Real Talk: When Does America See Herself?

Given her present state of dysfunction and absolute turmoil, I honestly do not know how America goes through this and does not stop to do some real serious introspection of herself and her "why". Really I don't...

As much as we claim to hate donald trump, and trust me I do, he has mostly exposed flaws that have been historically accepted and tolerated in a system that is, and has been, broken for a very long time. 

donald trump exposed, exploited, and took full advantage of America's most vulnerable weaknesses. He exposed and took full advantage of America's innate opposition and undeniable aversion to goodwill and humanity, as is proven by her history. Who didn't understand the meaning of "making America great again"? Of course, you knew. We all knew...

This country was built on racism. It is at her very core and freely flows in her DNA. 

Racism is as American as baseball, apple pie, and The Star Spangled Banner (Higgi-Ism). Believe it!

Racism trumps all for America, pun intended. White People will endure and suffer the worst of deprivation. As long as that suffering is in the interest, in name of, and supportive of racism, anti-Black racism specifically. She will spite herself to uphold racism, it doesn't matter. trump understood that and took advantage of it. 

Racism is a mental health disorder... 

The republicans have effectively been consumed by the beast(s) they fed. They energized their base by feeding them flames of hate, racism, homophobia, and xenophobia for years. Their party has now been consumed. They are no more... 

The Democrats sat back pretending that still we are in days of decorum and civility where statesmanship matters and dignity  has some value. They pride themselves on taking the lone traveled high road, traversed by only them. The repugs' aren't up there as they could give a damn! The Dems allowed the republicans to play with fire as though it wasn't a dangerous game and no one would ever truly get burned. They proceeded as though the beasts being fed were harmless pet [issues]. 

So here we are, the whole damn country is being consumed by distractions of the beasts, multiple fires are ablaze, and everyone put in place to save and protect the nation, is sitting on the sidelines, scatching their heads and other parts, pretending not to know how to contain the beast or put the fire out...

Again, how does America go through this and never stop to assess what the f*** is wrong with her? When does she ask herself why so many Americans were so willingly drawn to this level of hate and corruption? What is to be said about those who so easily caved, didn't resist, or who rationalized away America's return to the worst of her sins? 

How does America not examine her own pathologies that she has assigned to others so to avoid seeing herself? 

For America to see humanity in her victims, Black Americans specifically, it requires that she see the inhumanity in herself (Higgi-Ism). She will never be ready to do that and will therefore maintain her tolerance of those hell bent on distorting, erasing, or rewriting her story and that of her victims, no matter the cost.

It speaks volumes that America could not ward off an internal attack effectively rendering her destroyed from within. It is proof that she was never a super power but perhaps instead, a super bully with no real bite to even protect herself. The lies we will tell ourselves...

They say that there's nothing they can do about maga and the likes of donald trump. Trust me, if donald trump was a Black man or even a white female, they would have stopped this s*** a long time ago. He is the epitome of deplorable in every deplorable sense of the word, but he is white, he is male, and he will, therefore, be tolerated...

White people, including white women, will always tolerate and protect the white male. The white woman gives birth to the white male, she's married to him, he's her daddy. She's not going to turn her back on him no matter how bizarre, morally and/or emotionally bankrupt, no matter how corrupt. donald trump is all of that and more, but he is white, he is male, and so he is...

Every person who supported, enabled, and dare I say, who voted for or cheered him on, should be held accountable. At a minimum, they must never be forgiven or allowed to forget...

We stand where we are in 2026 because America has never reconciled or acknowledged her past. Unless and until she does that, in a way such that she is brutally honest with at least herself, we will remain or be here again in the future, if in fact, there is a future left for America to be had. Certainly, she will never be the same. Be that good or bad, how does America not examine herself? 🤷🏾

~ Miss Higgi Really Wants to Know... 

Photo Source: Unknown 
Content: Converse Print Ad

Anti-Black Racism is Profitable

Photo Source: Unknown

Here we go again... 

