#Who were my historical godparents so to speak

[kumkaniudaku]

FRIENDS (Three)

ONE. TWO.

The remainder of the trip felt like a dream for both couples as they reveled in time set aside to be carefree adults for the first time in months. Tasha and Maya spent hours in the bazaar, choosing fabrics and local jewelry from the finest designers. T’Challa and Chadwick spent time roaming the historical portions of Wakanda, including a few places that normal tourists were not privy to. Chadwick appreciated the lessons surrounding not only Wakandan culture and history but of the continent in general. T’Challa was excited to share the knowledge that he’d gained over his years as a student abroad and an ambassador for his beloved country.

In an effort to appease T’Challa and Chadwick’s desire for more “manly” activities, Maya and Tasha reluctantly slipped into workout gear to follow their husbands on a light hike through the Woods of Solitude. A light hike for the men turned into a jog while their wives chose to lag behind and enjoy the scenery.

Tasha stole glances at Maya and her barely-there bump and smiled, “I’m so happy for you, Star. How you feeling? Getting the Mommy butterflies yet?”

“I don’t know. I go back and forth between being excited and a little scared.”

“Because of the…” Tasha’s voice trailed as she gestured toward her stomach, earning a solemn nod from Maya. “It’ll be okay. The possibility is there, but don’t worry yourself about it. Plus, I ordered some stuff for them last night. How do you feel about a portrait of your sonogram?”

“Is this what having Auntie CoCo on board is like,” Maya laughed with her eyebrows raised.

“Sis, I’m literally just getting started. Count yourself lucky that I don’t just move into a spare room in the palace and annoy you for the next 8 months.”

“Trust me, I would welcome you with open arms. I could use another sane person around here.”

“Girl, tell me about it! Who knew a one-year-old could cause so much trouble?”

While Tasha and Maya exchanged stories of their children’s mischief, T’Challa and Chadwick brought their run to an end. Chest heaving and short of breath, Chadwick could only stare at the vast waterfall and lake at the end of their journey. The soft crashing of the rushing water drowned out the harsh thud of his heart in his ears as he quietly surveyed the nature around him.

“The stories of its beauty do not compare to the real thing.” T’Challa’s baritone shook Chadwick from his trance. “My wife did just as you when I brought her here for the first time.”

“You gotta understand, man. We don’t have much like this in the States,” Chadwick laughed.

T’Challa joined Chadwick in his laughter, patting his back as they took in the scenery together. A few moments of silence settled between the two before the King spoke up.

“You know, it is not often that I make friends. I don’t get out much if you can not tell. The country requires a lot.”

Chadwick nodded, unsure if he should add to the conversation or allow T’Challa to finish his thought.  

“Before my wife, I would rarely leave my office. And, even though she forces me to interact with others and I have my cousin, it has been difficult to have a friend that understands me.”

“You’re preaching to the choir man,” Chadwick chuckled. “If it isn’t with T or the kids, I don’t see much.”

“The mantle of husband and father consumes us both,” T’Challa laughed. “I consider you a friend, Chadwick. A brother, even.”

“I appreciate that man. The feeling is mutual.”

The two exchanged a handshake and hug before turning to the extensive, beautiful forest in front of them.

“A tradition Maya brought here with her is the idea of godparents,” T’Challa started. “Both of our children have an entire village behind them. The twins have room for one more set. If you and Tasha are interested…”

T’Challa looked at Chadwick from the corner of his eye to gauge his reaction. The long silence and unreadable facial expression resting on Chadwick’s face made the king wish he’d waited for his wife like they had originally planned instead of jumping the gun in the heat of the moment.

“You being serious man? Of course, we’ll be their godparents!”

T’Challa let go of a huge breath of relief, “Oh thank Bast. Maya would’ve killed me if you said no. She told me to wait.”

“Man, we’d never say no to that. Mala and Abdul already feel like our niece and nephew. Why not add another set to the bunch.”

