We as Black women are blessed with an adorning power. We are strong, because by being Black we are forced everyday to go to war with the ideas about our identities that introduce themselves and proclaim who we are as Black women before a word or formality ever escapes our lips.
Our skin speaks. We ask it to let our lips do the talking, but it cannot. Its position, coated in histories of strife and melanin, is firm. There was a point in my life when I asked her to stop, to stop screaming so loudly the proclamation of “I am Black” wherever we went. I was embarrassed, not intentionally, but I felt she spoke in volumes and tones that others did not, and that we had been conditioned for years to keep quiet.
She was loud and disobedient, and asked things of me that I had never expected of myself. She asked me to fight, not just for myself, but the others like me. I was meek and ill prepared, and the stress of having to contest every Black female stereotype out there because of the colour of my skin rotted my soul with anxiety.
As I matured, I came to realize that this was going to happen regardless of what I wanted, that she was going to turn heads, and that people would watch her wherever she and I went together, with disapproving eyes.
Suddenly I was aware of the necessity of our battle. I promised her I was going to make every effort to be proud of her and that together we would fight the notion that we could be forced against our will to belong to the shallow niches and small spaces of being that society had carved out for us. “This is who you are,” they said, and she screamed “No, that is who you think I am.” Our skin speaks. She does not tell you who you should be because you are Black, she does not tell you how you should act because you are Black; she does not tell you how you should speak because you are Black.
Our skin speaks. Our skin speaks in presence, and she proclaims, “I am here, I am valid, and I am important.” Our skin speaks. Listen.