Anti-Black racism is alive and well and must be damn profitable.

How many people sat around a marketing table and thought long and hard that an image requiring little imagination to visualize a white klan hood and dangling feet of a lynch victim was an appropriate image to use for advertisement or sale of anything, especially a product widely marketed to and consumed by Black folks? 

How many Black voices were seated at that table or have they all been fired because diversity no longer matters? 

Who thought it an appropriate ad at any time, but especially at a time when Black folks are turning up as strange fruit hanging from trees across the nation? All who, by the way, are deemed suicides requiring no further investigation. Case closed. 

For the record, Black folks don't engage in the klan's favorite activity. Black folks are not lynching ourselves. Lynching, call it by its name...

Who thought this an appropriate ad? 

The company has since pulled this Converse ad but why was it ever released? 

In case you didn't know, Nike owns Converse. 

I don't know the numbers, but I'm going to very comfortably guess that very large segments of the consumer group for both brands are Black people globally. 

When I first saw the ad, my immediate thought was, this can't be real. I had to Google it to be sure. By that time Nike/Converse had cleansed the internet of all visual proof of the ad. Fortunately, social media had already captured and shared it. It will not just go away. 

Kamala Harris, a Black female candidate for president of the United States, organized an entire political campaign strategy centering Converse sneakers; 'Chucks and Pearls' was her slogan, undoubtedly boosting sales. Has she released a statement about this? 

Let us not forget just a few years back when Black people rewarded Nike with our loyalty spending our dollars on their products over other brands because of their very public business decision to support Colin Kaepernick who, at the time, was being blackballed for taking a knee in the interest of the Black community and protection of hard-won civil rights. 

While other folks were burning or discarding their Nikes, Black folks were buying Nikes in significant numbers. Giving the appearance of standing with Colin, therefore the Black community, proved quite lucrative for the company. They made billions playing Black folks then, and they're 'Just Doing It' again now. Of course, they're "sorry"...

The Congressional Black Caucus is meeting this weekend. Will this matter be discussed? Will they release a statement? 

There is no wonder about what would or will be the response of this present administration whose rhetoric and policies have served to incite heightened anti-Black racism. We can expect that any statement from them would be a celebratory high five. 

I remember as a kid, my first pair of name brand sneakers was Converse. My mother had five children, all who wanted a pair of Converse sneaks. Of course, she couldn't afford them. I remember going to the knock-off section in sporting goods stores to buy "slightly irregular" sneaks at deeply discounted prices. That's how more than a few of us got our Chucks in the 70s. They were the hot sneak that all the kids just had to have. 

This is not the first time Nike has swam in the dirty pond of racially charged water. They swim not alone, however. Numerous retailers can be cited that have blatantly insulted the Black community, pulled the ad, offered an apology along with a scholarship, or gave some Black person a prominent and highly visible job with no real power to appease the community, only to turn around and do it all over again (i.e. H&M, Dove, Prada, Gucci, and more recently despite an ongoing and highly effective boycott, Target). 

It is estimated that between 70 and 72% of the National Basketball Association (NBA) players are Black. These highly influential players drive huge sales margins for whatever products they simply mention or wear, much less endorse or brand. 

Nike is a main supplier of apparel for the NBA. Prominent players such as Michael Jordan and LeBron James have shoe lines with Nike. Have they released a statement?

Nike is a major supplier of apparel throughout the NBA and likely other sports. Has NBA leadership released a statement? 

How about the Black players? Have they released a statement, threatened a boycott, or are they being obediently quiet as they just dribble?

It must be profitable to insult the Black community, offer the obligatory oops', realize profits, extend a "heartfelt" apology, until they 'just do it' again. 

Obviously, there is no accountability or real consequence for offending Black consumers, who like Black lives, just don't matter...

Again, who thought this an appropriate print ad, now or even during the infamous postcard days of jim crow? 

Anti-Black racism is alive and well and seemingly remains pretty damn profitable.

