Loud Mouth Brown Girl

I love loud girls. I can’t stand when girls are quiet, shy, and inhibited by what they think society wants from them. I grew up like that, constantly wondering who I was supposed to be, instead of knowing who I wanted to be.

Until fifteen years ago, it didn’t actually occur to me to look in the mirror and ask myself who I wanted to be. I didn’t know that was an option.

This is a direct result of being sexualized way too young and raped before I was out of diapers. This is what co-dependency thrives on.

Because I was so young, and my mom had placed me in the hands of a trusted babysitter, she was my first protector. She was enraged when she found out, and did everything she could to protect me, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened over and over and over again.

I moved out in my early twenties, but because the place I moved into had just as much abuse as my earlier home life, it was incredibly triggering, and before I’d even signed my lease, I was moving out again and back home. I’ve been here ever since.

It wasn’t that it was just triggering. I was expected to be a roommate, breadwinner, and babysitter all in one. It was about three weeks of that before I decided I’d rather live at home, instead of with these white people, who clearly expected more of me than I was able or willing to give.

I learned running away wouldn’t solve my problems. It would take many years of breaking down why I was the way I was to understand that while religion helped my mom in a great many areas of her life, it did so because she was white. The Anglo-Saxon white Christian religions were never going to protect me, the way they were willing to protect her.

As much as I resented the church for all the reasons I’ve listed on this blog and beyond, I recognize that for some people, church works. Fellowship works, community works, but the community has to be on the same page, and it took me a long time to understand that I was never going to be on the same page as those who hated me.

Now that I am here, I am exploring. I don’t want to say I am exploring “other religions,” because as a Black, Biracial person, I fully believe any religion I practice belongs to the universe and is given to me as a gift.

But I will say I am exploring paths that were not offered to me as a child. Paths that take me from Thailand to Japan, from England to Barbados, from New Orleans to Paris.

I am learning about the fact that every culture in the world has people they revere as God’s and that the Christian God is not the only option.

Hoodoo and Voodoo are teaching me to connect with my Black ancestors, and I don’t mean through majickal means, I mean by showing me that if I want to get to know them, I have to connect with my blood relatives first.

The thing that scares me the most – that I’ll be rejected – hasn’t happened with the Black members of my family. If anything, they have embraced me like a long-lost piece of the puzzle, and that feels amazing.

I cannot say the same for the white members of my family. All of us were raised with bias and racism, all of us were raised with microaggressions that taught us to bury our feelings of violation, fear, anxiety, and depression.

None of us kids were raised to believe we’d be family forever, and I fully understand why. In general, white people are not, and have never been raised with community the way that Black people have.

In the early days of enslavement, Black people were trained by abuse, rape, torture, branding, and other violent means to see all white people as a threat.

White people, in turn, were trained through the same means to see Black people as weaker than, as unworthy, and as easy to take advantage of.

Black people across the diaspora had to learn to work together; community was something that was ingrained into their bodies, minds, and souls through constant effort. Through continuous work. And through leaning on each other.

In the Black world, “You protect one, thus you protect all.” In the white community, you hoard what you have, leaving nothing for anyone else, on the off chance that if you do, you might be uncomfortable.

Black people lead with love, white people lead with shame. There’s a cast difference between Black and white people, and until white people, in particular, acknowledge that their fear of being seen as “bad” or “wrong” is precisely why they are the way they are.

I’ve been hearing all over social media lately, “Why won’t X come save us?” bitch, please, save yourself. You’re going to have to, because asking the same Black, Brown, Indian, and Indigenous bodies who have been dying for centuries, to continue to die so you can remain comfortable, should actually be studied.

A few days ago, a white woman on Threads wrote: “Can white people join the Black Panthers? I think we’re ready.”

The very fact that a white person dared to post such a question proves that you are not, in fact, ready for revolution.

I’m so confused as to why everyone thinks that revolution has to be bloody. The thing is, standing up to those who think they can do whatever they want doesn’t always have to be violent.

$12.4 billion – {Target} lost in market value as Target’s stock dropped by over $27 per share (The Charlotte Post, 2025) 3.1% Q4 sales decline, alongside a notable dip in February 2025 sales (The Sun, 2025 – Google

I no longer believe that *We* as a society need to do better. I fully believe that if we want change, if we want alteration, if we want the world to evolve, it’s going to have to be white women leading the charge. Mainly because they won’t listen to anyone else.

Meanwhile, I’ll be over there with the rest of the Loud Girls, fighting the good fight.

XOXO

Devon J Hall,

The Original Loud Mouth Brown Girl