Solange Knowles may be Beyoncé’s younger sister, but that doesn’t mean she’s content to stay shadowed in a corner.
Yes, Solange may not be a household brand, but I can’t help but think that she prefers it this way. This level of celebrity allows Solange to directly critique anti-blackness and white supremacy in America without the fear of public backlash that could destroy her pop culture bankability.
Beyoncé, who rarely gives interviews, may not take a publicly vocalized stance on issues of social justice, but she often makes her support known through financial support. Earlier this year, Queen Bey and husband Jay Z donated $1.5 million to the Black Lives Matter movement, in addition to other civil rights organizations. In the beginning of the summer, she gave around $82,000 from her Formation World Tour to assist the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. People may criticize Beyoncé for not literally speaking out in a blunt, unapologetic way like the actor Jesse Williams is prone to do. However, this has never been a part of Beyoncé’s handling of her image as an entertainer or member of pop culture royalty.
In the case of Solange, she utilizes social media in a form that her older sister avoids. Her Twitter and Instagram, along with her website, Saint Heron, routinely confront racism and the country’s impulse to uphold white privilege.
In the case of Solange, she utilizes social media in a form that her older sister avoids. Her Twitter and Instagram, along with her website, Saint Heron, routinely confront racism and the country’s impulse to uphold white privilege.
I can only wish that I’d grown up with someone like Solange as a public figure who is so insistent on protecting Black girls and women. On her Twitter, Solange recounted an unpleasant and highly uncomfortable concert experience in New Orleans. Solange, her husband, and her eleven-year-old son, Julez, attended a Kraftwerk concert at the Orpheum Theater. The audience at the electronica concert was not diverse: Solange noted that the overwhelming majority of patrons were white. When Solange danced to a song, a group of white women told her to sit down. Solange refused, and the women threw a lime at her.
To be Black in white spaces means that you are suddenly blessed and cursed with hyperawareness…
To the naive reader, this story may seem nothing more than an unfortunate incident to be chalked up to rude and drunk concert attendees. For Black girls and women who understand what Solange meant by the term “white spaces,” it’s affirmation of a long-known truth.
To be Black in white spaces means that you are suddenly blessed and cursed with hyperawareness, injected with the X-Men ability to interpret not just outright racism but malevolence cloaked in a cloudy layer of passive aggression and microaggressions. To be Black in white spaces means that you are both the designated ambassador of your entire race and no one at all, invisible, with an interchangeable face. In an essay titled “And Do You Belong? I Do” and posted on Saint Heron, Solange elaborated on her Tweets. She wrote:
It usually does not include “please.” It does not include “will you.” It does not include “would you mind,” for you must not even be worth wasting their mouths forming these respectable words. Although, you usually see them used seconds before or after you.
You don’t feel that most of the people in these incidents do not like black people, but simply are a product of their white supremacy and are exercising it on you without caution, care, or thought.
Many times the tone just simply says, “I do not feel you belong here.”
Anti-blackness is not solely relegated to overtly hostile or malicious displays of bigotry. There are numerous ways to make someone feel as though they don’t belong, as though their safety has been compromised. Later on in her essay, Solange wrote, “You constantly see the media having a hard time contextualizing black women and men as victims every day, even when it means losing their own lives….You realize that you never called these women racists, but people will continuously put those words in your mouth.”
White people who have deluded themselves into believing that they are progressive liberals often tout the phrase, “I don’t see color.” They frequently follow up with something along the lines of, “I don’t care if you’re black or white or green or blue,” ironically disproving their point, as they classify minority status as akin to alien foreignness. I didn’t grow up in the South, but that doesn’t mean I’m a stranger to racism, and to feeling like my blackness, my “Otherness,” doesn’t fit into my very white surroundings. The institution of whiteness ruled that my identity wasn’t authentic enough, that my blackness was dependent upon adhering to a narrow vision of blackness as defined by the white gaze. Boys who I deemed the love of my life have accused me of being too sensitive, of imagining things, of seeing fire where there isn’t smoke. That’s the clever trick of white privilege: the combination of willful ignorance and lack of lived experience imagines equality where it does not exist.
That’s the clever trick of white privilege: the combination of willful ignorance and lack of lived experience imagines equality where it does not exist.
I don’t believe that silence is a beneficial defense mechanism. In a society where being Black is punishable by death, silence only aids white supremacy. Solange recognizes that silence does not encourage change. She also realizes that she can use her public platform to connect with other Black girls and women and make them feel less isolated and alone.
