I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: sexism

  • Still I Rise by Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

    Still I Rise by Maya Angelou (1928-2014)


    You may write me down in history
    With your bitter, twisted lies,
    You may tread me in the very dirt
    But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

    Does my sassiness upset you?
    Why are you beset with gloom?
    ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
    Pumping in my living room.

    Just like moons and like suns,
    With the certainty of tides,
    Just like hopes springing high,
    Still I’ll rise.

    Did you want to see me broken?
    Bowed head and lowered eyes?
    Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
    Weakened by my soulful cries.

    Does my haughtiness offend you?
    Don’t you take it awful hard
    ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
    Diggin’ in my own back yard.

    You may shoot me with your words,
    You may cut me with your eyes,
    You may kill me with your hatefulness,
    But still, like air, I’ll rise.

     

    Does my sexiness upset you?
    Does it come as a surprise
    That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
    At the meeting of my thighs?

    Out of the huts of history’s shame
    I rise
    Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
    I rise
    I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
    Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
    Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
    I rise
    Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
    I rise
    Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
    I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
    I rise
    I rise
    I rise.

    Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/still-i-rise-by-maya-angelou

    And Still I Rise was author Maya Angelou’s third out of five volumes of poetry published in 1978 to mixed reviews for some strange reason known only to reviewers. April is National Poetry Month in the US so I couldn’t miss the opportunity to showcase one of my favorite poets: African American author, civil rights activist, and truth teller Maya Angelou.

    I sprinkled several of my favorite Maya quotes this month on my sidebar beneath the archived posts of I’ll Call It in an effort to share her wisdom that transports her words on wings to our ears and minds if we are willing to listen.

    In 1998 Maya Angelou spoke at the Second Annual Human Rights Campaign National Dinner; her speech that evening focused on the importance of gay people coming out of the closet. 

    You have no idea who you will inform because all of us are caged birds,

    have been and will be again.

    Caged by somebody else’s ignorance.

    Caged because of someone else’s small-mindedness.

    Caged because of someone else’s fear and hate…

    and sometimes caged by our own lack of courage.

    I miss Maya Angelou not only for her words but for her voice when she spoke. The rich, slow – almost ponderous – rhythms of her speech mesmerized me, and the deep rumbling voice was like the sound of my old Dodge Dakota pickup truck’s muffler when I started it first thing in the morning.  Music to my ears.

    Thank you, Luanne Castle (see blogroll), for reminding me to celebrate the rich history and present work of our American poets this month. When I was a child, my daddy enjoyed nothing more than to recite a poem to me – I know he would have loved a National Poetry Month.

  • it’s April 1st, fool! march madness is over, right?

    it’s April 1st, fool! march madness is over, right?


    South Carolina Gamecocks Coach Dawn Staley

    says two more games!

    The month of March may be over, but the Madness of NCAA basketball has one last hurrah this weekend. The Final Four for the women will be played in the frozen tundra that is more generally known as Minneapolis, Minnesota under the Friday night lights of Target Center in the heart of the downtown district on April Fool’s Day, 2022.

    The Gamecock women have been ranked #1 in the nation during the 2021-2022 season with a record of 33 wins and 2 losses. They will play the Louisville Cardinals (29-4) in the semi-final.

    Pretty and I love women’s basketball – the game is part of our inherited DNA in our respective families that became a jointly shared passion in the Dawn Staley era at our alma mater. Coach Staley has ignited not only the University of South Carolina fan base but also the love of the sport across the nation with attendance increases for women’s basketball programs everywhere. Thank you, Coach. Onward.

    Ella and me going into Greensboro,

    North Carolina Regional this past weekend

    (first weekend overnite for Pretty and me with our granddaughter)

    Ella’s favorite discovery at the game was Lay’s Potato Chips

    (she is her Nana’s granddaughter for sure –

    Pretty never met a potato chip she didn’t love)

    Ella’s mother Pretty Too a/k/a Caroline told Pretty yesterday that when she rocked Ella to sleep the night before, Ella whispered defense, defense. Caroline was so startled she asked Ella what she was saying, and Ella shouted DEFENSE. That’s our girl. She’s going to be a true Gamecock.