Corporate Response:

On September 18, 2026, Converse issued a formal statement apologizing for the material, telling media outlets: 

"We're sorry. We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong. We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared. This should not have happened, and we will do better."

(Source Google AI)

~ Miss Higgi Says,

#apologynotaccepted

What To The American Worker Means Labor Day?

There's something hypocritical about celebrating labor here in the United States. Our government and the 1% has never valued or respected the American worker upon whose back they earn their wealth and whatever level of productivity realized in the US.

America is a nation built on free or cheap labor. From the days of back breaking chattel slavery, to creation of American unions, which historically discriminated against Black workers denying them union membership, therefore the ability to work and feed their families, to the forced labor of children, exploitation of the workforce has always been the name of the game in the US.

Capitalism, also the name of the American game, depends on cheap or free labor. It also depends upon division of the masses between the classes and the races. The 1% lives to manipulate each these factors.

Recently, donald trump declared that American workers have too many holidays and should work more, as he golfs on more days than we can count.

We have a legislature that earns a healthy salary for working six months or less per calendar year for which they receive full healthcare benefits that they regularly vote to deny American workers. They are a body that never fails to grant themselves frequent raises while simultaneously voting to freeze the federal minimum wage at $7.25 since 2009, well below a living wage in the year 2026.

The American government further disrespects the American worker by repeatedly moving the goal post for the age of retirement presumably because American workers are not dying fast enough, surviving to reap the benefits of their investment reducing the government's ability to take risks with their money. Fifty used to be the retirement age. The government now thinks that 70 is closer to the appropriate age for the American worker to retire and collect our money they hoarded in the name of social security.

The same government has decided that not before 59 1/2, is the American worker capable of making decisions about what to do with the money they were forced to put in a 401K instead of the 1% employer providing a guaranteed pension.

I could go on but the point is clear. America could give a damn about the American worker. So it's kind of ridiculous for workers to celebrate the hypocrisy of Labor Day, a day the government gives American workers while exploiting them on the remaining 364 days of the year.

Labor Day simply marks the beginning of the end of a season. I hope your summer was good!

They Removed the Mask and Walked Away

A Facebook friend, Rodney Barnes, is The Mastermind behind this AI image which so accurately depicts the fallacy behind the facade of DEI. 

The way these corporations and other organizations walked away from DEI, so quickly, absent resistance, little to no pushback, tells you that their gestures were performative and the ability to stop pretending spelled R-E-L-I-E-F. They were getting paid megabucks to pretend so they tolerated the performance. Many performed well...

Their leadership teams and the make up of their rank and file told their true story. Why are all the Black Children in the Cafeteria Sitting Together? Why are all the secretaries and low level employees not white and all too often, the least paid no matter their position? We conveniently pretend to not know the answer to these questions...

Although DEI has become the buzz word for Black people or people of color, what most people did not know was that more white people were holding DEI positions than Black folks, and getting paid handsomely to do so.

So, when this administration decided to destroy all that is DEI, they displaced more white employees from that line of work than other folks. Maybe they did know the impact of their actions and saw this injury to some white folks as a utilitarian deed, minor casualties to be absorbed by some in the interest of the greater good to make America great again. 🤷🏾

Companies avoided backlash and public scrutiny by being performative in their commitment to DEI and making public declarations of said commitment that their private actions did not support.

It was probably killing them that they had to put up the pretense. So, when they were given permission to walk away, that's what most of them did. Without a fight, they picked up their toys, snatched off their masks, and simply walked away happy to have to pretend or perform no more...

The Times In Which We Live...

Yesterday I saw a young Black girl in the store with an older white woman. She was about 11 or 12 years old. Something about her or maybe my heightened awareness of recent incidents of harm being done to unsuspecting Black folks, made me want to ask lil' Sis, if she was okay. I hope my eyes conveyed my concern such that she knew I was a safe harbor if she needed it. 

