If this election has done one positive thing, it’s opened my eyes to how amazing my black sisters, we 92 percenters are…WE SHOWED OUT!
As someone who grew up as s suburban black girl in primarily PWI spaces since before I can remember and this continuing to be true now in my adult career, I needed this wakeup call…
I didn’t realize it but I had a veil over my eyes, I truly thought that if I worked hard enough, if I Kerry Washington’d my way through corporate that white people would be forced to finally one day acknowledge that I was just as good as them…but my parents and Papa Pope had it right, we will NEVER be accepted by them.
The day after the election when I woke up to see the results, that Trump had once again risen to power, I was filled with so much sadness and rage that white people were still consumed with such extreme hate from the Obama’s daring to be in the White House, from Kamala daring to run for office, that they felt the need to let their animosity shine bright by electing Trump, having him act as an indictment against all black people, saying through their vote and hate rallies that they would never let this happen again, and if it does, watch what we’re gonna do.
In all honesty it was pretty textbook and typical behavior that white people would respond to something they don’t like or understand with vitriol and violence, they weren’t who surprised me…what shocked me was that the POC/BIPOC community that I thought we had built with other minorities basically gave us as black people a massive middle finger.
In my mind I thought as black people we at least had camaraderie amongst our other fellow minorities, but they made it clear that their proximity to whiteness had fully blinded them to the fact that no matter how much the vote like them, they will never be them and that in the process they were willing to leave black people as just an afterthought instead of as the people who quite literally built this land they’re standing on.
So as a collective black people responded and said bump that, don’t call us POCs or BIPOCs, don’t act like we’re part of one community and like you share in our struggle, don’t tap us to help y’all out now that you sold out voted for the enemy and are about to FAFO. Nah, we are BLACK, African Americans, the original brown sugar bros and babes across ever shade of those in our community, we received the message… we are NOT the same and now for the first time since the 60s we don’t wanna try and be the same, we’re making our own lane.
When you look back over the 60s when Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were alive and you read their letters especially after the recent election you start to realize that Malcolm really head the right of it this whole dern whole time.
It’s really just black people in this fight against the prejudices and racism of the white man, it’s the same song that, different day, it’s been being sung since we were both stolen and sold from our native land. What’s new is how Millennials and Gen Z are now stepping into the old reality in the new age.
As a collective though I love how we all decided, you know what, this time this wound is too deep, we’re going to rest and if y’all wanna rip the country apart go ahead but as for us we’re gonna worry about our own communities from now on, our own black communities in case that wasn’t clear.
In the weeks post election I’ve experienced so many emotions first I was numb, then I was enraged but now I’m sitting in the eye opening acceptance of what this is, of saying goodbye to my old way of being and thinking.
I’m saying goodbye to thinking I could work hard and get white people to finally acknowledge my worth and accepting that this will never be the case…that I never needed their approval or acknowledgement to begin with.
Growing up in PWIs wires your brain subconsciously to always be looking for their approval, for their pat on the back, affirming that everything your parents told you is actually true…how sad for that version of me from just a few weeks ago. Desperately reaching for something that I already had but that I had been been tricked in to believing I needed to be given from people who deem me inferior.
Even though I’m still mourning that girl and woman who lived in that comfortable delusion for so long, there’s a quiet yet scary joy that’s emerging, a confidence that I’m starting embrace, a knowing that I can approve and affirm myself and actually mean it this time. I’m just as good as any white, Latin, Asian or Indian person on the planet and I don’t need them to affirm me anymore, I can rest, I will kickback and know that my best is more than enough, judging myself based on my own standards and not the white mans.
I can’t say that I don’t still deal with anxiety about how they feel about me, heck I felt it today BUT this shift is now at the forefront and I’m willing to take all the time I need to rewire my brain to gather my worth first from God, and then from myself.
My fellow black sister, my 92 percenters, it’s time for us to fully step into our own black and beautiful wonderland, we tried doing things their way and now that’s DONE. Now it’s about our community first and always.