“I [Carole A. Stabile] was looking at a documentary interview with Hazel Scott that I found at the Schomburg. She was incredible. She did not back down from a fight. She tells this story in the interview where she had been performing in a USO show, and they stopped in Pasco, Washington. It was cold, everyone was tired. They were miserable. And she and her traveling companion were refused service at a restaurant because they were black. She went to the police station, and she tells this story about the police chief saying to her, you better just leave this alone or I’ll arrest you for disturbing the peace. But then she went back to the hotel, talked to her agent and said to her agent, I want three things: I want a hot bath, I want a cold drink, and I want a lawyer. And she sued the state of Washington, she got a record settlement, and she gave all the money to the NAACP.”
Fredi Washington, Shirley Graham Du Bois,and Lena Horne are also mentioned in the interview.
Detroit is the largest and most populous city in the state of Michigan, with 4.3 million residents in its metropolitan area. It is best known as the center of the U.S. automobile industry, housing the headquarters of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Detroit is also a major port on the Detroit River, which is shown flowing through the city in this Overview — does anyone know why the river has two shades?
Four years after a young Montreal woman was sent home from work for having braids in her hair, the Quebec Human Rights Commission has ruled she was a victim of racial and gender discrimination.
The owner of Madisons New York Bar and Grill in downtown Montreal has been ordered to pay the 23-year-old $14,500 in damages.
“She took me aside personally and told me she didn’t want that kind of hairstyle in her establishment,” Lettia McNickle said, while fighting back tears.
McNickle recalls the distress she felt the day she was sent home by her boss in November 2014 and hopes the commission’s ruling will serve as a lesson to other employers.
“Now they [Madisons] know and other restaurants and companies know that they can’t get away with this,” she said.
McNickle’s mother, who worked as a hairdresser for two decades, claims it’s a victory for all black women.
“I just want to encourage other black women out there to be proud of who you are, from your afro hair to your curly hair, whether you want to straighten it out, it doesn’t define you,” Huelette McNickle said.
Black women are forced to assimilate to eurocentric hairstyles because our hair is punished for its natural state.
“It’s just hair”
“Why don’t you just wear your natural hair?”
Good. Now if we could get the US to agree, but it’s not discrimination because they can “just straighten it.” Sigh.
This reminds me of that Jurassic Park quote, about being so preoccupied with whether or not you could do something they didn’t stop to think if they should.
So what if they can straighten hair or shave a beard? So what if that tattoo or piercing was their choice? And don’t get me started on unnatural hair colors. Is it really any of your business?
Or to put it another way. If you are forcing a black woman to relax her hair to keep her job, the typical cost of that is $50 to $70. Every other month. With every single time risking physical injury.
Even if you ignore the risk, you are effectively paying that woman $25-35 a month less than her white coworker in the same job with the same pay.
let me tell you something that is fucked up about grief.
you get a couple years out and everything starts to feel kind of normal again, and you go back to being a person with thoughts and feelings that are about something other than your dead loved one
you still think about them. probably every day. but as time goes on you learn to bear it, to carry that sadness with you throughout your day, to hold it and know it but not let it consume you, and you think, “this is progress” and “i am getting better”
and then one day, nearly three years after, something catches your eye. and it’s just a person wearing a shirt they used to wear, or a news article that they’d think was funny, or a tv show that they would have liked. and suddenly the wind gets knocked out of you and you’re bent double, unable to breathe, tears spilling on your kitchen floor because it’s been three years and it somehow doesn’t hurt any less than it did the day they died
except now you’ve been carrying it for three years, and functioning fine, and knowing that you can function without this person that meant so much to you is a hurt all its own, it turns out. shouldn’t you still be lost and afraid? shouldn’t you still be hating every second of your miserable fucking life? shouldn’t you still be driving to the cemetery at two in the morning to cry and beg for a sign that they’re listening? you barely slept that first year. now you sleep just fine. did you even really love them, if you’re okay now?
and then the next morning you wake up and you go to work like you always do, and the weight you carry is a little heavier that day, but you’re so used to carrying it you barely notice. what difference does it make?
Yes. The getting used to it part. But then you don’t, really.
So the Spoon Theory is a fundamental metaphor used often in the chronic pain/chronic illness communities to explain to non-spoonies why life is harder for them. It’s super useful and we use that all the time.
But it has a corollary.
You know the phrase, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done,” right?
Well, Fork Theory is that one has a Fork Limit, that is, you can probably cope okay with one fork stuck in you, maybe two or three, but at some point you will lose your shit if one more fork happens.
A fork could range from being hungry or having to pee to getting a new bill or a new diagnosis of illness. There are lots of different sizes of forks, and volume vs. quantity means that the fork limit is not absolute. I might be able to deal with 20 tiny little escargot fork annoyances, such as a hangnail or slightly suboptimal pants, but not even one “you poked my trigger on purpose because you think it’s fun to see me melt down” pitchfork.
This is super relevant for neurodivergent folk. Like, you might be able to deal with your feet being cold or a tag, but not both. Hubby describes the situation as “It may seem weird that I just get up and leave the conversation to go to the bathroom, but you just dumped a new financial burden on me and I already had to pee, and going to the bathroom is the fork I can get rid of the fastest.”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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