Category: negative portrayal of black women in media

@_gypsy_eyez, acceptance, African American women, black women, Call of the Universe, child abuse survivor, dealing with emotions, facing fear, Fear, healing, honesty, Ju Ju, June Lejoi, know thyself, let go and let God, loneliness, memoirs, mixed black and white, mixed race, multi-racial, multiracial, negative bias against black women, negative portrayal of black women in media, overcoming fear, poem, poetry, Self acceptance, self esteem, self hate, Self-love, shame, spiritual awakening, spiritual journey, transformation, Universe, use your talent, use your voice, voice, vulnerability

Perfection

Browncurlycute

131cdd10-f4b2-4c49-9d0b-732a30eb88c1

2/24/17

As I sit and feel the sadness
That I’ve been so desperately trying to escape
I know it comes from deep within
My muscles
My joints
They hold this heartache.
It tells me lies that feel so true
You are not enough
They don’t want you,
Your body
Your mind
Your personality
Your brown skin.
At 42 with two young children,
Prepare to be alone forever.
That’s the message I see when I look out
That’s the message I hear when I look within.
Storms
I’ve been warned that they are coming
I’ve been encouraged that I’m strong enough to face them.
Fear, sadness and guilt have kept me frozen.
But you deserve more than that,
And I want more too.

black women, Lorde Royals, multi-racial, negative bias against black women, negative portrayal of black women in media, The Mindy Project

The Beginning

Browncurlycute

5/26/16
“Ouch!  That hurt….” was all I could think.  And there was this sharp pain in my stomach, or was it my heart?  It was a feeling beyond the feelings of being offended, being angry, being shocked, and confused… Like did that just happen?!  Did they really just say that?  I felt all of those feelings at once, it’s like I went through the stages of grief all in an instant.  At the end of it all was pain, real pain.  That shocked, sneak-up-on you type of pain.  Like that first moment of discovering you’re being lied to, cheated on, let go, fill in the blank.   But why was I having That pain over these words on a sit-com I’d only watched once before, The Mindy Project, and was only half watching now while I did the dishes?  I know why, it’s because it caught me off guard.  My defenses were down.  I had purposely picked this show because I was looking for something upbeat and not negative on black women.  I guess I was drawn in by the ad that showed two people of color highlighted in this particular episode.  I was even more drawn in when I began watching the episode and saw an African American woman who was a prominent side character, and was cute, professional, smart, and likable.  As the episode progressed, and my family’s dinner dishes seemed never ending, there were a few things about the show that I didn’t really like, but I hung in with it because of her.   And then the words came.   I wasn’t actually looking at the screen at the time, I just heard something to this effect, “Well, you know, in our society, that’s just how it is if your a lesbian, or a black woman, or a person of filth.”  Wow!  Even writing it right now gets me angry.   I wish I could write more specifically about the context of the comment in the show, but that would require re-watching it, which I’m not willing to do.  From what I could gather, three nurse characters (a queer woman, an African American woman, and a white man) were trying to convey to the doctor character what it was like to be treated as second class citizens.  The white male nurse was referring to himself as a person of filth (I’m not sure why).  What gets me is that for some reason, the writers of the show made a point to put the black woman, a woman like me, into the same category as a “person of filth”.