mammy Phat’s black and nappy Aunt Jemima
in a headscarf dark round and wide quick
to tender hide she is Big Mama grandma
grandma mama and Mama
everybody’s Aunt Sarah her children are
her children and your children are her
children and their children are her
children that she calls from down the
block up the block around the block and
down to the corner little jack horner
plus they’re serving jigaboos and jungle
bunnies saturnine an asexual used to
breed and bear never a heart to share no
man no love no splits no tips just
baby-making hips used to produce kids
and more kids and more kids to nurse
even if they’re not hers and discipline
ridden by whips all across her back her
strength her resilience envious of
everyone and no one the backbone raised
on neck bones cooking up creole gumbo
and Dirty South chitlins in a big pot
that she loves a lot with a wide smile
and a big ol laugh to hide the fact that
she too is hashtag me too when I was
three my mother says that I asked her to
put me in dance class I began at Mayfair
Academy on Chicago’s South Side but I
flourished at Sammy Dyer school of
theater ballet tap jazz acrobatics drama
and vocal lessons we did it all in blue
eyeshadow and red lipstick we didn’t
have recitals we had shows with
extravagant costumes and long titles
Cindy lucky dollar everything old is new
again we performed in theatres the Regal
jury Lane had a square stage and no
curtain that means the audience could
see you at your every turn and your
every mistake the first time I performed
in this theater I was seven or eight
still taking intermediate level classes
learning to pirouettes and I looked up
to the big girls of 15 16 17 and 18 who
could do everything
one thing four of them did was dance to
Nina Simone’s four women I have loved
and been haunted by the song since 1994
my skin is black my arms are long my
hair is Willy
and my back is strong I was sitting in
studio a of our Michigan Avenue building
and I would watch the big girls during
their rehearsals and I would marvel at
their strength during the show I always
snuck out from backstage in the dressing
room sat way back in the wing between
the rows of audience member so that I
could watch the big girls perform and
their beautiful costumes as their skirts
moved about them on the stage and I
would marvel at their beauty my favorite
woman was peaches her skin is brown and
her manner is tough
she’ll killed the first mother she sees
because her life has been rough back
then I didn’t fully understand the
content of Miss Simone’s lyrics it
wasn’t until much later I realized that
song that dance was my life my story the
first time I truly became aware of my
blackness and my femaleness and my
womanhood I was in college I had just
finished one of those long 6:00 to 8:30
p.m. classes in the Williams building on
FSU’s campus I left out of the back door
of the English department and I walked
down the block toward the stadium where
my car was parked from where I had
classes earlier in the day in the
communications department and as I
walked I talked on my hot pink lg razor
flip phone to one of my roommates who
was already back at our apartment we
always like to check up on each other
when we came in lady came in late at
night because the last thing one of the
four of us wanted to do was to call a
missing room his mother and explained
what we had either been lost or stolen
so I walked and we talked and I remember
my hair was in a big round afro I had
one side pulled to the back with the
barrettes
I wore a long denim skirt large hoop
earrings and I carried my class
materials in a tote bag and I walked and
we talked and I paid the cars driving
past me no attention that is until one
car a pickup truck drove by and the two
occupants inside yelled loud enough so
that I could hear them you nigger
bitch my only retort in my abject
hopelessness was what
so I was walking they were driving and
we were nowhere near lights even if we
were it wasn’t like I was going to
approach their truck I was angry not
stupid and my friend the one on the
phone the one from New York the one from
Queens was like me the girl from the
south side of Chicago ready to fight but
we weren’t not with our hands and
certainly not with our words because we
had yet to learn such racial slurs were
and are just par for the course I stand
before you today in all of my blackness
and all of my femaleness and in all of
my womanhood to talk about a subject
that is easily dismissed if you are not
both black and female and that is the
need for representation the need for a
woman like me women like me to be
represented everywhere and in all spaces
because representation matters
representation matters because without
me there would be no you and I don’t
mean that in the existential way that
science says Africa is the cradle of
life and so if life began in Africa then
