During the summer, I was in a meeting with colleagues across departments at my workplace. We were grappling with how to conceptualize the COVID-19 pandemic. A few people in the virtual meeting wanted to make sure that we were not making blanket statements about these times. One person emphasized that we were all in the same storm, but we were on different boats.
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Since the insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, DC, I have heard people emphasize how poorly educated Trump supporters are. They argue that if his followers were “more educated,” they would not have voted for him.
Continue readingLast week, I continued the Lunch with Lindsay video series with my friend Paty. She and I met our first year at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Almost two decades later, we reminisced on college, reflected on how we have evolved, and discussed how she approaches diversity and inclusion work during a reckoning with racism and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Continue readingIn case you are wondering where I have been for the past two weeks, I have been active. I might not have been active on this website, but I have been active. Like many of you, I have been dedicating my time to my day job, exercise that is never frequent enough, napping, and honestly doing “nothing.”
When I say “nothing,” I really mean resting; times are tough, and we all need to practice self-care. If you follow this blog regularly, you know that I am no stranger to talking about this topic and recently covered the importance of it in Lunch with Lindsay: Supporting Black Lives Matter and Practicing Self-Care.
Continue readingIs it just me, or did last week feel pretty long?
Actually, if you are like many people in my social circles who have been heavily engaged in the active work of racial justice, the last few decades have felt extremely long.
I both am encouraged to see more people fighting for racial justice—especially Black lives—in ways I have not seen in my lifetime, and I also am frustrated that this journey to progress is both so long and mentally and emotionally taxing for those involved. This is why when I saw the NPR Code Switch piece titled A Decade of Watching Black People Die, I thought to myself, “A decade? JUST a decade?” I decided not to listen to it.
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