I'm not paranoid, or even racist, as some will deflect, but these are the times in which we are living. Two white folks were recently convicted for brutally abusing several Black children they adopted. Lynchings are on the rise. We are to believe that a young Black wrestler killed himself by rolling himself in a wrestling mat. Let us not forget Tamla Horsford, the 40-year-old Black mother of five athletic sons living in an all white community, found dead in the backyard after a sleepover with white soccer moms. 

The stories of abuse or death of unsuspecting Black boys by their white "friends" is off the chain. Even white folks on social media are warning Black folks to be more careful and not so trusting in white spaces. I hear them...

I have said it for a long time now, and I will continue to say it, if white people knew the true depth of barbarity in their history, instead of spreading a narrative that they should clutch their pearls and fear Black folks, they would wonder why we're not afraid of them. 👀 

Be careful folks. We must be careful about the situations in which we put ourselves, certainly our children. How many of you hold inside or come home from work or some other integrated situation complaining about some negative experience you had with a white person, overtly or passively? What makes you then think that somehow our children can navigate that? Without the proper tools, they cannot... 

We are not protecting them when we don't talk to them about racism and discrimination, past or present. We do them no favor when we don't teach them to recognize the red flags, instead, we harm them. We harm, not protect them, by not passing down stories, not telling them their history (the good to fortify them, the bad to prepare them), not sharing our personal experiences, not instilling in them the skill of discernment to be on alert at all times. 

There's a way to do that without exchanging their innocence of youth for a constant state of fear or paranoia or making them feel tense or on guard at all times but rather, alert and aware of the signs to notice when things are out of sorts. They will know to err on the side of caution and not second guess their intuition telling themselves that something's wrong with them when it is not. Teach them to assess their surroundings to know good and bad people in their proximity. Teach them to identify good folks, both Black and white, who can be trusted to help in these situations. 

Have you all seen the social media posts where non-Black parents are teaching their children that if they're in a situation that doesn't feel safe, to find a Black woman to protect them. 👀 Sidebar: Black folks are feeling some kinda' way about this for a bunch of valid reasons. Again, however, it's not paranoia, it's survival. 

Is this fair? Are these pleasant conversations to have with our Black children? No, but they are necessary conversations that can be a matter of life or death. More importantly, it is responsible parenting...

We are hearing too many stories from far too many Black families left with no resolve, no justice, therefore, no peace, after an inexplicable and sudden death or missing of a loved one. May each family so affected, find justice and peace... 

~ Miss Higgi Prays 🙏🏿

Meet Joan Trumpauer, A White Woman Who Traded Her Privilege to Stand in Her Truth

We've all at least pondered what we would have done had we lived when America was "great". Well, here we are.

We are reliving a continuation of the worst of America's history. These are the times one promotes in chants to "Make America Great Again". This is the "great" they want to return to?

Meet Joan Trumpauer. She was a real one. She is a white woman who traded her privilege to stand in her truth. She put her life on the line for what she believed. Are you a Joan?

We need more Joans at this time. History does not allow that you just look the other way, pretending it's not that bad or that it's not really happening. History does not allow you to be ignorant or silent...

So, what are you going to do? I challenge us all to channel our innermost Joan and get to work. White folks, especially you "liberals", white women in particular, I need you to be the ally you say you are. 👀 Roll up your sleeves...

Pass on Joan's story to educate and inspire others.  Story Source: Informatify Facebook page 

She was a white Southern girl descended from slave owners — raised by a mother who believed in segregation. At nineteen, she threw all of that away, and it landed her on death row. And that was only the beginning of what she was willing to lose...

Her name was Joan Trumpauer, and she grew up in Arlington, Virginia, on the comfortable side of every line the segregated South had drawn.

Her family had once owned slaves in Georgia. Her mother was a staunch segregationist. Everything about Joan's world was arranged to reward her for looking away — to keep her safe, protected, and silent inside a system built for people who looked like her. The path in front of her was the easy one: finish school, marry well, live quietly, never make trouble.

