black people in nature?

I’ve been living in the Twin Cities, Minnesota for almost three years now and there is one major thing that bothers me. One of my favorite things to do when the weather permits is to enjoy all of the green space, water and state parks that Minnesota has to offer. My boyfriend and I frequently go on mini trips up the north shore, to state parks, waterfalls, walking trails etc. Being from Philly originally, I have a deeper appreciation for the nature that surrounds me because I did not grow up with nature in this close of a reach. Whenever we go to these places there is one thing that always stands out: there are hardly every any black people! It’s really bizzare to me because Minnesota has so much to offer. Usually when we go to these places the only black people that we see are usually with another white person (same situation as me I admit). I do not get it. I asked some black people at my last job if they’d been up the North Shore and they never have. It does not make sense to me because people will drive 6 hours from the cities to visit Chicago at the drop of a hat but will not drive 2 hours north to see views like these:

I am not sure if the issue is lack of interest in nature, lack of resources or simply lack of knowledge. Duluth for example, is extremely popular. It is the start of the North Shore and is extremely beautiful. Lots to see and eat. It is a 2 hour drive from the cities and I never see black people there. Even when I asked other black people in the cities why they have not gone up there they don’t really have an answer. The views are amazing!

There are other areas further north, like Grand Marais which is about 5 hours north of the cities that are even more beautiful (see above). I can understand not taking 10 hours out of your weekend for that, because that is a bit much, but it is worth it to take a longer trip. I am determined to convince more black people to go north (and south) to experience these amazing views. It is so worth it!

This was heavy on my mind this weekend because we took a mini trip down to Minneopia State Park in Mankato, MN about an hour and a half south of the cities. This state park was amazing because there was a waterfall and a bison enclosure! Do you know how hype I was to see real life bison? But again, I could not help but notice the lack of black people at this state park, and the park was very crowded this particular day because it was so nice out. I just do not understand, but I do want to. The bison were AMAZING to see so up close and I want my people to experience this stuff as well. See below for some pics and check my photography page for more:

Do you take advantage of the nature in your area? If not, you should!

Megan Thee Stallion Deserves Better

About one month ago, Megan Thee Stallion was shot in the feet. This was obviously big news in the pop culture world because it was alleged that she was shot by another famous rapper, Tory Lanez. Megan initially did not confirm who the perpetrator was although we all suspected due to their obvious involvement that night- they were hanging out and we saw it on IG. For the past month, social media trolls and regular people alike have been accusing her of lying about the incident. The lies got so intense that Megan Thee Stallion decided to dispel the rumors and name Lanez as her alleged shooter, confirming what most people already thought.

The theme of the responses that I’ve seen have been as follows: either people STILL think she’s lying; people think she should have spoken up sooner or people are accusing her of being a snitch. I have a problem with all three, but I’ll focus on the notion that “she should have spoken up sooner.” This is the part where I am speaking directly to Black people of all genders: are we going to pretend that as Black women we are not taught to protect the black man at all costs? If you are a Black woman and something happens to you at the hands of a Black man, you wrestle with whether or not to say anything because you know that the world is already against Black men. That is hounded into our psyche from the beginning. The world is already against Black men, so why would you as a Black woman want to add to that? We are trained to put the Black man before ourselves because as they say, who else will? Technically speaking, Megan acted the way we were taught to act and PLEASE do not act like you have not at some point either. I personally know what it’s like to suffer at the hands of a Black man and decide to keep it to yourself because you don’t want to see anything bad happen to them or you don’t want to contribute to yet another negative statistic or headline. That is the plight of the Black woman. We are trained to be SO strong yet when we are strong, there’s a problem.

If you are mad at Megan the Stallion, you need to redirect that anger and focus on breaking the generational toxicity that we are stuck in. Focus your energy on teaching the young people in your life that abuse is never okay under any circumstance regardless of who your abuser is. Focus on creating a world where our kids can grow up and not have to fear each other.

The sad reality is that we’ve all failed Megan the Stallion and we are failing ourselves right now. This is an opportunity to finally have the real conversations that we need in the Black community. We have to address the toxic male culture and the very real impacts that they have on our women. We need to address the level of intense secrecy that exists in our community. We are taught not to tell anyone about anything. This is so ingrained in our culture that when someone has the nerve to do so, they are met with anger when they are simply doing the right thing. We HAVE to do better because our lives literally depend on it.

no one teaches you how to make friends ..

All the friends

I am not good at making friends anymore ..or at least I have not yet figured out how. I used to be great at making friends because it was easy (although I was previously labeled as “standoffish ..). For the first 22 years of my life the formula stayed the same: go to school/extra curricular activities and make friends. Figure out who you vibe with and literally just keep talking to those people. I always made friends easily in school (minus high school but chile that is a blog for another time), but without the crutch of an organized setting, ya girl is lost okay. Lost.

