Finding Empowerment In Oppression

Lately, it feels like a silent revolution is stirring inside of me. I’m continually becoming more and more comfortable with my experience as a queer, black girl. I couldn’t imagine myself here a couple years ago but feeling safe and free in my black body in the midst of homophobia + misogynoir feels revolutionary.

When you’re a person of color and the “wrong” sexuality for heteronormative standards, you learn very early on that this system was not made for you. And if you don’t have someone who has felt that same pain, who’s felt unloved and unwanted, telling you otherwise, you start to believe that this world wasn’t made for you, either.

That is the farthest thing from the truth.

It doesn’t feel like it all the time but this world was made for all of us. We were placed on this earth to feel safe-uninhibited-loved-connected (the list goes on and on) but there are systems in place that are directly correlated to our internalized feelings of unworthiness. I like to objectify those feelings. By placing them outside of myself and looking at them for what they are, it always dawns on me that the hatred I, and my community face has nothing to do with us. Hatred is not a passive act. It might be insidious and tricky to pinpoint but a person makes a conscious choice to hate rather than to understand. That person’s bigotry is not on the victim.

A person of color is born and there are already systems preying on our self-esteem. With that in mind, the only thing poc can do to overcome these obstacles is to love ourselves deeply- and unapologetically, in a world that deems us unloveable. The same goes for people who identify with anything other than being straight.

Our oppression takes on different forms but the feelings of inferiority they plant in us are universal. For me, being black and queer is power. I won’t speak for others but I’m sure they feel the same sort of inexplicable pride in their community’s resilience to withstand all the obstacles we face. We saw that unbreakable power of activism recently with #NoDAPL. With any sort of collective pain, community and solidarity will bloom from it and their victory shows how much can be done when we protect one another from injustice. As Trump makes his way into the White House, we need to actively remind ourselves that we are not the narratives that bigots try to force on us. We are more than the hatred this country has normalized.

Being black with a soft heart is activism.

Not allowing society’s skewed view of my blackness and sexuality to determine my own perception of myself, is a form of activism.

Creating space for the generation after me so they won’t have to feel the same insecurities as much as I have is also a soft, yet effective, sort of activism.