Loud laughter approaching their location signaled Maya and Tasha’s presence and started the wheels of mischief inside of their husbands’ minds.

“You wanna do a little acting, man,” Chadwick asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“I have learned a thing or two from Maya. What did you have in mind?”

Like two school children plotting trouble in the back of the classroom, Chadwick and T’Challa finalized a plan in time to find their wives walking into the clearing while having a spirited conversation of their own.

“Girl, we had sex up until the very end with Micah. I was insatiable!”

“You?! I was calling ‘Challa up out of meetings all day. I’m pretty sure he was hiding from me at one point.” The ladies shared a round of laughter that came to an abrupt when they noticed the forlorn expressions resting on nearly identical faces. “What’s going on with you two? Both of y’all standing there with long giraffe faces.”

“Wow, I tell him all the time he looks like a baby giraffe! He and Noah even have th-”

“Tasha,” Chadwick interrupted, shooting his wife a warning look that stopped her from speaking. “Now isn’t the time.”

CoCo threw up her hands in surrender before mumbling a quiet ‘my bad.’

Maya, who had rarely seen her man so upset, captured his face in her hands to examine his eyes. “What’s wrong, baby? What happened?”

“I, I did not list listen to you, Kitten.” T’Challa stole a moment to look at Chadwick for approval, earning a concealed thumbs up in response. “I asked Chadwick if he and Tasha would like to be godparents for the twins and...he said no.”

“What! Why wouldn’t you wait on me to ask, ‘Challa?!”

“I thought I could handle it alone, Kitten.”

Maya took in T’Challa’s explanation with wide, angry eyes before turning to CoCo who was already fixated on her husband.

“I wanted to be the one to tell her, Aaron.” Chadwick was caught off guard and visibly shaken by Tasha’s answer. Everyone shared his shock as all eye turned to CoCo, waiting for an explanation.

Turning to Maya, Tasha’s eyes went sad, “We just have a lot going on, Star. Micah’s getting more involved, Noah is turning one and-”

“So you...don’t want to be our children’s godparents. Is that what you’re saying to me, Co?”

“No, no, no,” Chadwick interrupted once he noticed the tears welling in Maya’s eyes. “That’s not what you mean, T, right? Right?”

Thick tension hung in the air for several long seconds has the couples tried to avoid eye contact. T’Challa pulled Maya to his side just as the tears began to fall, earning an apologetic look from Chadwick. When they planned to prank their wives, this wasn’t the way they intended it to go.

“Maya,” CoCo whispered to get her friends attention. The queen looked up at the sound of her name, wiping her tears while appearing to stifle an audible cry.

“Yes, Tasha.”

“I think we got ‘em.”

As if a switch was flipped, the once sullen atmosphere was filled with girlish giggles between Maya and Tasha as the husbands looked on in confusion.

“Wait. Hold on.”

“Was this a prank, Kitten,” T’Challa asked, finishing Chadwick’s sentence.

Their obvious and animated confusion only fueled another round of laughter that had both women doubled over in tears. Maya could see through T’Challa’s antics any day of the week, and all it took was a subtle hand gesture from one queen to another to put on a master in pranking your spouse.

Maya took a pause from her laughter to dab the tears from her eyes and grab T’Challa’s hand. “It sure as hell was. We got y’all good! I told you to leave the acting up to me, Challa. You’re getting better though. C’mon, Co. I have some facials planned for us and all the girls.”

“Ooh, the one with the little flecks of gold in them?”

“Flecks? Girl, we don’t do flecks. We’re putting that whole mug in 24 karats.”

“Is this what being a rich bitch feels like? Because I am here for it!”

As the women walked off, sharing the excitement of having much needed “mommy down time”, their husband’s were left gobsmacked in their dust.

“Chad.”

“Yeah, man.”