But Joan couldn't stop seeing what that comfort was built on. Raised in the church, she kept colliding with the unbearable contradiction between what she'd been taught about justice and the injustice she watched every day. And at some point she made a decision that would cost her nearly everything: she would no longer stand on the comfortable side of it.

In 1961, at nineteen, she joined the Freedom Riders.

Their idea sounded almost mundane. Black and white Americans would ride interstate buses together and use the same waiting rooms and counters, regardless of race. No weapons, no threats — just a refusal to obey laws built on inequality.

In 1961, that refusal could get you killed. Freedom Riders were beaten in broad daylight, buses firebombed, mobs waiting at stations with chains and clubs.

Joan knew all of it. She boarded the bus anyway.

When she reached Jackson, Mississippi, she was arrested almost immediately. And then she was offered the easy way out that would follow her for years: pay the fine, leave Mississippi, go home, forget the whole thing.

She refused.

So they sent her to Parchman Farm — the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a place designed not merely to punish people but to break them. And here is a detail that tells you everything about what she endured: because Parchman had no women's wing, nineteen-year-old Joan was held in a cell on death row, crammed in with seventeen other women.

She spent about two months there. The heat was suffocating. The guards leaned on psychological cruelty as much as physical confinement, subjecting the women to invasive, degrading "examinations" designed purely to show they could do anything they wanted. They were making clear, Joan said, that they had total power — and probably would use it.

And through all of it, the guards reminded her of the one thing they thought she'd forgotten: she was white. Unlike the Black prisoners beside her, she could leave anytime — she only had to say she was sorry.

She never did.

Most people, after Parchman, would have gone home. Joan went deeper.

She dropped out of Duke and enrolled at Tougaloo College in Jackson — the first white student at the historically Black school. Her reasoning was pure, defiant logic: if whites would riot over Black students integrating white colleges, what would they do about a white student integrating a Black one? At Tougaloo she worked alongside Medgar Evers, met Martin Luther King Jr., roomed with the writer Anne Moody, and became the first white member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

Her family couldn't understand it. Threatening letters arrived. And to the segregationists of Mississippi, her real crime was never simply breaking their laws — it was choosing empathy over the privilege she'd been handed at birth.

Then came May 28, 1963 — and the moment that would put her face in history books.

Joan was one of roughly fourteen activists who staged a sit-in at the whites-only lunch counter of the Woolworth's in downtown Jackson. Anne Moody was there. So was professor John Salter, and chaplain Ed King. They sat down. They ordered food. That was all.

What followed became one of the most violent sit-ins of the entire Civil Rights Movement. A mob surrounded them and, for nearly three hours, unleashed everything it had. A Black student, Memphis Norman, was dragged to the floor and beaten by a former policeman. Salter was burned with cigarettes and hit with brass knuckles. The crowd screamed "communist" and worse, and a man pointed straight at Joan and called her a "race traitor." They poured ketchup, mustard, sugar, and spray paint over the activists' heads, spat on them, and punched them.

The police stood nearby and watched. No one stepped in.

And a photographer named Fred Blackwell captured it — three people at a lunch counter, dripping with condiments, ringed by faces contorted with hate, refusing to move. The picture went around the world. It became one of the defining images of the movement, because it showed something no argument could: that sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is simply refuse to get up.

The danger only escalated. Three weeks after Woolworth's, Medgar Evers was murdered in his own driveway. The next year, Joan briefed a young activist named Michael Schwerner on how to survive as a white organizer in Mississippi — one day before Schwerner was kidnapped and murdered alongside Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.

And one night in 1964, on a dark road near Canton, the Ku Klux Klan surrounded the car Joan was riding in and beat the driver. They escaped. She later learned the Klan had meant to kill her that night — and when they failed, they murdered three other activists instead.

She kept going anyway. She helped organize the March on Washington. She was arrested again and again — taking part, over the years, in dozens of sit-ins and demonstrations. She never stopped showing up.

