Audre Lorde said that self-preservation is a radical act. And I believe her — more now than ever. What has been expressed over the last 5 weeks, has shown how systemic the mistreatment of Black women and girls is! It is apparent how needed it … Continue reading Closing Thoughts: To Live In Spite Of
“Guard your heart, for this is the prize…” -BELOVED, Toni Morrison
Ancestors are closer than you think.
The world hates us and copies us. Dresses up as us, only to spit in our faces. And yet, we are not alone—and never have been!
What I find most fascinating in this era of White-obsessed anti-Black woman culture, is now vicious the world is to us, only to need our wit, heat, and fire to do what no one else seems to want to: care.
As with the Gospels, and other books that comprise what we know as the Bible, it is understood that this work is noted to have been written under divine inspiration, the retelling of witnesses and first hand accounts.
This, too, is how Black women have survived. This is how we have defended one another, believed other Black women are our sisters, and have learned to protect one another!
This is also how we have learned, how we have learned to leave record of our being, our mistakes, or suffering. Even if that be degrees in spite of, picking up second jobs to maintain, using wiles to make it do what need to be done, praying in showers or at altars, or pulling the pain out of their blood by ink.
Black women don’t ever cease to exist…as long as there is a Black woman who remembers her! As long as there is a Black woman who will remember her humanity, instead of prizing the level of trauma, dehumanization, neglect and abuse she was forced to survive!
We are the record.
We work to heal wounds they left with us, on us, and even in us when they had no other tools of peace, but only weapons of war!
We are making new legacy, living lives we have worked for —and yet, remembering not to revere pain, but prize power! Even if it is our own.
When our names are invoked when time ends here, don’t forget us! Don’t forget that we tried, we cried, and even lied saying, “I’m fine” when asked.
Sometimes we lied to keep going — because who could would believe us…if not our own selves?
Yet, we are not in this thing by ourselves…and never will be! The blood signed our names too.
“She’s so strong…” -everyone to Black women I grow weary of people saying, declaring,, Black women are so strong. We are strong, because what choice is there? What other alternative does a Black woman have? Weight is heaped on us as is done to beasts … Continue reading Part 4: A Convient Martyrdom
Black women deserve to be in a world that doesn’t ask them to be rock to be human.
In this identity, in this place of being Black and woman, I am in this space of having to defend my existence and define it to people unconcerned with doing either. And yet, my identity historically is tied to work, tied to being superhuman, and…immovable.
Being immovable.
To be Black and woman, to be belived, to be seen is to be immovable. We are expected to sink into not just the Quicksand that Nella Larsen talked about—but concrete.
Concrete is defined as:
From microagressions, to marginalization, we are told to act as if it doesn’t matter. In cases of outside aggression, violence, abuse and public disrespect —we are expected to not react! It is understood we are not be upset, neither do we react nor ask for, or seek, justice!
Why?
Care, concern, compassion and empathy are not what Black women are given. We are bred like prize mares for work, needing more work until we are still sacrificed for what out bodies will give up!
Black women can only have secrets, not safety.
When we demand it, when we make it, when we expect it, we are pushed into this concrete!We are seen as nuisance, as crazy, and as the troublesome equation to balance—via erasure.
The most devastating thing is when it is other Black women who pour it on you—forgetting that grave vaults are poured with cement! And those misogynist powered women, who use our graves as ladders—forget the equity of gravity!
Eventually, even as carefully as these women climb, they will eventually fall…or be pushed off it by either age or time.
Only to be welcomed by the embrace of their own cement…and the vault which will encase them.
Black women deserve to be in a world that doesn’t ask them to be rock to be human.
Let’s have a brief vocabulary lesson.
NECROMANCY. noun
the supposed practice of communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future. “alchemy, necromancy, and other magic practices”
NECROMANCER. noun. a person who uses witchcraft or sorcery, especially to reanimate dead people or to foretell the future by communicating with them
The first funeral of a woman I was told to attend was my maternal grandmother, Arceal. As of this November, she will have been gone from me, from us, a decade. Yet, in the 84 years she walked the Earth, she fought for every scrap of respect, and what we now call visibility. She was a Black woman, raising children, from the Jim Crow South and then Mississippi North (Missouri).