everyone you are looking for in our
connected to on ancestry.com lived and
died in Africa that may be true but
that’s not what I mean I mean that
without my blackness and my femaleness
being at the bottom to catch the scraps
of what the world has to offer there
would be no pathway for your very own
success without my blackness and my
femaleness being historically
marginalized and cast aside at the
bottom rung of every ladder corporate or
otherwise and the reason for which
patriarchy and privilege flourish
without my blackness and my femaleness
being here and available to take on all
of that you could not be you for example
Alyssa Milano could not be the violent
catalyst behind me – and the wrecking
ball of male privilege and the male gaze
in industries across the country and
around the globe
without the work of tirana Burke in
popular culture it is the elevation of
the cast of
/ Khadija Regine Maxine and Sinclair
from living single Elvis / Big Mama
Thornton the forgiveness of Justin at
the Super Bowl / Janet the automatic
deal for Lena Dunham vs. the slow burn
of undeniable talented Issa Rae it is
the wholesome depictions of Melania
Laura Abigail
Martha all 44 other first ladies versus
the demeaning characterization and
radicalization of Michelle that was
never true Megan Kelly / Tamron Hall the
booty and lift injectors versus the
natural around the way girls the models
who wear brillo pads on their heads
versus a model with the kitchen full of
kinks it is the executive with his
bachelors versus the low-level staffer
who has her master’s it is the whole
dollar for a white man – black woman’s
pittance of 67 cents it is the casual
awareness of these seemingly slights and
justices without the prescient sense to
realize that these seemingly slights and
justices are detrimental to an entire
group of people in 2016 the National
Center for Education Statistics found
that by race and by gender there is a
higher percentage of african-american
women enrolled in bachelor’s master’s
and doctoral programs in the United
States
headline proclaimed black women as the
most educated group in the country but
what have our degrees done for us lately
from Hollywood to Fashion Week fortune
500 companies to small businesses and
co-working spaces across the country
there are black women around you who you
know but don’t the ones who smile at you
with tired eyes and tight lips ready to
share and read you if you pop off like a
Kathy ray are you aware that we live
well exist and get our entire lives
together in spaces of black excellence
and black girl magic we greet each other
with come through Queen honey or your
hair is laid edges splayed eyebrows on
fleek
oh girl you know what’s all about that
contour and conditioner
Oh ciao your curls are poppin melanin is
magnificent hashtag goals but when we
leave our uplifting bottomless brunches
close the latest meme of our group chat
or exit a fixed facebook quiz on our
future we are left to face the world
that is harsh in its depiction of red
blooded women just trying to exist who
happen to have a darker pigment a world
you don’t realize as a child is very
much informed by the mainstream images
we all see representation matters in
2012 I didn’t really understand why
Kerry Washington landing scandal and
becoming the first African American
woman to play a lead role in a network
drama in some 40-odd years was a thing I
felt like I grew up seeing black women
on TV carrying Melina white and Malcolm
and Eddie Harriet on Family Matters The
Cosby Show a different world hanging
with mr. Cooper Moishe the Parkers for
your love girlfriends the game I grew up
seeing black women like me on TV so I
didn’t understand why Carrie and scandal
and later Viola Davis and how to get
away with murder was a thing until I
realized the majority of those shows I
just named for you were not on the big
three NBC ABC CBS four if you count Fox
and if they were they are still all
sitcoms representation matters from the
masthead to the byline of glossy
magazines and traditional
black-and-white prints publications
representation matters in our politics
black women make records when we turn
out to votes just look at the election
of doug jones over Roy Moore in Alabama
we did that or the election of Keisha
Lance bottoms as the first
african-american woman mayor in the city
of Atlanta yet there has never been a
black woman president
hashtag still wedding on Oprah or
Michelle to get their lives
and we have only our second
african-american woman u.s. senator and
Kamala Harris
the first being carol moseley-braun from
my hometown of Chicago data from the
reflective democracy campaign shows that
white men make up just 30 percent of the
US population but account for 65% of
elected officials representation matters
black women we are seen archetype and
stereotyped as mami’s welfare queens
