Whitney Smart
Bio
Certified Life Coach & Workshop Facilitator specializing in Self-Awareness, Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Resilience coaching. I also write a sometimes.
Stories (37/0)
Black In Corporate
When I started my corporate career experience, I never could have foreseen the many difficult life lessons I would learn that would shape me into who I am today. Most of my time in that world spanned my 20s and early 30s, and while I was definitely mature for my age, I had no idea what I was in for. I unfortunately had to learn the very hard way that not only was I not allowed to make mistakes as a Black woman, any mistakes I did make would live with me in ways it wouldn't for others. I learned at all times, I was being held to a different standard than my counterparts, as most Black people are in their given professions.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in Journal
Dear Black People: Nothing Replaces Therapy.
The last few months of being a human being on this planet have been tough. For Black people, it's been devastating. We have openly witnessed and watched our community members being murdered and lynched in the streets like they are nothing. We don't lynch animals so I can't even make that comparison, nor would I want to. That's something that society has apparently reserved only for Black people. The videos that are circulating are, in the words of Killer Mike, murder porn. I read an article yesterday about a bar in Long Island, my stomping grounds in the US, that was actually taking bets on how many shooting deaths there would be over the Labour Day weekend in Chicago and New York City, with the winner being offered a cash prize. Their Twitter post with a picture of the gambling board literally said, "Let the shooting sprees begin!" I want you to take this in for a moment. A bunch of people really believed that the best use of their time was to spend their hard earned money betting on how many people would die? Now the fact that they specifically chose Chicago and NYC, two cities whose gun violence happens predominantly in lower income, Black communities and other communities of colour tells you everything you need to know about their feelings towards us. Think about the privilege and arrogance a human being has to have to do something like this. Acknowledge the fact that they knew there could only be one winner and were willing to lose their money over this. That is how much they do not care about Black or Brown lives. That is the kind of hatred and racism that is alive and well in some white communities. There were 25 unique names of people who bet. 68 people liked the post on Twitter. This is just the one we found out about. Like all the incidences of police brutality against Black people that go unrecorded, who knows how many more bars like these exist with this type of reprehensible behaviour happening.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in Psyche
Get Out
I’ve been processing and coming to terms with several different things lately. One of them is the realization that I have (unknowingly) been in the presence of people who did not like me because of the colour of my skin; or worst, people who didn’t like Black people in general but made an “exception” for me. Now at first glance depending on who is reading this, that may not sound like that big of a deal or revelation. Most Black people know at any given time that if they are in a room full of people who do not predominantly look like them no matter the ethnicity, there is going to be a strong likelihood that there will be a significant amount of said people who do not like them. These are microaggressions that Black people experience literally every day and as a whole, we’ve developed a pretty thick skin in dealing with it.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in The Swamp
Dear Black Athletes & Entertainers: You Are Healers.
Last week Sunday August 23rd, a 29-year-old man by the name of Jacob Blake was shot in the back 7 times by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was shot in front of his three small children who were in the car. The latest shooting of an unarmed black person by police triggered a rash of protests across the nation. The NBA,which had just restarted its league in "bubbles" located in Orlando, FL stopped all games for several days as the players struck in protest of the continued police brutality towards the Black community. There were confirmed reports that a lot of players came very close to leaving the bubble to return home and join the fight on the ground for equality and social justice. There was a palpable heaviness in the air, and between the racial and political tensions stoked by a racist presidential administration with the backdrop of the coronavirus, the energy was at a very low point. Then Chadwick Boseman, our beloved colloquial King, passed away on the Friday and it seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in Motivation
Our King Is Dead: Why Chadwick Boseman's Death Hits So Hard.
On Friday August 28, 2020 while I was out celebrating my cousin's 29th birthday and her last year in her 20s, 3 news notifications hit my phone within minutes of each other, all from reputable news sources. Chadwick Boseman had passed away from colon cancer at the age of 43.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in Geeks
Dear White Parents of Biracial/Black Children: Who Is Showing Your Kids How To Navigate The Weight of Their Blackness?
Being Black is a noun, a verb and an adjective. Most people who identify as Black refer to the colour of their skin. However Blackness is also a cultural identity for a lot of us. As someone whose parents are both Black, I never had to question the skin I was in. Whenever I went anywhere, people would look at me and know that I was Black. I was never asked what I was mixed with or had to go through the guessing game of "what are you?" People didn't fetishize my hair (this was the mid 80s and early 90s) so I didn't have to deal with that either. That wasn't the case for my little sister. On my mom's side, I am the oldest and I have a younger sister. We are 5 years apart in age and we have different fathers. Hers is White. Mine is Black. Growing up with a Black mother and biracial Black sister, we constantly got asked questions about if we were really related. Or how could my mom be my sisters mom? Again, these were the 90s and most non-Black kids didn't understand blended families or single parenthood. My sister and I ended up being the unicorns of our social circles. Whenever my mom would show up at a parent teacher conference night for my sister, there was always this quizzical look from me to my sister to my mom if they didn't already know our family. Honestly, even as a kid I found that exhausting and annoying. But people are people so it was what it was.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in Families
Dear South Asian People: We (Black People) Are NOT The Problem.
