Opinion

Today, after a rushed process, Mayor G.T. Bynum selected the city’s first Black police chief, Wendell Franklin. However, instead of celebrating this historic selection, we have many concerns.

Either loudly sing your own praises or don’t in the new year, but let’s leave the humble brag behind, along with a few other oversaturated, cloying or just plain silly cultural quirks that deserve a big goodbye.

Hopefully, Union and Wade are not inadvertently setting their son up to one day be an anti-Black plaything for some White dude.

Here’s the truth: White people will always be oppressors until we consciously take action towards equity and justice. This is painful to hear and challenging to fully understand when you have the privilege of being white, yet its truth is undeniable.

Trump finally found a stadium full of people who won’t boo him — in the old Confederate and former slavery and slave-trading loving southern state of Alabama, a state that ranks at the bottom in every measurable category.

As a white woman, I’ve listened to black and brown members of my community talk, for years, about their fears when their child walks out of their home, car keys in hand, to begin the dangerous activity of driving while brown. We’ve all heard these fears so often, but have we become immune to them? Why haven’t we been able to step into their shoes and change their reality? 

I’m not going to lie; I think it’s because she’s black and happens to be the greatest gymnast that’s ever lived.