Jezebel’s sapphires were seen as loving
and nurturing always ready to take care
of somebody’s kids or were seen as loose
and promiscuous women a stereotype
persistent from slavery stemming from
the and Nike was differences or the
enlargement of certain parts of our
Anatomy it is the reason why slave
masters thought it was okay to put Sarah
Baartman in a cage and caught her around
from circus the circus like she was some
sort of sideshow freak or was seen as
sapphires with this burning desire to
succeed we wake up breathe and each
ambition for breakfast consume corporate
ladders for lunch and dine on the
mergers and acquisitions for dinner
until we never have to worry about a
pension we are self roam you’re not your
sweet thing we don’t get even or angry
we get everything even if that means
making a dirty deal with the devil who
wants nothing more than to knock us back
check our mates block the next
notch on our vision board become the
belted noose around our dreams and goals
but that depth of the Sapphire it’s
never showed just archetypes of us as
strong and mean summed up by the
stereotype of the angry black woman
representation matters and not the
latest iteration of black womanhood
derived from political dog whistles of
the 70s and exacerbated by reality shows
you know Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen
the queen of the ghetto the rider die
chicken hardcore the woman who found
love between her legs and birthed up one
two three four five six seven minimis
trained up to beg for a hand out instead
of a hand up for boots instead of
bootstraps taking advantage of every
government thing breakfast/lunch
education free and reduced prices
because
it ain’t trickin if they got it
representation matters we are who and
what we are perceived to be even if that
is the furthest thing from the truth as
Angela Davis said black women have had
to develop a larger vision of our
society than perhaps any other group we
have had to understand white men white
women black men and we have had to
understand ourselves we understand who
and what we are what we believe in and
what we stand for it is why we put so
much emphasis on how we present
ourselves to the world because
representation and presentation matters
is our head wrap or African print skirt
too ethnic is our twist out to militants
our fro to Panther risk our our heels
too inviting because they pimp out our
behinds is our hair too conforming is
our weave to fake or unbelieving I have
agonized over how I was going to wear my
hair tonight since the day I found out I
was accepted to be a speaker back in
November because representation and
presentation matters nothing is more
uncomfortable than explaining your
authenticity or in authenticity to a
gaze that is more critical than
understanding a co-worker who looks at
you with a side eye and a smile and says
that’s cute or that’s different for the
office or my favorite the high-pitched
voice in the outstretched hand I love
your hair is it real representation and
presentation matters it is the reason
why I wrote my debut novel for women
inspired by the big girls who danced and
miss Simone song angry at the 2011
Psychology Today article that said black
women were the least attractive group of
people on the planet bombarded by
doctored reality shows that only seemed
to show us acting a fool and inian dated
by stories about us that aren’t always
written for us or narrated by us we’re
Oh
for Winfrey Shonda Rimes Ava Duvernay
Debbie Allen Kerry Washington Issa Rae
Lena weaith are still visionary
groundbreakers becoming first including
Oprah at this year’s Golden Globes being
honored with the sets will be deMille
Award there are still so many black
women just like them and nothing like
them with stories of our own to tell be
it in boardrooms classrooms courtrooms
or screening rooms representation
matters Oscar so white is not just a
hashtag or trending topic me too was not
just a hashtag or trending topic times
up is not just a hashtag or trending
topic our lives are not just a hashtag
or trending topic and what Conda should
be more than a utopian ideal that only
exists in blockbuster movies rather than
a goal that we strive toward every day
representation matters there is a line
in one of my favorite movies the color
purple by Alice Walker that was adopted
from her novel in it Suge Avery says to
miss Celie I think it pisses got off if
you walk past the color purple in a
field and don’t notice it as black women
we are that color purple we see us each
other
preening and primping in all of our
queenly radiant royal glory do you let
us all we want from men and women no
matter race creed or code to be seen and
heard see us the real us the vulnerable
us not just your version of us
acknowledge us if you have a question
ask us have a seat at our table because representation matters
