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I Heart My DST…

19 D.R.S.

Hello World!!!

What is a DELTA?

A DELTA is

What an Aka ain’t.

What a Zeta wants to be.

What a Sigma can’t.

What an Alpha likes.

What a Kappa loves.

What a Que Psi Phi can’t get enough of!

OO-OOP, OO-OOP, OO-OOP, OO-OOP, OO-OOP….

As you can probably tell, this post is dedicated to Deltas all over the world, and we are…But specifically, I want to congratulate the Zeta Psi Chapterof Delta Sigma Theta Incorporated, the beloved chapter where I was made. This weekend we celebrated our 40th year of existence at the University of Georgia. 

Zeta Psi working on a Habitat for Humanity home.

I remember when I first decided that I wanted to be a Delta. I was a college sophomore. An older cousin who I admired had pledged DST at another school, and she talked about her sorority with such love that I started to consider whether pledging DST was for me. Then I had a summer internship at a local newspaper where my boss was a Delta. She was smart, career-oriented and kind. In fact,  I got so close to her that I mentioned that I was possibly interested in pledging the sorority the following school year. At the end of the summer, she gave me a beautiful key chain with a crystal-like elephant (elephants are one of our symbols.) attached to it. As she handed the key chain to me, she whispered, “I know I shouldn’t be giving this to you since you’re not a Delta, but I know you will be one day.” Shortly after, I read the book, “In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement,”  by Soror Paula J. Giddings, and I made the decision that I had to be a part of this grand sorority.

Zeta Psi are some steppers...

Since then, our lives have grown and changed. Some of us have gotten married. Some of us have gotten divorced. Some of us have become mothers. Some of us have become doctors. Some of us have become educators.  Some of us have moved cross country. Some of us have stayed put. Some of us have acquired property. Some of us have cut our hair. Some of us have grown locks. Some of us have grown apart. Some of us have gotten closer. And we’ve even lost one to breast cancer…And I expect more changes as time passes and we continue to grow…

Being in a sorority isn’t everything…like in all close relationships, there are misunderstandings and misdeeds…but there is something about being a part of a sisterhood that lasted and grown for decades – since January 13, 1913 to be exact – a sisterhood that was built at a critical time in this country’s history when black people – particularly women were marginalized. And through the support of this sisterhood, many of us have been able to accomplish feats that we were unlikely to accomplish alone.

And without even planning it, many of my best friends outside of my collegiate chapter happen to be Deltas! All I can say is like attracts like.

Zeta Psi, I salute you for 40 years of sisterhood, scholarship and service! Continue to encourage your members to achieve their highest potential and be a home away home on that colossal campus!

I Heart MY DST!

Any thoughts?

Zeta Psi is on YouTube!!!

 

 

 

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To Be Young and Dumb…

very cute if i say so myself...and i do:)

very cute if i say so myself...and i do:)

Hello World!!!

Happy Wednesday! I struggled whether to write about this topic, but since it has been the talk of town in the A since last week I decided to throw my two cents in the bucket as well…

So most black people across the nation have heard of the illustrious black institutions of the Atlanta University Center  (AUC) that have produced some of the nation’s greatest black leaders. It is pretty much one of the crown jewels of this city. Such notables including Dr. Martin Luther King and Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor, attended Morehouse College. Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, and Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple,” attended Spelman College. James Weldon Johnson, author of the Negro national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and Marva Collins, famed educator, attended Atlanta University and Clark College, respectively,  now known as Clark Atlanta University. And this is just a cursory list for brevity’s sake.

But since last week one of the AUC’s schools, Morehouse College, has not been in the news for its positive contributions to the nation’s brain trust. Rather it has been the news for its new dress code.  According to an article in the “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution” below are the parameters of the new dress code.

The policy details 11 expectations of students, including:

* no caps, do-rags and/or hoods in classrooms, the cafeteria, or other indoor venues

* no sun glasses worn in class or at formal programs

* no jeans at major programs, as well as no sagging pants on campus

* no clothing with derogatory or lewd messages either in words or pictures

* no wearing of clothing usually worn by women (dresses, tops, tunics, purses, pumps, etc.) on the Morehouse campus or at college-sponsored events.

Students that violate the new rules risk academic suspension.

