I don’t have to tell y’all that being a Black girl or women in this country– or several other places around the world–is no easy feat. To make a long story short, dealing with issues of both racism and sexism doesn’t exactly put us at the top of the totem pole in the eyes of society.
But thankfully, some of us know better. The truth.
Still, that doesn’t stop us from dealing with the very real ways in which we are hypersexualized, demeaned, degraded and devalued in society.
So perhaps, with all of that on her mind and on her back, poet Raven Taylor delivered a gripping piece called “How To Survive Being A Black Girl” at the 2014 National Poetry Slam in Seattle.
Check out some of the profound lines from the poem and watch it in its entirety in the video below.
Beware of men who enjoy girls who do not love themselves/Surely they will mistake your skin for an eclipse that you are ashamed to witness
Do not trust the White girl who touches your body like a trophy, fixes her lips to say that you are beautiful, but only when you are naked and speechless…
When confused Black men accuse you of being their mothers, try to teach you silence and obedience, say thank you. Think of your grandmother and pray for them. Resist the urge to apologize.
When you have heard that you are not Black enough, enough times to make your ancestors cringe, look up Blackness in the dictionary. Look up Blackness in the mirror. Look up Blackness in the whites of your eyes and poor one out for every time that you existed as a gray area.
Always remember that when you are a Black girl, everyday that you exist in your body, without apologizing, is activism.
