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Most black people grow accustomed to the fact that we have to excel just to be seen as existing, and this is a lesson passed down from generation to generation. You can either be Super Negro or the forgotten Negro.
People don’t know what to do with you if you are not trying to assimilate.
“There are so many more people than you realize,” she told us girls, “people who look up to the same sun and the moon and the stars. It’s your birthright to explore this world.”
You can love what you see in the mirror, but you can’t self-esteem your way out of the way the world treats you.
When you’re in a place where you don’t know what makes you happy, it’s really easy to be an asshole.
Women are told to “lean in.” Yeah, right. “Lean in so I can push you over.”
When we refuse to be exiled to the shadows as we mature, we get to be leaders who choose how we treat other women.
How are we supposed to give them all the knowledge, all the power, and all the pride that we can, and then ask them to be subservient when it comes to dealing with the police?
They are the boys I adore. And people don’t value their very breath. It could be extinguished in one second, without thought, leaving a dog to run, dragging its leash the whole way home. A dog, safer from harm than black boy bodies.
Inviting one black actor to the party isn’t enough—sorry, folks. We all know you can create even better art by truly being inclusive, but you’re never going to get inclusive in your work if you can’t figure out how to get inclusive in your social life.
We always internalize the things that happen to other people in terms of how it will affect us.
At the end, we are our stories, some shared and some lived alone.
