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“The invisibility of the one-two punch that is Blackness and poverty is brutal.”
Successful Black women almost normalize overachieving.
I read where some researchers trace the founding of the Ku Klux Klan to the Kappa Alpha fraternity.
Without the Preparatory Enrollment Program, there would have been zero students of color because we were starting with major deficits. Most destructive was the view that we weren’t worthy. It is the foundation built into the DNA of America, and when you couple it with personal challenges like poverty, violence, trauma, and compromised communities, it can become a death knell.
“Stop making love to something that’s killing you.”
What made it worse is that it’s not just presented by white executives, but also Black artists and producers. You begin to adopt the ideology of the “oppressor.” It becomes the key to success. Culturally speaking, many believe it and they have adopted the belief that if you are dark, you’re uglier, harder, more masculine, more maternal than your lighter-skinned counterparts. It’s the paper bag test mentality that many still refuse to believe.
Here’s the truth. If you have a choice between auditioning for a great role over a bad role, you are privileged. That means not only do you have a top agent who can get you in, you are at a level that you would be considered for it. Our profession at any given time has a 95 percent unemployment rate. Only 1 percent of actors make $50,000 a year or more and only 0.04 percent of actors are famous, and we won’t get into defining famous. The 0.04 percent are the stories you read about in the media. “Being picky,” “dropping agents,” making far less than male counterparts. Never having any regrets
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He who has choices has resources. And the life needs of some twentysomething actor are not the life needs of everyone. Health insurance, mortgage, children are not the top priority of most twentysomethings. Yet the people who are aspiring to be actors and have no knowledge as to a way in listen to the testimonies of the privileged. The ones who were extremely talented, but also extraordinarily lucky. Luck is an elusive monster who chooses when to come out of its cave to strike and who will be its recipient. It’s a business of deprivation.
The fucked-up part is that you don’t necessarily get paid for talent. You get paid for “getting butts in the seat.” The caveat is that with most people of color, your films are not distributed and promoted enough to ensure butts in the seat and it keeps you hustling as far as pay is concerned.
“Fame is a vapor. Popularity is an accident. Riches takes wings. And only one thing remains . . . CHARACTER.” —HORACE GREELEY
It’s like Oprah said, “I know for sure what we dwell on is what we become.” With this chapter in my life, I didn’t want to dwell on little Viola running away anymore. I wanted to run toward joy, hand in hand with Julius. I wanted to feel alive. I wanted to become . . . me.
Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past. They tell you successful therapy is when you have the big discovery that your parents did the best they could with what they were given.
It is a widely held belief that dark-skinned women just don’t do it for a lot of Black men. It’s a mentality rooted in both racism and misogyny, that you have no value as a woman if you do not turn them on, if you are not desirable to them. It’s ingrained thinking, dictated by oppression.
Taking off the wig in HTGAWM was my duty to honor Black women by not showing an image that is palatable to the oppressor, to people who have tarnished, punished the image of Black womanhood for so long. It said all of who we are is beautiful. Even our imperfections.
It was a basic understanding that your lot in life was to fight off sexual predators—including babysitters and neighbors, even before you knew the term. It was a side effect of poverty, of parents too busy with brutal survival to protect us 100 percent.
As Black women, we are complicated. We are feminine. We are sexual. We are beautiful. We’re pretty. There are people out there who desire us. We are deserving.
What you haven’t resolved in your life can absolutely become an obstacle in the work that you do.
