a journey of transformation
“A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.”
-Frederick Douglass
If you don’t have self-esteem, you will hesitate to do anything in your life. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote; you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution, and our revolution is long overdue.
No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women… When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.
Most Africans arrive in the United States ignorant of this country’s racism. We arrive here ignorant of the horrors of slavery, the terror of Jim Crow, the history of the civil rights movement and the present state of post-racist racism. Lacking analysis of how African Americans have borne most of the brunt of this racism, we buy into stereotypes depicting African Americans as lazy, deviant, and criminal. For their part, most African Americans have little to go on besides the racist depiction of Africa(ns) prevalent in the American education system and in the media. So African Americans end up thinking Africans are a bunch of emaciated petty-tribalists and rapist-polygamists. ….Brother, we haven’t met in over 400 years and this is how you want our reunion to be?
Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.
like black butterflies 