Solange recently interviewed actress Amandla Stenberg for the February 2016 issue of Teen Vogue and spoke to that feeling of unquantifiable kinship between Black girls. She noted, “There’s a secret language shared among black girls who are destined to climb mountains and cross rivers in a world that tells us to belong to the valleys that surround us. You learn it very young, and although it has no words, you hear it clearly.” Knowing this language has made it possible for women to produce safe spaces in the midst of uninhabitable land. It’s a sense of higher consciousness, the look that transpired between the only other Black woman and me in my graduate school writing class, the exchange that prompted me to grab the open seat next to her. A feeling of anchoring myself. It is less a shared code of pain than it is a show of solidarity.
Anger is often viewed as destructive. Solange challenges that idea, arguing that anger can be a healthy, even necessary response to unfathomable atrocities ranging from the physical to the emotional and mental.
Anger is often viewed as destructive. Solange challenges that idea, arguing that anger can be a healthy, even necessary response to unfathomable atrocities ranging from the physical to the emotional and mental. While Beyoncé seems to filter her frustrations through subversive tactics that are primarily based on a nonpersonal, business-first sensibility, Solange participates in racial politics via personal reflection.
The media may deem Solange “crazy” for speaking out, as is often the case when Black people refuse to be complicit in racially motivated abuse. Solange is not exposing anything new or revolutionary, but her comments are viewed as such due to America’s legacy of deep denial. In the closing part of her essay, Solange remarks, “We belong. We belong. We belong. We built this.” Anger is testament to this mantra, a reminder that blackness is not validated by trauma.
It’s always been assumed that I’m a “strong” person. The seductive dream of the Strong, Independent, Self-Sufficient Woman envelops unsuspecting black girls like veils of opium smoke.
You keep killing yourself so that others will live, as if you are a brown-skinned Joan of Arc, riding high on a chorus of persuasive voices, fooled into believing that you are learning the rites of warriors and not spells of decay and self-immolation. You keep thinking that to burn is to display a force beyond resolve, a dedication to stoic holiness. You are by no means a god but a sacrifice named “martyr.”
We are not regarded as superhuman, but inhuman, impervious to the violence of unpredictable emotions because we were not born with sensitivity.
Black girls are rarely, if ever, held in the same regard as other minorities. Between respectability politics and misogynoir, the space to exist is limited, constricted enough to turn a diamond-bright mind rabid. We are not the model minority, which is another form of racism and friend of white supremacy. We are not regarded as superhuman, but inhuman, impervious to the violence of unpredictable emotions because we were not born with sensitivity.
How long before I’m no longer asked to carry all this weight?
“I really wanted to grow into this person who could handle everything,” she says, “and I didn’t know that that’s just kind of impossible.”
In a revealing interview with Pitchfork, recording artist Janelle Monáe mistakenly confesses to the interviewer that she’s sought therapy for emotional issues, which were possibly exacerbated by a breakup while attempting to work on a new album. “I really wanted to grow into this person who could handle everything,” she says, “and I didn’t know that that’s just kind of impossible.”
The Kansas City native, who grew up and still is a devout Christian, adds that therapy was taboo in such a religious and cultural environment. She notes, “I didn’t like the idea of therapy at first. In the black community, nobody goes to therapy. You go to your pastor or you go to the Bible.” Mainstream American culture and black culture have little patience or empathy for mental illness. Mental illness is viewed as a weakness, a lack of self-control, as serious as a child’s temper tantrum dotted with forced tears.
To say that I grew up in a household that understood religion to be the shepherd to my immortal soul would be an exaggeration. On the other hand, my parents may not have shared religious practices, but the sincerity of their beliefs were equally fierce. My mother, who is Filipino, was born and raised in a country where the vast majority of the population identifies as Roman Catholic. She desperately tried to get me to mimic her unquestioning loyalty. In a way, my mother was just passing along what she already knew. Despite years of CCD classes, I didn’t pick up my mother’s enthusiasm.
They couldn’t understand how I could be so depressed. I had grown up in the suburbs with a dog and an impressive Barbie collection. There was a roof over my head, I had my own bedroom, there was always food on the table. What was the problem?
In contrast, my father hadn’t been pushed into religion by familial pressure to preserve traditions. My father’s mother did make him tag along to Sunday services. Yet no matter the consistency of her efforts, my father rejected the Episcopal Church. When he reached his midtwenties, he ignited his interest in religion and spirituality. He considered himself a Born Again Christian. The specifics of my parents’ beliefs may have greatly differed, but they practiced them with similar fortitude and humility. Neither liked the idea of playing around with a Ouija board; both cringed when someone admitted they didn’t believe in God.
