Dara T. Mathis
@TrulyTafakari
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mama. writer. | bylines where you like to read | @/trulytafakari on IG |
Washington, DC area
Joined March 2013
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Pinned Tweet
I am so, so grateful to be a recipient of the 2024 American Mosaic Journalism Prize.
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How I became the Hugging Mom 🧵:
Every day when I drop my son off at preschool, I give him a hug and wish him a good day. I tell him I love him while he runs off to play with his friends. Last week, after I hugged my son, something different happened.
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A lot of women in 2021 don’t do the things “our grandmothers used to do for our grandfathers”
🗣 BECAUSE OUR GRANDMOTHERS PULLED US TO THE SIDE AND TOLD US NOT TO
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My cupcakes might come from Giant but my hugs are home grown. I'm the Hugging Mom. The Love on Everybody's Babies Cause They're Mine, Too, Mom. All the babies can get it.
I love it here.
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Millennials get a lot of flack for the way we navigate employment, but the game our parents prepared us for doesn’t even exist anymore.
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20 years ago, there was no “student loan debt crisis,” only parents, teachers, and professionals advising kids that college was the surest way to secure your future by any means necessary.
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And every day since then, Keith has come looking to get his hug, and it belongs to him anytime he wants one.
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The next morning, after I hugged my son goodbye, his teacher caught my attention. "Um, can Keith give you a hug, too? He wants to hug you." Keith was watching me from across the room, shyly hanging out near the teacher's side.
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Daughters are not spiritual retribution for your misogyny.
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His friend Chase appeared behind him. Chase leaned right in and hugged me, too! Oh, this is what we doing? 🥰 Bet. I hugged Chase, absentmindedly rubbing the back of his head like I do my own son's. I wished him a good day and went on about mine.
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I walked over to him with my arms open. Aw, come here, baby. I got you. Keith and I wrapped our arms around each other and I wished him a good day.
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It occurred to me that when people accuse a woman/mother of “letting herself go,” they only mean her appearance, not her dreams or aspirations.
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R. Kelly has *finally* been convicted of producing child pornography.
To wit: If you deliberately sought to view his urination tape, “just to see if he really did that shit,” you watched child porn. For funsies.
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Black parents shouldn't have to trot out that their kid made honor roll to offer a "reason" why they didn't deserve to be shot by police.
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As a woman, I also deeply resent the idea that children are some kind of stabilizing agent in women’s lives, that without kids we are flighty or wild or in need of an accompanying weight to civilize us according to society’s approval.
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I kinda of hate how the shift to focus on individuals (not) getting vaccinated feels like letting the government off the hook for gross mishandling of the pandemic.
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Ya'll. We really are going to "lose" years behind this pandemic.
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*THAT* is my problem with most “educate me” prompts from either men or white people on the internet.
They say “educate,” but they really mean “convince me because I already don’t believe you.”
And instead of listening, they proceed to argue with you.
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Only in a Black church:
For our Easter pageant, they had Judas stroll down the aisle, hand on his waistband, with the O’Jays’ “Backstabbers” playing in the background 😂😂😂
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Hip-hop is still such a relatively young art form. It’s painful to have lost so many of its greats before they hit the age of 65.
The elder statesmen of rap are *young*. I want them to be able to grow old.
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I’m Team “tell ALLL the children the family business.”
Because only whispering it to the daughters leads to the sons looking at their grandparents’ “happy relationship” with starry eyes while the daughters run for the hills.
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It is infuriating to hear how we must “learn to live with COVID” when that directive comes without the promise of material support; “learn to live with COVID” is an invitation to die for the sake of capitalism.
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We have adopted the language of “war” on the coronavirus so we can dub essential workers as “heroes” for their “sacrifice.”
Here’s why it is a convenient lie.
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The way Americans teach racism as an individual character flaw rather than a defining characteristic of American policy makes it so much easier to gaslight POC.
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What haunts me about this case is that Kira Johnson had her partner right by her side advocating for her when she could not do so for herself.
And they ignored him, too.
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Kids really aren’t our “mini-me” carbon copies. They’re people who belong to themselves, learning how to be human beings in their own way. It’s amazing and humbling to realize.
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A Beyoncé video shoot.
Name a place with tighter security than the Capitol. RIGHT answers only. 😂👇🏽
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Popeyes better keep it cute.
One moment Twitter will be obsessed over their sandwiches, but the next moment will be about the plight of underpaid, overworked staff.
Watch a chicken sandwich frenzy turn into worker organization 😏
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“You are alive, aren’t you? Well, so long as you have no grave, you are covered by the sky. No limit to your possibilities.”
—Zora Neale Hurston
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I am annoyed by the insinuation that idiot 18 y/o’s dreamed up the idea of taking out gargantuan loans for shits and giggles. Most of us had no credit and couldn’t even rent a car. We were failed, deliberately.
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Apply that “an inconsistent presence is better than absence” logic to any other relationship, especially romantic ones, and you’d be calling someone a fool for settling for crumbs.
