There’s a difference between reacting to something I said and speaking past what I said to interject your opinion. I don’t create for your validation. I don’t create for your approval. I don’t care how you feel about my curls. If you are a nonblack person who rushes to respond tomy poem about anti-blackness in the hair care industry by speaking to what you personally think about my curls or kinky curls more generally?

Why aren’t my kinky curls classic curls? Didn’t mean to ask the question I know they why don’t need a reason So let’s just skip right to the lesson When you center the experience Of a certain kind of girl Then you’re bound to underestimate What makes up a classic curl Because if you knew your history You’d know we graced the world Long before your Ancestors So guess we’re classic girls

Whenever anyone says that I, or any of us, “called them out” I strongly side eye the suggestion. I don’t see truth telling as calling anything anywhere. I don’t see truth telling as confrontational to another person. The truth only confronts the lies within that person. If someone isn’t prepared to relinquish those lies, if someone still identifies with those lies, then they feel attacked. But all we did was say true things.

Shout out to the false equivalencies. Shout out to the half truth, masked truth, and anything but the actual truth. Shout out to the standards that are not standard selectively applied so as to disguise the hypocrisy that underlies it all. White supremacy is a hell of a high and an even heavier fall back to reality. Pointing reckless fingers right at you and me- angry at the ways that our humanity copes with this calamity.

I Love Black People. When I see us? I see where our humanity meets our divinity. I see where our wounds meet our completeness. I see where we hurt. I see how we heal. I see when we rise. I see US. And because of that - I will do everything in my power to never harm us. If I see a Black Person being harmful - I will speak to their completeness.

Do not be discouraged when they try to intimidate you. Do not be discouraged when they try to silence you. Do not be discouraged when they refuse to see you. They are afraid of what we are here to teach. We ask them to love and they seek to silence us. Why? Because they do not know love. Because they are terrified of love. Even as it hopes to help them.