Category Archives: Culture

America’s Diversity Votes and Wins!

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Even beyond the excessive attempts to disenfranchise voters, in spite of an effigy of the President with a noose around his neck, and even with so many other disparaging and racial sentiments arising out of the 2012 campaign, I am more hopeful and proud of my country than ever. American’s voted that they care about each other.  Even when they may not agree with each others ideologies or lifestyles, they still voted that everyone should be included and deserves to be counted and have civil rights.  The landscape is changing and I am optimistic about the future for the following reasons!

  1. America’s first African-American president wins not only the majority of electoral votes but also the popular vote, the most successful Democratic candidate since FDR by margins.
  2. The 113th Congress will have at least 19 female senators – more than ever in U.S. history.
  3.  Hawaii elects America’s first Asian senator.
  4. Wisconsin elects America’s first openly gay senator.
  5. Nevada elects Steven Horsford, its first African American Congressman.
  6. Voting was up for African Americans, young people, and Latinos despite the unprecedented number (25) of voter suppression laws passed last year.

I’m Barbara Talley, The Poet who speaks and inspires.   To find more about me, check out my promo sheet or visit  my website.

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WARNING!!! For independent thinkers only. Do not read this if you have a closed mind, and you wish it to stay that way.

phillipecopeland's avatarChange Is Gonna Come

Listening to National Public Radio while you’re driving can be hazardous.  Once again I almost drove off the road. The reporter was talking about a fourteen year old girl in Pakistan, hunted down and shot by the Pakistani Taliban for the offense of going to school. I was enraged. In spite of myself, all manner of hostile thoughts filled my mind. Since then, I’ve been following the story and the remarkable courage being shown by girls, women, and men in Pakistan.

Then the cartoons started popping up on my Facebook page. I began to feel uncomfortable with what I was seeing. What they all had in common was the juxtaposition of a girl in hijab with some school-related objects and a Middle Eastern/Muslim man (sometimes explicitly Taliban and sometimes not) reacting to her in fear. There was a time when I would have found these cartoons poignant and witty. That…

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I Lead: I Serve

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I attended the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) last month and am still processing the overwhelmingly high number of  distressing statistics and information that was presented.  From unprecedented unemployment and foreclosures, unequal application of justice, distorted and stereotypical images that lead to esteem issues, the critical importance of astuteness with technology, the politics of fear, the importance of entrepreneurship for wealth creation, to the guiding and protecting our young folks, the challenges facing people of color far exceed those of white America.

The theme of the CBC was I Lead: I Serve.  True service is in finding a need and filling it.  The topics presented at the CBC offered many paths of service for anyone who wants to make a difference.  Most people have grandiose dreams of being successful and great, but real success comes from being a leader.  And, if you want to be a leader, the path is through service, just find a need and fill it. Too much of present day propaganda pushes us toward looking out for self only.  But true fulfillment comes from meaningful pursuits, and those usually  involve serving others.  As the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ” Anybody can be great because everybody can serve.”  Although all the topics are worthy of discussion now, it is the sobering plight of our youth that haunts me the most.  If you think the adults have it bad, check out my next post about the children whose future is even more dismal if we don’t do something now!

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

And Justice for All

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We are a nation of laws and yet those laws and noble sentiments do not guarantee that everyone is given the same equal opportunities,  protection, or  justice under the law.  I once heard that we should not judge a country by how many wealthy people it has, but by how many poor it has.  On that same note, we should not judge a country by how many freedoms they have on the books, but instead by how many people are still not allowed to enjoy those basic freedoms. We should not judge a country by how many Nobel Laureates or Rhodes Scholars they have but by how many children they allow to go uneducated, unemployed, exploited, abused, or incarcerated because of the lack of education, protection,  and nurturing.  Continue to part 2.

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

What Does Your Hair Say About You?

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What does your hair mean to you? Does it represent beauty, culture, image, or identity.  Is it your crown or crowning glory? 

This past week while speaking at a Domestic Violence Luncheon, a lady the table and I got into a discussion about black hair.  She said she dissuaded her son from wearing braids because of the prejudice that he would receive.  She said she also didn’t wear her hair natural in 2011 for fear of discrimination.

Last May I spoke to an audience in Florida at an event organized by 100 Concerned Black Women and the topic of hair came up.  My co-presenter Iris Cooper had cut off her hair and a lady in the audience who self reportedly had worn wigs most of her life challenged why she did it.  The next day the older lady came to a followup session dawning her own hair.  She recounted how freeing it was.  She somehow had felt she needed validation, permission, and acceptance to free herself.  She explained how all her life she was called ugly because of her short hair.  And, now there is another trend, cutting off our hair that we’ve taken so long to grow and  letting go of what “long hair” means.  How do you feel about cutting your hair off?   It appears that we’ve still got a lot of work to do before we get to the point that we realize that we don’t all have to look the same and can see our own naturalness as beautiful.  Please comment and share “your hair story.”

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.