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All I really have to say about the gorilla glue incident:
“Black girls are trained early in beauty salons to smell smoke on themselves but to never yell ‘fire’.”
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Zora Neale Hurston interviewed Lewis as part of her anthropological studies and some of her recollections of their encounter can be found in her (autobiographical) book "Dust Tracks on a Road."
Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis, The last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and North America, 1920's
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🗣🗣PSA:
If a Black woman says a thing and explicitly writes “Black women,” guess what?
SHE MEANT BLACK WOMEN.
SHE MEANT BLACK WOMEN.
SHE MEANT BLACK WOMEN.
SHE MEANT BLACK WOMEN.
SHE MEANT BLACK WOMEN.
SHE MEANT BLACK WOMEN.
SHE MEANT BLACK WOMEN.
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I legit do not understand how people default to conspicuous consumption (cars, clothes, and Jordans) as the reason people fail to save money, when medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S.
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Sending love to everyone who had to teach themselves that having sex did not devalue them as human beings.
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From church culture to hip-hop, girlhood to adulthood, never once have I known our communities to miss an opportunity to script a man’s redemption story at the expense of a woman.
Abused in his youth… an addict as a adult… Ike Turner served 18 months in prison.. Rick James did similar time. Ike came out a changed positive human being. How long should R Kelly spend in prison -and does a USA system give a man a chance for a man to change his world around?
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Toni Morrison wrote in BELOVED, “You your own best thing, Sethe. You are.”
Those words have been an incalculable gift to me.
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Work out your misogyny in your therapist’s office. Work out your past hurts and issues with women in your internal room.
But don’t use your daughter as that space. She is not karma for fuckshit, or sent in spite of it. She is herself.
Love her as such.
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Found a Jamaican restaurant close to my house, and the prices on the menu are all blacked out with a note, “Prices have increased!” No idea of how much, just order and pray lol. They’re also out of chicken.
I know this food bout to be fire 😂
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Daughters are more likely to suffer from your misogyny if you believe that having a girl cures you of it.
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White Women: Rally for feminism, forget my racism!
Black Men: Rally against racism, forget my sexism!
Black Women:
http://t.co/x8iGwRPCfV
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Not enough people are interested in the space between their mother’s personhood and parenthood to ask her who she is when she isn’t mothering.
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Dear White people,
If you have to ask "Why didn't I know..." about an aspect of U.S. Black history, the answer is always:
WHITE SUPREMACY
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RT if a boy ever smacked, touched, or groped a part of your body when you were in school as a "practical joke"
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Nor are they tiny spiritual guides sent to newly show you the humanity of girls and women.
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“In death; Breonna and Toyin are queens, they are angels, they are saints, they are cover girls and muses, they are regal and chic and beautiful, they are merchandise, they are screensavers, they are profitable.”
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I liked Jay-Z better when he merely rapped about having more money than you, vs now when he raps that you don’t know what to do with the money you don’t have
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“You’re Black before you’re a woman”
but shared Blackness has never protected Black women from gendered violence.
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That a whole new person must be born before you recognize girls/women are people who deserve decency?
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It never gets old giving affirming compliments to random Black women in public. The smile hits their eyes first. ❤️
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I'm struggling a lot with the loss of the ability to (safely, freely) spend time with loved ones, in addition to not being able to properly celebrate the people who lost their lives in the past 18 months.
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I do not heap praise upon people who hold newborn girls and proclaim their nascent understanding of female humanity.
I grieve.
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I was thinking about the "oldest daughter" convo ppl often have on here and how much the commonality of deputizing the eldest girl as second parent says about A) the demands of parenting multiple kids and B) the labor it has always required even in "trad 2-parent" homes.
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It carries an implicit message that those “on the front lines” signed up for this, and they are bravely offering their lives and services to save us all.
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There is a segment of middle class Black folks who firmly believe The Problem with Black America™️ can be fixed by policing the way you niggas dress.
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In a lot of ways, 2020 felt like a "lost year." It's midway through 2021 and I don't know how to feel about it. I don't know how to measure these times beyond "I'm still here."
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RT if you live in a city/state where apartments or landlords charge you a month’s rent or more to move in
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I am old enough to remember the “pee tape” debates as one of the first that happened on nascent social media sites. Argued over whether the child was indeed a child, because she didn’t look like one to them. Disseminated child porn as communal entertainment. Water cooler fodder.
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Thug Kitchen, Aunt Jemima’s parent co, & just about any other entity struck w/ a sudden “realization” about their name/imagery being racist knows good & well…
2020 isn’t the first time they were asked to change their shit. It’s just the first time they were afraid NOT to.
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Sometimes, when I drive over city expressways, I randomly wonder what erased, destroyed Black town lies beneath.
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Many of us who rely on essential workers get to perform a disingenuous lip service that pretends we have always treated food service workers and other low-wage workers as essential to our way of life.
