NP: Every Ghetto Every City – Lauryn Hill

So yesterday was a pretty interesting day. As I was leaving a lounge in my Harlem neighborhood, a fair-skinned male in his mid-thirties randomly called my friend and I niggers. I had never experienced any form of racism in my neighborhood, let alone in Harlem as a whole. Immediately my defense went up, I swiveled around and aggressively asked the man to repeat his statement. As my friends and I started to go back and forth with the guy, I grabbed my friends’ hands and walked away. As I walked away he yelled, ”You are the weakest link.” That really hit home. Now, there were two ways that I could’ve handled that situation. I could’ve cursed him out, created a scene, and been labeled as a angry black girl by bystanders, or just walk away from someone who disrespected me for no reason. As a black woman, these are some of my everyday struggles: either I'm labeled as a weak woman for not standing up for myself or I'm just angry. One thing that many people seem to never understand is that we are not angry, we don’t have an attitude, and we are strong women who have fought through slavery, abandonment and neglect.

“The most disrespected person 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,” Malcolm X.

We are ridiculed by our own men who make matters even worse and are seen as nothing more than a sex symbol to many other men, but never wife material. In the dating world we are characterized as “too strong” or “too independent.” These qualities are often threatening to men, as they usually prefer submissive females. However, our independent attitudes and backbone are a part of who we are and something difficult to change. Since times of slavery, the black woman had to pick up duties that required independence.

Black women learned to balance being nurturing mothers and hard workers. In the African American community, many children grow up with single mothers. These mothers struggle to be accepted in the workforce with unequal pay and harassment. Then to leave to the outside world and be shamed by the color of their skin, targeted and feared; somehow they fight through it all and sacrifice everything for their children. So yes, most days we might not have a big smile on our faces because we are constantly fighting battles. As a young educated black woman, we are often categorized as bougie. We are often called intimidating and seen to “always have an attitude.” In reality we're probably nice, kind-hearted people; let's be realistic, your race doesn’t determine your demeanor.

I’m tired of people being afraid to approach me because they think I’m intimidating. I’m tired of never being treated fairly because I'm a woman. I’m tired of people judging me because I'm black. I'M TIRED OF BEING SEEN AS THE WEAKEST LINK because we are truly the strongest dominator. We love but we don’t tolerate disrespect, who would want a “yes-man” anyway? Black women have showed that we can do everything you can do with heels on and the world on our backs. It’s about time that we are treated deservingly!