By: Jasmine Gates
How can a statement made in 1962 still be one of the most prevalent statements in 2019?
How did we manage not to shift?
How did we manage not to grow?
How did we manage not to get better?
The statement I am speaking of was made by Malcolm X in May 1962. He stated:
“The most disrespected Woman in America is the Black Woman.
The most unprotected person in America is the Black Woman.
The most neglected person in America is the Black Woman”
You can argue this as an opinion. However, I urge you to ask a Black Woman how often these statements are proven to be true in her own experience.
Then ask her how she copes.
Her response will be the evidence of Black Girl Magic.
So let’s talk about it.
What is happening is that we as Black Women are reclaiming who we are. Through the respect we have for ourselves, the protection of our natural hair, and the way we are refusing to be silent and actually standing up for our sisters, daughters and friends that are going through said traumas.
We are reclaiming these things so that the generations to come will be born without an expectancy of a certain treatment from the world, but born into a space where their mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers are healing out loud. The power in that is when you heal out loud, the oppressors have less freedom to move and oppress freely, further preventing the generations to come from experiencing the same traumas.
We have the ability to influence the course of events through an extraordinary way and that is the definition of Magic.
Notice, I didn’t mention anything about the world around us changing. This is because Magic is having the ability to shift things from what is normal. We can all attest to the mistreatment of Black Women being a normal offense here in America. However, the shift is taking place in how we deal with the negative treatment and in turn the world around us changes.
We have been able to find beauty in the natural states of our hair in a world where the hair that grows from our scalp is constantly policed; find innocence in our bodies that have been oversexualized at young ages by men who should be in jail for fantasizing about us; and lastly, blossom in a place that stripped us of everything we knew and told us working for Massa was all we could ever aspire to be.
Once we became educated on the fact that slavery wasn’t the origin of our ancestors, we have been able to take their teachings and apply it to self. One of the most prevalent sayings is Sankofa. It is an African word from the Akan tribe in Ghana. It means to return, go, look, see and take. This is exactly what Black Girl Magic is, going back to claim who we were at our origin, before America handed us its perception of us.
