Dearest Readers of The Kitchen Table,
I am officially retiring my place here at TKT.
Yolanda and I launched this blog nearly one year ago. In that time we developed a wonderful group of regular readers. You came to our table and shared in an amazing year of American politics, culture, and life. I am so grateful that you indulged me, applauded me, criticized me, and more than anything else I am grateful that you read me.
The Kitchen Table was a vitally important outlet for me and for my ideas during the past year.
As you know, I have been on vacation from daily TKT blogging for just over a month. Part of the reason I took a break from my writing here at TKT was to have some space to reassess how I am currently using my personal and professional efforts and energy. After a great deal of soul searching and several conversations with my good friend Yolanda, I have decided to retire my spot as co-author of this blog.
There are many reasons for this decision, but I don't want to subject you to a Sarah Palin-like ramble. Instead I will simply say goodbye.
I am not completely leaving the work of public, political writing.
You can still read me regularly on TheNation.com on the blog The Notion.
I regularly contribute to Politico.com in The Arena.
And I write occasionally at both TheGrio.com and CNN.com
None of these forum have the same special spirit of The Kitchen Table. I will miss hosting you here at this table, but I hope to that we can continue our conversations in these other locations.
Melissa
Posts
44 comments:
Thank you Professor,
for you wisdom,insight,politics, and laughter. As a budding academic your words here at TKT have pushed me to be a better human and student. Well wishes and blessing to you on the next part of your journey, you will be missed.
Tee
This truly breaks my heart :( I respect and admire your voice and transparency. It has been a guidepost in my own journey as a theologian and an aspiring scholar within the academy. Praying with you during your discernment process. I would love to hear more about your decision to resign and wondering whether or not a political-hand or some kind of pressured "censorship" had any impact. You will be missed at TKT!
You announce this on the same day we remember MJ.... Alot of losses today
Well, that sucks. I've enjoyed reading you here. Best to you, in any case.
Well I have to say this sucks. So much in the world has happened since you guys posted and I was hoping to catchup.
Wow Melissa,
I so enjoyed this dialogue that we don't see on the national level. It almost seems unfair that it is ending. Is there anyway you can stay for another six months? Please, please, please (I am doing a James Brown here). May you continue to grow as an advocate for all who are on the periphery.
So sorry to see you go. I've enjoyed following your commentary. It was a real honor. -Misha fullagenda.blogspot.com
So does this me the KT is dead with Yolanda taking the summer off too? You got us hooked then bailed. I will continue to read you on CNN, but the KT WAS special...
I'm so sad to hear this! I am a TKT addict and couldn't wait for you to come back. But I also totally understand - I often wondered how you possibly had time to write such thoughtful pieces so frequently! Thank you for all your work, and I'll continue to follow you wherever you blog :)
Typical ! TYPICAL !!! She ingratiates herself into our world and then when we fall totally in love ( figuratively speaking ) with her ; she pulls a SARAH PALIN and dumps us flat !
So typical !
Brutus does not read those other blogs you write for , Professor Melissa Harris Lacewell ! So I guess it's good-bye .
Good-bye . Have a nice life .
Girl first Michael Jackson and now this...Never Can Say Good Bye ...No No Na No Now ....Girl I just hung up explaining to my girlfriend why she had to check you and Yolanda out ...thanks for doing my radio show back in December I am still hoping to have the both of you back on...
Your decision here will only make sense to me if you are going to start writing books at rate of bell hooks or faster...I will try to check out these other blogs and websites for your work but I echo another reader here who like I believed the TKT was something special...I already miss you
Danna
Thank you for your contributions on this blog! You and Dr. Pierce have been incredibly prolific in what you have done in this venue in addition to your family lives, your scholarship, and your teaching responsibilities. Thank you for this service to the online community! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us here for as long as you have. Blessings in your continuing endeavors!
Wow....we will definitely follow your work!
See this is why I will miss this place so much. We here talk about the double sadness of losing this place and MJ on the same day while on other so-called "progressive and feminist" blogs you have to cuss folks out for spewing their ignorant bigotry anytime anything of substance to people of color is mentioned. There are not homes online for us.
I'm sorry to hear you will no longer be writing for the Kitchen Table. I don't know how you and Yolanda did it given your busy schedules. Your commentaries always were well written and well researched. I will be looking for your work on the websites you mentioned.
Take care and God bless!
I was shocked to read the news about your departure from TKT. I will miss reading your thoughtful insight to current events. Thank you for all the hard work you put into TKT. I wish you lots of success in your future endeavors.
