Welcome to Litsy!

Highly recommend this book. The author sits down and has real talk conversations with folx of Black America, and they‘ve got a lot to say. White peoplx should be doing the same instead of hanging on to racial bias, and/or just not knowing. These conversations are so important. Together, we can create a more just, loving world for all. But we can only do it together. 👊🏾✊🏻🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸It‘s not too late to fulfill EVERY promise.

We‘re seeing Black men and women get killed, assaulted, and berated nearly every week, whether it‘s in their own backyard, at Waffle House, or sitting down at a Starbucks. This needs to change, and it needs to happen now. This country needs to commit itself to making sure that young Black dreaming doesn‘t die. That young Black America is given the tools to dream and the opportunity to actually realize those dreams in a fair and equitable way.

I‘m trying not to live in worry or fear. I feel like that‘s also a part of White supremacy. I think that‘s why were seeing such alarming rates of Black death on social media. I feel like that‘s all a part of their plan: keep us in fear. It‘s so easy to give into the fear, but to me it takes a little more courage to look at our resilience, to look at our strength and love. We are very strong people. We‘re still here. Ain‘t nothing you can do.

If we weren‘t clear before, then we should be clear now: the American Dream has never been for so many of us. With Trump‘s promises to “make America great again”, it‘s really clear that this dream is not a dream of freedom for Black folks, women, queer people, Muslim folks, undocumented folks, Latinx people, or disabled people or any of us who live at the intersections of those identities.

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains. I‘m ready to live. I‘m not doing it to die. I‘m doing this to live, because like I told you before, if I don‘t do it, we‘re going to die. I‘m doing this to live.

The only time they pay attention is when we‘re out in their face. When we‘re up in their face and we don‘t disappear. When they have to see young Black people crying, when they have to see us angry and fierce, and they‘re on their toes, and they don‘t know what to do because of our anger. That is our power.

Being Black in the United States, we have a very complex relationship to gender and sexuality, and in many ways the expectations of gender are harder on Black people. Black women, we often have to compete with images that try to strip us of our womanhood. The same thing goes for Black men, as they feel that they are competing with a society that doesn‘t really value their manhood.

I try to be very sensitive when I say this, but as a Black woman who very much appreciates dating Black men, it is difficult particularly as a Black transgender woman to find Black men who are open to understand my identity, or won‘t just write me off because I‘m transgender.

I don‘t have an American dream anymore because it‘s like society has played me. Degraded, beaten, underprivileged me. Every day is a struggle to get to the next day. My dream is to be able to see my kids successful, not locked up or the police done killed them.

Love is hard for everyone. But for young Black people in America, it seems damn near impossible. Is it that surprising when we lack the love of our society? We are raised in a society that teaches us to hate ourselves, our bodies, our features, and to hate each other. We are taught that our hair is inappropriate and our skin is too dark. And then we are condemned when we learn to experience love in other ways.

Enslaved couples weren‘t always allowed to legally marry, because marriage inherently implied that the right gave couples control over “women‘s sexuality and labor” and parental rights to children, would have been antithetical to the capitalistic enterprise of slavery, which necessitated that White plantation owners have full control over Black bodies. Slaves were also seen as not having the morality to “respect and honor” marriage.

Black people have never truly been in control of our love. It was always understood as someone else‘s to regulate, stigmatize, criticize, and legitimize. Our love, the love that we nourish and foster, when it looks different from their love, the love of White folk, is mocked and called unfit. Black love has been shaped by the White power structure. It has been regulated, stigmatized, criticized, and used as a method of control.

Do not limit us. I cannot tell you the power that Black people have. You look at our skin, confine us in a box based on our color. You can be a prostitute; a drug dealer; a crack addict. No. I can be a fucking angel. A queen; I can rule this fucking empire. I can do anything that I want to because I am a Black woman and because my struggles have been so real and I have lived my whole life sacrificing everything I want to do for everyone else.

Hollywood is a place where everyone wants their dreams to come true, but it‘s also a place that Black folks have struggled not just for visibility but for the power to create and tell their stories to the world. It‘s a place where despite all the odes to diversity, the experience of Blacks (and seemingly all people of color) remain anything but equal.

What does it feel like to be a young Black man in America? I used to say you were born with a felony. It‘s like a curse. It‘s a gift and a curse. Everybody want to be Black, but nobody want to be Black. You want to rock the hairstyles, the dreads, the braids. Everybody want our culture, but they don‘t want to be us. Forget the curse, it‘s bittersweet. You already born with the odds against you. You make it out, God must know your name.

With all these labels, she said, it‘s challenging. It can also be confusing when White folks try to connect with you by talking about Nicki Minaji or something “really” Black, instead of treating you like a person. It makes you uncomfortable. Insecure. And it‘s hard to figure out where to draw the line and how to challenge people when they say or do questionable things.

The American Dream is not “getting by.” At least it wasn‘t supposed to be. It hasn‘t changed enough to define a new destination. You‘re supposed to have a comfortable life, not a “getting by” life. I do not have it. I‘m still working on it. I‘m still pursuing. Still chasing the dream, whatever. Shout out to Martin Luther [King].

Black people don‘t give up. Black millennials are coming into their own right now, and we‘re in that same mindset. We‘re not going to give up. We‘re also hip to the fact that we are going to be discriminated against no matter what happens. Whether it‘s buying a home, getting a job, we‘re going to be discriminated against because of the color of our skin because that‘s the way America is.

“Not only do you have to worry,” he said, “about not having food to eat, but as a Black person, you have the added burden of just trying to make it home alive.”

I feel so betrayed by America, by those on the right, by White women, that maybe it doesn‘t even matter where I live. I still want to believe in America. Believe that things can be better. America of late is making it hard.

The public and bold way that Southern Whites cling to the flag and memorabilia is frightening, but it‘s more than just a flag and statues. It‘s about a history that so many in the region are unwilling to let go of, a past they seem to yearn for—an America of yesteryear. And while that sentiment has crept up nearly everywhere in the nation, the South always seems to lead the charge.

For me, in such polarized times, when White privilege, nativist-sentiment, and xenophobia have been clearly visible, the South, with its racial past and unwillingness by so many to renounce it, have especially frustrated me. When states like Mississippi refuse to remove the Confederate flag from their state flag or signs that urge to ‘Keep America White‘ are displayed so openly on the streets, I‘m horrified in ways that I‘m not up north.

I remember my sadness walking around the slave memorials in lower Manhattan, the sheer terror watching Eric Garner mumble the words “I can‘t breathe” over and over on that street in Staten Island, and the fear I felt when a young Black man was killed by a White police officer steps from where my great-aunt lived and where I currently reside.

⬆️Your Black friends are speaking. LISTEN.

New York was like a sky scattered with diamonds, filled with bright lights that I‘d been gazing at since I was a young child.

This wasn‘t really on my radar until I spotted it on the shelf, but what I‘ve read so far, from the jacket to the first few pages, really grabbed my attention. I look forward to actually having the time to sit down and dig a little deeper into these stories.

#tbrtuesdays