Melanin Monday

It was late Friday morning, and I was sitting in a session of a conference.  This was my 2nd conference of the week and I was beat.  As the session was wrapping up, my mind began to wander..I thought of something I read on Luvvie's blog earlier this year.  She says this is a hella onyx year and she is absolutely right. (Read Luvvie's post here) Then I started trying to think of days of the week...like Melanin Monday.  Welp, that's just about as far as I got.  I started to send a tweet to Luvvie and ask her to name the rest of the days of the week for us but she's already named the months of the year so... how about we do something ourselves?  So I thought maybe we could name the days of the week the Ghanaian people name their kids, so Tuesday could be Araba Tuesday. At any rate, I stopped at Melanin Monday.

Actually all last week, I had been thinking about the keynote address that I heard Melissa Harris Perry give on intersectionality last Tuesday at the NCWIT Summit. (National Center for Women in Technology)  Believe me when I tell you that speech and even the Q&A after was EVERYTHING!!!!  I tried to take pictures, but they were not clear enough.  I attempted to live tweet it, but I could not keep up with her.  So then I tried to Periscope it, but only got the end of the Q&A session.  One thing I took away from her was this:  "Every single day, cite a woman of color."   Now you have to watch her speech to get the full context (I told you I could not keep up).  I am, however going to take it a step further.  Every single day, support a woman of color.

I know good and well with my current schedule, that I am not going to write a blog post about a Black woman every day because...well... LIFE :)  What I can do is start a #melaninmonday series where I highlight a living Black woman that has a broad impact on society as we know it.  I have 14 lined up so far.  These women are authors, scientists, educators, mathematicians and entertainers and they all impact various facets of culture, society and the world.  The next step would be for each of us as individuals to recognize the Black women in each of our lives who impact us on a daily basis.

Any ways...here goes..I'm off to write my #melaninmonday post...