T’Challa turned to him, mouth still ajar in an effort to find the right words to convey his disbelief. “In America, there is a phrase you use. ‘Got played’ is it?”

“Yeah. That’s the one.”

“I believe that is what has happened. We just-”

“Got played. The sooner we act like it didn’t happen the better.”

“They will use this against us forever, huh?”

“You know it,” Chadwick answered, rocking back and forth on his heels. “C’mon, man. Race you back to the palace. Last one there is the one that takes the fall for this.”

“Wait! You forget I am the superhero! You just play one on television!”

-------------

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[thegloober]

Asian Americans and Affirmative Action

I remember going to see The Joy Luck Club during my first year in college with a group of students from my residence hall, all of whom were white. I don’t think I’d ever seen the intensity of parental expectations on screen in quite that way, an intensity that reminded me of my own family dynamics. I was wiping away tears as the film ended, only to hear the kids I’d come with say things like, “That was dumb … let’s go get Taco Bell.”

That was one of the first times I realized that my childhood and adolescence were Asian American in distinctive ways, and that stories like mine were rarely represented in literature, art and film. This meant at least two things: 1) I did not have the pleasure of seeing and exploring my own experience in artistic ways; and 2) other Americans were left in the dark about an important identity community in their nation.

As regular readers of this blog know by now, my interest in exploring the experience of being othered in America caused me to turn to minority writers, largely black folks. I ate up James Baldwin and Malcolm X, and did the translations in my head. They felt like outsiders in ways A, B and C; I felt like an outsider in ways D, E and F. These black writers and activists were like godparents to me, and I wondered why there were comparatively few such Asian American voices.

I’ve been thinking back to these experiences as I’ve been reading about the Asian American affirmative action wars at Harvard . I think it’s a fascinating situation because you have large and vocal groups of people who are part of the same broad ethnic category on different sides of an issue that is sacred to progressives. Among other things, this situation highlights that ethnic groups don’t march in monolith and they don’t always and easily line up with progressive positions.

I’m a bit skeptical of the progressive claims that the Asian Americans against affirmative action are simply being duped by white conservatives like Edward Blum (although I find Blum a pretty odious figure). The main reason for my skepticism is that a big part of the diversity progressive credo is to listen to people of color and their analysis of the situation. If we progressives only want to listen when those communities hold progressive positions and insist on claiming that conservative views among minorities are somehow inevitably the result of manipulation, then we can rightly be accused of only wanting to listen to ourselves in various accents. 

Generally speaking, I am a supporter of affirmative action in a “thumb on the scale” sense, meaning that I don’t like the idea of strict quotas, but I do think it is important for various sectors (higher education, the corporate world, Hollywood) to be proactive about addressing underrepresentation of minorities and historic oppression. It is important for a diverse society to have diverse leadership and diverse representation, although I think these values need to be balanced with other values.

Diversity progressives like me generally think that oppression and underrepresentation go hand in hand, meaning that where there is smoke (underrepresentation), there is fire (oppression).

This generally fits neatly into other categories that diversity progressives like to use: white folks and people of color. The logic goes, white people do the oppressing through racism, people of color experience it and are not only personally hurt by it but also shut out of important arenas like elite higher education. 

If this logic model holds, how then do we regard the situation at Harvard and other elite universities, where one group that is subject to racism (Asian-Americans) is way overrepresented and other groups subject to racism (African-Americans and Latinos) are woefully under-represented?

Amongst other things, I think the case reveals that the two-dimensional take on identity politics — racism and white supremacy act on racial minorities in ways that create clear fault lines and simple solidarity blocks (like people of color vs white people) – is simply not true to reality.  

The world is (thankfully) both more interesting and complicated than that. It is important to remember that the category “people of color” includes the vast majority of the human race – just about everybody outside of the white populations of Europe, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The category Asian American includes people who hail from nearly 50 nations, many of which are sworn enemies. There is a measure of usefulness in using these categories, but only if we recognize that they are shorthand and conceal all sorts of internal differences.

