Jesse Williams, Race & Women’s Inequality.
Jesse Williams, Race & Women’s Inequality.
I was drowning and did not know. Until the words of Jesse Williams pulled me up from underwater did I take a breath and rediscover my air.
On my first day of kindergarten my brother was entering 7th grade. I was shy and scared. I prayed my parents would come back and pick me up. Another little girl came over and asked, “Do you want to be friends?” I said “yes.” We are still friends today.
While waiting in line with my backpack dressed in my newly pressed uniform I overheard snippets from a few parents.
“What do we have like 3 or 4 of them now?”
“If more keep coming this school is going to go down.”
“They are taking up spots.”
I was only 5 years old, but I knew when someone was talking about me. My brother made his way over to my line. The mother’s continued to mutter. My brother both protective and unyielding at 13 turned to those women and said, “You don’t own the school. We have a right to be here.”
The bell had not even yet rung. I had an advocate and a friend. We need both in life. I went to my first day of class bruised but not broken. Over the years I have had many more days like that first day of kindergarten. I have more than a million examples of both overt and innuendo forms of racism.
I am an Associate Pastor. The church is not a safe haven from bigotry. I have watched men wrestle with wanting to extend opportunity to women in leadership within the church. I have sat in meetings and seminars as women and benevolent male advocates strain his or her voice to speak of equality. I have walked away hearing men whom I had respected rumble about women “taking” men’s jobs. I will be here all day if I share my thoughts on segregation in the church.
I did not know that bigots in their privilege owned the seat and the table. I had failed to be informed that my rights being a Black and female human were in opposition to a fantasy that some hold being women and people of color can only sit at the table if invited.
I have heard this nonsensical rhetoric my whole life. Embarrassingly, I admit at different points in my life I believed that my color and my womanhood were of less value. Although, strong and encouraging parents raised me the weight of oppression from negative self-talk, magazine images, misogynistic music, and not seeing myself represented in leadership had taken its toll.
Over the past few years, I have grown spiritually and intimately in my relationship with God. The strengthening of my faith has made my voice strong and brave. I recognize my worth. I feel free. For a long time I feared speaking on topics like inequality and justice. Somewhere a long the way I learned that speaking my mind in a way that might make others uncomfortable was neither my place and would be deemed inappropriate.
If you have people in your life who insist that your words opposing injustice are inappropriate --- cut those people off from speaking into your life.
I have no credentials that often verify a speaker. I am not an actor. I do not hold a PhD. I have not intricately studied texts on racial reconciliation nor women’s issues.
I am a Black woman with a voice and a story. I am not drowning. I am breathing. I fear if I do not speak up I will always fear for my Black Father, Black Brothers, Black Nephews. I will fear for their bodies and those who would try to physically harm them. If I do not speak up I will perpetuate the lie that women should be soft, demure, and go quietly to her corner.
I am healed. I have chosen to take up my mat. I have chosen to walk.