Let me address the issues that have folk up in arms: sagging pants and cross dressing. Here in the A, lawmakers have been grappling with the saggy pants issues for the past couple of years or so. They believe this fashion statement is disrespectful and even promotes a certain thug or criminal mentality.  So this issue is nothing new.

And the other issue is cross dressing….and just for the record I am not looking for this post to be a discussion on gay rights. But apparently, many of the Morehouse College students are dressing in clothing typically associated with women’s attire to class and other campus-associated events.

So since this is my blog, I guess I need to go ahead and state my opinion. I don’t like sagging pants. I have been known to walk up to teenage boys on the street and pull up their pants without their permission. I imagine I have gotten away with this because I’m cute, haha. On one occasion, I asked this dude was his little behind cold as I could practically see it as his pants sagged way under his butt cheeks. And it was cold outside…I know he was cold and there was no way he could deny it. In fact, his boy who was was him had to smile when I told him so. In church on Sunday, one of the speakers offered to buy some belts for Christmas for some of the boys in the congregation who may not have the financial means to buy belts. It was a joke but he wasn’t joking…

Now on to the cross dressing…One of my mottos is “do you.” And I imagine that is what many of these students are thinking when they wear women’s attire on campus. All that aside, is that attire really appropriate in class?  When I was in college, it was hard enough to focus on the instructor and the coursework without any distractions. You cannot tell me that wearing women’s attire to class as a young man is not distracting to the other students. Now, I heard that some of the students believe they should be allowed to wear whatever they want as they are paying for their education. I understand that train of thought up until a certain point. I often missed days in a row of class (sorry mom and dad!) in college using that same principle. I thought since I’m paying for class I can show up when I want to…But at the same time, it would have been arrogant and maybe even delusional for me to assume the professor would give me the same attention as was given to the other students as I clearly did not respect the teacher’s time enough to show up for class.

Aside from those opinions, I also understand what it means to be “young and dumb.” When you are young and dumb, you rarely think of consequences, ramifications and implications…And to some degree, you shouldn’t…The Bible explains this principle perfectly…

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. I Corinthians 13:11

In my 36 years, I have made many a fashion statement being the proudly creative person that I am. I used the above picture because it was one of my fashion statements I guess…More than 10 years ago, I went to this club and saw this dude who looked like a pimp in his white Fedora-style hat and his wide-collared shirt. He was the business as the young folk say now…(I can’t believe I’m saying this ,but hey I am 36.) I thought to myself, “Why don’t I act like I’m one of his hoes?” So I asked this guy, who I didn’t know, if I could stage this pic with him where he was telling me to get his money. Remember that song “$itch Betta Have My Money?” That was the look I was going for…All of my girls who were with me thought I was hilarious and gutsy…It was a very cute picture…Aww, to be young and dumb…

And for the record, if I were 10 or so years younger, I would be rocking a red mohawk…I’m just sayin’. But that time has come and gone…

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…Ecclesiastes 3:1

Any thoughts?

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Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby…Let’s Talk About You and Me…

True or false?

True or false?

Hello World!!!

After a blog writing hiatus (I needed it), I am back baby! So to get this party started right, I thought I would write about a subject sure to get a few comments…That’s right, I’m talking about sex…I’ve been hesitant to discuss this topic because of its very personal nature, and trust I won’t be revealing much about myself here…but inevitably, I knew I had to bring it up…so here goes…

If you’ve attended church for at least a month, you are pleasantly surprised to know that you can contact the God who rules this universe by simply praying. It’s a definite perk of being a Christian. And if you’ve been introduced to a few scriptures particularly those in Psalm, you know that God promises to take care of those who take the time to honor Him and seek His guidance – undeniably a benefit of being a Christian. And if you are at the right church, you discover that you can meet some really good people who can be “God with skin on” when you really need to hear from God through human voices…There are countless benefits to being a Christian!

