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Posts tagged as ““Dear Lori””

Eleven Years Ago Today: Good Black News Was Founded

Eleven Years Ago Today: Good Black News Was Founded

By goodblacknews on March 18, 2021

GOOD BLACK NEWS proudly celebrates its eleventh anniversary today, March 18, 2021. GBN initially launched in 2010 as a Facebook page (read the story behind GBN’s creation here), and in 2012, we created a dedicated website, goodblacknews.org, which has allowed us to provide archives, search functions and easy access to our most popular social media to you, our readers.

The outpouring of appreciation you’ve shown us over the years via follows, likes, comments, shares, reblogs, DMs and e-mails means the world (even when we are overwhelmed and can’t respond to them all), and inspires GBN to keep working to find ways to expand, improve, and offer more content on the main page as well as on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, RSS feed, LinkedIn and Flipboard (new)!

In the past year, we were honored to not only have GBN’s 2016 Editorial “What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege” recirculate across the internet, but also to see the May 2020 editorial, A Letter to Friends Who Really Want to End Racism, spark much-needed conversation on both topics.

Additionally, GBN was featured in the April 2020 New York Times article “The News Is Making People Anxious. You’ll Never Believe What They’re Reading Instead.” and the June 2020 Good Housekeeping piece How To Explain White Privilege to Someone Who Doesn’t Think it Exists.

In July 2020 GBN Founder and Editor-in-Chief Lori Lakin Hutcherson was interviewed about Good Black News on Barry Shore’s Joy of Living podcast and in Fall 2020 finally spoke with Jason, the high school friend whose Facebook post lead to “What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege” on the premiere episode of the Three Uncanny Four podcast Do The Work:

In 2020, Lori also started a Q&A column entitled “Dear Lori” where she responds to questions about white privilege and race she’s been asked by readers that she intends to resume shortly, because the questions just don’t stop.

And after years of promising in these anniversary posts, we finally launched the GBN newsletter via email. The intention is for it to be weekly but for myriad reasons, it hasn’t been consistent. In the coming months, we aim to make it so.

GBN is super proud to announce that in Fall 2021 Workman Publishing will be offering our first physical product: a Page-A-Day® Calendar entitled A Year of Good Black News for 2022, chock full of history, trivia and fun Black facts to enjoy every day of the year. We will offer more information on the calendar and its availability in the coming months.

Good Black News remains a labor of love for Founder/Editor-In-Chief Lori Lakin Hutcherson and co-editor Lesa Lakin, and we must gratefully acknowledge 2020’s volunteer contributors: Susan Cartsonis, Julie Adelle Bibb, Beck Carpenter, Hanelle Culpepper Meier, Jessie Davis, Dan Evans, Gina Fattore, Julie Fishman, Michael Giltz, Eric Greene, Thaddeus Grimes-Gruczka, Ashanti Hutcherson, Warren Hutcherson, Fred Johnson, Epiphany Jordan, Brenda Lakin, Joyce Lakin, Ray Lancon, Lois Leveen, John Levinson, Rob Lowry, Catherine Metcalf, Lara Olsen, Flynn Richardson, Maeve Richardson, Rosanna Rossetto and Becky Schonbrun. 

Special thanks to Zyda Culpepper Mellon for allowing GBN to share her powerful video testimony on how white friends and family can be allies, to TedX speaker and contributor Dena Crowder for creating and sharing her Power Shot video series on GBN, to incredible Tech Jedi Samer Shenouda for migrating and revamping the GBN website to make us bigger, stronger, faster, and to Jeff Meier, Teddy Tenenbaum and Marlon West for creating incredible Spotify playlists and posts covering a variety of genres, sub-genres and artists celebrating the musical diaspora, past and present. You are all deeply, greatly appreciated.

Please continue to help us spread GBN by sharing, liking, re-tweeting and commenting, and consider following GBN here on the main page, as well as wherever you are on social media.

Please also consider joining our e-mail list via our “Contact Us” tab. We will only use this list to keep you updated on GBN and send you our e-newsletter. And, of course, you may opt out at any time.

GBN believes in bringing you positive news, reviews and stories of interest about black people all over the world, and greatly value your participation in continuing to build our shared vision.

Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to providing you with more Good Black News in the coming year, and beyond!

