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Posts tagged as “Joyce Lakin”

Good Black News Wishes You and Yours Happy Mother’s Day 2022 and Offers a Mother’s Day Playlist — from Our Mom! (LISTEN)

[Photo: GBN Contributor Joyce Lakin (l) and GBN Editor-in-Chief Lori Lakin Hutcherson (r) in Maui, 2005]

Good Black News wants to take a moment on this day to honor and remember the women who gave us life, who nurtured and raised us, and also offered us solace, counsel, wisdom, humility and humor.

To all the mothers out there – be they Aunties, Grandmothers, Cousins or Friends – thank you for all you do!

And to one mom out there in particular — Joyce Lakin — we want to thank you for all of the above and also for agreeing to put together a playlist of some of your all-time favorite songs to share with all the other moms and children out there who grew up on their mom’s music!

[spotifyplaybutton play=”https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2GPh8RMXYweW8a8VkRFG6M?si=bf6c5e2d1cd24447″]

On this list there’s clearly songs you grew up on (Johnny Mathis, Etta James, Sammy Davis, Jr.), songs that were your jams that became our jams (Teddy Pendergrass, Marvin Gaye, Prince) and songs that are refreshing surprises — Jay Z and J. Lo — who knew?!

If anyone out there is still lucky enough to have their mom, we encourage you to ask them for their playlist — and you’ll learn more about your mom and yourself than you’d imagine!

Thanks, Mom.  And Happy Mother’s Day!

Eleven Years Ago Today: Good Black News Was Founded

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 FacebookTwitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTubeRSS 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 RichardsonRosanna 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

"Woman In The Mirror": GBN Editor Lori Lakin Hutcherson’s Personal Essay on Women, Power and Leadership

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson via dumbofeather.com

Ever since I was four years old, I remember feeling powerless. I didn’t know it by name then, but looking back, powerlessness is what drove me every night, after I slid under my Raggedy Ann sheets and comforter, to wish and pray that when I woke up, I’d wake up a boy. Not because I felt like a boy inside, but because boys got to have what I couldn’t. Hair that didn’t have to be detangled or combed or braided. Action figures instead of dolls. Race cars with race tracks and pants to play in—always pants. In my four-year-old mind, boys had everything. Freedom. Choices. Power. Pants. But every morning like clockwork, the sun rose, I looked down, and I was denied yet again by The Man Upstairs. I was still Team Pink. I was still a girl.

I wore my disappointment more stoically than my dresses, because somehow I knew this was not a conversation to be had with either parent, or even my big sister (who was obsessed with boys in the acceptable way—with crushes and smiles and day dates to ice skating shows). I didn’t know how to voice the palpable inequity I was absorbing from our society, my culture, the media. That boys were considered the stronger, smarter, faster sex, who should be deferred to and in control. What I couldn’t find words for, but knew from the tips of my bobble ball hair ties to the soles of my patent leather Mary Janes, was that the way girls were devalued wasn’t fair, square or remotely close to justified.

Girls were just as smart and fast and valuable as boys—and once in a while, in between ads for EZ bake ovens and hungry toy babies and household products that would save me from a lifetime of dishpan hands, my TV echoed parts of this truth to me. I saw the “Bionic Woman” and “Wonder Woman” and Billie Jean King with the big glasses and small tennis racket beat the old, blustering Bobby guy in “The Battle of the Sexes.” And then there was Nadia from Romania who proved her ability at the Montreal Olympics, though her dainty and pretty were remarked upon more often than her athleticism and artistry. Even after her repeated displays of superlativeness, she stood there, half-smiling, as they gave most of the credit to her male coach. They might not have been black like me but they were girls like me, girls who liked to rip and run and use their bodies and brains for something other than to attract boys.

