Exploration of Blackness: Appreciation v. Appropriation

Me appreciating and then appropriating my co-worker Shanell

I had a lot of reservations about contributing to our Exploring Blackness blog series this week. I tried to play it off – oh, I have a full workload, I’m not sure I have time – but the truth is, I was procrastinating because I didn’t feel I should be participating in this conversation. And that’s because I’m not black.
To explore blackness is, in some way, to define what blackness is and what it might encompass. And I’m someone who believes the cardinal rule about race and race-ness is that you don’t get to define it for other people. I have my own projections around this. As a South Asian American woman, my face contorts into horror and disgust every time someone who isn’t South Asian tries to talk about it, about what it includes, how it is portrayed, or how its culture is appropriated (read: yoga, North Indian fashion, Bollywood). “What the hell do you know?” is always at the back of my throat, just waiting to shoot out at the person, regardless of what they might actually know.

Exploration of Blackness: Sustainability

The Green Movement, as we call it, is progressing rapidly. We are seeing shifting ideals in almost every professional setting but it is, as many movements have, moving forward with a lack of racial analysis. Essentially it is leaving people of color out of the conversation-- specifically Black people.
This lack of analysis is happening both at the micro and macro levels. When I decided to apply for a MBA program in Sustainable Enterprise, I figured I would be one of few people of color in the class, but never thought I would be the only Black person in my graduating cohort. The lens through which I apply my thinking is so substantially different from that of my classmates that it makes it near impossible to not be enraged every time discussions occur that lack inclusiveness.

I imagined developing innovative new business models that posited themselves as the solution to our society’s social injustices that government was unable or unwilling to address. I was a true believer that the market could self-correct a majority of our country’s ailments if steeped in the rational thought of “people & planet before profit”. Halfway through my first semester, I realized this was not the program I had imagined and quickly became disillusioned.

Exploration of Blackness: The fear of mental illness

Me & my son, Gavin

My experiences with Blackness lie in the complicated juncture of communicating through internalized shame and shattering addiction. For the last several years, I have worked in mental health, more specifically, in an inpatient psychiatric unit with adolescents and substance abusers. Contrary to popular belief, substance abuse and chemical dependency are considerable elements of mental illness. In this country, instead of treating addiction as a mental health issue, we treat it as a crime. If that isn’t enough, add to the equation being Black and the stigma often attached to that. There are over 500,000 non-violent drug users in prison at this time, many of whom are Black.
Mental health is often considered an invisible illness. It exists, but it can’t be “seen” so it’s often disregarded. When most people think of a disability, they picture in their minds a person with a visible, obvious impairment. Our visually oriented society may not take the time to look beyond appearances. People tend to believe what they see; and if it can’t be seen, it simply doesn’t exist. Not only has it been grossly disregarded, but mental health illnesses have been severely stigmatized by society. For most people just mentioning the term schizophrenia conjures thoughts of padded walls and strait jackets.

Roughly 35-40 percent of the patient population I worked with was Black. If they were admitted for substance abuse, their drugs of choice was almost always crack cocaine, marijuana or alcohol. If they were admitted in a psychiatric capacity the diagnosis varied from severe depression to schizophrenia. My assumption on why I didn’t see a larger population of Blacks being admitted to mental health facilities is based on this quietly kept secret in the Black community that we just don’t talk about why Uncle Jay acts “funny” sometimes. We sweep incidents like this under the rug or try to pray it away.

Join Us at the Our Families Coalition LGBTQ Family Night!

Are you an LGBTQ family living in the Bay Area? Come join Strong Families, as we attend Our Families Coalition's 14th Annual LGBT Families Night at the YMCA in Berkeley (2001 Allston Way) on March 10th from 5-9pm.

Adults are $5 and children are free! Families will be able to laugh, splash, play, tumble and craft during this fun filled evening. Dinner will be served at 6pm and you will have the chance to buy raffle tickets to win family fun prizes.

Our Families is a Strong Families member and we will be there collecting stories from LGBTQ families. Look for us in the yellow shirts! We can't wait to see you!

To help make sure there is enough food and activities for you and your family, please RSVP at lgbtqfamilynight2012.eventbrite.com

Exploration of Blackness: Not Black Enough

Me with my mother (far left), two sisters and our dog, Bab

Beautiful Sunny California, the ocean breeze from the West and Santa Ana winds from the South, manicured lawns and scenic views in every direction. I was born in 1963, in South Central Los Angeles to a middle class family, the youngest of three girls. My dad was a hard working blue collar man and my mom was a nurse. We grew up in a middle class neighborhood where the fathers worked and usually the mothers stayed at home to raise the children. There were a lot of kids on our block so we never lacked neighborly camaraderie. Just like any children, we played, we fought, we made up, and played some more. We were no different than anyone else; or so I thought.

