about Black exhale
Let it out and cleanse your body, cleanse your spirit. Empty yourself.
Do not suppress anymore.
Get it out for your ancestors. Get it out for your George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Emmitt Till, or ________. Get it out for all of the victims of state violence. Get it out for doing anything while Black. Grieve. Rage. Get the pervasive racism out of your cells. Open up your throat chakra but do not scream it at your children for they have less power than you. Do not pass that shit down to the vulnerable ones. Give it to the sky and let it transmute and rain down so that your tears can wash this all away. Give it to the earth so that the soil can use it to grow us newly. Let it out of your body. Let it out. Let it out. Let it out.
Black lives are sacred.
When will we start to acknowledge that? Or perhaps because somewhere in the sinews of the collective body we sense that Black is beautiful, powerful and divine, then what arises is a primal and unchecked impulse to conquer? The way I grew up, self-love was never taught to me. One day it hit me…I do not hate myself, I was just never taught how to love myself. The violence on Black bodies is a learned behavior. We have learned it and impose it on our children, our brothers and sisters, our communities.
The lessons of our fungibility and disposability continued during the 2020 pandemic, under the knee of an officer, under the gavel of a judge, in the textbooks of our schools that called our enslaved ancestors volunteers. This is not innate, this is not a curse from God, this is not our culture or our fate.
All learned behavior must first be confronted and the impact acknowledged before the unlearning and re-education can even begin. However, the social construction of whiteness is not designed to see itself or the harms embedded in how racial ideologies depend on power and subjugation. And because this is a global wound, we must also interrogate anti-Blackness everywhere because Black lives are sacred. Our bodies are meant to be cherished. Our bodies are here to experience safety. We will not be pathologized or punished for freedom. (SHIT, ARE WE BEING PUNISHED FOR OUR FREEDOM?)
Left to right, top row: @mcclinton, @blackwomenradicals, @black_surfing_rockaway, @uluvmylovefaces, John Gutmann. Second row: @dazzle_jam, @dazzle_jam, @mswrightsway, @antoinettebefree (shower), @mswrightsway (stretch), @kennallmond. Bottom row: Kerry James Marshall, @dr_afiya, @nuitnoireoff, @nickey_ta_summer, @mysticalhealing.guide, @earthtojordi.
about Antoinette Cooper
The ways in which the collective will bring their light will be the light of transformation, or the fire of rage. All are valid, all are creative forces, all are for our highest good.
It is past time for some of America’s favorite pastimes—the lynching of Black folk—and America’s most cherished rituals—the elevation of whiteness—to come to an end. Because, just like the process of me coming into my womanhood and my divinity, the space that we take up and the attention that is ours no longer frightens us as we enter into our alignment. The darkness of racializing and racism needs some light, in whatever form it comes through.
This healing work includes ancestral work and white folks have their ancestral work to do as well. Break the cycles. In this racialized construction, your skin is both a privilege and a prison. The ones who are conscious and aware are the ones who see the bars. This is how you start to lift your own veil so that you start to see that the anger or discomfort comes from an ancestral exhaustion. Wound work is how you practice opening your heart to connect to the humanity of someone that does not look like you. This is how you send love to contribute to a people who were harmed. This is how you begin to practice witnessing and generously holding space for the experience and truth of another person. This is how you courageously allow yourself to be broken open.