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Terry Crews' eagerness to die on so many needless hills is one of the strangest things I've ever witnessed on this app.
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Some people deliberately cross your boundaries because they don’t believe even you deserve to have them.
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On one hand, I am so grateful to be here. On the other hand, grief.
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The coolest thing I learned this week:
The Black Panther Party fed a contingent of disability rights activists in San Francisco during the 28-day 504 Occupation in 1977.
“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” —Audre Lorde
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And even that wondrous proclamation of “girlz r peeple! 🤯” is often tinged with a weird obsession over the newborn girl’s eventual pubescent development or future sexuality.
I just…can’t.
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In December, doctors misdiagnosed her with chronic bronchitis. Last week, she died of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. 😥
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“I can’t believe there’s been literally no media coverage about this event that I learned about through media coverage 😡”
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Yes, many medical professionals are fueled by compassion and a desire to heal the sick. But no one feels like a “hero” being compelled to work without PPE, hazard pay, sick leave, nationalized health insurance or workplace testing while unemployment rates skyrocket.
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It really irks me when Black folks posit that The Problem With Black People™️ is merely that we haven’t grasped how to be capitalists like other racial/ethnic groups, like it’s a science we‘ve been pathologically unable to comprehend after 500 years 😑
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I might delete that later but I am so angry it has taken this long, THIS LONG, for that man to face legal ramifications for something that became a (sick, twisted) joke in our community.
It was never funny.
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People counsel married women every day "have sex even when you don't feel like it" and then wonder why we're having a national crisis about coercion, boundaries, and consent. 🤔
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So much breath is wasted trying to ensure girls/young women *do not have* sex, that little to no care is given whether they have *good* sex, sex that affirms them, sex that is pleasurable for them, sex that contributes to their overall health.
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The only way the American government’s response to coronavirus resembles a war is in the political expedience of poor, working class, and Black communities.
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The first week of Black History Month has been a long year.
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No one “signed up for” the delayed social distancing orders and inaction despite evidence from around the world that COVID-19 demanded decisive measures.
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Hero is a word we falsely sing to ourselves when people are *being sacrificed* as opposed to voluntarily sacrificing for a cause.
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Very little about job hunting feels personable or dignified. It’s such a dehumanizing process these days.
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I don’t think a lot of people see “parent” as a relationship that requires maintenance and responsibility as much as they consider it an honorific that entitles them to privileges.
Parenting is a relationship. Too many people subscribe to the "My presence is a present" idea and the power dynamic that comes with it, and believe an inconsistent parent is better than no parent at all. If you can't uphold your end of the relationship, what are you really doing?
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Reminder to self:
When you are hesitant to celebrate your successes aloud, you rob the people who have been rooting for and supporting you of the chance to share in your joy.
Shout that shit.
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Grandparents’ Marriage™️ is a recurrent enough conversation on here to clock which demographic views them with nostalgia and which demographic has no illusions about what many marriages were like beneath the surface. 😒
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@will_thad
Yep. Could have property in their name sold right from under them just because they were women. Things were *different*.
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My daughter is teaching me to allow her the full spectrum of her feelings. It. Is. A. LESSON.
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Essential workers deserve more than us calling them our heroes; they deserve to be delivered from man-made horror.
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It has always been true in America that your job could kill you and your employer would fill your seat the next day🤷🏾♀️.
But it really is something else to watch millions die in a pandemic & hear employers say, "We have a worker shortage because no one wants work (for low pay)!"
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That thing men sometimes do, when they assume a popular BW entertainer’s music is our Bible for relationships and if she makes IRL moves “contrary” to her lyrics, it’s a gotcha moment for BW…
It’s weird and illogical.
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Maybe it’s because society expects women to have already abandoned any dreams that do not center children by the time they actually have babies.
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One thing I’ve learned watching corporate, media, and publishing spaces:
The money exists.
Bags of it will appear out of thin air for the same people again and again, right after the gatekeepers tell YOU, “We don’t have the money right for it now.”
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Create worlds where Black children have room to behave like children.
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It took me until my 30s to learn I didn’t have to pretend to need nothing (or close to it) to make myself lovable.
You don’t have to be grateful for the least that someone tosses your way.
I will spend the rest of my life spreading this good gospel to anyone who needs it 😄
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Governmental mismanagement is not a cause anyone should be dying for. But essential workers are. And many of them are already among the most marginalized, disproportionately abandoned people in this country.
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“Nobody wants to END the police.”
Prison abolitionists:
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Sometimes I wish the Internet could go “off” like TV used to stop broadcasting in the 60s.
Like if you tried to log on to Twitter after midnight and all you saw was snow or a black screen and you closed the app because there would be nothing to see here, folks.
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"The amount of times I have to say, ‘She’s saying no, and you have your hand in her vagina. You need to take it out,’ is unreal."
WOW.
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It is a cruel trick to refuse policies that will keep low-wage workers alive and then praise them for dying first during a pandemic.
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