Long, potentially triggering post.
For Black History Month, I’ll be boldly and lovingly celebrating:
- Those who roamed Earth before me
- Those who once roamed Earth with me
- My own historical Earthly journey
- The ways that the chosen people of now are currently dismantling and disrupting.
As I take a moment to acknowledge past versions of myself, I applaud myself for bravely making it to this moment.
Obi Soulstar (an amazing Chicago artist) perfectly captured me channeling one of my most iconic sheroes.
This picture caused discomfort for some people I know, but it is my all-time favorite picture out of every photo I’ve ever taken.
To me, this shot tells the story of what happens when a Black woman gives herself permission to:
- RELEASE society’s conditionings, expectations and restraints
- REMOVE the fragile armor of stereotypical feminine adornment (both material and immaterial) and
- RESIDE in her divine autonomy and authority.
Dominant culture demands that Black women masquerade as submissive subordinates (even in spaces where masculine leadership and provision are lacking).
Western culture commits to grooming women like me so that we are invaluable, yet undervalued. Religion raises us to be moral and just without money or jurisdiction. Capitalism carefully cultivates us so that we are profitable, but not prosperous.
I RELEASE these conditionings, expectations and restraints from my past, present and future reality.
Black excellence brainwashes us to play the role of performative powerhouse minus the appropriate prestige.
European classism pressures us to behave, speak and dress “properly,” but when it’s time for us to receive proper treatment and compensation, crickets.
I REMOVE this fragile armor and stereotypical feminine adornment from my past, present and future reality.
“Allies” tend to offer impotent empathy as they respectfully regurgitate recycled anti-racist rhetoric from comfortable spaces. Spaces they wouldn’t have if people who looked like me hadn’t built the whole system.
Generic, guilty white tears bleed into vessels of liberal tyranny, and overflow into raging rivers of weaponized white feminist privilege while Black women are held hostage by its treacherous waters of rehearsed respectability and resilience.
We drown in martyrdom for a culture and a people who wouldn’t sacrifice a mere moment of time or space to consider us.
I REMOVE this fragile armor and stereotypical feminine adornment from my past, present and future reality.
Internalized misogynoir compels Black women to comply by taking up as little space as possible, regardless of our size. We are trained to be agreeable even to our detriment, lest we be labeled hostile, angry.
When we do fight for something, it’s usually against our own interests.
We are instructed to enable egregiousness, to overlook oppression, and to suppress our standards, thereby allowing nonsense to wreak havoc in our lives.
We misuse our maternal instincts to raise directionless adult man-cubs. We abuse our loyalty to create homes for lazy, vengeful, manipulative male hobosexuals. We over extend compassion in the hopes of getting chose by closeted homosexuals.
We risk it all to make room for them to pump us full of hate seeds and then we cry about how unsafe and unprotected we feel by our so-called counterparts. We squander our inheritance and wonder why we don’t feel at home within ourselves.
No more!
I curate spaces my sistren and I can dwell and thrive in. I make no excuses for us because we are worthy of so much more.
I RELEASE the frail shackles of stagnant society, I REMOVE the weak armor of false femininity and I fearlessly RESIDE in my divine autonomy and authority.
You can find me on the corner where Black History meets Black Love.