in a headscarf dark round and wide quick
to tender hide she is Big Mama grandma
grandma mama and Mama
everybody’s Aunt Sarah her children are
her children and your children are her
children and their children are her
children that she calls from down the
block up the block around the block and
down to the corner little jack horner
plus they’re serving jigaboos and jungle
bunnies saturnine an asexual used to
breed and bear never a heart to share no
man no love no splits no tips just
baby-making hips used to produce kids
and more kids and more kids to nurse
even if they’re not hers and discipline
ridden by whips all across her back her
strength her resilience envious of
everyone and no one the backbone raised
on neck bones cooking up creole gumbo
and Dirty South chitlins in a big pot
that she loves a lot with a wide smile
and a big ol laugh to hide the fact that
she too is hashtag me too when I was
three my mother says that I asked her to
put me in dance class I began at Mayfair
Academy on Chicago’s South Side but I
flourished at Sammy Dyer school of
theater ballet tap jazz acrobatics drama
and vocal lessons we did it all in blue
eyeshadow and red lipstick we didn’t
have recitals we had shows with
extravagant costumes and long titles
Cindy lucky dollar everything old is new
again we performed in theatres the Regal
jury Lane had a square stage and no
curtain that means the audience could
see you at your every turn and your
every mistake the first time I performed
in this theater I was seven or eight
still taking intermediate level classes
learning to pirouettes and I looked up
to the big girls of 15 16 17 and 18 who
could do everything
one thing four of them did was dance to
Nina Simone’s four women I have loved
and been haunted by the song since 1994
my skin is black my arms are long my
hair is Willy
and my back is strong I was sitting in
studio a of our Michigan Avenue building
and I would watch the big girls during
their rehearsals and I would marvel at
their strength during the show I always
snuck out from backstage in the dressing
room sat way back in the wing between
the rows of audience member so that I
could watch the big girls perform and
their beautiful costumes as their skirts
moved about them on the stage and I
would marvel at their beauty my favorite
woman was peaches her skin is brown and
her manner is tough
she’ll killed the first mother she sees
because her life has been rough back
then I didn’t fully understand the
content of Miss Simone’s lyrics it
wasn’t until much later I realized that
song that dance was my life my story the
first time I truly became aware of my
blackness and my femaleness and my
womanhood I was in college I had just
finished one of those long 6:00 to 8:30
p.m. classes in the Williams building on
FSU’s campus I left out of the back door
of the English department and I walked
down the block toward the stadium where
my car was parked from where I had
classes earlier in the day in the
communications department and as I
walked I talked on my hot pink lg razor
flip phone to one of my roommates who
was already back at our apartment we
always like to check up on each other
when we came in lady came in late at
night because the last thing one of the
four of us wanted to do was to call a
missing room his mother and explained
what we had either been lost or stolen
so I walked and we talked and I remember
my hair was in a big round afro I had
one side pulled to the back with the
barrettes
I wore a long denim skirt large hoop
earrings and I carried my class
materials in a tote bag and I walked and
we talked and I paid the cars driving
past me no attention that is until one
car a pickup truck drove by and the two
occupants inside yelled loud enough so
that I could hear them you nigger
bitch my only retort in my abject
hopelessness was what
so I was walking they were driving and
we were nowhere near lights even if we
were it wasn’t like I was going to
approach their truck I was angry not
stupid and my friend the one on the
phone the one from New York the one from
Queens was like me the girl from the
south side of Chicago ready to fight but
we weren’t not with our hands and
certainly not with our words because we
had yet to learn such racial slurs were
and are just par for the course I stand
before you today in all of my blackness
and all of my femaleness and in all of
my womanhood to talk about a subject
that is easily dismissed if you are not
both black and female and that is the
need for representation the need for a
woman like me women like me to be
represented everywhere and in all spaces
because representation matters
representation matters because without
me there would be no you and I don’t
mean that in the existential way that
science says Africa is the cradle of
life and so if life began in Africa then
everyone you are looking for in our
