Amber LaTeisha

[welovenappyhair]

@filah_lah_lah

[zarphire]

The topic is “things to not say to a black girl”

Often times many people say ignorant things like this , thinking that is a complement but in fact it’s is rude, extremely disrespectful , and hurtful. By saying these things they are saying that black isn’t beautiful. When in fact we are , which is why everyone wants to to look like a black girl or woman. These are examples of mircoaggressions.

[amber-lateisha]

Once again, a monolithic reduction of the Black femme experience in this statements. I agree with the OP in that this is also an example of microagressions. It is both heartbreaking and angering when these comments get made. 

[modernafrohippie]

For those who may not know: I do nude model. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do. It’s freeing. Liberating. And no ones is ever the same because we all have different body types. Many of us struggle with body dysmorphia and for me the best thing that helped was me accepting how I looked and loving it by coming up with creative nude concepts!

This time I decided to have a picnic... nude 😜 and it was the BEST time. God drinks. Smoke. Music. And laughs with my photographer. Hopefully someday we’ll be able to have nude picnics FORREAL! Legally lol 😝

If you’d like to see more of this content (uncensored bc booooo people policing our bodies on social media’s lol) you can check out the link in my Instagram @modernafrohippie 🌼

[amber-lateisha]

Embracing our bodies, embracing the beauty in our skin, and embracing the different body types we inhabit to me is black feminism. Freeing ourselves from societies expectations of us gives us wings. When we are able to fully inhabit our skin, we reject the notion of “Other” and of anything other than divine. 

[farewell-to-lorien]

…I am not impressed with America’s progress. I am not impressed that slavery was abolished or that Jim Crow ended. I feel no need to pat America on its back for these ‘achievements.’ This is how it always should have been. Many call it progress, but I do not consider it praiseworthy that only within the last generation did America reach the baseline for human decency.

Austin Channing Brown, I’m Still Here (via enneagrammar)

I love this quote. It encompasses so much of what I think a lot of us are feeling. No one should be rewarded for common decency. We also should not be thankful or grateful as some people may assert. This is beyond the least that America can do.

[amber-lateisha]

For Black Women, Joy Is Nonnegotiable

After the 2016 deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, I wondered when I could laugh again. This time, I’m not asking permission.

Black joy is an essential part of Black feminism and Black trauma work. It is of course of the utmost importance to educate ourselves and arm ourselves to be successful in our lives. It is also important to celebrate, to love ourselves and to love each other. This article has quotes from Black women describing what Black joy means to them and how it relates to their mental health. We must be gentle with ourselves, take moments to breathe, and take moments to engage in self- or community-care.

So, in the midst of important and heavy reading/work, I invite you to take a deep breath. 

Take another.

Release any tension your jaw may be holding. Do the same with your shoulders. Maybe get a glass of water or make a cup of tea. A couple more deep breaths. 

I like to close out with a few things I’m grateful for and one thing I truly love about myself.

Black joy is essential.

[amber-lateisha]

Legacy of Trauma: The African American Experience - ACEs

Brandon Jones M.A. is a psychotherapist, professor, author. He specializations in Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), Historical and Intergenerational trau...

This is a long video but worth the watch if you have the time. If not, I would start around 22:17. Jones discusses a modern ACE (adverse childhood experience) test that was conducted in 2012. This study highlights the childhood trauma that impacts the Black community. Looking at childhood is important because trauma that is caused and not treated at a young age influences how people move through the world after. Also, as is said in the video, if you have been exposed to trauma once, your risk for being exposed again goes up exponentially. This study also categorizes the types of trauma children in urban areas experience.

I believe there is much more work to be done here using Black feminism as our guide. There has not been enough work done on studying how gender and intersectionality affects childhood trauma. The more modern study is a step in the right direction but it is not complete nor good enough.

[amber-lateisha]

“African American human subject research is desperately needed, but academic press editorial departments make it different to publish and Institutional Review Boards (IRB) make it difficult to conduct. My infidelity study was initially exclusively about black women, but publisher rejections to my book proposal within the realm of ‘while we find your project very interesting, we fear the topic is too niche for our list and won’t offer abroad enough appeal’ spurred me to expand the sample while consciously recruiting African American women.” - Designing Love: Reimagining Technology and Intimacy, Ebony A. Utley, 196

[amber-lateisha]

Across Generations: Michelle Obama and Her Mentees - The Michelle Obama Podcast

Part two of our discussion about mentorship features Michelle in conversation with her younger team members, in which they explore the ups and downs of professional life and what it’s like to be a black woman right now. Find the episode transcript here: https://spoti.fi/TMOP_transcripts Make a plan to vote in the Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5: weall.vote/ga

“I go through these really interesting moments of trauma, I think. And we texted a little bit about this, but there's this trauma of just being Black in America that you're seeing on social media. There's the trauma of watching people kill people who look like you based on how they look. And, having a brother who, you know, God forbid he ever got pulled over, is not gonna have chill. He's not gonna be somebody, who...Yene's brother isn't either. Plenty of my friends' brothers aren't. Then also the trauma of watching white people process it.” Kristin Jones, The Michelle Obama Podcast

As a young Black woman, this entire episode hit home for me. I am highlighting Kristin talking about trauma here to fit with my personal focus and interest. The whole conversation is one of honesty, healing, and openness that is important to hear. I thought about Angela Y Davis in A vocabulary for feminist praxis: on war and radical critique when she writes, “Victories achieved by individuals do not necessarily count as collective victories” (21) and I think a lot of people (correctly) viewed the Obama administration this way. The mantra of racism being over because we’ve had a Black president was everywhere. It was destructive and false and once again making the Black experience a monolithic one. Listening to this episode (and the one before it) and hearing Michelle talk about how important it is for her to give opportunity and guidance to young Black people, specifically women, I got the impression that she understands what Davis was saying and agrees with it. She is very much aware of the perception of her husband’s presidency and knows first hand the fight isn’t over. She is using her influence and victory to empower a generation of women that will come behind her and continue what she started. And it’s wonderful to see a space given to these remarkably bright and aware young women.