My maternal grandmother was one of the strongest women I have ever known–and I am proud to be her granddaughter. From that pride, from that knowing, I remember my paternal grandmother, Mollie. From what I have heard of her, she was a whole hurricane as well from the Delta of Mississippi and landing in East St. Louis, IL. I am proud to be her granddaughter, too.
It is not lost on me that one grandmother was in the last slave state, and the other grandmother was in the neighboring free state of Illinois.
Yet, in reflecting on their lives, and even paralleling them with my own, I see that the respect they deserved in this life was not afforded to them until they did. People took pains to make sure their services were right, the right music played, names spelled right, and resting places confirmed. This peace of the dead and dying translates to the erasure of any other thing which had bothered her in life.
Racism. Sexism. Abuse. Neglect. Abandonment.
She gets quiet. She gets…respect.
While in life, which slides Black women from erasure, obscurity, and disbelief only to reanimate us when statistics are needed. Mortality rates to be beefed up, for diversity studies or other disparities in health care or malpractice actions!
I can’t help but liken this type of treatment to matches. In my grandmother’s kitchen, their were kitchen matches with a flint side on the box. She struck the match when their was an eye on her stove which was not working: it had trouble lighting.
Matches are meant for work! They are used just for quick work that someone else will be credited for, and then drowned to make sure their fire is not allowed to be uncontrolled. This nation will let Black folk work–especially Black women work, and watch them while they do it better than anyone else!– but as soon as that work is complete? Once that eye is lit, lanterns, candles or torches lit?
They snuff us. They drown us.
We get the peace of the grave, but not the peace that belief, acceptance and visibility does.
Respect for Black women is the same you give to a hammer, full tank of gas, or a correct paycheck–we are a tool. With that belief, absent of respect, we are no better than toolsheds –and even for some toolsheds they have locks, don’t they? But for us?
No one needs us, no one wants us, until the world is dark–and when the world thinks it can see again? We are not needed.
Zora Neale Hurston said, “The n—- woman is the mule of the world.”
Read it again.
Anyone whom has followed me on social media, bought any book, or commented on any post knows I am a living daughter, with a dead father. As I love him, revere him, he also told his daughters, and his son, that sometime everyone can’t go with you.
This necromancy with Black women is apparent when the world won’t listen to, believe, support, advocate for Black women when we’re alive—but you want to hear us when we can no longer speak.
This gives weight to the dark suspicion that Black women —when they are dead!—are what the world wants us to be in life: docile, unmoveable, quiet, long-suffering and above all things—submissive.
Yet, I pose this question to Black men—the assumed ally of Black women. This question is specific to Black men who hate Black women. I am aware that as I take other classes and races of non-Black people on a case by case basis, because that is the right thing to do!
I am aware that systemic racism, institutional racism, compounded with misogynoir fuel the hatred of Black women.
Again, for those who really hate Black women, then I offer you this:
“What is the solution?”
This day by day extermination of Black women at catastrophic levels, judging by the overwhelming silence of classes of Black men clearly fine with this.
Again, let us re-examine what happened to Carlishia Hood in June-July 2023. A Black man is harassing her in public. She asked him to leave her alone. Her son is present for this. Her son goes to the car—and gets her gun. This man keeps harassing her. Threatening to harm her. Carliesha’s son shoots him.
And kills him.
Now, did her son want to kill this Black man? That we cannot be sure of! But we can assume he wanted to protect his mother. Yet, were Black men there who could not be bothered to say anything—but they recorded this incident.
And posted it to social media.
It really looks like, this hate comes from the fact Black women being in the same condition of chattle slavery, segregation and facing similar/exact abuses—there are classes of Black men who are mad we won’t go away! That we have the nerve to build life with our own successes, despite obstacles set before us. Even when or if those obstacles intersect sex and race.
Yet, when a Black women are dead—in our palatable form!—when she can no longer breathe the air, then she can be believed.
She can be beloved the…canonized due to her suffering. The expectation is Black women should be accustomed to disappointment, resilient to abuse, and comfortable with death—it is our reward!
