Growing up, I spent a lot of time learning about activism and Black Lives Matter, but nothing that I experienced compared to the explosion of protests around the world following the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. I could barely open social media without being forced to relive the realities of many Black people around the world—during the ongoing deadly pandemic. 

It was harder for people who aren’t Black to turn away from these injustices too. Everyone was suddenly getting with the times—dare I say woke—even though it may not have been an authentic stance against police brutality and anti-Blackness, but a personal pat on the back that called for others to view them as an agent of change.

“Pseudo-activism” is when groups show support for a movement or set of beliefs solely because everyone around them is doing so—and not because they actually believe in the message behind the cause. Rather quickly, I noticed that the influx of support for Black Lives Matter was the latest bandwagon that brands were jumping on. The type of violence that Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and countless other Black people have experienced is nothing new, and I felt conflicted seeing the sudden support. On one hand, it was amazing to see so many companies that I’d supported throughout the years releasing statements, but I could never seem to silence that voice in the back of my head that kept asking: What took you so long? Why now? What was so significant about this year that was different from 2012, when Trayvon Martin was murdered?

What I realized is that while many conversations held in 2020 may have been about Black people, we weren’t always the target audience. The public statements that we saw a lot of large companies releasing suggested that after years of silence, they were suddenly deciding to take a stand against anti-Black racism, but they didn’t feel sincere to me. From Microsoft to Adidas, I spent a lot of time reviewing the PR-proofed missives companies released, but what spoke volumes to me was the fact that while these brands were pledging their support for the advancement of Black people and against police brutality, there was a noticeable lack of Black people in positions of power at these same companies—including ones that I’d worked for myself.

It was easy for companies to draft a letter to avoid looking like a company that had stayed silent during a revolution. But many of them failed to acknowledge the anti-Blackness at work in their hiring practices, daily operations and the pay inequalities that exist between Black employees and their white counterparts.

Seeing the problems that other companies have had with diversity is sad, but what impacted me more was being employed by a company that made a statement internally, while also having white employees that were being paid higher salaries than me for the same work. Or seeing white coworkers whose salaries weren’t impacted during the coronavirus pandemic, despite company-wide emails suggesting that all employees had received a reduction. Their performative support hit so close that it crushed my spirit and made me question my career. When you’ve worked hard to be a champion for a company while witnessing the devaluing of Black lives daily, it feels like a slap in the face when you have to carry on as if nothing is happening.

It quickly became clear that companies deciding to speak out or stay silent was more about them than it was about me—and once the news cycle moved on from speaking about Black Lives Matter, the social media campaigns from large companies stopped. Black people are still experiencing the same oppression, but the commitment to dismantle anti-Black racism where it exists seems to have been put on the back burner.

Truth is, the plights that Black people face haven’t changed, nor have they been dismantled. Following the protests that erupted in 2014 after the murder of Michael Brown, six prominent activists involved with them mysteriously died, and police ruled that none of their deaths were suspicious. KJ Brooks has detailed how, after she went viral last year for a video holding members of the Kansas City Police Department accountable, the KCPD followed her to the point that she had to hire a private security team. 

Despite the patterns that take place before our eyes, Black people can’t get the support we need when our lives are in danger, when an act of violence can be prevented. The attention usually only comes once another life has been lost. It’s terrifying, and I wouldn’t wish these experiences on my worst enemy. When we hold white supremacy accountable, our lives are at risk. When we ignore it, our lives are still at risk.

Companies committing to challenging anti-Black racism and police brutality isn’t a one-time deal. 

We need those in positions of power and privilege to do the work as if their lives depended on it. Because my life does, and it’s not the responsibility of those who are oppressed to get rid of oppression that we didn’t create. I hope that the companies that released statements last summer do right by their sentiments, and put in the necessary work within their companies as well as the community. It’s possible. It will take a lot of work, but that’s the point. Committing to change because everyone else is doesn’t solve the problem—it simply delays solutions from taking place. If you are going to stand for Black lives, remember to do the work when the cameras stop rolling and the world is no longer watching.

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Black Lives Still Matter When the News Cycle Ends: Where Does BLM Go From Here?

When I was six, my best friend asked me why I was white when my dad was Black. I laughed and told her that he wasn’t Black, he was brown. She looked at me like I was a fool and said, “Aren’t all Black people technically brown?” And thus began my practical education on racial identity in America.

The truth is, no one wants to hear about racial experience from someone who looks like me. And that’s fair. To think that a society built on the persecution of Black and brown people needs more think pieces about whiteness is utterly tone-deaf. So this is not an essay on whiteness. It is a story of what happens when identity and loss collide, and how the collective identity of a family shapes its individual members. 

I am the child of a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan and a white Irish Catholic lady from New Jersey. There is a trickiness to the language Americans use to talk about race, one that leaves no room for my existence. There’s the Black-and-white binary, as well as the amorphous “person of color” designation given to those with more than strictly European lineage, whether or not they have African ancestry. By this logic, I fall into the catchall category of “people of color.” 

But I am not a person of color; I am a genetic fuck-up that defies all principles of inherited traits. Rather than an even blend of my parents, I came out as white as my mother—pale as a ghost, blue-eyed and so blonde I looked bald. My eyes and hair darkened with age, but my skin stayed translucent, with my constellations of freckles as the only trace of melanin. So I cannot be a person of color, because by definition whiteness is the absence of color. A white person of color is an oxymoron.

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