It is only Thursday, and yet this week alone has felt like a lifetime. Between the shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old unarmed Black father who was shot in front of his kids 7 times in the back on Sunday, or the Republican National Convention which started on Monday and has spewed hatred and fear of Black people to their primarily white Anglo base all week, this week has been soul-suckingly long already. There have been protests raging in the United States, NBA players have announced they are boycotting (striking technically) the games that were scheduled to be played and MLB and MLS teams are following suit, standing in solidarity with their athletic colleagues. And in the midst of all of this, Black people are facing another all-too familiar attack from another marginalized and racialized group of people, who have suffered similar traumas due to colonialism, white supremacy, racism and the class system. As some of you in the Black community have heard, there is a popular Indo-Caribbean restaurant that is frequented by us and recently, the manager of one of the locations who happens to be a family member of the owner of the restaurant made some extremely racist and ignorant comments on social media regarding the current state of affairs between law enforcement and the Black community. His comments have caused backlash and quite a stir, some calling for complete boycotts of their businesses both here in Toronto and in Trinidad & Tobago. As someone who has Indo-Caribbean friends, I really wanted to take a moment to address some of the history and foundation of where this stems from. It’s roots are deep in the very white supremacist, racist and anti-Black rhetoric we are currently witnessing.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in The Swamp
Thug(s)
I remember very distinctly the first time a white person used the term "thug" to me and I knew they really meant "N*****." I was working for a Fortune 500 company in their Supply Chain division as a budding manager. I had built out and ran a home delivery program for this company and managed a P&L of about $30 million dollars annually. It was the most stressful yet rewarding time of my life. I had received Executive Leadership awards from my senior leadership team and had been recognize company wide for my contributions. Exceptional customer service skills have always been one of my strongest attributes and I prided myself on being able to negotiate and manage tough customer service situations. There were many a time where my company president sent me issues to resolve and trusted me implicitly to make decisions on what the right course of action was. I said all this not to brag in any way, but more to provide context of my work ethic and standing at this particular point in time at this company. I was well respected and had worked my ass off to be so.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in The Swamp
WAP vs. You Shook Me All Night Song
I absolutely love music. From the moment I was born, I was unknowingly being trained in good music. Funny (and true) sidebar story: My mom was terrified of SIDS. If you are old enough to know or remember anything about the 80's, there was a period of time were there was an increase of infants dying in their sleep. They sometimes called it "crib death," but it was SIDS which stands for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the sudden unexplained death of a child of less than one year of age. My mom had this idea that if she played music to me on the radio when I was sleeping, that somehow the music would call me back from the Light if my little baby Spirit decided it had had enough of this planet already. Irrational, I know. Makes no scientific sense, I know. Totally a mom-logic thing? Absolutely. And really kinda sweet in an odd way! But in reality, all that happened was that I was being subliminally programmed to good ass 70's and 80's music!
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in The Swamp
I Got Sent To America
In the summer of 1998, I went to spend some time with my dad in New York. He and my oldest sister had moved there almost two years prior and I really missed spending time with them. I remember talking to my dad on the phone about coming and how exciting it would be. He spoke to my mom, they sorted some stuff out, and voila! I was New York bound. New York in June 1998 was were it was AT! I had never been exposed to Black American culture as a teenager so this was my first foray into it all. My dad lived in Rosedale, Queens at the time and it was a predominantly black neighbourhood back then. I remember the smells of street meat on Jamaica Ave, the dollar vans that would take us anywhere we wanted to go that operated faster than the buses. I remember the food, especially a New York slice dripping in cheesy (but oily) goodness or the Chinese food that wasn't even close to authentic Chinese food, but tasted oh so good! I remember the music. DMX dropped his iconic first album that summer. Everyone in NY was going nuts because he was the hardest rapper to hit the streets in a minute. Sigh. Amazing memories.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in Education
Courage
Brene Brown is one of my favourite humans in the entire world. I mean that. She came into my life via a Netflix special she did called “A Call To Courage.” It was a brilliant talk within which she touched on several different topics, including her trademark dissection of shame, bravery, courage and vulnerability. If you’ve ever listened to her TED Talks, podcast or seen her on Super Soul Sundays on the OWN Network, you’ll know that Brene is extremely funny, incredibly smart, a total academic and a great teacher. There was a line she said in the special (well there were several, really) but this was one that really stood out to me. She was talking about what she had learned after 20 years of research on courage, vulnerability and bravery and she said “if you’re brave with your life, (if) you choose to live in the arena, you’re going to get your assed kicked. You are going to fall, you are going to fail; you are going to know heartbreak. It’s a choice.” She then went on to describe her definition of vulnerability which she says is not about winning or losing. “It’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.”
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in Motivation
Dear White People: (Please) Mind Your Business. We’re Just Living While Black!
A few weeks ago a girlfriend of mine asked me to volunteer some of my time to help her out with a women’s retreat. She is a health and wellness coach and was facilitating a paint session in a beautiful park in Toronto on a sunny but breezy Sunday afternoon. We got there and started setting up the materials, laying out the canvases, paint brushes and other supplies the ladies would need. The women on the retreat were a local church group and were comprised of predominantly black women. They had had a wonderful weekend filled with different activities that helped them focus on their spiritual and personal growth and commitment to their faith. On this Sunday, they had gone for a group hike in the park as it had a hiking trail, and were to finish off their day with a group paint session facilitated by my friend.
By Whitney Smart4 years ago in Humans
