Status Updates From Black Women Will Save the W...

I want the next generation to know that the fight is bigger than any of us. In the end, it is about helping others.

When we are too tired to carry on, love brings us back center and motivates us to keep pushing.

Our young people are acting for our national interest every day. We often overlook them, equating their youth with inexperience. Assuming their efforts are simply symbolic gestures. But that does them and us a disservice. For the entirety of this country's history, it has and always will be the young people–the nameless, faceless young person–who are the vital change agents.

History has shown us, over and over, that it takes a normal person with courage to truly make a difference. It's not always the visible heroes. It's the unnamed, many in our own homes, who come out en mssse to truly make a difference.

The best way to fight oppression is to do it together and to win for everyone. Entrenched power doesn't concede easily and we win only when we are organized, coordinated, and advancing the interest of the collective...our collective orientation drives us to pay attention to the gaps as we answer the question: Where is the unmet need?

"Black women will continue to show up. We will continue to show our power," Waters King told TheGrio. "But now it's time for America to show up for us."

Hair discrimination is race discrimination and it is a long-standing, legal practice that further codifies racism. As Asamoah reminds us, discrimination in any form is ultimately a net loss for everyone.

If there is one take away from this book, it's a call to action to treat our Black girls as who they are: girls. They deserve patience, cultivation, care, and support like any other girl and yet the research is clear: Black girls are subject to a painful adultification bias that deprives them of investment and makes them far more likely to end up disciplined or even incarcerated.

[Microaggressions] are often snide and subtle–but always devastating. They are devastating because of what they imply about you–your talent, your professionalism, and, ultimately, you're worth.

For all our progress, America requires‐hell, demands-structural change, which will follow only after a shift in our politics. That change will never happen without achieving deeper understanding among and between white and Black people throughout America. Without healing and reconciliation, how will we move forward as a country?

So much about what we understand about race is illuminated by the families who raise us. Without dialogue and exposure, many white families never fully understand the struggle of Black americans. As much as our country has changed for the better over my lifetime, the fundamental struggles of being Black in America remain largely unchanged: the income gap is as large today as it was in 1968.

No matter what room we are in, we fight for those outside of the room. We know that we are here for a reason and that reason lives in every person, past or present, who has found themselves marginalized and excluded. We are here to fight for what's right.

If you cross a line by making someone, particularly a white person, uncomfortable with your questioning, you could see your career held back for years. If you are viewed as "angry" or "hostile" in your demeanor, then you could see your career derailed all together...if you are not attuned to those cultural threats, you cannot lead because they'll push you out of the room.

The casual discrimination that our society perpetuates against Black women, trans, and non-binary people contributes to a cycle: first, we're overlooked and ignored; and then, we are dehumanized in our victimhood. Our pain and suffering don't add up enough to matter. When justice isn't served, the cycle repeats and continues uninterrupted. As a community, we're left exposed and vulnerable–preyed upon and unprotected.

In the case of missing girls and women, California journalist Erika Marie Rivers launched Our Black Girls to highlight the fact that one hundred thousand Black women go missing every year. [in italics] One hundred thousand. Yet our society engages with just a few of these stories if we're lucky.
https://www.ourblackgirls.com

Erasure almost always affects the powerless women, people of color, those without financial means. In the realm of science and research, for example, women's contributions have been erased so frequently and for so long that they even have a name for it: the "Matilda Effect" (named for a 19th century activist in the women's suffrage movement, Matilda Joslyn Gage).

Erasure is especially common across the world of activism and social justice movements. When you examine the feminist movement, many of the struggles and the gains that followed for women were instigated by Black women and yet rarely are our contributions acknowledged, let alone celebrated.

Black women have made enormous contributions to society and yet, reliably, we are excluded from media coverage, the public record, and the history books. We are even erased in the mind. The mental shortcuts of implicit bias lead many, even the well-meaning, to discount or ignore our presence or our voices altogether.

In the Trump era, with hate and fascism on the rise, taking up space in the conversation, being loud about my point of view, and insisting on being heard saved my life. The Trump era was the era of negation for Black women we were supposed to, simply, disappear.

When you're charting a path that no one else is charting, people tend to be dismissive. When I first started reporting, I was instantly branded as "militant" for asking questions that centered humanity as I interrogated the powerful...As I advanced in my career, I learned to take up space and insist on my recognition, the credit I deserved...I take up space because this is How Not To Be Erased.

History has shown us that when Black women fight to open the door for themselves, they are fighting to open the door for everyone–ultimately driving progress for all people and communities.

As the Harvard Business review found, the Black women who excel in leadership are experts at emotional intelligence, managing against "identity abrasions" (the negative interactions Black women endure because of who they are) that threatened to undermine their confidence and sense of competence.

Americans have only recently come to understand: America–and it's always-fragile democracy–requires ever-vigilant defense.

Let me be clear: I love America. That is precisely why I insist on telling America the truth about herself. She deserves it because it's the only way she gets better.

[Trump] did untold harm to our environment; he neglected the most vulnerable in our society. More than any other president in American history, Trump abused power and flouted the law...but what is most striking and most personal to me is this: President Trump terrorized everyone who loves America, especially those who spoke up to defend America in her darkest hour.