Eventually Joan Trumpauer Mulholland became a teacher, spending decades in the classroom before founding a foundation to teach young people about the movement. Now in her eighties, she still speaks to students across America. And when they ask where she found the courage, her answer is disarmingly plain: she never thought of herself as especially brave. She simply knew what was right — and once you truly know a thing is right, she says, pretending you don't becomes impossible.

She summed up her whole life in a single sentence, back in 1963: "I'm trying to help America become what it says it is."

She wasn't forced into any of it. She was never denied a single right she risked her life to win for others. She could have lived a comfortable, quiet life and lost nothing.

Instead, at nineteen, she crossed the line she'd been warned her whole life never to cross. And she never crossed back.

Her story leaves a question for the rest of us. When we see injustice in our own time — and it costs something to say so — which side of the line are we standing on? Had you ever heard of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland before today? Tell us below, and share her name forward. The quiet ones who refuse to look away deserve to be remembered too.

Source: Informatify (Facebook)

                          She earned it!

The Dearly Departed

America woke this morning to news that senator lindsey graham died. Speculation is rampant that mitch mcConnell is at least brain dead, but no confirmation has been made. Good Sunday Morning...

A friend said, mostly because of her job, that she refrains from making jubilant posts on social media following incidents of death or harm to others. I understand, and given normal circumstances, I would agree.

I must say, however, that we are not living in normal times. We are living in a time and place of absolute chaos and incivility. Our usual defenders are not fighting for us, not our legal system, our media outlets, our legislators. No one! The American people have been left to our own devices. 

Enter, social media where We The People gather to vent...

This nation is being led by the worst of the worst. Cancer left untreated festers, grows, and metastasizes over time. Untreated cancer left to consume America has adversely affected us all.

Taking the high road, being kind and gracious and civil in the face of such incivility has not served us well. Do we need to stoop to the lows where others dwell? No, not necessarily. If ever, however, there was a time to respond in kind, it is now.

If, in fact, some of the comments seem venomous or mean spirited, it is because the deceased earned such responses.

One is due in death the same level of decorum, respect, civility, and compassion by which they lived and afforded others during their lifetime. The inevitable incident of death does not make a horrible person a better person. They are simply a dead person who was horrible and who most folks, including their family, will remember accordingly. There will be no fake tears or other usual acts of mourning.

If you live a horrible life, that's how people will remember you. What is new, however, is that moreso now, people are prone to express how they truly feel about the 'dearly departed' in the immediate. We have been conditioned to not speak ill of the dead.

These departed others, however, are not friends or family members who, although we didn't particularly care for, we still might owe some degree of respect. These are politicians and other public figures, people who were in positions of power who brought us harm. People who probably wielded their power irresponsibly and deliberately in ways to negatively affect our lives. They will be gone but the impact of the pain and suffering they caused will long endure. So, if public response to their demise is less than civil, they earned it. They are not our neighbor, friend, or loved one.

Justice scalia was the first public figure I recall being brutally scorned post death seemingly even before his eyes were closed. He was a horrible person, as was lindsey, as was mitch, as was rush, as is elon, as is trump (the celebration will be massive and global - we will experience world peace for as long as the celebration lasts, earning him posthumously, his shamelessly desired Nobel Prize 🤷🏾).

The list of potential candidates for the list of public figures of ill repute, is infinite. It encompasses more names than I could ever cite. The difference is that previously we waited for history to judge these people. In these times, however, there is no need to wait for history. History is being written about them in real time, even during their life.

They were/are horrible, horrible people. May they have an eternal reunion in hell...

FN: If these people were your loved or special ones and you ignored, excused, condoned, or remained silent as they committed their damning deeds, you were complicit in your silence. You were quiet and unbothered then, please be quiet and unbothered now. Refrain from lashing at others not sensitive to your time of sorrow. Speak not, as you spoke not when your 'dearly departed' was still here unapologetically causing grief and wreaking havoc upon the others of us...

~ Miss Higgi Says