#queenjo

Dated 2015

  To the African-American youth of Generation Z and beyond,

      Today I sat in a corporate meeting for 4 hours and as one can expect the smallest portion of the room were brown people.  We went through the history of said company and talked about opportunity in the 1960s, and how a curious kid (white male) was offered a partnership after working for the company for four years and how he is the sole owner in 2015.  He even made a joke about how he tells his extensive staff that he doesn’t take pictures anymore with them because of how big he has gotten.  The point of the meeting was to drive home that we (the company) were a family and that we should be proud of our humble beginnings.

      Later in the speech, he decided to recognize those who have been with the company the longest, and two women (African-American) were there over 50 years.  I asked around trying to find what position they must hold considering their longevity with the company only to find that one is a greeter and the other is a manicurist. I couldn’t imagine why an 80+-year-old woman would want to stay a manicurist after 50 years.  

     I waited in the parking lot to get some inkling of her life. She wore a bright pink suit and a short wig and was perfectly healthy. She walked to her silver Hyundai and drove off and I felt disappointed. I was disappointed in what the company had to offer someone who has been loyal to the company for 50 years when they offered the world to an under educated white male after 4 years!

      This reminded me about how my great-great-great grandmother was the first African-American woman to work for Avon, and all of the other African-American women who never get their fair representation in the historical account of the workforce.  

     What were black women doing in the 1950’s thru the 1970’s?  My mind tells me they were domestic workers, teachers, beauticians, entertainers or freedom fighters.  I am told about one-woman entrepreneur, Madame CJ Walker; but do we really know any other scientists, businesswomen, and technicians?

    I let that dwell in my head and came home to several rants about Rachel Dolezal and black face and the young lady physically manhandled in McKinney and the countless memes, and hash-tags that followed.  There are people talking of media distractions, but no one suggesting who is being distracted and what exactly we are being distracted from.  There are no plans.  There is no call to action.   These stories are mere entertainment!  We are appalled with no uproar.  

      The Rachel Dolezal story is labeled “a distraction” not worthy of commentary! Someone who “mocks” a black woman is not worthy of a story. We are supposedly “making a big deal” out of this!  And it is a reminder that no one cares about the legacy/image of the black woman.  There are no immediate consequences to slandering the mother of all mothers! Rachel Dolezal even had a music video praising her ways by a black man; and yet, it is also labeled a distraction.

      A couple of months back, we saw a Russell Simons skit in which they decided to make a comedy sketch where Harriet Tubman slept with various white masters as a bargaining chip for freedom. The majority of viewers claiming “it’s just a joke” and “there are other things more important to be upset about” made my blood boil.

 Ironically, not even two months after that, Nicki Minaj had the “Lookin’ A** Ni**a” single cover drop with Malcolm X’s face on it and the Twitter community went up in arms!

     Black women have been adopting the feminist/womanist moniker without the historical context out of necessity.  The media is coining Beyoncé to be the front woman of such uprising because it has commercial value and it is a quieter approach to the political sexist arena and the target is OUR black men!  

      Black men are becoming annoyed with this bulls-eye placed on their heads.  They are so concerned with their image that they pay more attention to “street harassment” video portrayals not noticing the set up!  Black men were lynched for “cat-calling” or even staring at white women in the past 50-60 years, yet some black men have no problem asserting themselves to black women’s’ bodies on the street whom they’ve never met!  We (as black women) should feel lucky that we are even noticed!

      They love to cause confusion!  Notice that black women and men are arguing over the difference between a word-definition!  The media labeled this assertion “cat-calling” with out effectively defining/ educating what the line between showing interest and harassment may be.   What we should have done was define that for ourselves collectively so that we may have better opportunities for black women to feel safe and black men to respectively continue genuine pursuit!

      The “cat-calling” videos targeting black men deserved uproar; it was “NOT” labeled a “distraction” because it targeted the image of black men and the indirect injustice to killing black men for their unjust brute reputation.   This video is connected to why police feel comfortable killing Mike Brown in cold blood! “The image of the black man is something worth the conversation, worth fighting for, worth rioting for, because he was killed.  Such stories create legacies.  We will remember this moment in history!

 The Rachel Dolezal story is labeled a “distraction”; the mockery of black women not worthy of a conversation, not worthy of an uproar!  Rachel Dolezal puts on black face, recreates kinky hair, and it’s a joke! Stories about why a “white-woman” would ever want to be a black-woman, thrive!  The young lady in McKinney, Texas is brutally handled by the police. She was labeled disruptive and rowdy. We are appalled with no uproar. No one wants to see the correlation! She was not murdered. We don’t know her name. This incident will not be remembered and this woman will be a smaller part of the black woman legacy.

    Black feminist are becoming resentful.  Black men are becoming resentful.  Young people are becoming divisive and I am feeling anxious! We are at war. There is mental warfare amongst everyone and warfare amongst ourselves.   There are no victors, no universal leaders, and no universal direction for us to move!

    Please avoid such warfare, practice empathy without belittling pride. Know your history and know what may have been removed and strategically added, and most importantly remember those who fought and died for this knowledge!  Death comes in all forms and “mental-death” and “self-defeat” and “self-hate” is the cost of war. There are mental-veterans around you and bitter ones too; love them the same! Remember their stories. Prevent history from repeating itself.

  -       a concerned citizen