Situations where Asian Americans find themselves on opposite sides, like affirmative action at elite universities, are an opportunity to explore the fascinating internal complications of categories like “Asian American” and “people of color,” and the diverse ways that racism affects various minority communities.

African Americans, for example, are underrepresented at elite universities. This is a problem and it needs to be addressed – both in the admissions process at those universities (for which I support some version of affirmative action short of strict quotas) and, more importantly, upstream, in the stunningly unjust manner in which public schools are funded.

But African Americans are not especially underrepresented in broader American culture. Sports, music, fashion, literature, film, television – everywhere you turn, black people are contributing, making life better and more interesting for all of us.

Asian Americans, on the other hand, have only recently broken through in these cultural arenas, at least in appreciable numbers and visible ways.

My advocacy/activist take on the affirmative action question is that Harvard ought to make sure that all racial groups in the United States are reasonably represented, both for the educational experience of its students and also because Harvard graduates a disproportionate number of elite leaders for our society, and a multicultural society needs a multicultural cast of leaders. Somehow, Harvard has to figure out how to shape racially diverse classes in a manner that doesn’t downgrade the “personality rating” of Asian Americans in the admissions process, which, if it’s true, is deeply offensive.

Hollywood, for its part, needs to make more films like The Joy Luck Club (which I liked a lot better than Crazy Rich Asians).    

But I think the more interesting questions are in those grey, complicated areas: how and why does racism affect various minority groups so differently (lots of Asian Americans in elite higher ed, not so many visibly in the culture; fewer African Americans at top universities, lots of representation in the culture).

What factors other than racism, such as community expectations, might be at play?

These are the questions that don’t lend themselves to easy answers or binary positions, but rather to rigorous research and deep thinking – the work that intellectuals are best suited to do.  

Source: https://bloghyped.com/asian-americans-and-affirmative-action/

[incarnationsf]

Lord, Who May Dwell in Your Tabernacle?

By the Rev. Darren Miner

Psalm 15

After years of preaching primarily on the Gospel reading, I find myself for the second Sunday in a row preaching on another reading. Today, I would like to focus my attention on the psalm.

The psalmist poses a question, one that we might very well ask ourselves today: “Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle? Who may abide upon your holy hill?” In other words, who is fit to come into the presence of God? The psalmist proceeds to answer his own question by enumerating a list of requirements. The list is by no means complete, but it does get to the heart of what it means to be righteous.

The first requirement is that we lead a blameless life, do what is right, and speak the truth from our hearts. If taken literally, we are all in trouble! For who among us has lived a blameless life? But the point stands: it is the goal of the righteous to be blameless before the Lord. Before I move on, let me say a bit more about speaking truth from the heart. This phrase means to speak what we believe in the very core of our being. It is more than just a command not to lie. It is a command to open ourselves up to others and to share the Truth that sustains our soul.

The psalmist continues with a command against slander and name-calling, against false accusations and words of contempt. I wish those in our government would pay a bit more attention to this advice! Nowadays, political campaigning goes on year round, and it consists primarily of slandering one’s opponent. Unfortunately, this approach to discourse is not limited to the political sphere. I moderate a discussion group on Facebook dealing with the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer. I have had to remove members from the group, because they have made scurrilous attacks on a person with whom they disagreed about some ceremonial instruction in the prayer book. And just this week, the Episcopal News Service announced that they are no longer allowing readers on their Web site to comment on news articles, because the comments have been so vicious. We can do better than that, folks!

In verse 4 of the psalm, we are told that the righteous person should reject the wicked and honor those who honor God. Now, what does it mean to “reject the wicked”? Well, in ancient times, it meant to cut off all contact with the person, at least, until he or she showed some sign of repentance. We find signs of that same approach in the Gospels. But I’m not too sure just how well it would work today. All too often, if you cut off contact, you simply kill the relationship altogether. Perhaps it might be better to reject the wickedness, not the wicked. Perhaps instead of shunning the offender, we might share a little of that “truth from the heart.” The truth can be quite powerful!