Exploration of Blackness: Moral Hazard

By Alexander Dede

The idea of the nature of things is a fallacy. To be specific, it is an appeal to tradition. You often hear this when people are describing an aspect of society such as racism or homophobia and someone claims those things to be normal because they are old. While it may sound cliché, it is true that we have it within our hands to change the nature of things; but to do that, we first have to understand what it is that we are trying to change, which is deeper than many give credit. Society can be divided into those who have privilege and those who do not; those privileges rest on various intellectual pillars. One of the stronger, albeit ignored ones, is moral hazard.
In economics, moral hazard occurs when one body makes a decision but another body is responsible for the negative cost if things go poorly. The decision-making body is insulated from the negative costs, and therefore behaves differently than they would if they had to bear the weight of their decision. You see this behavior with how people treat things that they don’t own, like rental cars or a manager of a business who behaves recklessly because the system protects them, or they are simply the child of the higher ups in a corporation. I like to apply this idea outside of economics, finance, and management and to society itself.

Part of being a minority in the United States is that a large degree of your autonomy and your pursuits of happiness are determined by members of the majority. I feel that some White people fail to fully grasp this reality. Why are Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and other groups so vocal about issues of rights, access to the mechanisms of power, and institutions of upward mobility? Because minorities do not control the mechanisms and institutions of power that Whites control. One of the great unspoken truths of American society is that in terms of rights, White people have complete moral hazard. If rights and access are limited to minorities, it does not affect them. It is the ultimate form of privilege in society, to decide the rights of others.

Exploration of Blackness: Tattooing while Black

Kirk tattooing a customer

Like so many other plights of people of color in America, Black tattoo artists have struggled to forge their way into an industry where they were not wanted. Creative castaways, they were forced to build from the ground up and to create a niche industry that catered to their unique needs as artists of color. Despite their talent, Black artist were denied apprenticeships and other opportunities to hone their skills through the 80s. Their aptness did not exclude them from the humiliation of racial prejudice.

Kirk Boutte owns Effum Bodyworks in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He is featured in Color Outside the Lines, a documentary about struggles of Black tattoo artists in their journey to success despite racial barriers. I sat down with him to talk about his experiences.

SM: When I ask the question "what has been your experience being a Black tattoo artist," what comes up for you?

Struggle. It’s hard to be respected as a Black tattoo artist. If you don’t do traditional Black art, people won't recognize you for doing your own thing. A small percentage of people appreciate originality, but unless you're doing ethnic – you know, Black stuff, they don’t acknowledge you.  Also, White artists don’t believe it is a whole different struggle being a Black artist. They just believe it is about a good work – when it’s not. It can be about race. 90 percent of my clients are African-American and they’re not all fair skinned. Tattooing on dark skin is a challenge and a lot of White tattoo artist never take it, but that’s how I got my start. I didn’t get successful in my business only tattooing fair-skinned people.

SM: Do you prefer to tattoo on Black skin because you know other artists don’t?

No. Not particularly, but I always tell up and coming artists and folks who work at my shop that once they master Black skin, other skin is a cinch. Black skin is the most difficult, period. If I can help them work Black skin, they can go anywhere. It is a different learning experience. Learning to tattoo on White skin then moving to tattoo on Black skin is nearly impossible.

SM: What have been your prized experiences tattooing as an artist of color?

I’ve been tattooing my entire adult life and it has been uphill the entire time. I don’t have any regrets because I have always progressed. I never had a will to tattoo, but one day God put the idea in my head that this is what I am supposed to be doing. I started my business out of my mother’s house but once it got off the ground, I had to find my own space. 14 years later I run a successful business that caters to mostly people who look like me.

Exploration of Blackness

 

By Shanelle Matthews

Earlier this month we published a blog that outlined the monolithic and capricious way America celebrates Black history – with decontextualized, corporate commercials and signage that limits the scope of identifiable, progressive Blackness to a single heritage month. With that discussion, came the suggestion to explore Blackness and experiences with Blackness with more care, paying attention to the uncomfortable but important details that mantle the plight of the black experience in America.
Although I won’t share it in its entirety, my experience is first hand. It is also acutely intersectional. I want to preface it by acknowledging that my privilege both allows me to tell of my experience and use technology to share it with the world.

