A woman-of-color who writes poetry or paints or dances or makes movies knows there is no escape from race or gender when she is writing or painting. She can’t take off her color and sex and leave them at the door or her study or studio. Nor can she leave behind her history. Art is about identity, among other things, and her creativity is political.
— Gloria Anzaldúa, Making Face/Making Soul: Haciendo Caras — Creative and Cultural Perspectives by Women of Color (via jatigi)
Because when a man tells a Black woman that she looks mixed as a form of endearment, he’s insinuating that her beauty comes from the (allegedly) non-Black part of her. All they’re effectively saying is: You’re too beautiful to just be Black. Oh, but I am. I’m beautiful just like my beautiful Black mother, just like her mother and her mother’s mother. We’re generations of women born right here in the US of A, from North Carolina to Massachusetts by way of the motherland. Brown skin, nappy hair, cornbread and gravy gorgeous. We aren’t beautiful in spite of our Blackness, we are beautiful because of it. So don’t dare try to give the credit to anything else.
—
Shayla Pierce, Why Saying I Look “Mixed” Isn’t A Compliment (via theraceproblem)
(via blackmaleintimacy)
To my young playwrights who are black, I have ultimate faith that you can move forward boldly in your unique brand of black storytelling because this bold storytelling is the breath of life that keeps our beloved black theater healthy so that she will be there for the next generation of storytellers. I have faith in you, because I must. I have faith in you because someone had faith in me. My hand is stretched to you my young playwrights who are black. You are the axis on which the future of the black story spins. Stand boldly in this space with all the honor and joy that lives there.
My name is not Annie. It’s Quvenzhane.
— 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, correcting the AP Reporter who said she was “just going to call her Annie.” (via shereader)
Eventually, I realized that I had two choices. I could struggle for stupid stuff—for some trinkets and creature comforts—or I could make a choice to struggle for something that would make a better life for myself, my children and their children. You either work for yourself and your people or you work for your oppressor. Those are the two things that all young people in the United States have to decide, basically, and that they’re not going to participate in their own self-destruction.
— Assata Shakur (via bhargette)
