Dr. Kaye Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Dr. Kaye Whitehead Arundhati Roy once wrote that “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” I would add that in these moments, as we watch what is happening in Texas with Senate Bill 8 and Senate […]
Author Archives: Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead
Posted in!Front Page
I swear America will be America to me
Dr. Kaye Wise Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Dr. Kaye Whitehead Special to the AFRO “America,” Langston Hughes once wrote, “never was America to me. And yet I swear this oath—America will be!” What will it take, I often wonder, for America, the land of the oppressed, home of racist cowards, to be America to me? […]
Posted inNEWS
What to a Black mother is your Fourth of July?
Dr. Kaye Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Dr. Kaye Whitehead You will never know real fear until you have that moment, the one when you give your Black son the keys to his first car, and he says, “Tell me again what to do when the cops stop me so that they don’t shoot me.” Somewhere, […]
Posted inNEWS
“America,” he said, “is a racist wicked hellhole”
By Dr. Kaye Whitehead As a Black woman, no matter how fast I run, I cannot outrun my past or our collective history. My life has never been a blank canvas where I could paint the picture of who I want to be and how I want the world to see me. I was born […]
Posted inNEWS
Conversations with Dr. Kaye: Abolish the damn police
Dr. Kaye Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Dr. Kaye Whitehead Like many of you, I counted down the moments, with both trepidation and worry, to the reading of the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial. As someone who has both studied and witnessed state-sanctioned violence against the Black community, and who grew listening to my father […]
Posted inOPINION
9 Minutes and 29 Seconds
Dr. Kaye Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Dr. Kaye Whitehead Pictures of children in pain tend to haunt me. It is the wide-eyed look of either sheer terror or deep-rooted sadness that takes me out. I look at them and see myself during those moments after my father used his belt and his power to remind […]
Posted inNEWS
2021: It is (past) time for y’all to be antiracist
Dr. Kaye Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Dr. Kaye Whitehead Now that we are at the end of Donald Trump’s reign and we can feel the collective temperature of our nation begin to drop, we should probably take a moment to look back at what we have learned before the whitewashing of history begins. It is […]
Posted inNEWS
2020: a year that tried but did not break us
Dr. Kaye Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Dr. Kaye Whitehead There are moments in your life that are so overwhelming that they take your breath away. Moments that when you look back, you remember every detail like it just happened. My mother remembers the day that Dr. King was assassinated. She had just made dinner and […]
Posted inNEWS
2020: the year from hell
By Dr. Kaye Whitehead 2020 has changed us. It has broken us, transmogrified us and challenged us. It has been a year where we have learned who we are and what we are willing to do to survive. There are days when I wake up, and I am so disappointed with my elected officials, fellow […]
Posted inOPINION
Trump was a necessary evil
Dr. Kaye Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Karsonya Wise Whitehead Unlike 71 million Americans across this country, I voted against Donald Trump and against authoritarianism, fascism, xenophobia and bigotry. When I voted, I did it to take a stand against hatred, White supremacy and racism. Now to be clear, I have always intentionally voted for a candidate and […]
Posted inOPINION
White Men Are ‘They the People’
Dr. Kaye Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Dr. Kaye Whitehead When I was 13-years-old, my teacher made us memorize the Preamble to the Constitution. I used to read it every night, and early on, I believed that the words and the sentiment applied to everyone. I Was The People. My father, a Vietnam war era veteran […]
Posted inCoronavirus
#BlackCovidStories: It’s Mourning Time
Dr. Kaye Whitehead (Courtesy Photo) By Dr. Kaye Whitehead COVID-19 has changed me. It has aged me, and I am now weathered in ways I could have never imagined. I have become my Nana, who used to say, with a sigh, that you reach a point in your life when nothing that White America does […]