For so long I was invisible in this country we call America. Some call it Amerikkka because it hasn’t always been kind to us…even now. The price of my ticket is very expensive and I still have yet to feel the FREEDOM of this journey. I am an American with limited liberties that were added to the laws as an addendum when slavery ended and the civil rights movement demanded. But it was just to placate the masses. The rifts between black men and women, the harm of our children when learning a skewed version of history, and the inability to live comfortably making wages that are competitive and just…that ticket gets higher in price.
I am black and I am a woman and what I get from various people and cultures…even our own black men treat me and other black women like we’re invisible. So I write and I write louder so everyone can hear me. I know the history of the #politicalinvisibility of black women and I condemn it just like #AudreLorde, #ElaineBrown, #SojournerTruth, #MariaStewart, and more. Black women’s contributions and talents are so rich and full you would think that those stereotypes about us would no longer exist…but they do! And they hurt us even more, each day as they are voiced on social media, in person, movies, and even in our workspace.
Movies…The Birth of a Nation has shown yet again we are relegated to weak, abused, and mute females whose dependence is the lone black man to redeem our reputation and character…because we can’t do it on our own.
As Professor Leslie M. Alexander mentions,
Enslaved women fought for their dignity and freedom, and they exercised agency over their lives, in spite of unimaginable horrors. This is the story that deserves to be told, not one that disseminates archaic and damaging myths that cast black men as courageous saviors and black women as helpless victims.
academichustler1975 