After reading your thoughts on CNN and Black in America, I would like to know when the Black in America are going to stop whining? I was born a very poor white American who faced inequality just as blacks. I was shamed for the clothes I wore, shamed for my glasses that were wired together in the middle, shamed for being poor. I too could have whined and blamed everyone for my situation and asked for handouts and abused the system. BUT I DID NOT! Instead, I set my sights on education and working my way out of poverty instead of dwelling in it. I too know that individuals of every color abuse the system and whine about his/her situation. I do not look at color when I meet a person, instead, I let that person reveal his/herself to me. I grew up in a racial society and continue to live in one. It will never go away no matter who one elects President or the color of their skin. Why can't Blacks embrace life instead of always calling the race card? I don't understand it; never have, never will. People are ridiculed everyday for various reasons; fat, thin, elderly, handicapped. What makes Blacks think that they are any better than these individuals and should receive special attention? My Mother who worked all her life as a maid (yes, she is white), for wealthy individuals, is now reduced to going on welfare because her money is quickly ebbing away and she can no longer live in an Assisted Living Home. Infact, she cannot even have a life insurance policy. She will be transferring to a Nursing Home and she will share a room until she dies. This is blatant discrimination by the Federal Government and State Government. How is this any different? If people of all colors would STOP whining and put their minds together that God gave them, this would stop. Education is the answer for everyone. Instead of moaning and groaning, mourning for Michael Jackson and crying discrimination, use that energy to make this world better for everyone. Resting on one's laurels will not solve anything. Thank you for letting me respond. I hope you can see it from the "other side." G. Step, RN BSN
Do black people do ANYTHING besides complain about racial equality? Don't believe that one day someone is just going to GIVE you a bunch of money --and you'll think that is racial equality.
You have to work for it. Blacks need to evolve from societal parasites to workers, inventors and strivers.
Thank you for your posts, Melissa. They have educated me in a way no books and essays could have.
Good luck in all you do!
Thank you for your blog over the past year. You both have great insights, the writing is always crisp, and if I were a student again I'd love to take classes from both of you. Best wishes in your next endeavors.
I will miss hanging out at the table with you, Melissa. I have felt very nourished this year by your honest, groundbreaking insights but I am grateful that you will continue to express yourself in other venues online. Good luck in all you do and I wish you much love, light and continual success.
Thank you. This blog ushered me fully into the world of blogging and I was hungry for your ideas. Be blessed.
And to think I just found this site today....a week after you say you will no longer write on it. I MUST be behind. I look forward to scrolling through old posts if they will remain here. Just last week I posted something regarding Obama's election myself, because it is clear that the rift (putting it lightly, I understand) that exists in America is far from being bridged. If interested, you can read that here:
http://circlethesquaretable.blogspot.com/2009/07/sometimes-horse-needs-to-be-beaten.html
Good luck. I look forward to reading old posts.
Thank you Melissa for having endured the insipid bigoted fools for as long as you did like Anon and Mark.
Hi there!
I am sooo sad to hear this news!
I hope that this will not be the end of the blog and that there will be another sista-scholar who will take the torch and run with Yolanda because this is a very popular blog!!
Best wishes to you.
Peace, blessings and DUNAMIS!
Lisa
REPLY TO MARK : Mark, my dear boy, I am white but unlike you I would never consider that Black people need to "evolve from societal parasites into workers, inventors and strivers"! Have you read about the many wonderful african americans who have contributed to our society in many fields including medicine,World War II, education, politics, government, literature, RELIGION, etc? Watch the wonderful movie on the life of Dr. Vivien Thomas who invented the surgery that cured blue babies while he was paid as a JANITOR at Harvard Univ. You my dear boy are extremely IGNORANT of the facts and really need to read.Perhaps, Dr. Yolanda Pierce will be kind enough to suggest some books for you. I would like to see you write an apology here at TKT! Black people were never parasites, they were workers from the beginning and they were owned by wealthy white and wealthy black people. Mark, you are an embarassment to the human race. Black workers kept the South wealthy for many years and kept the plantations profitable for many many years and received Nothing in return. They worked and worked and worked for the white men like you so you could maintain a high standard of living and they got nothing in return. And, white institutiions were able to grow and expand on the backs of those black slaves. People like you are oblivious to the real facts that you had a much higher standard of living due to the free labor they gave to the white people while being denied every freedom known to us today. Black people have already worked and they invented and they did strive to obtain the rights of human beings and they worked for their civil rights and many died and many died at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, a white terrorist organization. Mark, it is Sad to know you even come here to this sacred place, TKT. Please apologize or better yet, just stay away.
