Blogger Interview at Womanist Musings

Hey I was a featured blogger at Womanist Musings last week. I'm the little blogger that could you know. Thanks to blog host Renee for reaching out and offering support. Check out Sometimes It Takes An Act of Faith interview. Here's an excerpt:

We live in a hierarchal society in which black women often find themselves at the bottom. To what do you attribute this and why do you feel that black women continually fail to make themselves a priority?

It could take volumes to reply to this question! Not every Black woman is in this situation first of all. Again, this goes back to systematic racism where the infrastructure is set up to favour white men, then white women and children. One of the biggest problems I see I how the Blacks who are descended from the slaves that built the Americas is the lack of acknowledgement of that. There is a psychic fissure that still resonates with a lot of people because it’s carried generation to generation – but people accept it as well. Those contracts to agree to carry this burden need to be broken. There needs to be a recognition of the different class structures that exist amongst Blacks as well. It’s funny how when things were much more difficult for Blacks overall many were in fact able to work around a horrible existence and be successful. Now there seems to be a defeatist attitude often where the focus is on all the negative things that can occur. There’s also this focus on protecting Black boys and men at all costs against the big bad (white) racism at the expense of Black women and girls. Women in general have a hard time putting themselves first because we live in a patriarchal society that teaches us to defer to men always. So for Black women it’s doubly so. In the end the only reason why Black women don’t put themselves first is because they choose not to. Society is set up to pass us over but that doesn’t mean we have to let it happen! It’s an indoctrination that begins as a child, much like the results of the test where children prefer the white doll. It’s a not always silent message being passed down generation to generation and it’s literally killing us. It has to change or most of us won’t make it. We have to do an extensive evaluation of where we stand, what our place in the world will be and learn to make better choices. When we know better we will.