connected to on ancestry.com lived and
died in Africa that may be true but
that’s not what I mean I mean that
without my blackness and my femaleness
being at the bottom to catch the scraps
of what the world has to offer there
would be no pathway for your very own
success without my blackness and my
femaleness being historically
marginalized and cast aside at the
bottom rung of every ladder corporate or
otherwise and the reason for which
patriarchy and privilege flourish
without my blackness and my femaleness
being here and available to take on all
of that you could not be you for example
Alyssa Milano could not be the violent
catalyst behind me – and the wrecking
ball of male privilege and the male gaze
in industries across the country and
around the globe
without the work of tirana Burke in
popular culture it is the elevation of
the cast of
/ Khadija Regine Maxine and Sinclair
from living single Elvis / Big Mama
Thornton the forgiveness of Justin at
the Super Bowl / Janet the automatic
deal for Lena Dunham vs. the slow burn
of undeniable talented Issa Rae it is
the wholesome depictions of Melania
Laura Abigail
Martha all 44 other first ladies versus
the demeaning characterization and
radicalization of Michelle that was
never true Megan Kelly / Tamron Hall the
booty and lift injectors versus the
natural around the way girls the models
who wear brillo pads on their heads
versus a model with the kitchen full of
kinks it is the executive with his
bachelors versus the low-level staffer
who has her master’s it is the whole
dollar for a white man – black woman’s
pittance of 67 cents it is the casual
awareness of these seemingly slights and
justices without the prescient sense to
realize that these seemingly slights and
justices are detrimental to an entire
group of people in 2016 the National
Center for Education Statistics found
that by race and by gender there is a
higher percentage of african-american
women enrolled in bachelor’s master’s
and doctoral programs in the United
States
headline proclaimed black women as the
most educated group in the country but
what have our degrees done for us lately
from Hollywood to Fashion Week fortune
500 companies to small businesses and
co-working spaces across the country
there are black women around you who you
know but don’t the ones who smile at you
with tired eyes and tight lips ready to
share and read you if you pop off like a
Kathy ray are you aware that we live
well exist and get our entire lives
together in spaces of black excellence
and black girl magic we greet each other
with come through Queen honey or your
hair is laid edges splayed eyebrows on
fleek
oh girl you know what’s all about that
contour and conditioner
Oh ciao your curls are poppin melanin is
magnificent hashtag goals but when we
leave our uplifting bottomless brunches
close the latest meme of our group chat
or exit a fixed facebook quiz on our
future we are left to face the world
that is harsh in its depiction of red
blooded women just trying to exist who
happen to have a darker pigment a world
you don’t realize as a child is very
much informed by the mainstream images
we all see representation matters in
2012 I didn’t really understand why
Kerry Washington landing scandal and
becoming the first African American
woman to play a lead role in a network
drama in some 40-odd years was a thing I
felt like I grew up seeing black women
on TV carrying Melina white and Malcolm
and Eddie Harriet on Family Matters The
Cosby Show a different world hanging
with mr. Cooper Moishe the Parkers for
your love girlfriends the game I grew up
seeing black women like me on TV so I
didn’t understand why Carrie and scandal
and later Viola Davis and how to get
away with murder was a thing until I
realized the majority of those shows I
just named for you were not on the big
three NBC ABC CBS four if you count Fox
and if they were they are still all
sitcoms representation matters from the
masthead to the byline of glossy
magazines and traditional
black-and-white prints publications
representation matters in our politics
black women make records when we turn
out to votes just look at the election
of doug jones over Roy Moore in Alabama
we did that or the election of Keisha
Lance bottoms as the first
african-american woman mayor in the city
of Atlanta yet there has never been a
black woman president
hashtag still wedding on Oprah or
Michelle to get their lives
and we have only our second
african-american woman u.s. senator and
Kamala Harris
the first being carol moseley-braun from
my hometown of Chicago data from the
reflective democracy campaign shows that
white men make up just 30 percent of the
US population but account for 65% of
elected officials representation matters
black women we are seen archetype and
stereotyped as mami’s welfare queens
Jezebel’s sapphires were seen as loving
