You See, I See, We See…Differently
I Want You To See How I See The World, So I’m Going To Show You
In this photo, I see a young girl who will be forced to start calling herself a woman at far too early an age.
By the time she is six years old, teachers and schoolmates alike will have let her know they don’t like her hair, her clothes, or her scent, and all of the reasons will amount to the fact that the color of her skin is different than theirs.
You see a young child wearing a shirt that says “Future Leader,” I see a shirt that says “my mother knows what I will have to face as I get older and wiser, and she is preparing me for battle.”
You see a small child laughing and you think “oh that’s so adorable, look at her happiness,” I silently pray to the Gods that she gets to hold onto that feeling for as long as possible, knowing full well the world will strip her of every bit of laughter if it can, whether she likes it or not.
When I was younger they called the kinds of people who think the way that I do “cynical,” and they made us feel like being cynical is a bad thing, but it’s not cynical to understand that Black children will face exponentially larger amounts of gender-based violence than our white counterparts.
It’s not cynical to understand that Black children will be forced to work twelve times harder than their white counterparts while being pitted against each other for the smallest and slightest amount of acceptance.
Our successes matter more because they are absolutely harder to achieve, when we make it to twenty-one our parents breathe sighs of relief, when we come home from school or the corner store, our parents breathe a sigh of relief that is so deep the trees in the front yard can feel it.
Everything we do is scrutinized, everything we do is ripped apart, and no matter how good the effect of whatever it is that we’re doing, it’s always “slightly” less important than someone else, because of the color of our skin.
We are either “too dark” or “not dark enough,” and both are an insult to every single person conditioned to hate those that are different.
We are special because the world hates us so much because the world made us different specifically because the world likes making the ruling class uncomfortable, that’s a fact that has been proven time and time again throughout history.
Our stories matter because the stories of our ancients are rare and few and far between. Whenever possible in the past, Hollywood has made a verifiable library out of Black stories with white actors playing the parts that Black people by the right of their birth, should have been granted.
And because Hollywood in particular has always been slanted when it comes to people who look like us, the rest of the world has followed suit.
Every single day, women and men who look like me are having their rights stripped away in America because the “white is right” folks have realized that WE know the power of our own voice.
You see a future leader in that photo. I see a warrior that will have battles she will never talk about. I see a young girl who will eventually grow up to be a writer because writing will be the only thing in the world that will calm her soul, it will show her that her voice matters and that by the use of her voice, she can change the world.
I see a girl who will be educated by hatred, stigma, lies, and brutality. I see a girl who will find the strength of her ancient mothers to fight back, and who will win whatever the world has to throw at her because she was born to be a part of the future.
I see a young girl in this photo who I hope to find one day, so I can say thank you, thank you for existing. Thank you for reminding me that I am here so I can show all those who come after me it’s exactly as hard as it looks, but it’s absolutely worth it.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
