“Once upon a time. there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.” —— Anne Tyler

I despise at times the woman I see in the mirror. She is a contrarian, perpetually “turnt” and ready to unleash her fury at the innocent and the instigator. Maybe I spent too much of my life contemplating, pontificating, “thanking and dranking” about racism in the U.S. and abroad. Maybe I acquiesced too quickly in my identity as a “subaltern subject”, or the “Negro problem” William Edward Burghardt DuBois so eloquently interrogates in Souls of Black Folks . Maybe I should have attended at least one HBCU instead of my spending my entire post- secondary tenure surrounded by racists, indifferent or comatose but think they “woke” as fuck whites alongside the snoozing and losing people of color. Maybe I watched too many Brady Bunch episodes, thought “Friends” were my friends (even the white imaginary ones I remember as a child) or lost too many of my brain cells from the off campus Everclear beer bong parties. Maybe it happened when I entered the workforce directing my first office at 23 at a medium sized college and my middle age black supervisor consistently attempted to quell my desire to produce programs like Black Think Tanks or Black Scholars in residence (I was the shit even back then). Or going through graduate school as a non- traditional student where my mentors complained I had too many jobs and maybe I wasn’t smart enough to complete this masters in Africana Studies so I should try something easier like “Education”. Or working on a doctorate where white women wined day in and day out about labor at home is valuable, we are more than our vaginas blah blah blah bullshit. Or, moving to the south where southern hospitality is sweet as syrup and laced with all types of micro and macro-aggressions against Black folks. Or working with black folks so damn scared of white people they should consider changing their name tags to “Yessum”. Or, perhaps, I woke the fuck up, realized this shit ain’t changing. No matter how nice, competent, savvy, and ecumenical my approaches to address inequities and transgressions, the barometer of justice never if rarely moved. Yeah, all of the above. I give up.

Those who continue to work in these stenches I mean trenches of inequities may do so. I desire to speak my truth and pray that someone hears it, appreciates it and wants more for their lives than the sop we call inclusion. Many use the Audre Lorde quote, “The master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house.” While I see the problematic of attempting to make change from within, if you screw a nail in with a screwdriver, surely you can unscrew that sucker with the same tool! We can dismantle the house but after it’s disassembled, we need to set the foundation on fire. We can never build a community of true equality on such fucked ground. Which is why I dropped out of diversity work. I exhaust seeing different white faces with the same fraudulent shenanigans. I weary trying to explain to black middle class educated elites that if they don’t like “the Gays”, they don’t like your ass (many of which are black). And don’t get me started on the other folks of color who may not want to be white, but damn sure never want to be Black! It is a shit show and nothing is getting fertilized. So I said to myself , ” Girl, what you gonna do? You about to bust?”. I said back, “Bitch, they ain’t killing me so I am gonna write till I feel better.” (Don’t judge me for talking to myself. If I can’t tell myself, who the fuck can I tell?)

If you feel the way I do, join in. Maybe we can learn something new, get a good laugh (at someone else’s expense), come up with some solutions and or make connections to help with solutions. I chose to drop out. And when I am done with this journey, perhaps I will choose to drop back in.