Why Are We Here?

Melissa,

I remember when I "graduated" from the kids' table to the adult table during family holiday meals. It was when I had a home of my own, had cooked and hosted the family dinner, and insisted on my right to sit in the formal dining room, instead of at the kitchen table with assorted cousins ranging in age from 2 to 42. I was truly a "woman grown" in the eyes of my family, but in my heart, I actually missed the kids' table. Growing up, the kitchen, and particularly the kitchen table was a site of comfort, laughter, advice, gossip, and good food. Important family decisions were made at the kitchen table; elaborate Sunday dinners of candied yams, fried chicken, and collard greens were prepared. At the kitchen table, homework was done and bills were paid (and left unpaid). You could distinguish "family" from "guest" by whether they were seated at the kitchen table or in the more formal areas of the house. I grew up watching generations of Black women experience the sorrows and joys of life at the kitchen table.

I find myself dining at all types of tables now, but none of these tables elicit the acceptance I once experienced at the kitchen table. As a Black woman in the academy, I've been invited to sit and eat at the Ivory Tower table, but I have not felt welcomed as a full participant in the meal. It wasn't so long ago that someone like me would have only been allowed to clean the table. As a Christian and lay minister, I join my brothers and sisters in Christ at the communion table, but I often feel like an outsider when gracing the pews; I wonder if their God is the same as my God? I struggle with a form of double consciousness, a term which W.E.B DuBois defines so brilliantly: "this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."

So, my hope is that this blog creates a "kitchen table" in cyberspace for those of us who struggle with being on the inside of an institution, but still feel like outsiders. I hope there are others, like ourselves, who enjoy conversations about race, religion, politics, and popular culture - but informed by a historical consciousness. But most of all, I hope that we can model what has been glaringly absent in our own professional lives: a place of refuge and acceptance for all the roles we bring to the table. We are scholars, activists, mothers, and public intellectuals. And we need each other to survive and thrive. I hope there are other folks out there who'd like to join us on this journey.

Yolanda