Do they really love us or the attention they get from pretending to?
My friends and I noticed a trend on social media where people claim to love black women--especially dark skinned black women. They romanticize the parts of us that we have been conditioned to hate for centuries; natural hair… especially 4c coils and afros. They love our melanated, rich dark skin and all shapes and sizes of our bodies. They often reprimand those who feel otherwise almost to prove that black women are loved for who they are.
Although it feels nice to be the center of this newfound love and attention, I think that this is all extremely problematic and a way to undermine/silence the experience of the black woman. Of course this is all just my opinion, other black women may feel differently but I want to elaborate on why I feel this strongly.
First of all, those that post this type of content--being that it is trending--benefit largely from doing so. This is because they gain a lot of traction from adding these hashtags about black women. Also, they get a lot of feedback from black women because it seems that it all comes from a genuine place. Some that post are sincere in how they feel about us but others definitely are not. So, this love for black women is used as a strategy to gain more clout on these platforms. More and more people hop on the bandwagon of loving the raw black woman when in reality they just love the attention.
Second, I feel that hyping up black women on social media but not having that same energy in real life is misleading and dangerous. This is because creating all of this “love” for us gaslights how we feel we are being treated in society. We often feel like the bottom of the barrel and the most unloved and unprotected. Those feelings come from a strong history of us being undermined, critiqued, disregarded and constantly mistreated. Not just by white society but by our own black men. Also, these feelings are not just a result of history but a result of how we are still being treated today. I have the receipts about all of this but that's for a whole other blog post… I got ya’ll . So the point i'm trying to make here is that in real life we are not treated the way we deserve but yet social media platforms are trending with insane amounts of love for us. Something is not adding up here… This love does not translate into real life and that is my issue. This social media fad dilutes our feelings and struggles and makes it seem as if the issues we face are just a figment of our imagination.
Lastly, If black women were loved as much as social media claims, we would have had more coverage on the murder of Breonna Taylor… I am extremely happy about how much exposure the Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd stories have gotten but disheartened by how little attention Breonna’s story received. I have not seen Breonna’s story circulate social media as much as the other cases have. We rarely hear stories concerning black women and police brutality even though those cases are happening just as often as they are to black men. If black women were loved as much as social media claims, we would not have to second guess wearing our natural hair and being our true authentic selves. If black women were loved as much as social media claims, we would not have to constantly battle for our lives when bringing life into the world…
P.S: If you really love us, don’t fantasize over our features and the physical aspects of us… advocate for our visions, our education, our health but most importantly our life.
Stay safe and empowered!
Love,
The EBW
