February 2025, Part One

Excerpt from Introduction

Photo Description: The author with one of her favorite authors, Imani Perry. They are both wearing all black. They are standing smiling straight at the camera. Perry’s writing is the perfect blend of history, research, and memoir. She’s the gold standard!

February 2025, Part One

Below is an excerpt from the Introduction. I would love to hear your thoughts or feedback in the comments!

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“I didn’t vote for Obama either time.”

I was having my first Texas friend outing. We were walking along a path in a neighborhood park. It was early October so the central Texas humidity was still in full force, but the morning hour weakened its impact. I was pushing a stroller carrying my almost two-year-old son.

Thank God we were walking and not making eye contact because I was shocked. I may have gripped the handle of the stroller a little hard and swerved but overall, I think I absorbed my surprise but I didn’t get it. I know it would have been rude for me to turn the stroller around and head back- my mother raised me better than that, but I had SO. MANY. QUESTIONS. First, how could Elena*, this lovely Mexican-American woman not vote for Obama?

Elena and I met under the shade of the tree waiting to pick up our fifth-grade daughters after school. She was the only one who spoke to me amongst all the other parents. I looked forward to our shade tree conversations. I was in a new state, I was working remotely and she was my only regular in-person adult contact. Our kids got along, and we didn’t have a shortage of other things to talk about. So on that park path, I had to take note of my dissonance and try to understand the perspective of this perfectly wonderful woman who had a different political standpoint from me.

I moved to Texas in August 2016 just in time for the election of a new president.

I was born and raised in Wisconsin but spent over 20 years in a Black, liberal bubble also known as New York City specifically Harlem. The biggest diversity in my existence was as a parent of The School at Columbia University. This social experiment put together residents of District 3 (Upper West Side of Manhattan), District 5 (Harlem), and those employed at Columbia University. It diversified the school racially and socio-economically but that’s about it. There was limited diversity of thought or political perspectives. All my adult years were talking to others who had similar views that I had. There were differences but there was nothing that couldn’t be talked through in a focused conversation.

This changed when I moved to my new state.

Soon after my park walk with Elena, I was facilitating a session focused on equity for a group of Texas school leaders. Participants were asked to write their racial narratives. The approach to writing this is in multiple, discreet steps starting with participants talking about their childhood. One of the white male principals struggled with the exercise. I tried to be a teacher and provide some historical perspectives for him to think about but the evaluations talked about how I was combative, insensitive, and should not be a facilitator.

I was not in Harlem anymore.

After this series of events, I had lunch with a Black female friend who had been doing equity-focused work in Texas for over 20 years at that point. She just told me “Welcome to Texas.” She explained that the pushback would be fierce and as a Black woman, I would get it tenfold and it would be personal. She explained that I would need to develop a new set of strategies to best navigate pushback and different perspectives and to stay focused on our shared purpose- better outcomes for students.

* name changed