In the essay History Is A Weapon (1925) penned by Amy Jacques Garvey, wife of Marcus Garvey, writes that Black men say there is a new day coming but ‘do nothing to usher in the day.’
Let me to you this, the Blue Fairy is never going to grant your wish of being a real White boy. And the Black women who, too, hate Black women, believing that struggle is the ideal, being the right kind of Black woman is the antidote for everything —the Blue Fairy will never will not make your eyes Blue, Pecola Breedlove!
Black women are not going to die to make the world better or for the comfort of a world who deems them too loud. We deserve long life, too.
Caveat: These are my thoughts powered by experience and living (and fighting to live) in a body both woman and Black. -JBH
“Damn shame—being a Black woman.”
-Mama Pope
This nation has a very weird necromancy with Black women. This nation will use us as fodder and battle cry.
Let us examine what happened to Carlisha Hood in Chicago, Illinois in July 2023. This situation is frightening as a Black woman who has children, daughters specifically.
It has been demonstrating all over social media (especially, TikTok) there is a group of Black men who would rather see us all dead, randomly or violently assaulted, than living without the weight of a partnership that is not healthy, loving, viable or supportive.
I have had many conversations on social media, angry men (Black and White), and I am at a loss as to why it is the world hates, tries to recreate us, only to continue to fail and doing so.
You hate Black women when we’re here, but…love Black women when we leave?
As a student of history, I know there is no civilization in the history of the world which has prospered when it has abused its women, has thrown away its women, or made it mission to kill its women.
I echo the sentiments of the social media creator, Navi Robbins—he said in June/July 2023, there deep anti-Blackness within our own community. On some level, he’s right.
This behavior and poisonous thinking has been ensconced so long, shared so long that it will take at least two generations to change.
I have not lost hope.
But, I would be lying to say I wasn’t afraid.
The written word will always have power. No matter if it is in pen and paper, light in screen, or pencil etchings, and a notebook. As long as human beings have the power to record their own narratives, there will always be two sides to every story!
for the cars, it is essential that we understand just how important gatekeeping of language is, that language will still always invite intimacy, and it is important for minority people to have their story told as well.
it is for the want to control the narrative that Christ was made white, right?
as long as I as a writer, who identifies as black and female, have the resources at the ready to tell my story? I am going to tell it! I’m going to tell it because it needs to be told. There is an intimacy that goes along with this black, female experience that can only be reconciled, and understood by other Black people, and especially other black women. My language lends itself to, and towards that intimacy and experience!
If you take my words for me, you are actively engaging in my erasure! just because you can use a word that is used by people in a community that you are ingratiate it in, that you grew up around, does not mean you have the freedom to use that language, those words in a contacts reserve just for the people in that community and experience!
It’s deeper than, “You can’t say that.“
You can’t say that because you haven’t lived that.
“Language invites permission.” -JBH
My best friend is Sicilian. There are words she and her family says that I can’t. It is the for the respect of her, her experiences, but I don’t repeat those words.
They are not mine to say.
Most communities have trauma-inducing words: some language has a history of harm. Because language involves intimacy, acknowledgment, and intelligence, it is essential that we understand that they are just some words you don’t say. Or if you do say them, you have to deactivate the trauma, they may be within them.
Then the greater question becomes: who owns language? While there is no easy answer to this, there is a resolution to it.
The resolution to this is found in respect. The person who is speaking, who has the experience to convey their thought, and share their intimacy, through conversation. They are the ones who own the language of that space.
if you were not the person in the space, by which the language, the idea, or experience is geared toward or taken from, you are not essential to the conversation – you are a participant and an active listener in the conversation.
Language will always yield intimacy and influence.
There is and must be a level of recognition that goes along with language. This goes deeper than why you can’t say that.
What is often not seen or noticed in these discourses is how essential these two things are: experience and context.
In this digital age, so much is lost but the most crucial is intimacy. It is this knowledge which determines the effect of language in situations and people.
You can’t say what I say because you don’t have experience and context. I believe that this is a reason why language is often referred to in a feminine context–things with feminine attributes are capable of growth or change.
Toni Morrison said that language is the measure of our lives. Perhaps this is so because it provides links to past, context to present and perspective to future.
I Breathe Fire 