In my home, the messages were similarly mixed. My mom had a job just like my dad did. And as a teacher, when I went to work with her, I got to see a woman in charge. Of the space, the lessons, the students. I saw her leadership there, as well as in the house. Mom had as much authority as Dad (if not more) and my dad did the cooking. And since both parents were college graduates and educators, my sister and I were expected to do well in school, go to college and have a career.
Mom even gave my sister and me “School Years” memory books so we could track our progress from Kindergarten through High School. Who our friends and teachers were, our activities, awards, and what we wanted to be when we grew up. This aid to success ended up being one of the most painful reminders of the limited expectations the world had for me. The occupations listed for “Boys”? Policeman, Fireman, Astronaut, Soldier, Cowboy, Baseball Player. But for “Girls”? Mother, Nurse, School Teacher, Airline Hostess, Model, Secretary. In that order.

There was a “fill in the blank” space, so every year from Kinder on I filled it in with “Doctor.” By third grade, someone with a pink marker lined through my “Doctor” and checked “Secretary” instead. I rebelled with my blue marker and rubbed over the pink check next to “Secretary.” I didn’t remember this until I recently found the book, but it spoke volumes that someone in my life thought I was fantasizing if I wanted to be a doctor. In 1976. The same year of the U.S. Bicentennial, 200 years after independence from tyranny was declared and where colonists believed their liberty was worth their death. I, too, was fighting for liberty. My liberty. I wanted Batman, not Barbie, and I was tired of feeling wrong about it.

Years pass, and compliments about my cuteness are directed to me instead of my parents. I didn’t do anything to be cute—DNA did that—so this always feels weird. My mum tells me to not question or argue but just say “thank you.” Dutifully, I do. But being valued solely this way never sits right with me. I wanted “boy-style” compliments, about how clever or strong or skilled at whatever I was—praise that felt earned. I did receive some of this from the adults in my life, right alongside advice like, “Always have bus money so you don’t have to depend on boys for rides,” or, “No one buys the cow if the milk is free,” or, “It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as it is a poor one.”

When my parents separate and divorce, this family fracture ironically gets me more of what I want. Guilt presents include video games and model cars and Star Wars toys. And pants—jeans and corduroys! My mom says when she was younger, she was a tomboy too. She enrolls my sister (and eventually me) in softball, and buys me books about skateboarding but stops short of the skateboard—she thinks I will fall and break my head. If I were a boy, I think, she’d let me break my head. I try to build my own with a plank of wood and wheels from Mom’s ancient metal roller skates. It travels six inches, I fall off and it falls apart. When my dad gets a housekeeper for his new townhouse, she cleans my room and asks him how old his son is. Suddenly Dad won’t buy me any more model cars.

As puberty dawns, boys are still getting the better deal. Most of them grow into muscles and height and undeniable physical dominance. But should this give them more rights? Should more strength automatically equal more power? Boys (and several girls) seem to think so and this thinking is validated at every turn. In government, in movies, in the workplace, in classrooms. They can pick up girls at random and the girls squeal and laugh and cajole the boys to put them down instead of throwing them into the ocean/pool/sofa cushions. All in good fun, right? Not at all a display or reminder of dominance, right? Boys get to act on crushes and initiate kisses and ask for dates without being considered “fast” or “sluts” or “whores.” They also get no periods, no pregnancies, no abortions.

I am handed deodorant, pads and Judy Blume books as my teenage girl starter kit. I dislike the changes and growing pains and expectations of “blossoming into a young woman.” I focus on grades instead of gregariousness—studying instead of a social life. My big sister Lesa, a natural at young womanhood, follows in our grandmother and mother’s kick steps and becomes a varsity cheerleader. I scoff and diminish her choice by saying I’d rather be who people cheer for. Because some girls make fun of other girls for being too “girly.” I do not see the insidious danger of this for decades.

By 1986 I am a senior in high school, and being in the “smart girl” category has been a boon for me. I am not offered a cent for a cute outfit or a good hair day, but Dad pays good money for As and Bs. I also get to wear pants and sneakers and no make up everyday and no one cares. Mom and Lesa are officially the “pretty girls” with pretty power and that is alright by me. I have no jealousy or longing for “pretty” status— though most girls aspire to this, it seems more like a curse than a gift to me. Yes, my mother and sister get preferential treatment and constant compliments, which they enjoy. But I also see them experience the flip side. Men and boys would stalk them both. Put their hands on them without permission. Recklessly follow after them in traffic. This was weekly if not daily for them; for me it was rarely, but it should have been never. It should always be never. But as 99 percent of girls and women will tell you, it’s never never. I am approached by a pimp on a bus who tells me I look sad and he can take care of me. I exit at the next stop and walk the extra mile home to escape him. I am told to smile more times than I am asked for my opinion. One afternoon I’m followed by a man who screams I should be walking behind him and don’t know my place. I run into a 7-11 and stay huddled near the Ms. Pacman machine until he disappears. Oh hell no. Screw being treated like prey. Screw pretty.