As a Black, queer feminist, my experience with Blackness has been multi-faceted. It has proven to be both sentimentally joyful and heart wrenchingly painful – an antagonistic relationship between several identities vying to occupy space in the same body. The mental elasticity it has taken to not compartmentalize myself into biddable parts is chokingly exhausting. My identities are not mutually exclusive. Although I’ve been relegated to a social deviant by some and an angry Black woman by many, I’ve managed to forge my way into a non-compliant existence where I believe my voice is being marginally heard and sometimes appreciated. The space in-between is where my privilege ends and my identity becomes a knotty annoyance that consigns me to the likeness of a quietly reprimanded child. In exploring my Blackness, it has become real to me that many believe I am not an expert in my own experiences – that others can tell my story better than I can.

You’ve been told about my experiences a thousand times. Politicians and the media have deconstructed my existence, peeled back my layers, and put me on display for centuries. They say I’m a self-sabotaging, resource draining welfare queen. I’m the parent of many but a mother to few. I’m lazy, undeserving, sexually insatiable, exploitive, and I know little about myself and my body. I’m uneducated, ill-mannered, and a drain on society –so are my children. If I do manage to beat these odds, I am difficult and irrational. I am successful but only marginally so because I am unmarried and unable to find a man who is willing to compromise his sanity to be my partner. I am lonely and sad.

For me, none of this is true. This woman is mythical – as real as the mermaid unicorn hybrid that puts a dollar under your pillow and presents under your tree. But this is my experience with Blackness. It is countering the narrative of a story that is told on my behalf so I can't tell my real story; the story of a self-sufficient, resilient, loving, and appreciated Black woman who is tangible and human. The story of a woman who is sex positive, practices yoga, and has made the self-determined and conscious choice to both be queer and not yet a parent.

When I was a teenager, my dad used to tell me that going into the world I had two strikes against me: my womanism and my Blackness. That later became three strikes when I outed myself to my parents as queer. While his ideology was correct in that my plight would sometimes be difficult, I later found those strikes were not strikes at all but instead stories, stories whose narratives had to be explored and eventually changed.

Exploration can be defined as the search for information or resources. Blackness, in all of its nuanced complexity, cannot be completely exhaustive in its existence because there are stories and legacies that have never been told. Also the Black experience that is shared with the world, has been deceitfully documented by people who have a vested interest in hiding the truth. We have the power to explore the richness of the identities of Black people and the cultural implications of Black legacies by divulging our experiences. This divulgence includes the thoughtful art of appreciating identity without appropriating it – more on this later this week.

Although these experiences vary in their involvedness they have a similar significance in needing to be discussed and shared. There is an inherent intricacy to sharing second-hand experiences with Blackness that often leaves non-Black people apprehensive (and sometimes not so apprehensiveness as with my story). The thorny history of Blacks in America and the subsequent marginalization leaves little room for error, even folks in America who identify as Black can find it difficult to explore and share their experiences. This week we will explore both first and second-hand experiences with Blackness. We hope you will appreciate the diverse stories from both staff and guest authors as we set out to discover differing narratives of Blackness in America.

Chris Brown--not forgiven

On Grammy night 2009, I was disgusted like everyone else when news broke of Chris Brown’s assault and Rihanna’s injured face was plastered all over the internet. I was so angry I immediately deleted his songs, changed the radio stations, edited my playlists, and even wrote my final paper on domestic abuse about the incident.

The Weight of Internment

My grandmother, Sumi (middle), with her parents and sisters

“Five FBI man come take Papa away.” On Friday, March 13, 1942, these are the words told to my grandmother who came home from school to find her mother sitting alone in their home that had been completely torn apart. It would be the beginning of their journey through internment—from Pomona, California to Heart Mountain, Wyoming and finally, Crystal City, Texas.

This Sunday will mark seventy years since FDR signed Executive Order 9066, which began the forced internment of Japanese Americans in the United States. I have heard different pieces of my grandmother’s experience growing up and have never had much of an opinion on it, other than that it was obviously unjust to force people into camps because of their race. After all, this wasn’t my experience and I didn’t live through that time—what else could I have to say about it?

Women asked to keep legs and mouths shut

What is going on today? Some excerpts, great videos, and a petition to sign.  Because the panel of witnesses giving testimony in a hearing on contraception should not look like this.

