Black Lives Matter: My Journey to Self-Acceptance, Self-Love, and Activism as a Black Woman
This past week has been a lot. The murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers has metaphorically and literally blown up around the world. In every state and major city, there have been peaceful protests for the past 6 days as well as some cases of rioting and looting. Protests have also been taking place in most major cities around the world including London, Paris, Copenhagen, Rio de Janeiro, and Sydney.
Social media has also been flooded with the thoughts, anguish, anger, frustration, and devastation that has taken place. It’s almost suffocating the amount of media that is being created, shared, and re-shared. There isn’t anywhere that you can go and not see something about George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and the protests.
Where this is super encouraging to see, it also makes me say “what took you so long?”. To be honest it’s super traumatic and triggering to continually see images and videos of black people being beaten, suffocated, shot, and murdered at the hands of law enforcement. The murder of George Floyd, a black man in America by the police is just one example of the ways in which white supremacy prevails. The “justice” system was created to oppress black and brown people and even 157 years after the Emancipation Proclamation racism persists, both systematically, societally, and individually.
This week has been tough for me for many reasons, but I often return to this feeling of hopelessness. Racism is something that I’m facing but my parents faced it and my grandparents faced it and my great grandparents faced it and my great-great-grandparents faced it. It's disappointing to be once again confronted with the reality that not that many things have changed. The fight still goes on and I’m dedicated to doing all I can to work toward eradicating white supremacy so that we can truly live in a world where black lives matter.
MY JOURNEY TO SELF-ACCEPTANCE, SELF-LOVE, AND ACTIVISM AS A BLACK WOMAN
I’ve been super down for the cause for years, advocating for Black Lives Matter in the face of my peers who couldn’t care less (and didn’t have to because it didn’t interrupt their lives). I’ve always gone to predominantly white institutions (PWIs) so my blackness in comparison to my peers was always noticeable. I went to the same all-girls private school from 1st grade to 12th grade and was a part of around 15-20 people that had been together for the entire 12 years. We truly created and maintained a sisterhood mentality between us which meant that even though we might’ve disagreed about some social issues, we were able to work through it since we felt more like family than friends.
When I went to college, I really started to take an interest in learning more about Black American history through literature and activism. The murder of Freddie Gray took place during my freshman year and being from the Baltimore area, it affected me greatly. In my sophomore year, I took a general education course titled Survey of African American Literature and it was truly the best, most enlightening, and comforting class I’ve ever taken. To begin with, the class was about 75% black which for a university that’s overall population was around 4% black people that was unheard of.
What really made this class so moving to me is that all we talked about, read about, and wrote about was ME. I’d never had the chance to be taught about myself and the history of African Americans in an honest, deep way and it was so heartwarming to see that my university found it worth a semester-long course. I commonly would leave the class crying from the joy I felt from feeling seen and understood and also the despair I felt from truly comprehending the depravity of abuse that many suffered.
I’m not saying that race is the be-all and end-all of personal identity, but for me, it does make up the majority of my identity. Black bodies, features, and culture are generally not mainstream and therefore a lot of my self-confidence has been built by learning to love and appreciate the black things about me.
I’ve always loved myself, but this class shot my self-love through the roof. Not only was I a great person who had accomplished amazing things, but now I know about hundreds of other African Americans that came before me and their greatness. Just the positive light that this course put blackness in was the first time I’d experienced that in education so it was super encouraging.
In the following years of college I took a Black Poetry and a class titled Black Lives Matter. In those courses, I was able to truly dissect a portion of these topics, but the classes left me hungry to learn more. Since my time in college, I’ve continued to educate myself on different historical events and the lasting effects that come from them. I’m not saying that I’m the most woke person or I’m always in the streets fighting for justice, but I consciously push myself to speak out and be brave in situations of injustice, mistreatment, and bias.
I’ve compiled a list of some ways you can help support Black Lives Matter and the black community in general.
WAYS TO HELP THE CAUSE
Donate
Sign Petitions
Support Black-Owned Businesses
Anti Racism Resources
A Detailed List of Anti-Racism Resources - Article by Katie Couric for Medium
So moving forward, I’ll forever fight to make sure that black lives truly matter. I’ll fight in my workplace, within my friendships, and in any place where progress could and should be made. I encourage you to join with me and do the same so that one day we won’t have to fight for black lives to matter because they already will.