REPLY TO MARK : Mark, my dear boy, I am white but unlike you I would never consider that Black people need to "evolve from societal parasites into workers, inventors and strivers"! Have you read about the many wonderful african americans who have contributed to our society in many fields including medicine,World War II, education, politics, government, literature, RELIGION, etc? Watch the wonderful movie on the life of Dr. Vivien Thomas who invented the surgery that cured blue babies while he was paid as a JANITOR at Harvard Univ. You my dear boy are extremely IGNORANT of the facts and really need to read.Perhaps, Dr. Yolanda Pierce will be kind enough to suggest some books for you. I would like to see you write an apology here at TKT! Black people were never parasites, they were workers from the beginning and they were owned by wealthy white and wealthy black people. Mark, you are an embarassment to the human race. Black workers kept the South wealthy for many years and kept the plantations profitable for many many years and received Nothing in return. They worked and worked and worked for the white men like you so you could maintain a high standard of living and they got nothing in return. And, white institutiions were able to grow and expand on the backs of those black slaves. People like you are oblivious to the real facts that you had a much higher standard of living due to the free labor they gave to the white people while being denied every freedom known to us today. Black people have already worked and they invented and they did strive to obtain the rights of human beings and they worked for their civil rights and many died and many died at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, a white terrorist organization. Mark, it is Sad to know you even come here to this sacred place, TKT. Please apologize or better yet, just stay away.
It is not that Blacks were not workers, inventors, "strivers", it is that they were NEVER given any RECOGNITION for what they accomplished.
And, Mark, I am white !
What is so impressive about the human spirit is accomplishing so much while being contrained in every way!
Not "contrained" (SP) , CONSTRAINED AND OPPRESSED in every way !!!!!
I found you a few months ago - as a white person in Idaho, which is not terribly diverse, it has been so enlightening to me to read your thoughts and Yolanda's. I've learned a lot, even for (I think) a pretty educated person. I am sorry to see you go. I hope that whoever co-authors with Yolanda after this is as talented as you are, but it will be different!
After what happened to Prof. Gates, you might have to fire up this site sometime in the future.
You know, when the Princeton police are called because some store clerk says you tried to walk out of the dressing room with clothes you tried on.
I am White. I find it offensive when Chris Matthews is "discussing" Prof Gates and yet he really knows absolutely NOTHING, No Facts at all but spends time basically siding with the white cops. The Prof was in his own HOUSE !!!!! What is happening in this country? This and The Birthers, all of the Nuts are coming out of the trees !Sheesh!
Dr. Pierce, hope you will write something soon, God Bless You
"I am white".
I'll take the liberty to answer for the professor(s).
This a comment I made June 1st, in response to their comment, "Criminal Shadows".
Racial progress in America is both real and an illusion. It just depends on who you are and where you sit.
For black men, it's like the line from that Public Enemy song.."every brother man's life is like swinging the dice.."
One of the hardest jobs on this planet is trying to live a sane, sustainable life as a black man (not a Negro) in America.
Barack has taken on an almost impossible assignment, but I bet there are times he says to himself, I've had it worst than this. Most black men have a lot of those times. If you're strong, smart, tough and lucky, you figure out ways to work around or knock down the obstacles in your path.
But, to borrow a line from another rapper, Ice Cube, "..that's how the strong survive; shit, the strong even die, in South Central."
Postscript: for black men, Cambridge or Princeton, might as well be South Central LA.
Daniel Bruno Sanz would like to share his Huffington Post essay with you;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-bruno-sanz/obama-2012_b_234874.html
Please post it on your website and send your link to us for inclusion at DanielBrunoSanz.com
Follow us on Twitter at Twitter.com/DanielBrunoSanz
Regards,
Navas
Here are the keyords in the essay:
13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 2012 Election, B.E.T., Barack Hussein Obama, Booker T. Washington, Bryant Park, Cipriani's, Colin Powell, Criminal Industrial Complex, Deb Slott, Do The Right Thing, Heidi Klum, Hip-Hop, Mark Penn, Melting Pot, Pink Elephant, Racism, Reconstruction, Robert Johnson, Seal, Segregation, Shelby Steele, Sidney Poiter, Sonia Sotomayor, Spike Lee, Tavis Smiley, Terrence Yang, The Dance Flick, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Virginia Davies, W.E.B. Dubois, Zero Mostel, Politics
Prologue to Obama 2012
We approach the future walking backwards, our gaze forever fixated on the past. Predicting the future is not a passive exercise; we invent it every day with our actions.
I began the sketches for what would ultimately become Obama 2012 in March 2007, a month after Barack Obama declared his candidacy. I had spent much of the previous 18 months living abroad as an entrepreneur and statesman of sorts, and I was slightly out of touch with the pulse of life on the street in the United States. I learnt about Sen. Barack Obama’s Springfield, IL speech formally declaring his candidacy for president of the United States through one of the international cable news channels and thought how great it would be to have a fresh start after years of mediocrity in Washington and a plummeting reputation around the world.
