Last week, a video produced by actress Amandla Stenberg grabbed much of the interwebs attention and launched a thousand think pieces about cultural appropriation. This 16-year-old artist put out a video on her Instagram that I believe was part of a school project entitled, “Don’t Cash Crop my Cornrows” where she covered a wide spectrum of actions associated with the co-opting of African American culture from hairstyles and dance styles (e.g. twerking) to black linguistics and colloquialisms. She also offered a comprehensive definition of the term and ended her video with the question, “What if society loved black people as much as they love black culture?”
Amanda’s was a pretty bomb school project. It made me think about what I was pondering at 16. Between AP classes, running track and trying to keep sane with my crazy love life (another story for another day), I didn’t really grapple with such weighty topics. The deepest paper I think I wrote about at my Catholic high school was about juveniles being tried as adults and whether that was actually true justice given their underdeveloped cranial capacities to understand the gravity of their actions. I don’t even think I broke my analysis down by racial, socio-economic systems of oppression. I didn’t get to that level of scrutiny until sophomore year of college and my first course on African American history.
But what if I had started at 16 asking super deep questions? More importantly, what if I had believed it was okay for me to do so? Man, if I could hot tub time machine back and tell that 16-year-old me a couple of pieces of wisdom, I’d start with these gems:
- God loves you no matter what. You can make mistakes, not go to church on Sunday, hate your parents because they won’t let you spend the night at your boyfriend’s house like some of your classmates – thank God they didn’t – and God will still love you. And God will be with you always.
- It’s okay to be a nerd. You were a high achiever your whole school career. Remember taking that SAT test in the 6th grade and getting a pretty good score? Remember your essays being chosen for awards and being published in the local newspaper? You felt so down on being smart and tried to play it down. You totally should have embraced being a black girl nerd.
- Everyone feels self-conscious at some point. It’s not just you. Even that girl with the long blonde hair and the other with the body every guy is checking for. It comes with being human.
- Be bold and outspoken. Even though you are an introvert, your voice totally matters and generally, you have cool things to say. You thought because you were 16, you had to wait to grow up to be heard. Not true.
These actually work for the mid-thirties as well.
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