Now for the next verse! There, we are commanded to swear to do only what is right and then to keep that oath. Well, the Episcopal Church has incorporated just such an oath into the liturgy. Several times each year, we formally renew our baptismal vows. We stand and repeat the oaths either that were taken by us at our baptism or that were laid upon us by our parents and godparents. If you recall, when the celebrant asks the congregation to renew each vow, the response is “I will, with God’s help.” That last bit is important. For honestly, we would have no hope of keeping those pesky baptismal vows unless God himself came to our aid!

Now, we get to verse 6. And if taken out of its historical context, it’s a problem for America’s capitalist economy. For on the face of it, the verse not only forbids the taking of bribes, but the charging of interest on loans. Be that as it may, the context of the commandment is loaning money to the poor in order to make a huge profit. So, it does not really forbid charging interest in the course of a day-to-day business loan. But it does forbid profiting on the poverty of one’s neighbor.

And that, my friends, is the last of the requirements. For the final verse of the psalm makes no demands on us at all. Instead, it makes a promise: “Whoever does these things shall never be overthrown.”

Now, the various commandments of Psalm 15 are meant to be observed by a righteous individual. They are meant to be observed by a righteous church. And they are meant to be observed by a righteous nation. For as the book of Deuteronomy says, “This will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’”

On Thursday, as I watched the first of several funeral services for John McCain, I pondered what was going on in Senator McCain’s mind as he planned this sequence of funeral services for himself. He asked people from both political parties to eulogize him. He asked folks of different races to pray for him. (And he asked a couple of people whose attitude he found especially divisive not to attend!) Senator McCain was an honorable man, a heroic man. But he was more than that: he was a righteous man. And I think that he wanted his funeral services to act as a national call to a very particular sort of righteousness: political discourse that “speaks truth from the heart” and “does not heap contempt upon one’s neighbor.” I have no doubt that, even now, Senator John McCain dwells in God’s tabernacle and abides upon God’s holy hill. As for us who are still in this world, let’s heed his call, and the call of the psalmist, and get to work on transforming ourselves, our church, and our country!

© 2018 by Darren Miner. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

[intersectionalculture]