By September, after what seemed like raising a six-month-old child, my sketches had turned into Why the Democrats Will Win in 2008 the Road to an Obama White House. It was my answer to the burning question everyone had back in March: Can he really win? Actually, not everyone thought it was a question. For many people, including Mark Penn, director of the Clinton campaign, the answer was an easy “no way.” This strategic blunder made it that much easier for the Clinton campaign to be defeated. Then there were Black pundits like Shelby Steele, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, who came out with a 2007 book entitled A Bound Man, Why Obama Can't Win.
Being Black did seem to be an automatic disqualification, but then why did someone need to write an entire book arguing what should have been patently obvious? Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell came to my mind and I remembered that he could have run for president in 1992 as a war hero. But Colin Powell was Ronald Reagan’s protégé and got a special pass on the race question. Black conservatives like Justice Thomas, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell were careful to disassociate themselves from liberal thinkers and activists like Jesse Jackson, who lost, as expected, the 1984 and 1988 Democratic primaries. Ultimately, Colin Powell, in spite of all his honors, declined to run for president. His wife Alma feared for his safety. Common sense said that a candidate like Obama, for numerous insurmountable reasons, didn't stand a chance of winning the Democratic primary, let alone a general election in which 10% of the electorate is African American and Republicans controlled the White House for 20 of the preceding 28 years. But I decided that Obama's chances merited a closer examination. In it, I would bring to bear my gambling skills.
Thanks for doing it in the first place. I'll miss you.
Michelle
thanks for your thoughts and insights doc. they will be missed. hope that this blog continues with new voices who are just as passionate and thought provoking. may i recommend dr. carla shedd of columbia.
Drs. Melissa and Yolanda, Please keep The Kitchen Table serving the nourishment we need to feed our political spirits. Could you post links to your other blog sites on this blog?
Dr. Melissa, thank you for uniting with your friend to join many of the non-academics to the academic world of political experiences. I will be reading more of the blogs you are linked with.
Dr. Yolanda, thank you for uniting with your friend to join many of the non-academics to the academic world of political experiences. whereas this is a bittersweet change, is there a beginning in the making for a continuation of similar discussions under your current blogs?
Professor Harris-Lacewell,
Why be so definitive and deprive us all of your wisdom? Why not periodically do a few 'guest turns', while Professor Pierce, and whoever replaces you carry on more regularly.
Consider it, please.
On the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, essayist Daniel Bruno Sanz has written a unique piece about the nuclear arms race and the Black experience on film:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-bruno-sanz/bad-dreams-from-my-grandf_b_250751.html
You may post it on your website and follow us at Twitter.com/DanielBrunoSanz
Here are the Keywords:
5ive, Adolf Hitler, African-American Poetry, Al-Queda, Albert Einstein, Arch Oboler, Carl Sagan, Charles Bronson, Charles Lampkin, Cosmos, Douglass Macarthur, Elizabeth Montgomery, Emperor Hirohito, Enrico Fermi, Fahrenhei 451, Fat Man, Five, Francois Truffaut, Frank Lloyd Wright, Genesis, Gyokuon-Hoso, H.G. Welles, Harry Truman, Hiroshima, James Anderson, James Weldon Johnson, Julius Rosenberg, Klaus Fuchs, Lavrentii Beria, Leo Szilard, Lord Of The Flies, Los Ultimos Cinco, Manchuria, Manhattan Project, Mao Tse-Tung, Martini Movies, Mokusatsu, Mulholland Highway, Nagasaki, Nietzsche, North Korea, Nuclear Holocaust, On The Beach, Orson Welles, Pearl Harbor, Potsdam Declaration, Reagan, Red Army, Rod Serling, Schopenhauer, Semipalatinsk, Stalin, Stepin Fetchit, Suzuki Kantaro, Taliban, The Day After, The Day The World Ended, Twilight Zone, Uranium Fission, Variety Magazine, Will Smith, Wille Zur Macht, William Golding, William Phipps, Living News
Lovely kitchen table, keep up the good work. God Bless.
Excellent view.Nice explanation.It sounds so good.But it is possible only when the
cabinetgiant kitchen has a good quality cabinets.Thank you.
Dear Princeton Tigers: Please keep roaring. May Christ empower you so that you will be able to keep soaring, keep singing, keep working, keep walking. Your sista.
New essay "The Gates Affair:Why We Care" yours to publish
Dear readers and webmasters,
Author Daniel Bruno Sanz has written an essay about Gatesgate. We encourage its publication and distribution.
Regards,
Navas S.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
- 4th Amendment to the The Constitution of the United States of America
so sad to hear, i just starting to get to know this site..
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