The world has not been kind to Black women in particular. Today I read this tweet and I’m not going to lie, it sent me over the edge.
I am tired of being told that Dark skinned Black folk have it easier or harder than light-skinned, and vice versa.
We have it horrible, fucking period. It’s an awful existence being a woman of Brown or Black color, because we get beaten, raped, and killed more than anyone else on the planet. Especially when we’re trans women.
Yes, I said when WE are trans women. Because those women are my sisters, my mothers, and my aunts, nieces, cousins, grandmothers.
Since the first Black women crossed the oceans to come to America, they have been abused in the worst possible ways and we never talk about it.
On the rare occasions we talk about our trauma, we’re told it’s “too traumatizing,” and people walk away from us rather than being hurt by our strength, then they have the guts to ask us how the fuck we did it?!
We did it because we didn’t have a choice. We survived, we aren’t thriving, we’re not succeeding in business and politics the way that we should be, because when we try our sons, nephews, grandfathers, husbands, and brothers are murdered in the streets. By cops. In their beds, by cops. In the forests, the lakes, the fucking hospital. By Cops.
All around the world, men are fighting with bombs, knives, and guns, meanwhile, it’s women who are suffering the most. Running from schools and homes with or without their children, left to their own devices.
Throughout history, women have been expected to be heros, and honestly, I’m a bit tired of that shit.
When I was in my 20s, my guy friends always had female friends come over to clean and cook for them. Not wives, not girlfriends, just girls who paid for the hours they spent with these men by cooking and cleaning for them as if they were auditioning to be a girlfriend or wife. I was one of them and it was the most disgusting time of my life.
Growing up surrounded by men who figured my body was their plaything and my brain didn’t count was exhausting and more than once it almost got me killed. At least once it nearly got me murdered. I was conditioned by white men to believe that I was a person who deserved to come secondary because as much as we’d like to pretend the days of Jim Crow are over, the truth is they were never over. They will never be over. The men from the days of Jim Crow passed those racist lessons on to their sons, their nephews, and grandsons, and the damage has continued. The only difference between now and 1952 is that your family stopped talking about racism.
MY family stopped talking about racism, we stopped noticing the same signs the Jews saw during the nazi uprising. Time and time again, we’ve been smacked back into the days of nazism because we refuse to recognize the patterns that get us where we are today.
There are days that I just sit here and I stare at the internet, literally just staring at the world as one bad thing after another crosses my social media feeds, and it’s not that I can’t be doing anything else, it’s that I’m trying to find the knot in the center that says “this is where you belong, Devon, this is where you can be the most help.”
The truth of it is that the world is in so much pain right now there’s nothing I can do but take time to heal, and every time I think I’m ready to reenter the world again, I get slapped back to reality only to see how much pain and suffering is happening, and it’s all so overwhelming.
It’s like I open my front door to the world just a little bit only to slam it back shut again because EVERY FUCKING THING ON THE PLANET, is so God damned scary and suffocating.
This is what Black women should be doing. Sleeping. Fucking relaxing after long days of walking along the beach after being swatched in luxury and dreams and fantasy’s come to life.
Black women are tired, angry, and stressed out, and some of us when we get together want to just sit and laugh, but some of us are so fucking traumatized from trying to exist in this world that we don’t even know how to relax.
This world has tried to destroy every single Black woman who ever set foot on an acre of dirt on this planet, and now we’re supposed to rally up and save it? No. I do not think so. We are busy protecting ourselves, saving ourselves to worry about saving everyone else on this planet, and while we’re busy stuffing the rafts with our broken and bleeding bodies, yes God damnit we’ll make room for you too because that’s who we are.
When I look around my house do you know what I see? I see a world that is filled with chaos and stress because I’m too fucking tired to do anything about it right now. I am too tired, too sore, and too angry to deal with the fact that MY life is a mess because I spent the first 36 years of my life taking care of and protecting everyone else.
The reason I’m single is that white men beat me down and broke me into the woman you see before you today, still trying to claim a life that I desperately want and am too tired to do anything about.
Rene Atter listed hundreds of stories of Black folk – exclusively – being killed by cops. Indigenous people have found upwards of 10,000 unclaimed dead bodies of their children, lost to the dirt of time, because white people decided the lives of nearly or over, we’re not sure yet, 10,000 CHILDREN, deserved to die for existing while Brown and Black.
Our children never get to be children. They are warriors from the womb, from the moment we take our first breath, we are prepared for life with white people, which usually ends with our last blood. Make it stop.
We Are Tired. Make It The Fuck Stop Right Fucking Now. PLEASE.
If you want to support Black people don’t just do it when one of us dies and that death horrifies you, don’t just do it when you feel guilty and ashamed, do it every single day all day, throughout every breath you take. Make our lives matter to you as much as your own or your children. Talk to your kids about racism, talk to your family about racism, talk to your family members about what happens to us. Inform yourselves.
Stop expecting us to educate you for free, and then punish us for not doing it when we say no. Either be our friends or don’t, but please don’t pretend. This happened to me. Because I’m studying cannabis, someone came to me to ask about dosing – not something I’m qualified to answer so I didn’t, but I explained why. Now I’m the bad guy because I don’t have the information you want, really? I’m tired.
No one who follows me is putting food in my belly, or paying my bills and while I will continue on, I need y’all, WE Need y’all, to give us a break. Black people might be at the helm of saving the world, but we can’t do it alone.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 