My parents never could fully grasp the realities of living with a mental illness. I internalized a lot of things, bottled up darkness to feast on later, a form of self-sabotage. They couldn’t understand how I could be so depressed. I had grown up in the suburbs with a dog and an impressive Barbie collection. There was a roof over my head, I had my own bedroom, there was always food on the table. What was the problem? I knew my enemy, but I couldn’t flesh him out for my confused and frustrated parents. He was a lonely figure who could slip out of descriptions. He was a language I couldn’t articulate.
In the case of Janelle Monáe, resistance meant moving away from the super-fly cyborg persona of her debut and embracing a much more vulnerable perspective.
How do we escape this weight that seems destined to break our backs? It’s enough to make you wish for a fatal dose of oleander to drink.
Due to various barriers and the stubborn bigotry of gatekeepers, pop culture has yet to fully move away from harmful, emotionally compromised, stereotypical depictions of black girls and women. This is not to say that nuanced protagonists don’t exist. They’re just rare and under the radar.
In the case of Janelle Monáe, resistance meant moving away from the super-fly cyborg persona of her debut and embracing a much more vulnerable perspective. The aloof, technological sensation hailing from another galaxy traded in visuals reminiscent of George Lucas and Octavia Butler for multilayered R&B grounded in emotional fluidity. For example, in the track “Electric Lady,” Monáe mentions spaceships and outer space, but the core of the song is about women’s empowerment. She sings,
She’ll walk in any room have you raising up your antennas
She can fly you straight to the moon or to the ghettos
Wearing tennis shoes or in flats or in stilettos
Illuminating all that she touches
Eye on the sparrow.
If anything, the conflict between persona-heavy mythology and lyrical openness seems a bit more balanced.
Now that she no longer feels the “impossible” urge to be her own savior or no longer feels that she has to do everything, it has opened new possibilities in her art.
I can’t help but think that Monáe’s decision to reformulate the sci-fi-heavy aesthetic is the result of a shift in her thinking. Now that she no longer feels the “impossible” urge to be her own savior or no longer feels that she has to do everything, it has opened new possibilities in her art. She is no longer using the cyborg persona (as much) to filter the emotions and ideas that shape and inform her music. The world looks different when you feel as though you don’t have to constantly be on guard, vigilant against cracks in your appearance.
I grew up believing that seeking help was the coward’s impulse. But the Strong Black Woman and her sermons never brought me back to life. The Strong Black Woman consciously and unconsciously contributed to my shame. The preachings of the Strong Black Woman did not help my art or my will to live. The Strong Black Woman wants me to be Superwoman, but I would rather be a woman, receptive to the contradictions of being human.
In Ellen Conford’s 1976 young adult novel, Dear Lovey Hart, I Am Desperate, freshman Carrie Wasserman finds herself writing an anonymous advice column for her high school newspaper.
The column becomes wildly popular to the dismay of Carrie’s father, the school’s head guidance counselor. But Carrie finds her position difficult: she is falling for her intense and driven co-conspirator, the paper’s editor, Chip. Her advice to her friends ends up going against her alter-ego’s words. She’s trying to juggle homework and writing. Most of all, she is out of her depth fielding all-too-serious questions that come up. Her answers become more flippant—sometimes a little mean—and the tide of opinion turns against Lovey Hart.
And, oh, how worn out I was from trying to find new gimmicks for the Eternal Number One question: “How do I get him to notice me?” I began turning from sensible, cute suggestions, to downright sarcastic answers. “Drop an anvil on his foot.” “Put Jell-O down his shirt.” “Fall off his roof.”
Lovey Hart was probably one of my favorite books from junior high and high school. The book was made into an Afterschool Special and spawned a sequel, We Interrupt This Semester for An Important Bulletin, in which Carrie contends with a Southern belle and imagines herself in scenes from a romance novel in which her sleeves keep getting ripped off, leaving her creamy shoulders exposed.
Conford, who died a year ago, was one of those authors whose books were always on the paperback carousel at both the school library and the city branch library. A few of her novels were recently reissued with Lizzie Skurnick’s imprint at Ig Publishing.
Re-reading, I realized that Conford’s wisecracking but empathetic voice was one I tried—and keep trying—to channel with varying degrees of success.