Instead I want to be strong and quick. And thanks to Title IX, I can put my body in service to sports—softball, basketball, cross country. I do them all and excel at none. I am average in every way, but the existence of these girls’ teams does not live or die by any one of us having to prove exceptional ability. We have the freedom to suck and stay funded, just like the boys’ teams. This makes me wonder if society needs a version of Title IX not just for the sports field, but for every field. Shouldn’t we demand and legislate programs that provide equal opportunity for both sexes everywhere? So then over time, like with sports, this parity would become the norm? Why not try this out in politics, I think—like maybe in the Senate? After all, there are 100 senators, two from each state, so why not make them 50:50, one male and one female? Wouldn’t that be true equal representation? But I don’t know what to do with these notions, so I keep them to myself. What kind of power do I have to make them happen, anyway? I don’t my want my “smart girl” rep to become a “naive, silly, pie-in-the-sky girl” rep.

High school also offers me a lifelong mentor in the unlikely form of tough-as-nails, no nonsense, AP U.S. history teacher Mr. Safier. He values effort, intelligence and discipline above gender, race, class… or anything else, really. Finally I am celebrated for what I believe counts. Safier is more than safe harbor. He is an equalizer. After repeatedly killing it in his classes, one boy writes in my senior yearbook he’s lived in academic fear of me for almost two years. I love this. Now I have proof. Brains are my field-levelling power. And they are what get me into a top-notch university.

At first, college feels different than high school—better—like there is gender parity. Like “smart” is all that matters. Smart whomevers travel to Boston from wherever to spend four focused years getting smarter. But then the parties start. The blue lights, safety phones and shuttle bus stops are pointed out. Boys casually notice, girls mark their maps. We have political debates. Ideological tangles. We openly protest to take back the night. I make male and female friends of every race and religion and orientation and it all feels equitable and the way the real world should be. I don’t shave my legs all winter. I march with the Black Student Union to the freshman quad to demand I don’t remember what from the Dean. One Christmas I fly home sporting fake Malcolm X glasses, leather Africa medallions and a lot of opinions. My dad picks me up at the airport and later asks everyone in the family but me if I’m a lesbian. Dressed like that, politicized like that, with my “tomboy” history—what else could I be?

What my father does ask me about is what I want to do after college. Whatever it is, I’m told, I should want my boss’ job. That’s where the power is. If you don’t want your boss’ job, you have the wrong job. So if I still want to be a doctor, become Chief of Surgery. If I want to teach, become Teacher of the Year. I do journalism for fun at college because there’s no television station, so I tell him maybe I want to write. Then, Dad says, become the publisher. He sends me articles on mastery and how to achieve it. The bar is set high—as high for me as for the boy he never had, I think, so I accept his challenge. I try to jump that high. Into top positions. Into leadership. Into power.

Unlike Dad though, I think public sector work is for the birds, even when in the “power position.” Dad had achieved that – he rose from community college counsellor to assistant Dean, Dean (the youngest dean in California ever at the time), Vice President, President, then Chancellor of an entire district. He was the top dog, the leader. But then sometimes he would say if he were in the private sector, he would be a CEO making ten times as much money. But it just so happened his heart was in education, and he chose it over what could have been real wealth. Another mixed message I struggled to process. Go for heart or for money or for power? And do they have to be separate?

My power equation, I came to realize, extended beyond my father’s. Mine was leadership, plus affinity, plus money. And, luckily, I told myself, my heart was in writing—television to be specific—a very lucrative field. (Journalism, I’d discovered, paid even less than teaching). So I told him I wanted to follow the Hollywood path. I wanted to come back to California. Come back home.