So You’re Afro-Latinx. Now What? Congratulations, mi negra! It finally happened. Today you looked into the mirror and said, “I’m black. Soy negra. Vaya.” You embraced your black or brown skin, your curls and kink. No small feat for a Dominican. You’re ready to forgo the centuries of Dominican anti-Africanism and embrace your brothers, sisters and cousins of the African Diaspora. The reality is, there is no “black coming-out party.” Soon it will begin to sink in that everything black, everything African Diaspora, is appropriated, commercialized, monetized and exploited. Arguably, the term “Afro-Latinx” is suffering from “gimmification.” Within our community, there are Afro-Latinx who pretend black when it is convenient and then try to blend right back into anti-blackness when it is not. The colonial trauma and legacy of self-hate continues to morph into stranger things. Thankfully, many Afro-Latinx are sharing their stories. Read this excerpt from Yesenia Montilla’s poem “The Day I Realized We Were Black,” from her collection The Pink Box: because my godparents were Irish-American because I had suppressed my blackness because my brother shook me when I told him he was stupid we were Latino because he had missed his Jersey to Port Authority bus because he was walking to the nearest train station and lost his way because he was stopped by the police because he was hit with a stick because he was never given the right directions even though he begged because trash was thrown at him from the police cruiser’s window as he walked because he was never the same because we’re black because we’re black and I never knew I was twenty-two Or my 2015 Gawker essay, “Hiding Black Behind the Ears: On Dominicans, Blackness, and Haiti”: America thrusts black or white upon you quickly, and you have to decide, you have to know who and what you are. Life in the Dominican Republic had been too culturally ignorant and insular. Meanwhile in America, some Eurocentric or Castilian Latinos pass for white, but Afro-Latinos are either self-hating or catching hell or both, or just plain confused about who they are. Most of the Dominicans I know have a recognizable African lineage, but too many are quick to claim Latin American status as opposed to Afro-Caribbean identity. But let’s be honest: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Haiti aren’t in South or Central America—they’re in the Caribbean. We need to re-examine our historical cultural selves. I agree that race is a construct, but identity is a necessity. These stories are necessary, and we still need to shift the focus on strengthening the intersections of our common African heritage and struggles. Remember: We’re not creating a brand. Your identity is not a marketable widget. We do want to move ever closer to a reunification of displaced African people: a political, social, economic, technological and global reunification. Europeans hoard resources and exact power in the name of whiteness. We need to come together and go a step further by accepting our African heritage and by working to eliminate the “color” construct. That being said, all the new terms flying around are confusing: Latinegr@, Blacktino (my fave), Afro Latinx, Latinx, Afro-Latino and Afro-Caribbean Latino. You’re probably wondering which one of these applies to you. In his article “Afro-Latinx: Representation Matters,” Jose Figueroa defines “Afro-Latinx” this way: An Afro-Latinx is a black person from Latin America. Despite sharing the identity of Latinx, colonial structures of privilege and power thrive within the community ... black and indigenous Latinxs are consistently forced to the sidelines and denied, despite their strong influences to Latinx culture. Recognizing and accepting your African heritage doesn’t mean you pretend that you’re African American. Don’t parrot, imitate, appropriate or otherwise “act” African American. That shit is offensive to the African-American community, and stupid. We are a large black family, and we’re all unique based on our experience in the Diaspora. Embrace the beauty of our differences. You have a Caribbean identity, and because people of the African Diaspora share so many traits, you don’t need to play roles. Fact: White supremacists don’t care that you speak English, Spanish, French, Creole, Portuguese, etc. Observe what a Ku Klux Klan leader told Univision news anchor Ilia Calderón, live on camera, during an interview: “To me you’re a nigger. That’s it.” Language is just another of the master’s many tools. The African Diaspora speaks more European languages than we do languages native to the continent of Africa. We embrace the master’s languages as if speaking them makes us special. Coño. Colonial empire builders believed in the exceptionalism of their culture and language. They branded the native languages of the lands they conquered as unfit for instructional purposes; stripping us of our native languages facilitates stripping us of our identities. Show up for black people and support Afrocentric movements—globally, black folks in America (see Black Lives Matter), in Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, France, Germany, South and Central America, and the continent of Africa. The Inter-American Foundation observes: There are significant Afro-American populations throughout the region [South and Central America], although some have been reluctant to acknowledge them. Throughout the 20th century, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile have insisted that they were white nations with few or no citizens of African descent. ... In the Dominican Republic, people visibly of African descent constitute a