My friendships tended to start with the people that I can complain to about whatever situation we’re in. Class: “ugh why is this professor giving so much work on the first day, has he heard of syllabus week or..” Dining hall: “so is this food for people? ..” Annoying work conference: **catches the eye of the person also rolling their eyes at the dreadful, “sit next to someone you don’t know.” I’m sure you’ve picked up on this, but yes, I can be a complainer. At first I tried to change it, but now I’ve just figured out how to turn a complaint into dark humor so sometimes people just think i’m being funny, but really i’m just complaining. Don’t hate ..and don’t try to steal my strategy.

Without the organized nature of school, I have no idea how to go about making friends now, I just don’t. Making friends at work is generally a nonstarter for me. I know people feel differently about this, but I do not look to make friends at work. It’s happened (once, hey girl if you’re reading this, you know who you are..) but I do not make it a point to seek it out because the potential for messy drama is too high. If I am getting paid to work with you, I don’t want to run the risk of us falling out and now we still have to work together. Too weird. You spend too much time at work to have personal drama with people, so I try to just keep it professional.

I am in school, but grad school is just different than undergrad, plus I am not in a cohort model program, so everyone takes classes at their own pace. So without school and work, where does that leave room to make friends? I am not one to take extra cooking classes or language classes or pottery. That’s just not my jam. So where does the friendship magic happen?

This is important to me right now because I live in a state that I am not from. In Jan. it will make 3 years since I’ve lived in the Twin Cities. I have an amazing support system of frineds all over the country (and sometimes the world depending on where they are galavanting off to that given month/year), but they’re not physically HERE. So while I have very long phone conversations a lot, I am missing the in person connections.

So help ya girl out, where do YOU go to make friends as an adult?

My boyfriend is white and people love talking about it

It’s a Sunday night in August and since I am currently not working (see previous post for more details ..) I am fortunate enough to experience a reprieve from the so called “Sunday scaries.” My mom is in town visiting from Philly and we’re up watching “Black is King” by Beyonce because I insisted that she wait until she came here to watch so we could take in Beyonce’s latest creative masterpiece together. Having my mom visit is always fun, and now its particularly interesting because I live with my boyfriend of almost two years, so when she comes to visit she stays with us. Whenever we all go places together, I cannot help but wonder how we look to the everyday passerby. My mom and I are Black and my boyfriend is white. It feels weird to even type that because usually you’d just see it and know, but it provides obvious context in this situation.

Sometimes I find myself explaining to people that I did not go looking for a white man to date, that it just happened. I feel the need to explain that because way too many people have implied that I must have been on the white man search. “I need to go find my white guy like you did,” is actually one of my favorites simply due to its absurdity. More often, however, I feel like I’ve had to have the same conversation over and over again with people who have known me for a long time because my identity in college and even a bit in high school was so tied to my racial identity. I went to a predominately white college in Ohio where I served as the president of the Black Student Union my senior year. I also had no qualms with calling out white people (and still don’t) when they said and did problematic things. Because of this, I think that people actually thought that I did not like white people. Imagine that. Having the audacity to call out offensive, disrespectful and downright hurtful behaviors at the hands of your white peers means that you don’t or didn’t like the entire race. OKAY. I digress.

The other day I had a long conversation with a friend about this very topic. Black men simply do not get the same reaction when they are with white women. In fact, if a black woman even comments on that situation, we’re bitter angry and/or jealous. The nuances of the two scenarios are different (more to come on that in a later blog, or perhaps even a multi part series of posts). When a black man dates a white woman it seems totally fine, almost expected. When a black woman dates a white man however ..well you already know what/how people think. I know that I do not owe anyone an explanation about my relationship, but sometimes I feel like I have to dispel certain ideas pertaining to this particular situation because it makes me cringe at the idea that people might actually believe that I went out looking specifically for a white man.

The amount of times people have told me that that they “would have never guessed,” that I am with a white man or that they “just can’t see it.” I am not even sure what that means. Maybe they are referring to my Afrocentric permanent hairstyle choice of locs, or the black power symbol that I have tattooed on my arm, or perhaps even because of the way I talk. Only the people making those statements can tell you what they meant by them because please believe I usually choose not to engage in those types of conversations. What people who make those comments generally do not know is that I almost decided to eliminate white men from my dating pool altogether because of the types of ridiculous gross comments too many of them made to me on dating apps (okay yet another post for the future will likely dive into that one ..).

These first few posts of the blog are meant to serve as an introduction into the various parts of my life because I will reference them in later posts. There are a lot of things that I’ve wanted to get off my chest about being a black woman in an and interracial relationship and making a video about the topic felt a little salacious for reasons that I cannot pin down at the moment. I will however, continue to write about it because it is obviously a big part of my life. This is still an adjustment of sorts for myself and writing though that helps me process.