In the Black with Yolanda White

My daughter Nyla posted a message on her Facebook page.  It read, “I can’t wait to go to Maine for College.  I have got to get out of Killwaukee.”  I was struck and saddened by her use of a “K” in Milwaukee, but I really couldn’t argue with her or admonish her in any way.  Lately, when the news comes on, it can reflect a dark inner city story, where someone’s life was snuffed out.  Before May 2013, I had not known anyone personally who had been killed (by a person with a gun) at least not someone near and…

I could go on an on about how grueling graduate school has been, alongside full time work and motherhood.  I could go on and on about that, but many women have overcome such obstacles, so not much to lament about there.  I could espouse on the ambiguity of these studies: no real answers, lots of theorizing and hypoculating!  No, that isn’t “a word,” (not an Oxford one anyway) but I believe my soon-to-be-master’s status, gives me the right to create at least one new word for our lexicons.  Yes, I could go all around the mulberry bush with my regrets…

Take a Picture, it’ll last longer – A Rant I always feel like, somebody’s watching me!   But it really depends on where I go, as I go about our warm town and its outlying suburbs. Ironically, I know people who won’t even go downtown in Milwaukee, because of who else they think might be there (or not).  I go where I need to go, but often, when I go where I am not expected, well…it grips my goat. Milwaukee is a big, funny place, at times, especially for my black self.  I get that people are tired of discussions…

I checked off Number 2 on my bucket list on this New Year’s Morning, 2013. I took that BIG head first running face dive, no flop, into Lake Michigan and became the part of the notorious Polar Bear Club. There were hundreds and – this one here! Jumping in our cold lake has been has been on my mind to do for years, but this year, I had few excuses. I’d long since checked off Number 1 on my bucket list (to have a daughter who was sugar and spice and everything nice). This month, January, that daughter would turn…

Reading books assigned to me during my walk in graduate school has been a bit like a crapshoot. Some books I have been forced to read caused me feel like a winner (or a potential winner), others left me feeling like the “biggest loser,” confused, depressed and convinced leadership is just not for me. The book, Cultivating Leadership in Schools: Connecting People, Purpose and Practice by Gordon Donaldson Jr. made me feel like a winner…with loosing tendencies. The first big idea takeaway for me was that there were five activities (identifying, keeping, focusing, giving and protecting) that leaders are to…

We were just 11 months into the “recession.” Earthquakes rocked and re-rocked Pakistan. Barak Obama became the first black president of these “United States.” And according to the website, MilwaukeeRenaissance.com, 79 people had been murdered/killed in our city that year, by the end of November 2008 (69 people so far for this year, the website also reported). I had the privilege of querying Mayor Tom Barrett back then. I promised him I’d take less than five minutes. He obliged me and Three Minutes with the Mayor, a Q&A, was published in the Milwaukee Community Journal (MCJ).  Since that time much has…

Someone called me “angry” the other day. I got angry at her when she said it, because I am normally not an “angry” character. They offered up some more pearls of constructive criticism by querying me, “How are you ever supposed to get in the Black – the positive – and stay there if you are always negative about something or other?” Still angry, I retorted, I like lots of things about Milwaukee and to prove it, I made a quick list… 10. I like that in Milwaukee, there are tons of places to learn and continue your education and…

Someone called me “Angry” the other day.  I got angry at her when she said it, because I am normally not an “Angry” character.  They offered up some more pearls of constructive criticism by querying me, “How are you ever supposed to get in the Black – the positive – and stay there if you are always negative about something or other?”  Still angry, I retorted, I like lots of things about Milwaukee and to prove it, I made a quick list… 10.       I like that in Milwaukee, there are tons of places to learn and continue your education and…

I was amazed at a random cannon-like blast while I sat visiting a friend who owns a home near 20th and Capital. She shrugged it off and said, “Girl, we hear that all the time.” That made me angry.  On second thought, I hear them, too, from my redeveloping, near Downtown neighborhood, where the prostitutes and drug dealers are up earlier than my daughter taking the bus to school.  I tell her to keep her head on swivel, don’t have both ear buds in at the same time and to keep her mean mug on. I hate to have to tell…

Why is it when a corporation experiences fiscal suffering and utilizes bankruptcy protection to restructure their finances, they are considered responsible, are applauded, supported, backed, bailed out, re-vitalized? No business, nor any person, really wants that. Bankruptcy has never helped me, and I did it twice. Don’t believe everything you hear on commercials. Yes, I have done things that I am not proud of in my past. I have made mistakes, and I paid sorely for each and every one of them. Today, I am an honest, low- to middle-  (potentially) class black woman, single mother (but not by choice)…