    Special shoutouts to our basketball buddies who have shared another special season with the Gamecock women, Pretty and me: Garner, JD, Brian, Joan, Robert, Susan, Chris, Pat, Number One Son Drew, 2.5 year old Ella, the Upstate Double Ds Darlene and Dawne…Brenda, Tony, Baby Dawn and her mothers in front of us, Jennifer R and Lisa – you all cheered throughout the journey. It’s been a great ride.

    I would be in big trouble if I failed to mention the men’s basketball teams also have their own Final Four this weekend, and my most faithful reader Dick Hubbard’s North Carolina Tar Heels will play archrival Duke tomorrow night in their semi-final in New Orleans. This is the first year in our 40-year friendship both Dick and I have had teams we passionately pull for in the Final Four. When he called me this morning to remind me, I said I hoped this didn’t mean one of us might be checking the score from St. Peter’s gate.

    Whether you follow the Final Four with your personal bracket or don’t follow basketball at all, enjoy the first weekend in April and please stay tuned.

    Go Gamecocks!

  • two singular American warrior women: one shared destiny

    two singular American warrior women: one shared destiny


    Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, have had a front row seat at their 51 year old daughter’s confirmation proceedings to be appointed the first Black woman to the United States Supreme Court during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s public hearings this week. Their faces remained noncommittal, even stoic, when their daughter’s faith, views on pornography, questions of character were attacked by the Republican Senators in the room.

    The confirmation hearings that began with President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Jackson had a zoo-like quality with the zookeeper a/k/a Chairman Dick Durbin doing his best to maintain order – decorum was out the window. Johnny and Ellery Brown had undoubtedly seen worse behavior as natives of Miami growing up in the Jim Crow South but as public school teachers in Washington, D.C. they had also seen the impact of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s which gave their children more opportunities for success. Judge Jackson was born on September 14, 1970 in Washington, D.C.

    When Judge Jackson was 27 years old in 1997, a woman named Madeleine Albright, who then President Bill Clinton had nominated to become the first female Secretary of State, went through her own Senate confirmation hearings in an atmosphere much less combative than the circus she was forced to endure. Republican Senator Jesse Helms who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee led then United Nations Ambassador Albright through the process that ended in a unanimous Senate vote to confirm. Wow. Those were the days.

    Madeleine Albright was born on May 15, 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovokia (now the Czech Republic). In 1939 the Nazi occupation forced her family to become refugees in England, but they returned home after World War II; only to flee again when the communist coup occurred. Her father Josef Korbel had been a member of the Czechoslovokian diplomatic service and sentenced to death by the communist regime. The second time her family fled Madeleine and her mother Anna took a ship to Ellis Island in November, 1948; Josef joined them later. They eventually settled in Denver, Colorado where Josef accepted a postion at the University of Denver.

    Madeleine Albright’s storied career represents to me the best of America. To be “the first” woman in any field, to be known as a woman who “tells it like it is,” to successfully navigate the political land mines of our nation’s Capitol to serve our country in an ever changing world – these are accomplishments we celebrate; but to achieve as an outsider, a refugee, demands our highest honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed by President Barack Obama in 2012.

    Madeleine Albright died yesterday, March 23, 2022 following a long battle with an enemy we all know: cancer.

    The first woman ever called Madam Secretary of State left us as the first Black woman battled for her position on the Supreme Court in a contentious, even embarrassing at times, public hearing while her parents, husband, daughters, brother and others watched. The coincidental timing was remarkable to me.

    Yet I had a spirit of hope for the future when I heard Judge Jackson’s answers to the questions posed yesterday, a glimmer of hope for equality and fairness for my granddaughters. I also felt that same spirit of hope in the legacy Madeleine Albright leaves, her persistence in pursuing freedom for all nations, the world peace she strived for. I salute both of these warrior women during Women’s History Month for their shared destiny, for the heritage we can honor by emulating their courage in our own outrageous acts of everyday rebellions.

