Black Girls Deserve to Step Into the Sun
As a child, I never really was someone who identified with needing labels. Even now, my attachment to materials is small. However, as I have started to step into my own, I see where certain luxuries or fashion pieces pique my interest. It was a struggle to accept that because growing up, there was always this unspoken narrative that I should not want more, and as a Black girl having more was wrong.
To be bougie and a Black girl was a sin.
I am not sure when I started to internalize this narrative, but a key memory was that it was not my parents who taught me this. The world around me balanced White people's report that I am undeserving and Black people's history that I think I am better. Although, differing ideologies both stem from our country's ingrained overarching narrative of white supremacy.
After the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, we entered the era of convicted leasing, which the PBS documentary refers to as “slavery by another name.” Even for the Black people who could escape this reworded form of violence, the journey to ownership and luxury was still not easy or accessible. Often when Black families acquired anything from land, finances, and pianos, their property was forcefully taken from them.
In 1921 Willa and Charles Bruce purchased land on the beach of California and 12 years later were chased off by the KKK. The government seized their land for abandonment, and in 2021, the state of California decided to return the land to the family's descendants. Regardless of how hard we worked, the idea of ownership from White America was not something they felt we deserved. It also caused trauma and violence, which could be why so many Black people rejected the idea of being in proximity to wealth.
During slavery, the “house slave” and the “field slave” classification by slave owners created a psychological divide used to manipulate and control enslaved Black people. The view of those in the house was that they were receiving more, and if they acted as a watch over those in the field, they might have been rewarded. Although I would not count obtaining basic human needs as a reward, the process was just a form of manipulation and control.
Today these nuances from our history still linger because, during slavery, Black women were the backs keeping the plantation. They were not only in the fields. They were used as breeders, entertainment, and punishment; our bodies were not our own. The idea of rest and luxury were never afforded to us, and often, the liberation of Black people consisted of Black men. We were told to wait for our turn to stand in the sun.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, African-American women have continued to obtain degrees at a higher rate within the African-American community. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor showed that Black women were more likely to start a business than White men. We are leading the charge in our education and industries but keep getting told to step out of the sun.
Black girls continue to be at the back of society and are not allowed to feel luxury because of institutional oppression.
As I grow in my physical form and my spiritual alignment with womanhood, I see that Black girls deserve everything. I used to wake up every morning and cry because I could not articulate how painful it was to navigate a world that both hated me but used me as the blueprint for community and beauty. The frameworks Black women have built throughout social movements are still being used today without any acknowledgment. I grew tired. I am tired of producing and doing for a society that categorized me as less.
That’s when I found rest and travel. Those experiences allowed me to step deeper into myself, realizing I was deserving. This is your sign of living life, not bound to the rhetoric that says your life is only about serving. We do not have to keep believing that the constraints set by oppression are the only box we can play in. We can grow, we can love, we can experience.
We can live in the sun.