majority, but because African ancestry is stigmatized it is commonly denied even when it is obvious. ... Afro-Latin activists are changing the national dialogue by insisting that the African and Afro-American contribution to the national culture be recognized. Many African descendants are now realizing that in their home nations they are black first and a citizen second. In his essay “Why It Is Necessary That All Afro-Descendants of Latin America, the Caribbean and North America Know Each Other More,” Afro-Cuban history scholar Tomás Fernández Robaina writes: It is very important that we recognize how this struggle began long ago, when we did not call ourselves “Negroes,” “African-Americans,” or “Afro-descendants,” as has been used more recently, but as “Cubans,” “Mexicans,” “Colombians,” “Brazilians,” identified, rather, as citizens of our respective countries, and as such, rightfully evidenced in our constitutions. Beautiful words, which, in practice, have been mostly lies ...[Emphasis added.] You will not all of a sudden become the epicenter of knowledge on black identity and the African Diaspora because you read a few articles. Don’t pontificate to Afro-Latinx who don’t get it and don’t want to get it. Keep discovering the facts for yourself and, if you’re fortunate, with a community. Find your truth and be open to listening to other people’s stories. Check out Alan Pelaez Lopez’ article in Everyday Feminism: But especially, I thought I couldn’t be Latinx, because everywhere I went, I was labeled “African American,” “mulatto,” “negro,” and so on. But, the reality is that there’s no need for me to apologize to my younger self and there’s no need for you, my fellow Afro-Latinx sibling to apologize because there is no manual on how to navigate being both Black and Latinx. If you are reading this, I hope you understand that being confused is not your fault, that having questions is okay, and that you’re not the first to learn to accept your full Black self and your full Latinx self. Let me get something clear: you are not an impostor! Visit African countries. I had the European trip fever. I wanted to go to Paris and Madrid, and I have visited London and the Canary Islands. Ultimately, the time away with my family was nice, but the trip didn’t bring me closer to my roots. This yearning to visit the master’s cities is the same as the urge to learn the colonizer’s languages (Ooh la la, I speak French, Italian, German). Yes, European cities are beautiful places, but built on the corpses of colonialism. The next international trip I want to take is to Ghana. Read up. Take courses and workshops. Watch documentaries like Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Black in Latin America (free on YouTube or PBS). Get your hands on books like the ones in the Ain’t I a Latina article “10 Afro-Latina Authors You Should Know.” The website teachthought has compiled a list called “25 of the Most Important Books About Racism and Being Black in America.” Blavity compiled a list of books by Afro-Latinas: “11 Must-Read Books That Center Powerful Afro-Latin@ Narratives.” Find the intersections created in our communities by the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords and the Brown Berets. Visit the Civil Rights Digital Library online. The HuffPost article “Who Benefited From the Civil Rights Movement” briefly demonstrates how the movement became a blueprint for every other marginalized community in America. But be wary as fuck, too. Your family and that clique of cousins who can pass for white might not be ready for this new woke version of you. Get ready for an intervention from the primas and the tías, the mamis and the abuelas, when you decide to stop relaxing your hair and go natural. “Tu ta loca muchacha el Diablo!” Or when you finally call bullshit on that anti-blackness you’ve been hearing your whole life. You are going to be challenged on this newfound blackness; hold fast. And please, whatever you do, don’t expect to be welcomed by all black people, either, simply because ta-da, you dique woke now. Many people of color feign blackness when it suits them, then relapse right back into their self-hating and black-denying ways. You’ll have to forgive us if we’re not ready to grant you a plaque on a building somewhere. Yes, you will get some side eye, and yes, you must learn to deal with it. Black people from Trinidad to Mississippi have seen the “gimmification,” and appropriation of blackness ad nauseam, and we’re not here for that. Be proud, be aware and be emotionally intelligent. A post on the website Lipstick Alley, “A Recent Trend in Many Latinos Identifying as Black/Afro Latinx for Convenience,” reveals what some folks in the African-American community find problematic. I’ll end with a cautionary tale about relapses. My man Sammy Sosa meant a lot to me during the ’90s, and especially during the 1998 home run chase. Here was a paisano representing pa la gente, a Dominican who looked like me shining in the unforgiving American spotlight. After the performance-enhancing-drug drama and the fall of Sosa and Mark McGuire, America did what it does best: It forgave its white heroes—McGuire and, ultimately, Ryan Braun. Then it burned Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds at the stake. I don’t know how much that had to do with Sosa bleaching his skin white, but damn, Sammy, just damn. It’s possible Sosa believed that going white would let him back into that spotlight, into the realm of white forgiveness. Or maybe there’s a deeper trauma at work. Listen, I still love Sammy Sosa, but don’t go out like Sammy Sosa. Don’t relapse. Bueno mi gente; stay woke, stay black.