Just Another Day

Rosa Parks is dead...I saw the news paper reports about it and watched the TV news accounts of it. I did not really think about it until I read a friends blog.
Ms. Parks lived a life of "quiet dignity", that's the phrase the media used over and over again. How quiet was it really? Was she screaming inside at the most certain injustices that she lived every day before and after that historic bus ride? How much of the indignities do we keep inside, never letting but our closest allies know our true feelings? When do we get to stop suffering in silence ?

Don't get me wrong,I am not nor will I be a so called "shrinking violet" there are many times when I am to all appearances, in the role of "Angry Black Woman"(although I think that would be a great super hero persona)but the some of the time I feel forced into (due to time or place) a inwardly angry silence.
Example: I'm at a work function and I am asked to bring a contingent of the young people I work with to meet and mingle with some of the Board Members. I know it's "parade the young brown queer faces it looks good for the agency time" so in silent anger I comply.

white board member : So are most of these kids homeless?
me: No, some live at home some live in college dorms, some have their own apartment and some live with extended or families of choice.
white board member: Really, well are a lot of them involved in the DYS system?
me: No
white board member: So what are they into? What do the like to do?
me : Well that young man is a college student, that young woman just finished massage therapy school and that young man is in high school, a tap dancer and wants to be an interior designer.
white board member: Really ...Did he bring his tap shoes?
me: I got to go.

So here's to all the lives lived in "quiet dignity", take a deep breath because sometimes it's hard to keep the screaming inside....