Some weeks ago, I logged into Facebook and became enraptured by a status an old college friend had recently posted. It read, “I trust Black women more than any other group of people.” Initially, I thought nothing of it, since it also rang true for me, but as I scrolled through the comments under the post, it was clear that my brown skin girlfriend had hit a nerve.
In the media and in our own community, Black women are told who we are, how we should be and what we’re going to be. We’re the most educated group of people in this country and yet we’re told our education will greatly diminish our chances at a “fairytale” home life. (Whatever that means.) In one breath we’re told we don’t give Black men a chance, and in another, we are told we baby our Black sons. We’re too loud, or we don’t speak up enough. We’re too weak, or too feminist. Or my personal favorite, our standards are just too high. According to everyone else, we’re just too damn much, and we need to fix a laundry list of things in order to find love, happiness, and security. It’s a constant and exhausting stripping of our humanity. It seems natural then that we gravitate inward towards one another. (Despite what the media tries to say.) As my friend’s Facebook post so bluntly put it, the reason I’m still living (and thriving) in this precarious space we call life as a Black woman, is because of the other Black women I choose to surround myself with.
Issa Rae’s long awaited and highly anticipated HBO series “Insecure”, puts the narrative of Black women back in our hands, while paying homage to our fellow sisters.
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