How to Survive as a Black Kid
- How to Survive as a Black Kid
- Don’t rely on school books for your education about history; they are heavily edited by European colonialism. Have you ever been taught about the ancient Wagadu Empire? Or the likes of Elijah McCoy?
- Be aware there is a whole cityscape of well taught untruths and social constructs designed to block your view and destroy you mentally. You will have to gird your mind with carefully sought out knowledge to keep it fortified.
- One day you may encounter a police officer whose sole aim is to belittle you. Be aware he is driven by great bitterness and life’s sorrows. This particular man was beaten by his father and called a failure since his youth. His wife is having an affair with someone who knows tenderness. Daily, he has to pretend he does not know. The system has allowed him to feel as though he has real power. You are the victim of his delusions. Try not to become too riled.
- Don’t feel guilty if you don’t ‘act black’. These narrow paradigms someone has set up of how a typical black person must act and speak are one of the many, many ways to keep you locked up in a box. Yet…
- Don’t feel guilty if you are accused of ‘acting black’ If you are expressing yourself in the essence of where you were raised, the confidence, lingo, mannerisms and intonations. Don’t feel you have to edit yourself for fear of other’s narrow minds and even narrower racial confines. As formerly stated, this term is a myth you learn to bypass. Simply a coin created to shame you whichever side it lands on.
- Don’t feel guilty if you fall in love with someone of another race. As long as your admiration stems from a love of the soul’s beauty and not a hatred of blackness, or a fetish or worship of another colour, let love do what it does best –teach you to live outside of all of your ‘Self.’.
- Teach yourself that hips, full lips, thighs and derriere and kinky hair are a point of beauty, not shame. Whether you have them or not.
- Racist comments – let not your heart be perturbed. If someone has a heart so festered and intentions most deplorable, you should not be able to muster enough respect for them that their opinions mean anything to you.
- If you’ve been brought up on ‘gangster’ rap, wean yourself off it. The record companies who pump sewage audibly are happy to have ‘music’ promoting envy, greed and murder, to infiltrate communities and be the backing track to their decay.
- Words can be powerful. Words can be used against you. 16th Century words such as ‘blacklisted’ and ‘blackmail’ reinforce ‘black’ as a negative. Equip yourself with words that empower. P.S in China, white is the colour of death. These things are cultural. Cultural things are not concrete. However, they are fascinating. Learning about other cultures will expand your mind outside the small euro-centric vista you’ve been raised to have.
- Understand that people will try to destroy you when they are afraid of your power
- Read books. Many books. The right books.
- Remind yourself daily that you as a human being have overwhelming intrinsic beauty and strength
- Use your power wisely.
- Use your power wisely
- Use your power wisely
(via isfpoc)