[amber-lateisha]

untitled #1

pretty

what does that word mean coming from a descendant of a “former” sundown town behind a stretched smile with pity filled eyes and hands made for pointing at the wrong man?

look just like her

says the ignorant man who cannot see past the similarity of skin tone between my adopted mother and me

not like the others

enough said.

don’t need all that neck movement

as i get passionate loud correct about the world

it’s such a shame

when referring to genocide and forced labor that still exists in the america they so proudly celebrate on the fourth day of the seventh month of a year that was filled with

i’m not a racist. anti-Black offends me. i get it, i do.

go to hell.

[amber-lateisha]

I learned that my anger never meant that there was something wrong with me. It meant that there was something wrong. Out there. Something I might have the power to change. I stopped being a quiet peacekeeper and started being a loud peacemaker. My anger was good

Untamed, Glennon Doyle (via amber-lateisha)

This book is one I have recommended to all of the women in my circle. It’s eye opening, challenging, and I found it to be pretty life changing. Though not written as a Black feminist text, there are many takeaways that could be viewed through the lens of Black feminist theory and still hold up. Doyle talks about rejecting stereotypes, about standing up for yourself and in turn other women around you, about questioning the status quo, and about empowerment. All of those are parts of Black feminism and this book helped to unleash my inner strength and taught me how to harness it.

[amber-lateisha]

I learned that my anger never meant that there was something wrong with me. It meant that there was something wrong. Out there. Something I might have the power to change. I stopped being a quiet peacekeeper and started being a loud peacemaker. My anger was good

Untamed, Glennon Doyle

[amber-lateisha]

Austin Channing Brown at TheoEd Talks The Double Sided Pursuit of Racial Justice

A new leading voice in racial justice, Austin Channing Brown offers a compelling look at what the journey towards justice entails in an era of rising racial ...

This talk dials in on the anti-Blackness that is in the fabric of this country. Brown talks about how the loving of Black people is conditional and how Blackness is only accepted when it is performative. She touches on the mass incarceration of Black people, the failings of our education system, and the health care system failing Black women. Austin Channing Brown is a contemporary Black feminist leader and is essential.

Through the lens of racial trauma, Brown talks about our people paying the price for conditional love, conditional friendships, conditional co-working spaces, and conditional neighborliness. This conditional being creates a constant state of uncertainty and fear and this state breeds trauma.

[amber-lateisha]

I found this piece to be both brave and heartbreaking. I already had the idea for my assimilation photo before I found this but it struck the same chord for me. Both are about how the world perceives us and how we feel we must adapt our faces and bodies to fit their narrative as a matter of survival. It is a way that white supremacy has done damage to the beauty seen in Black women, something I believe is starting to change. I believe we are pushing back, showing who we are, and loving ourselves.

[amber-lateisha]

Where We Last Left Off

Where We Last Left Off, an album by Victoria Rosser on Spotify

As Black women, we are often left behind in the movement for racial justice. We are categorized into one thing or another, ignoring intersectionality. We fall into silence. We fall into the river upstream. The refrain from this song echoes the movement for change.

“I don’t wanna be okay with the way things have been We fall deep into silence We’re falling”

[amber-lateisha]

There comes a time where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (via amber-lateisha)

There are so many answers to the “why” of this question in relation to Black lives and Black bodies. My focus (if it wasn’t already apparent) is trauma. We fall into this particular branch from the moment we are born into the anti-Black state that is this country. We fall in the first time we are stereotyped and our existence is made to be monolithic. We fall in due to a lack of education about our history in grade school. If we travel upstream, we can start by naming it what it is and beginning a healing process that is well overdue. We can educate our community on the pillars of Black feminism. We can dismantle the scaffolding of white supremacy and inherited trauma before it solidifies and needs severe undoing. We can make education sexy. We can embrace the erotic. We can find our strength and hear our power. And though it is unrealistic to strive for a trauma-less Black existence in these modern times, being armed with the tools to resist and heal from racial trauma can make all the difference.

[amber-lateisha]

There comes a time where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

[amber-lateisha]

June Jordan - Poem About My Rights

Created with http://www.mp32tube.com

CW: rape, harsh language

Trauma. That is this poem. It is about specific traumas, general trauma of being a woman, and racial trauma. Jordan links racial trauma to sexual assault trauma with the lines:

“what will the evidence look like the proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland and if after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to self-immolation of the villages and if after that we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they claim my consent”

Here Jordan links having lack of proof of sexual assault with having lack of proof for racial trauma as well. She is pointing out beautifully how the two are intertwined and of the same foundation.