What Mr. Costello Is Reading Right Now: Hadiya Roderique
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Hi MTW!
This is a fantastic personal essay about a black woman's struggle for success and belonging. Hadiya is Canadian and a fellow ultimate player. I can't resist sharing this one!
--C
Hadiya Roderique is a lawyer who left private practice five years ago. She is now working on her PhD at the University of Toronto. Looking back at her Bay Street career, she says she misses some things about the legal world, but ‘I don’t miss the isolation and the nagging sense that other people didn’t feel I belonged.’
Photography by Luis Mora
Black on Bay Street: Hadiya Roderique had it all. But still could not fit in
My parents moved to Canada to offer me the promise of the North American dream. But on my way to becoming a lawyer, I learned that success isn't necessarily about merit. It's also about fitting in. As a person of colour, that's a roadblock that comes up again and again.
"Later, a fellow law student, a white woman, asked me if I was going to wear my natural hair to interviews. I hadn't thought of that. I'd worn it naturally since I started university. But how black is black enough, and how black is too much? Should I straighten my hair, which I hadn't done in seven years? I didn't want to work for a firm that wouldn't want me as I am. But I knew this principle might come at a cost. After all, I'd never met a black lawyer with natural hair."
Hi MTW! As a teacher and a coach, I am always trying to get my students and players to access their entire human experience and apply it to the skills required for our sport or class. In teaching 9th graders, I have a lot of fun reading different kinds of narratives throughout the semester and imploring my students to follow their own path for a goal for which they would be a "stone through water." As a coach, my players must have a mindfulness of their bodies and their process in order to perform at their peak. The hidden message behind all of these lessons is that the tasks we perform day-to-day in any context, be it the classroom or the playing field, should require our entire concentration in the moments that we are processing them. Jaylen Brown: ‘We’re having some of the same problems we had 50 years ago. Some things have changed a lot but other factors are deeply embedded in our society.’ Photograph: Brian Babineau/NBAE/Getty Images Jaylen Brown of the Celtic
Hi MTW! Yesterday Wyatt Walker's obituary came across my news feed and I was jolted a bit because of a chapter that I teach out of Malcolm Gladwell's book "David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants." The chapter is titled "Wyatt Walker" and it tells the story of some of the critical moves made during the Civil Rights Movement. Wyatt Walker was the architect behind some of the peaceful protests in Birmingham, AL that led to a national perception shift of the treatment of blacks in the South. Read Walker's obituary here: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/obituaries/wyatt-tee-walker-dead.html?referer=http://m.facebook.com "Dr. Walker joined the fledgling Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1961 and served until 1964 as its executive director and, unofficially, as Dr. King’s right-hand man. At the S.C.L.C., he devised a structured fund-raising strategy and organized numerous protests, including a serie
Mateo Rull 12th grade Social Justice Magazine Club Frontier Regional School 9/28/2017 “ I am white. That’s all you know about me. Am I privileged based on that alone? And assuming I am, should I feel guilt? And what should I do about it?" Stand up comedian Omar Ismail answers this long and ambiguous question in the most graceful way: comparing white privilege to height, liberating himself from the controversy (which is bound to happen regardless) of racial debate; debate that in fact should not exist at all. A debate that originated from sheer ignorance in times past and that somehow we haven’t managed as a species to overcome. “Consider it this way, All I know about you is that you’re tall. Does that mean you don’t deserve the can of tuna on the higher shelf? Should you feel guilty about getting the tuna from the top shelf? Does that mean short people can’t get the tuna? Does that mean there aren’t any disadvantages of being tall?” No, No, No and No. What tru
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