What Mama Told Me

My Mama always used to say that I had two strikes against me: being black and being a woman, and that one identity could never be separate from the other. But balancing those two identities has always been a challenge for me. I've found it very easy for me to rally behind the causes of my race more so than the causes of my gender. It wasn't until I read the chapter in book "Freedom Daughters", about the battle between the feminist movement and black men over the right to vote and how black women were left between a rock and a hard place did I really begin to understand the complexities of my identities. And more so than that I began to recognize the reason for my discomfort with the feminist movement and getting involved in the cause. I am a BLACK woman and the normative for the word "woman" for so long has be and still is white. African American women and the feminist movement have always been at odds. And as evident by the drama surrounding the slutwalks, they still are. The struggle of Black women to navigate the cross identities is an age old one that all the black women of generations pass have had to deal with. Society seems to have demanded we make a choice, are we black or are we women? But then we can never be just one. I can never just be one. I am a complex, intricate mixture of them both. And I need to find a space to navigate that space.



Being a college student makes navigating that space all the more difficult, especially on a predominantly white liberal campus with students who believe they are so "aware" they have nothing to learn from the lived experience that is you, that makes you, that is your contribution. Navigating social circles, relationships, and classroom discussion can be a draining, confusing process all on it's own and then add trying to get the education about yourself that they refuse to give you. It's more than enough to discourage you and drive you crazy.

But I don't want to allow that to happen to me. So instead I will release-- every experience, every frustration, every thought, everything that has to with and effected me as a black woman, and as a person just trying to make it through.