Warmly,

The Good Black News Team

“Dear Lori”: Did Your White Friend Ever Respond? He and I “Do The Work” on a Podcast (LISTEN)

“Dear Lori”: Did Your White Friend Ever Respond? He and I “Do The Work” on a Podcast (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on October 8, 2020

Before I answer today’s query, I need to thank everyone for all the positive feedback on my debut “Dear Lori“ column. I appreciate the responses, the encouragement and yes, the new questions! I plan to answer them as soon as I can.

Now, I’ll get to the number-one, hands-down, most-popular question I’ve been asked for over four years ever since my original 2016 post about Jason’s white privilege Facebook question to his Black and biracial friends…

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[All letters are published verbatim and without corrections. Only the names have been changed.]

Dear Lori:

Hi! I just read your article about the facebook post. I GOTTA know if the white friend responded and if so, what did he say? Would you mind making a post/article about that? LeKeisha

Dear LeKeisha:

Thank you for writing in! You are far from alone in wanting to know if Jason responded and if so, what he said. There’s a reason why I’ve never really answered that question until today though — I didn’t have one.

Well, not a good one, at least in my estimation. Because the only response from Jason I ever saw was an indirect one in my feed when I shared a link in 2016 to an “answer blog” published in Huffington Post to my White Privilege piece. One friend commented:

“I’m glad that your thoughtful post got the attention it deserved. A lot of my friends shared it after I shared it — you delivered your message in a very “hearable” and moving way. You made it into a teaching moment, and I think those are rare.”

Under that Jason replied:

“It certainly taught me… 😉“

And that was it. That’s all I got.

I knew it would anger or sadden some readers to know that after I spent a large chunk of my time crafting a reply (not to mention considerable emotional labor), all I got back was four words and a wink emoji. It would seem to affirm no matter how much Black people extend ourselves to help white people understand, it’s not worth the effort because they really don’t want to hear or engage with the answer even when they’re the ones who asked in the first place.

For other readers, they likely wanted to hear a happy ending – that my response transformed Jason’s thinking, finally made him understand white privilege and systemic racism, and that he was now fighting the good fight like any good-hearted, newly-aware person would do. I didn’t want to upset those readers either, even though — let’s be real — there’s no magic post anywhere that’s going to do all that.

But I’ll admit, a deeper response from him would have been nice for me to hear, too.

Today, I am happy to finally be able to share that deeper response — in the premiere episode of Do The Work – a new podcast hosted by Brandon Kyle Goodman all about having these conversations.

The producers reached out to me and Jason this summer after my piece went around again post-George Floyd and the nationwide protests, and we finally came together to have the conversation we’ve never had. So instead of having me tell you his response secondhand, you now can hear it directly for yourself. Hope it satisfies!

Take care and all best, Lori

 

“Dear Lori”: My Black Answers to Even More Questions About White Privilege

“Dear Lori”: My Black Answers to Even More Questions About White Privilege

By goodblacknews on September 25, 2020
by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief

Before I get started with the Q&A, I’m going to share some backstory behind why I’ve decided to create this “Dear Lori” column for Good Black News:

Four years ago I wrote an essay called “What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege” that ended up going viral and getting re-published by several large outlets in 2016, 2017, 2018, and once again this summer.

Each time my white privilege piece circulates, I get a rush of emails, posts, messages, comments, tweets and DMs from new readers. Most are positive, some negative, some hilarious (between “laugh or cry,” I choose “laugh”) and inevitably, some questioning. I try my best to respond individually, but sometimes it’s way too overwhelming a task. Like during the last rush right after Christian Cooper, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and the nationwide protests.

I did find the energy in late May to write “A Letter to Friends Who Really Want to End Racism” on my personal Facebook page in an attempt to share my thoughts on how to move forward pro-actively. My sister (and GBN co-editor) Lesa encouraged me to publish it on GBN as well. I did, and that piece had its own extra flutter of internet life, too.

I texted Lesa to say her instincts were right again (in 2016 she predicted “What I Said…” would go viral before I posted it) and she responded in spotty text talk: You speak super Black pride and really wanna be woke white — needs to be shared!

Her words gave me a much-needed chuckle during a fraught pandemic shopping trip in a bare-shelved Whole Foods. They also helped crystallize my thoughts on what I might be able to uniquely contribute to the movement for equity and justice.