I cannot believe that this is what is bringing me out of my blogging hibernation, but I have seen so many ill-informed and straight up strange takes on this fleeting event. It truly boggles my mind what people fixate on. If you haven’t heard, which honestly, good for you if you haven’t, last night at the (dying) Oscars awards show Chris Rock was presenting the Best Documentary award and as he does threw in some jokes. There was one ad-lib in particular that incited Will Smith to get up from his front-row seat and slap Chris across the face, turn, and jog back to his seat so casually. It was like he just finished a transaction at a drug store, left his car on, so quickly needed to get back. All in all it was a truly underwhelming moment that left most viewers confused and questioning if the entire incident was a skit. It wasn’t.

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This country can continue to put bandaids on open wounds and make empty promises, but nothing will fundamentally change when it comes to race relations without a serious look at how racism is so engrained in our society. Nothing will fully mend until we face our history, structural racism, and lack of nuanced thinking when it comes to healing and talking about race.

I feel like I’ve had this conversation and regurgitated the above sentiment ad nauseam, but until there is significant change in the way we operate and discuss racism, it still needs to be repeated. I’ll never stop saying it.

It’s increasingly clear just how opposed this country is to rectifying the past or trying to build a better future due to the outrageous reactions to Critical Race Theory (CRT). I want to start this off by saying nobody is teaching 5 year olds Critical Race Theory.

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I can’t believe it’s January 17th because it feels like it should be later in the year and also earlier in the year at the same time. The first week of January was exceptionally tough for me personally, and the second week went by so quickly it all feels like a blur.

Here we are in week 3 of the new year and still experiencing the pandemic in new and devastating ways. With record numbers being announced almost every day and continual pleas from our government and the media to “do your part” in protecting yourself and others but providing conflicting ways in doing so, the entirety of the covid response gets even more disappointing and morbid everyday.

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I was going to try and write something inspiring for the new year. An entry about hope and resilience, a testament to the human experience and how we can get through most things with positive thinking and each other. I was going to write a roundup of all the funny and strange things that happened this year that provided some levity and distraction from our failing systems. A few of those weird occurrences, like the shrimp guy or the saga of the gorilla glue lady.

So much has gone on last year that has made an impact on how we view the world and the responsibility of the governments around us. I was going to write about how leaders continuously make decisions that are clearly not putting people before profits. Instead lives are being put directly in danger to ensure the economy doesn’t get “shut down.” I was going to write about how the influx of unionizing, workers strikes, and walkouts is a direct reaction to how capitalistic structures are dehumanizing and debilitating to the livelihoods of millions.

I decided not to, though. So much has gone on this year that rehashing felt like more of a redundancy than a recap. Also because time feels like an illusion anyway. Plus I just saw Betty White passed and that news just threw me completely off.

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It’s almost Christmas and like evil clockwork, Covid has decided to raise its voice with a vengeance in the form of Omarion Omicron. There is a lot about the emergence of this new variant that is both frustrating and exhausting but also infuriating and troubling. It’s infuriating and troubling because of the US’s reaction to South Africa after they so graciously shared their scientific findings. The US acted as if SA manufactured the variant themselves, held the only instance of the mutation, and were planning to unleash it on the world. Subsequently, the US enacted travel restrictions for many countries on the African continent, including: South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. As outlined in this opinion piece, the decision felt incredibly discriminatory and counter-productive considering how many people travel internationally and the very high likelihood the variant was already abroad (surprise it was).

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