Black girl magic
Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls! Boy am I tired of that nonsense.
I’m tired of the same old narrative that “Black women are here to do it all” Yes, technically we can. So can white women, but it doesn’t mean we should. What that means if one person is “doing it all” it means that the other person is “doing nothing” and I should know. I speak from experience. I’m happily divorced because of that very reason.
We have gotten to a state where we have glamourised burn-out culture. A black woman is working 6 figures, whilst breastfeeding until 2 years 2 kids, dressing designer with perfect skin and a 24 inch waist with 44 inch hips and bust not to mention and is baking apple pie for the husband who is doing…Nish.
Why are we glorifying struggle love? As the child of immigrant parents I can tell you about the West African experience. I grew up seeing my mother, and my aunts grind for absolutely everything that they hold in their hands today. All my cousins are successful. And I suppose you could say I am too. That was due to the sacrifice of our mothers. And don’t get me wrong, I love my mother. She’s all I have. But the pain and stress that she put her body through could have killed her and would have killed me.
Don’t get me wrong. I did not come from a single parent family. I adore my dad. (there will be many posts about my dad later) however my dad was a man of his time and a man of his culture.
Whenever any African man was about to do something that was detrimental to the family that he lived with. (We’ll talk about the “Other family” in later posts) You would hear those golden words “I’m an African Man!” that, complete sentence was enough to justify whatever BS that was about to go down and cower any reasonable objections to not do the stupid thing that was about to cost the main family in either time, money or stress.
My problem with my childhood and was that “African men” are not seen as by themselves as responsible for the children they father. This is due to “Black girl Magic.”
The mother is never going to let her “Babies” as the Yanks call them starve. She’ll always make sure there is a roof over their heads, and clothes on their back and food on the table. I’ve seen it and as a result the men do nothing. In fact they do worse than nothing. The devil makes work for idle hands and they find all manner of stupidity to get up to because they know their wives/girlfriends have the basics covered. This is not a problem shared by our white counterparts, as there is no such thing as “white girl magic” White women are allowed to be vulnerable. They can be a career woman or a mother, but are rarely expected to do both at a high level. They are never expected to be the main earner, and pay for the children all by themselves. They have husbands and boyfriends to do that. And if the men don’t perform, there are both legal and cultural repercussions.
We have normalised black women either being single parents or being emotionally/financially the single parent, and so when she does this well she’s a “Black girl magic” but it is an all or nothing strategy. There is no wiggle room. If she does all that and her child still doesn’t end up successful. She has failed. Not both parents have failed. She has failed. And that is the problem with “Black girl Magic” because if a black girl performs that magic, she is a witch. And none of us are in fact, witches.
Grace and Courage
Annetta Mother Smith.