For BIPOC, microaggressions start as early as the cradle-with our names
I don’t have a common first name. It’s four letters, two syllables and is pronounced Vee-na. According to my mother, one of her friends, who became my godmother, was a teacher and had a student by that name. She liked it and thus, I got christened with the name.
Throughout adulthood, I’ve been told several different meanings and origins of my name. One origin of it is Anglo-Saxon and means “vine.” Another origin of it is Hindi and is a musical instrument. Yet another origin that I’ve heard is…
Something that should be of little consequence is filled with angst for me
About a month ago, with some trepidation, I went on several websites looking for available appointments to get a COVID vaccine, initially to no avail. This was before many states in the US offered the vaccine simply by walking in. It took around four days before I snagged an appointment at the Javits Center on May 31st. In pre-pandemic times, it served as a convention center and event venue in New York City. Now it’s a mass vaccination site.
A week after making that appointment, I realized…
Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd isn’t the end of state-sanctioned violence
I wasn’t one of those people who paid any attention to Derek Chauvin’s trial. I have a lot going on in my personal life right now. The stress of taking on new responsibilities at work, processing my uncle’s death, and dealing with my father’s deteriorating health is enough to fling me backward from their winds.
All of those things in addition to still grappling with living through a pandemic as well as trying to exist in this toxic society as a Black woman are simply…
Or when my life got in the way
So. I haven’t written very much over the last six weeks, primarily because my offline life got more stressful. At my day job, I now work with a different team. I’m currently doing more time-sensitive and detail-oriented work than I’d done before, so it’s taking up more of my energy. However, that isn’t the main reason for my disappearance because usually, I’d still have the emotional and mental space to create.
The main reason I haven’t written much has to do with my personal life. My uncle, my father’s oldest brother, passed away at the end of February from dementia…
The Atlanta mass shooting of six Asian women highlights the disconnect among Asians and other communities of color
I’ve struggled for over a week about voicing my opinion on the mass shooting in Atlanta, where eight people were killed in a spa, six of them Asian women. It’s sickening that even in a pandemic, hardly anyone is safe from white male violence.
And yes, it’s enraging that once again, people want to make excuses for Robert Aaron Long, the shooter, because of his race and gender. Claiming he had a “bad day” or “he had a sex addiction and just…
Policing what we do with our money is racist and classist
I checked my bank account yesterday to see if my $1400 stimulus check from the historic $1.9 trillion dollar relief bill arrived. Some friends of mine on social media announced that they received theirs last weekend but my bank chose not to make the money available until yesterday. It’s now sitting in my account, ready to use.
I am privileged in that I don’t need the money to stave off eviction or buy food, but others do. Yet, I’ve come across people on the interwebs who are already shaming…
On why forgiveness can end up erasing one’s pain and trauma and does not hold wrongdoers accountable
My therapist recently assigned me homework to write a letter that forgave me for actions and beliefs that caused me harm during my youth.
When told of the assignment, I recoiled because my thoughts on forgiveness have shifted dramatically in recent years.
For instance, my sister and I have a complicated relationship. Growing up, we were night and day. While I read books, got good grades in school, and stayed in the background, my sister partied, got mediocre to poor grades and drifted to the forefront of any environment she entered.
We grew more distant in adulthood as our lives…
In being kind and gentle with my younger self regarding my asexuality
I’m at a crossroads.
I first came upon asexuality as a sexual orientation six years ago. The process of accepting this part of myself is a slow one. The fact that I still struggle with my aceness is partly due to the fact that there are so few representations of ace people in the media. Nobody thinks an ace person looks anything like me. In all of the ace groups I come across online, I’m usually one of the few BIPOC as well as one of the oldest…
Months or weeks that celebrate marginalized groups can be a double edged sword
The thought that older people tend to be more conservative centers on white people
“If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart, and if you are not a conservative when old, you have no brain.”
That quote has been attributed to several people, Winston Churchill among them. But the notion that people get more conservative with age has gnawed at me for years. When I was younger, I took the axiom to mean that the shift toward pragmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty were unavoidable once I got to a certain age. …
Vena Moore
Dismantling white, male supremacy one word at a time.