    Onward.

  • INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

    INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY


    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

    International Women’s Day

    Dedicated this year to the women of Ukraine

    Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

  • say her name: Breonna Taylor. now say his name: Amir Locke

    say her name: Breonna Taylor. now say his name: Amir Locke


    Before 7:00 a.m. last Wednesday, February 8th., 22 year old Amir Locke was sleeping soundly, wrapped in a comforter on a couch inside a Minneapolis apartment. A police bodycam video shows SWAT team police officers entering the apartment at that moment by quietly turning a key to unlock it, bursting through the doorway yelling Police! Search Warrant! One of the officers kicked the sofa where Locke was sleeping. Locke, a Black man, seemed to be startled and tried to sit up while holding a gun he had legally purchased for protection in his work as a driver for a food delivery service in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area. A few seconds later, Amir was shot and killed by policemen serving a no-knock warrant – but not for a warrant against Amir.

    Sound familiar? It really should. Next month, March 13th., marks the two year anniversary of the murder of Breonna Taylor, the 26 year old Black woman killed by police in her own apartment in Louisville, Kentucky. Ms. Taylor was an Emergency Room tech for the University of Louisville Health. Three police officers fired 32 bullets in the early morning raid that killed Taylor, hitting her six times.

    Jury selection has begun this week (two years after the fact) for Louisville Metro ex-police officer Brett Hankison on charges of wanton endangerment because he fired recklessly during the early morning raid into Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment where three people were inside. He also fired 10 shots into Taylor’s apartment, but his bullets were not the ones later identified as killing her.

    No one has ever been charged in Breonna Taylor’s death.

    Marisa Lati in an article in The Washington Post on February 03, 2022 writes “Ben Crump, an attorney for Taylor’s family, said the three felony counts of wanton endangerment against Hankison should be the lowest charges among many in the case. ‘The trial of Brett Hankison recalls the inconceivable lack of justice for Breonna Taylor,’ he said in a statement. ‘It is hard to comprehend that this is the only criminal trial to emerge from the botched no-knock raid that took her innocent life and subsequently shook the nation.’ ”

    Reporting by Sara Burnett of the Associated Press on February 05th. states Amir Locke had recently filed paperwork to start his own music business and was leaving Minneapolis to move to Dallas next week to be closer to his mother. Locke’s family said he had no previous criminal record. Amir was born in the St. Paul suburb of Maplewood, grew up in the suburbs where he played basketball in middle school and tried out for the high school football team but a broken collar bone ended his athletic career. Music became his passion, he loved hip-hop and “speaking about the realities of what’s going on in the neighborhood,” according to Andre Locke, his father.

    February is designated Black History Month, and the clouds that cover me today are for these two young people who should have been contributors to that history but whose names now become reminders of the ongoing lack of equal justice and systemic racism instead. Amir Locke. Breonna Taylor.

    Hear their voices as Oprah explained the remarkable cover of Breonna Taylor for the September, 2020 issue of Oprah Magazine:

     “For the first time in 20 years, @oprah has given up her O Magazine cover to honor Breonna Taylor. She says, Breonna Taylor. She was just like you. And like everyone who dies unexpectedly, she had plans. Plans for a future filled with responsibility and work and friends and laughter. Imagine if three unidentified men burst into your home while you were sleeping. And your partner fired a gun to protect you. And then mayhem. What I know for sure: We can’t be silent. We have to use whatever megaphone we have to cry for justice. And that is why Breonna Taylor is on the cover of O magazine. I cry for justice in her name…”

    Today on this 08th. day of Black History Month I also cry for justice in Breonna Taylor’s and Amir Locke’s names, two young people who made history for the wrong reasons but whose legacy will forever be linked to the struggles for justice for all Black people everywhere. Say their names.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated, get boosted and please stay tuned.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.