From Think Progress:
 
This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women.

We have arrived

We have ARRIVED! Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are ON the contraception clusterfuck. If you read or watch nothing else on this issue, check these out.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Vagina Ideologues
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Vagina Ideologues - Sean Hannity's Holy Sausage Fest
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Contraception Crusade
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

We are winning

In the last couple of weeks, lots of people and institutions have weighed in on women's health care. From the Susan G. Komen Foundation to the Catholic Bishops and now Senator Roy Blunt, we have been hearing about what kind of access and services these people think we should have.

Thanks to the amazing power of organizing and social media, they have also heard from tens of thousands of us. And our message has been clear: we want and need no-cost birth control and access to a full range of health care options that we can afford.

As you may know, Republican Senator Roy Blunt put out a plan that would let any employer deny coverage for any health care treatment to which they claim a moral or religious objection. That could be anything: prenatal care for unmarried women, HIV treatment, vaccines, substance use counseling, or mental health care. And certainly, contraception.

Love is

by Shanelle Matthews

As expected, today’s news reflects the many ways people all over the world feel about love. Reeling off of the revolutionary energy of the occupations, many folks are occupying V-Day, expressing staunch opposition to the exploitive and capitalistic chocolate-coated holiday often cloaked under the pretext of adoration and affection. A day that unapologetically boasts the privilege of heteronormativity and the tradition of monogamy – openly excluding so many.

Still others will embrace the opportunity shower their partners, friends and relatives with sweet gifts robed in crimson and given with love – commercial as it may be.

All personal views aside, what do people really want from a day of love? Love, in all of its nuanced complexity, is many things to many people. It is adorning and ostentatious, a glittery show of lights for the entire world to see, it is mindful and quaint, compliant and subtly exposed to an intimate audience of two; it is mellow but rich and full of niceties and sometimes love is grippingly unemotional, but consistently so. Compound emotional details aside, love is also a warm meal. It is enough money in your pocket to buy a dignifying cup of coffee, it is a warm, embracing coat on a cold winter’s day, the long, slow breath you take when you flip the switch and the lights come on, the ability make a decent wage, feed your family and live life away from the margins and closer to the center.

For some, love is a phone call, a distant, lingering “I love and miss you” between thousands of miles to someone who has been deported or incarcerated. Some celebrate love at the cemetery, mourning the loss of someone close to us who because of structural isms is no longer in our present. Love is in a hospital room where we cling to hope and pray for mercy – where we wonder what we have left to sell to foot the bill. Love is being the last person given a bed at the local shelter, the worry of where you’ll sleep for the night slowly vanishing. Love is not always sweet and chocolaty and wrapped in fancy paper.

This V-Day, protect access to birth control!

This Valentine’s Day, students on campuses across the country are calling on their Senators and Speaker Boehner to respect “Birth Control 4 Us,” a campaign launched to protect young women’s access to birth control. 

Ciara from Momma's Hip Hop Kitchen in NY

In January, the Obama Administration’s decision not to expand religious exemptions to no-copay birth control was a step in the right direction towards providing women basic health care. No woman should be denied their right to medical services because they can’t afford the high deductibles, or because their insurance plan doesn’t include contraceptive services. Catholic Health Association has already come out in support of this solution, and it is the Republicans in Congress that stand in the way of birth control access.

What's love got to do with it?

by Nina Jacinto

I've always had an internal battle with holidays. I can never seem to meet the expectations of society as to how to properly celebrate and honor each one. I don't really like getting dressed up for Halloween. I feel terribly depressed around Christmas. I prefer spending New Year's Eve away from crowds. Then towards the end of January, every dancing Santa at the drugstore is marked 75% off and the aisles have been replaced with that familiar pink and red. I'm literally cringing just thinking about it.

SAFIRE is in session!

by mai doan, SAFIRE organizer

SAFIRE at the 2011 Summer Celebration

For the last two sessions, SAFIRE has been having critical, informative, and relevant dialogue around gender, sexuality, body image, relationships, and the state of sex education in Oakland high schools. For both ACRJ and the young Asian women who participate, the program fills a critical gap.

The lack of safer spaces for low-income, young women of color to critically grapple with these issues is an insidious manifestation of a system that devalues their right to knowledge and information as well as their control over their bodies, gender, sexuality, and relationships.

