What We Lose

by Zinzi Clemmons

I’ve often thought that being a light-skinned black woman is like being a well-dressed person who is also homeless. You may be able to pass in mainstream society, appearing acceptable to others, even desired. But in reality you have nowhere to rest, nowhere to feel safe. Even while you’re out in public, feeling fine and free, inside you cannot shake the feeling of rootlessness. Others may even envy you, but this masks the fact that at night, there is nowhere safe for you, no place to call your own.

No one in my family, going back to Africa in both directions, has ever run for any reason except self-preservation.

When I was a child, my mother would try to convince me of a woman’s need for a secret stash.

Check out this quote. Do you have a stash?

well as the outrage of the local community, it is difficult to understand why she failed to recognise the threat that the club was posing and how damaging this was to herself. Her reluctance to disband the club is inexplicable. Ms Madikizela-Mandela