AM I MY SISTER'S KEEPER?

 Um,....“EXCUUUUUSE ME!” she hissed rudely while simultaneously splattering us with both rain-water and round-the-way-girl-attitude before click-clacking ahead of us into the restaurant. Now we were ALL headed into the same, exact place but apparently my friend and I weren’t moving fast enough  out of the down-pour for home-girl, so we were shoved aside before we could open the door.
I looked on in shock as my BFF and fellow committee organizer, momentarily forgot our purposes for meeting that day and  proceeded to follow our impatient, young antagonizer into the downtown pizza parlor to reprimand her. They exchanged brief, heated words and before I could even intervene, the other woman turned quickly on stiletto-ed heels and exited out as angrily as she entered. Whether she left because she was actually scared to be in close proximity of my girlfriend or lost  her appetite I'll never know; I was just glad it was over as quickly as it started.

The end?

Well not really, as my friend and I got down to business over soda pop & pepperoni; neither one of us truly able to get the stench of that unexpected (and let’s be honest---> ‘ignorant’) altercation off of our spirits, we couldn’t help but discuss what just happened: Here we were: fellow organizers and presenters for an upcoming community event in honor of and support of Black women ("The 2nd Annual Africana-WoManism Society Symposium") and yet had just taken part in a verbal-joust with the very audience we were targeting for this summit!

wow...

With the air thick with irony and shame, we immediately felt remorseful and after saying a sincere prayer for that young sistah’ (and ourselves) we decided not to let this unfortunate moment go in vain but to forge ahead with an even stronger commitment to our involvement in the movement. So newly inspired and famished, we ate our pizza and finished lining out our presentation.

Shortly after I parted ways with my friend I got to thinkin': it was very easy to set aside time to plan, write, delegate and create a collaboration with this homegirl of mine, a woman I’ve known and loved like a sister ever since my freshman year in college but how often are women, specifically Black women grouped together with unknown sistahs and have less than amicable results? I see it all the time from TV shows like “Jerry Springer”, any number of reality TV shows to up-close and personal conflicts like at the pizza parlor earlier with my usually  level-headed friend; Black women seem to have a BIG problem with each other and this is one pink and BIG elephant in the room that needs to be called out...intervention style.

 I'll admit as peaceful as most folks will tell you I am, in the past I too have let myself fall victim to that nasty spirit of "Sapphire”, and got-somebody-told-off. Now to be clear I would NEVER roll my neck, eyes, shake my finger and carry on as anything but a lady today but I have thrown my share of ‘shade’ ( a.k.a. ‘Sista-tude’) before when I felt vexed enough to get my point across to another who I felt wasn’t respecting me. It seems so childish and silly when you're thinking clear-headed BUT at the WRONG moment on the WRONG day, the knee-jerk response for far too many of us is to resort to this childhood way of handling things; like we did on the playground or bus-stop with our friends egging us on to ‘go off’…usually with someone who looks like similar to 'us'.

  Call it being: 'ghetto', 'angry-Black-Woman-issues’, Crabs-In-The-Barrel-syndrome or just immaturity…I just know we need to work on a mass healing between ‘sistah-on-sistah’ relations, within in the community, within our homes, within ourselves. In other words: we’ve got a historic, new health plan that will benefit us ALL physically, let’s now work on repairing the spiritual and emotional damage we do to each other.

Am I My Sistah’s Keeper? ......YES I AM!