Womanist AND a sports fan?

by Tavae Samuelu, Grassroots Fundraising Coordinator

Linsane in the Membrane

Me and sports, we have a complicated relationship. I love them, I really do. Although, I have zero athletic ability, and my eighth grade basketball coach called me a waste of height. I still get all kinds of nostalgic when I think about the Sundays I’ve spent watching football, the Lakers I’ve seen come and go, even enjoying the seventh inning stretch of an otherwise uneventful baseball game. That song with the Cracker Jacks is really catchy. Sports are what I distract my dad with when he asks about my plans for the future. I can actually mark the moment in our conversations on rugby where his mind wanders to his glory days on the field. Sports are how I connect with the youth that I tutor because they would rather discuss the Super Bowl than balance chemical equations. Sports are what I do with my best friends.

Help us recruit for ACRJ's young men's program!

by mai doan, SAFIRE organizer
Hey all! Happy Thursday! We are excited to welcome back ACRJ’s Young Men’s Program. This Spring, we are running our first regular session since we first piloted it last Summer. Similar to SAFIRE, our young men’s program provides a safe learning and growing space for Asian, high-school aged, self-identified young men living in Oakland.
This Spring, our Young Men’s Program will continue critical and crucial conversations around gender, sexuality, body image, and relationships. We need YOUR help in recruiting young Asian men to ACRJ's innovative, powerful, necessary, and important program!
If you or someone you know works with high-school aged young Asian men in Oakland, support us in getting the word out to them about this amazing learning and leadership opportunity.
Click here for a copy of the application!  Orientation for the Young Men's Program is February 15th, from 4:00 pm-6:00 pm.
Applications can be emailed to our Young Men's Program Coordinator, Jack de Jesus at jack@reproductivejustice.org. 

Total eclipse of the breast

Climbing Mt Shasta to raise money for the Breast Cancer Fund

By Lisa Russ

The Komen/Planned Parenthood storm last week was a fascinating real-time window into how tens of thousands of women think and feel about the politics of breast cancer and reproductive health care. The storm both changed the environment and is the environment.  Here are two thoughts I am mulling over as we begin to translate the events of last week into learnings for our work.

First, breast cancer has eclipsed abortion.

For many women, breast cancer has become their pivotal “personal is political” experience. As women who are diagnosed with breast cancer have become more visible, and organizations supporting them have shaped themselves into vibrant, supportive hubs, breast cancer has replaced abortion as the primary place where women are challenged to understand their bodies, to see their health in a political context, and are moved to take action.

Making friends with AMIGOS

By Priscilla Hoang

Amigos de las Américas (AMIGOS) is an organization dedicated to developing young people’s leadership skills through community work and international travel. For the past two weeks, 26 high-school aged Youth Ambassadors from Paraguay and Uruguay have been occupying Room 7 in my school. It is their last day in the Bay Area before embarking on another journey to Washington D.C. I’ve had the honor of meeting the students and learning more about where they come from.

The video is an interview with two students from Uruguay prior to the trip.

Most of the students come from low-income areas and have never traveled outside of their country. Having the opportunity to come to the Bay Area on a scholarship is one of the most rewarding experiences they have ever encountered in their lives. The Youth Ambassadors have met with many different organizations around the Bay Area, including Youth Speaks, Oakland Chinatown Youth Center, Youth Together, East Side Arts Alliance, Mandela Marketplace, UC Berkeley Alumni, and many more that even I, as an Oakland native, do not know about.

NAFTA for Asia?: free trade is an attack on strong families

Last week's rally for a fair deal or no deal in Los Angeles!

by mai doan, SAFIRE organizer
In October 2011, text from the Transpacific Partnership free trade agreement was leaked sparking global resistance to what organizers and media sources alike are calling “NAFTA for Asia.” The Transpacific Partnership, also known as TPP, is a free trade agreement being pushed forth by the United States and involves nine countries— Singapore, Viet Nam, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, Peru, and Brunei. TPP is said to have “the potential to be the most expansive trade agreement ever entered into by the United States, in terms of its geographic and economic reach, and the most dangerous to the environment.”

The 411 on breasts, Komen and Planned Parenthood

Have you been seeing a whole bunch of talk on your Facebook, twitter and elsewhere about the Pink Ribbon Problem?  Susan G Komen, an organization that raises hundreds of millions of dollars each year for breast cancer research and prevention, pulled a large grant being used by Planned Parenthood to do prevention screenings for mostly uninsured women.  This quick chat with Shanelle Matthews and Jeanine Shimatsu break down the basics of why this matters--especially to young women of color. 

If you want to learn more about this issue, please check out the following links.