But there a few edicts that come with being a Christian that frankly aren’t that appealing…one of those is premarital sex…Apparently, if you are married, you have a license to “get ur freak on,” but if you are single, you must “flee fornication. ” (I Corinthians 6:18 if you are interested…) I started hearing about all of the many verses in the Bible that discourage premarital sex when I was a teenager…At that point, it’s all good…You are still a little scared of boys anyway…Well, let me speak for me…As a teenager, I was not ready for sex…I knew I had all sorts of strange feelings when I looked at boys I considered fine, but the idea of having sex with them was certainly farther than I wanted to go…

Where these Biblical principles get tricky is when you are fully grown and you know what to do about it…Y’all know what I mean, right? It just ain’t cute anymore when you hit 30 years old, but it clearly states in God’s word, if you love Him, you will keep his commandments…(John 14:15)…So what are single Christian women and men of a certain age supposed to do when we are no longer “never scared” when it comes to sex…Being the bibliophile that I am, you know I’ve read numerous books about the topic…the most recent book I’ve read is “Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity” by Lauren F. Winner. She makes a lot of good points about why it’s wise to wait…

I may bring up some points from her book as I write this post, but let me bring up a few reasons I think that premarital sex may not be the way to go with or without the Bible verses…By most studies, women and men are getting married later in life as time progresses…Chances are most people have dated quite a few people by the time they finally do get married…so the potential to have had several sexual partners in a lifetime is quite possible…I just have to think that eventually could be draining mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually over time…Maybe for men that would not be as much of  a factor, but from the women I know, every time you get involved with a man fully and it’s not your husband, a little piece of you dies…And it’s hard to be optimistic about dating over the long haul when you invest so much only to get back so little… ( I don’t care what the women in Sex and the City say…)

And while I believe in women’s liberation and all, we know that there are double standards in what is appropriate sexual behavior when it comes to women and men that cannot be denied…when you have sex with a man who is not emotionally invested in you, no matter what comes out of his mouth, he is not feelin’ you the same way you could be feelin’ him…A man recently told me that if he has sex with a woman he is not into, her whole house can go up in flames with her in it the moment he is done having sex with her, and he frankly wouldn’t care…That’s straight harsh, but it’s something to think about…And we all know that it takes a while for a man to get emotionally attached to a woman – typically much much longer than it takes a woman…And because men are hunters, we gotta respect the natural order of things…men respect what they have to wait for…if you just give him  “hot sex on a platter” if takes away from the hunt…

Since I’m a black woman, I have to speak from that perspective…I think much of our issues in the black community can be traced back to our loosening values when it comes to premarital sex…In a conversation I had last night with a fine man (yes, I’m talking about you 🙂 ), I told him that if all single black women in the A decided to stop having sex unless they are married, there would be some real and quantifiable results. Let’s say that today, Sunday, October 18, 2009, women declared on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse that there would be no sex without a ring…A year from today, I guarantee the marriage rate – whatever it is – would double…Women may be able to go without sex for a long, long while, but most men cannot go without sex for the same length of time…And the people who got married would be more likely to have long-lasting marriages as women and men would make choices that wouldn’t be as dependant on sexual attraction…As it stands now, when you tell a man that you are a celibate, he may stick around if really wants to be there, but he has many, many options if he suddenly decides he can’t take it anymore…

There would be no children born outside of wedlock…Yes, it’s possible to raise a healthy child as a single parent…I’ve seen it many times, but I think most single parents would rather raise their children as a two-parent household…Goodness gracious, I cannot even fathom all the changes that could come as a result of children being raised by two parents rather than one…We’ve all heard of some of the issues that children deal with when they are missing their mothers or fathers…More men would know how to be or even want to be real men because they would have seen it growing up…More women would make better choices about men because they were raised with their fathers…Poverty would decline as many single parents are poor…The jails would be less full because people would be more likely to learn responsible behavior because both parents were in their lives and were able to devote full attention to them…I know I’m skipping over a few things, but just consider what the ramifications could possibly be…

Who knows where sexually transmitted diseases come from, but I guarantee there would be less of them if people refused to engage in premarital sex…I don’t know all of the stats, but I think I’ve heard there are hundreds of STDs although only a few of them are well known – obviously HIV, HPV, herpes, etc.

I could go on, and this is by no means an organized discourse on the topic of premarital sex….these are just some random thoughts…The older I get, the more demystifying the term “sin” is to me…I simply think that sin is something that harms our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with others…I think God declared that premarital sex is a sin because He knows how far reaching the effects are…

Any thoughts?

P.S. Yes, I know that one of the effects of this edict would be that the premium would go up on prostitutes…that’s another topic for another day…

P.P.S. And maybe the music about sex would get better too…Although everyone seems to be having sex nowadays – married or not – no one can really sing about sex like the old school singers…I remember the first time I saw the video for Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” I think I was six years old…I didn’t know what sexual healing was, but I was sure it was good…