Vixen Chronicles

I always talk to my Lyft driver. Today was no different. I instructed her on the best way to turn around in my hairpin driveway, slid into the back seat and then “How are you today?” Unlike in a taxi, there was no plexiglass wall between us, nothing to suggest that the person behind the wheel had no desire to connect. She smiled in the rear view, and I could tell there was much story behind her round eyes. Her reply rang with an African lilt. Somewhere west, maybe? I have found that for most people, you don’t have to ask directly. If you show a little interest, they will tell you all sorts of things about their lives that help you understand how they came to be in the space they occupy at the present moment. My phone rang, interrupting me. My husband was catching me on the way to a different airport to fill me in on how his recruiting trip had been going. We work for tech industry competitors, (but not competitors), and he joked that he has to get to the would-be interns for his ...

This will piss some people off.  In America, I am Black first. As a result, we tend to codify many things by race. It is a travesty, though, to contrast the media coverage of the Paris terror attacks and the Kenya University shootings as a function of race. I realize that doing so, for some people,  is an avoidance of a collective social hurt.  There has been a war on Christianity since the crusades. It is not new  is certainly independent of color. In all likelihood, the shooter in Kenya was black. This does not make it un-terrible. What happened in France was also independent of race. The news reported two Americans died. I saw one  man who was as at the Stade show his almost-wound. His phone saved him. He was black. He was also African. And French. What happened in France is better compared to 9/11, when we, Americans of all ilk felt suddenly naked as the terrorist attacks stripped the proverbial wool off of our western sense of security and safety we enjoyed...