and nurturing always ready to take care
of somebody’s kids or were seen as loose
and promiscuous women a stereotype
persistent from slavery stemming from
the and Nike was differences or the
enlargement of certain parts of our
Anatomy it is the reason why slave
masters thought it was okay to put Sarah
Baartman in a cage and caught her around
from circus the circus like she was some
sort of sideshow freak or was seen as
sapphires with this burning desire to
succeed we wake up breathe and each
ambition for breakfast consume corporate
ladders for lunch and dine on the
mergers and acquisitions for dinner
until we never have to worry about a
pension we are self roam you’re not your
sweet thing we don’t get even or angry
we get everything even if that means
making a dirty deal with the devil who
wants nothing more than to knock us back
check our mates block the next
notch on our vision board become the
belted noose around our dreams and goals
but that depth of the Sapphire it’s
never showed just archetypes of us as
strong and mean summed up by the
stereotype of the angry black woman
representation matters and not the
latest iteration of black womanhood
derived from political dog whistles of
the 70s and exacerbated by reality shows
you know Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen
the queen of the ghetto the rider die
chicken hardcore the woman who found
love between her legs and birthed up one
two three four five six seven minimis
trained up to beg for a hand out instead
of a hand up for boots instead of
bootstraps taking advantage of every
government thing breakfast/lunch
education free and reduced prices
because
it ain’t trickin if they got it
representation matters we are who and
what we are perceived to be even if that
is the furthest thing from the truth as
Angela Davis said black women have had
to develop a larger vision of our
society than perhaps any other group we
have had to understand white men white
women black men and we have had to
understand ourselves we understand who
and what we are what we believe in and
what we stand for it is why we put so
much emphasis on how we present
ourselves to the world because
representation and presentation matters
is our head wrap or African print skirt
too ethnic is our twist out to militants
our fro to Panther risk our our heels
too inviting because they pimp out our
behinds is our hair too conforming is
our weave to fake or unbelieving I have
agonized over how I was going to wear my
hair tonight since the day I found out I
was accepted to be a speaker back in
November because representation and
presentation matters nothing is more
uncomfortable than explaining your
authenticity or in authenticity to a
gaze that is more critical than
understanding a co-worker who looks at
you with a side eye and a smile and says
that’s cute or that’s different for the
office or my favorite the high-pitched
voice in the outstretched hand I love
your hair is it real representation and
presentation matters it is the reason
why I wrote my debut novel for women
inspired by the big girls who danced and
miss Simone song angry at the 2011
Psychology Today article that said black
women were the least attractive group of
people on the planet bombarded by
doctored reality shows that only seemed
to show us acting a fool and inian dated
by stories about us that aren’t always
written for us or narrated by us we’re
Oh
for Winfrey Shonda Rimes Ava Duvernay
Debbie Allen Kerry Washington Issa Rae
Lena weaith are still visionary
groundbreakers becoming first including
Oprah at this year’s Golden Globes being
honored with the sets will be deMille
Award there are still so many black
women just like them and nothing like
them with stories of our own to tell be
it in boardrooms classrooms courtrooms
or screening rooms representation
matters Oscar so white is not just a
hashtag or trending topic me too was not
just a hashtag or trending topic times
up is not just a hashtag or trending
topic our lives are not just a hashtag
or trending topic and what Conda should
be more than a utopian ideal that only
exists in blockbuster movies rather than
a goal that we strive toward every day
representation matters there is a line
in one of my favorite movies the color
purple by Alice Walker that was adopted
from her novel in it Suge Avery says to
miss Celie I think it pisses got off if
you walk past the color purple in a
field and don’t notice it as black women
we are that color purple we see us each
other
preening and primping in all of our
queenly radiant royal glory do you let
us all we want from men and women no
matter race creed or code to be seen and
heard see us the real us the vulnerable
us not just your version of us
acknowledge us if you have a question
ask us have a seat at our table because representation matters
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