• Great overview piece by Colorlines
• Amazing Tumblr site with personal stories: Planned Parenthood Saved Me 
• There is a Facebook page calling for a boycott of Komen that has facts, images, and conversation
• A good overview of the issue from Our Bodies Ourselves blog. This piece has lots of other links if you want to go deep on the story.
• This piece from Western States Center talks about the impact on women of color.
• Amazing Pinterest wall full of lots of visuals, videos and more.
• Story in The Atlantic includes quotes and reprints of memos from Komen staff, including the resignation of one senior staff member.
• While Komen said they weren't funding any organizations under investigation, this piece in Mother Jones explains that Komen gave $75 million to Penn State. 
• Trailer for the upcoming movie, Pink Ribbon, Inc. The trailer gives a powerful short look into the pink ribbon industry.
• Update: Friday morning Komen Foundation said they were reversing their decision to cut breast-screening grants to Planned Parenthood
• Some say that Komen statement to continue funding  is a PR move not a policy reversal

This is my Black history, not yours

by Shanelle Matthews

Photo by Tre Stewart

Black Women Writers-- a timeless book that lays perched on my teeming bookshelf, tattered pages strewn with notes, insignificant to the naked eye. This critical evaluation of Black literary brilliance, that assesses the works of women like Toni Cade Bambara, Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez, Alice Walker, and Gwendolyn Brooks, is my Black history. I carry this history with me everywhere I go, indulging in the fictional genius and immeasurable talent of women who look like me and with whom I share the passion for the art of literature. This history fuels my creative prose and for it I am infinitely grateful because without it, I can’t be sure of where I would find my inspiration. But this is my Black history – not yours.

Black history month is proof of America’s obsession with pacifist behavior. A sweet cyclic muse that we court each February, exploiting the notion that Black history is a subgenre of American history and therefore can be relegated to a month filled with partial truths -- one short, concentrated heritage month spent divulging stories that have been diluted due to an overwhelming feeling of White guilt.  This guilt urges historians to hide the truth and tell only those heroic tales of Blackness suitable for their grandchildren’s ears. This is not my Black history.

Each of us enters February anew. A month that begins and ends just like the others, with affixed holidays, anniversaries, and birthdays. Guilt, tradition, and a fear of discriminatory reprisal will lead teachers and the media to communicate misbegotten lessons that highlight the importance and relevance of Black people and our contributions, but we don’t have to bite. We don’t have to agree to learning only the lessons that post-racialists deem relevant to teach -- a watery, fetishized skeleton of what is one of the most potent and vital legacies in American history.

My Black history, the one I celebrate every day, is intoxicating. It’s too vast, too compelling, and too detailed to fit into my pocket or yours. My Black history is shiny. It sparkles with glitter and gold. It’s feminine, mysterious, and integral. My Black history has many names: Baldwin, Carver, Chisholm, Hamer, Baker, and Douglas. It has been recorded and retold in many voices, through many narratives, and doesn’t consent to being muddled under the pretext of comfort. My Black history is tall, dashing, and poised. My Black history is not easily oppressed because it is fundamentally weaved into the foundational fabric of America.

Today, history is being strategically decontextualized. States like Texas and Tennessee are fighting to ensure that children learn only what’s easy to digest – only what feels comfortable and nothing more. This certainly isn’t my Black history because in addition to all of the above-mentioned qualities, my Black history is rooted in suffering and sorrow. It can be a sad, heartbreaking tale of death and destruction that weeps angrily. Its unembellished, uncovered body bares deep scars of a long, unforgiving, and vicious experience-- an experience that cannot be denied no matter the amount of discomfort it causes, and an experience that cannot be commercially highjacked or co-opted and then slanted into agreeable information.

We are each responsible for our own awareness of history. The vitality of it is subjective. Black history isn’t an impartial regurgitation of facts and ideas; it is a cultural experience that has shaped the lives of not just Blacks but everyone born in this country. It is no less culturally important than other histories. In fact, it is the collective struggle that helps us transcend the idea that our cultural legacies be confined to heritage months.

My Black history is my own. It is the lessons I know to be true despite the constant denial.  I will tell this history to anyone who asks, anytime of the year because my history isn't a small compliant space. It is shiny and glittery and it sparkles, everyday.

Shanelle Matthews is a creative, blogger and all around communications enthusiast. She is the Communications Manager at Forward Together and is a participant in the Strong Families project, Echoing Ida. Follow her @freedom_writer