Lovey Hart was funny—Carrie was funny. That was important to me as a young woman, and it is maybe why I read the book over and over.
I needed to hear the wry voice of a girl who herself is allowed and encouraged to be funny, who explores how wit can sometimes be mean, or wise, or kind. For example, here are Carrie’s thoughts as she contemplates her crush, Chip:
But while a brooding, intense boy makes the heart beat faster, he also puts a simultaneous strain on the brain, because you are frantically trying to think of something to say to make him stop brooding, which is an outright contradiction, but true, nevertheless.
Carrie is self-aware enough to know she’s falling for Chip’s act, but she can see her own absurdity in trying to console him. There is a buoyancy to Carrie’s voice—to this book’s realism. It was such a relief to encounter it at an age when life often felt confusing and intense and hard to bear.
I suspect that my teachers mistrusted humor. Trying to corral a roomful of teens making boner jokes can maybe do that to a person.
There was a preponderance of Earnest Literature About Issues in our curriculum. Moreover, among the “realistic” contemporary young adult selections pushed by my teachers and librarians were cautionary tales about young women who got pregnant, who got lost in drugs, who fought the system and lost. The Chocolate War. The Language of the Goldfish. The Pigman. Go Ask Alice.
I am oversimplifying the novels I was recommended. But in my memory, so many of the characters in those books seemed so tragic and so—well—white. And if they were non-white, well, that alone was often written as a calamity. In the world of true-life, contemporary young adult books of the 80s and 90s, my mere non-white existence was an Issue.
My reality is not grim. I don’t think others should get to frame it that way either.
Don’t get me wrong, I gladly read—and still read—Issues books: I spend many an evening sitting in the dark, sobbing into my duvet, my tearstained face illuminated by the impassive light of my Kindle. It is one of the most luxurious things one can do.
But often so much of the narrative of these books is about giving an audience—giving other people, the culture—the opportunity for catharsis and absolution.
How nice for other people.
As an aside, maybe that’s why I consumed teen series featuring non-white protagonists who, you know, lived their lives.
Teen series were not considered good reading by my teachers. But, as I noted in a previous column, the novels sometimes featured characters who led rich and varied existences—characters such as Faith from The Girls of Canby Hall, or Claudia Kishi from The Babysitter’s Club. And avoiding that narrative of a life crystallized by tragedy is why I’ve given my young child funny middle-grade series like Lenore Look’s Alvin Ho books, or Andrea Cheng’s Anna Wang books.
“Sometimes—no, most of the time—popular and worthwhile are not synonymous at all,” Carrie’s guidance counselor father—an educator—tells her in a rant against Lovey Hart’s column.
Carrie answers, “But everything doesn’t have to be worthwhile . . . Some things can be just for fun.”
In a way, Lovey Hart is in conversation with those Issues books. Lovey Hart may be “for fun,” but it is also worthwhile.
Conford depicts people with problems—girls with problems—who are not tragic even though their lives could easily turn that way. Maybe that’s why I identified with Carrie, although her universe seemed pretty white. It’s maybe why I wanted, however imperfectly, to identify with her.
There are seeds of tragedy in Lovey Hart. Carrie receives letters from girls wanting the attention of boys, sure, but she also gets them from students who’ve lost all their friends after quitting drugs, kids whose parents are getting divorced—many of the scenarios of the Issues books are alluded to in Dear Lovey Hart, I Am Desperate. And then there is also Carrie’s buddy, Terry, who is in love with her French teacher:
“Lovey Hart says,” Terry began abruptly, her voice distant and dreamy, “that you should let someone know if you like them, because they might be liking you all the time, and if you’re too shy to ever tell each other, you’ll never know what Might Have Been.”
“Terry,” I said nervously, “I think she was talking about a sophomore and a junior, not a student and a teacher.”
Terry believes herself emotionally ripe enough to handle a love affair. One night, Terry impulsively shows up at Mr. Stokes’s apartment to declare her feelings.
This is an Issue.
In a different book, it could have easily taken a terrible turn. Even as I write this, I am reading a discussion which shows how very easily student-teacher relations take terrible turns.
Conford goes with what I think is the best-case scenario, which is also somehow a reasonable ending to Terry’s drama. Terry ends up spurned and alive—unharmed despite sustaining some embarrassment. And . . . well, that is probably the most optimistic-while-plausible scenario in life, isn’t it? Being alive and unharmed except for minor embarrassment is the best for which we can realistically hope.
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