#ericastill

According to Erica Still from “Prophetic Remembrance: Black Subjectivity in African American and South African Trauma Narratives”  and Marquis Bey and Theodora Sakellarides article “When We Enter: the Blackness of Rachel Dolezal,” Blackness can be defined as an impossibility, something that was never meant to exist within the racist confines of U.S. institutions and society, therefore presenting the space that Blackness lives despite being impossible as imaginary. Understanding Blackness a something that shouldn’t survive, it then explains and defends the institutionalized policing of Blackness through law creation and passing. The policing of traditionally Black hairstyles and dress is one example of such policing. Such laws do not come out of nowhere, however. The policing of Black bodies does not begin at the institutional level, but begins socially, when one part of the social part-the dominant part- begins to manage and restrain the rest of the social group. Latesha Byrd’s experience at work is an example of someone believing tow things: that their opinions, emotions, and view of things is more important than another’s, especially those that are interpreted as below them; that belief leads them to think that they have a right to direct the narrative of another’s emotions and experience