If learning about the burdens carried by Black women yesterday becomes another reason we are expected to carry everyone today, then the lesson has bee
If learning about the burdens carried by Black women yesterday becomes another reason we are expected to carry everyone today, then the lesson has been turned upside down.
Pain should never become a debt.
One of the most disappointing moments on social media was watching highly intelligent and highly admired Black women directly assert that the true history of Black women in the US being historically stripped of softness meant that some debt was owed to movements and belief systems.
My miraculous cultural history deserves to be remembered, mourned, and honored, not used against me. The ancestors fought and survived to expand my choices, not to have what they survived used to narrow my choices. To expand my voice, not silence my voice. Our voices grow stronger when our choices are freely made.
If someone says, “Black women were treated unfairly, so you should support this organization, this candidate, this ideology, or this movement,” they have changed history into an obligation.
Your history belongs to you. Your choices belong to you too.
When someone says, in effect, “Black women have been denied softness, protection, or ‘femininity;’ therefore, Black women should now give more energy, loyalty, compassion, votes, labor, or public defense to this movement,” they are converting our injury into obligation. Always coming to withdraw, never to deposit.
That move often follows a recognizable pattern:
First, a real historical wound is named.
Then the listener is encouraged to identify personally with that wound.
Next, urgency, guilt, solidarity, or fear of betrayal is introduced.
Finally, a specific political or social duty is presented as the proper response.
That is persuasion. It becomes manipulation when the emotional charge of racism is used to bypass open examination of the movement’s actual goals, beneficiaries, tradeoffs, or treatment of Black women.
A fair movement would say:
Here is the claim.
Here is the evidence.
Here is what we are asking.
Here is who benefits.
Here is what it may cost you.
You are free to disagree.
A manipulative movement says:
Because of what was done to Black women, a good Black woman should support this.
That is not the same thing.
I have the right to understand who benefits, who bears the cost, and what is being asked of me.
Imagine someone reminds you of every difficult thing your grandmother endured. You listen. You feel compassion. You learn something important.
Then they say, “Now you need to volunteer for my organization because of what happened to your grandmother.”
Those are two different conversations.
Learning history is education.
Being pressured because of history is something else.
There is also a deeper contradiction. If a movement argues that Black women have historically been treated as endlessly strong, self-sacrificing, and available for labor, then uses that argument to demand more labor from Black women, it may be repeating the pattern under more sophisticated language.
OR…..Suppose your boss tells you women have historically had fewer opportunities in leadership.
That may be true.
But if the boss follows that by saying, “Therefore you should work weekends without extra pay because women need to prove themselves,” something has gone wrong.
A true painful history has been used to create a new obligation. After all the pain, they still came to collect whatever you have left. Just wringing you out and draining you dry.
That does not mean every appeal to shared history is dishonest. Collective memory can help people recognize patterns, organize around genuine interests, and build institutions. But the ethical test is whether the history enlarges Black women’s freedom of judgment or narrows it.
Black women deserve to know our history.
We deserve to know how stereotypes were created and how they still show up today.
But knowing our history should leave us more free, not less.
If learning about the burdens carried by Black women yesterday becomes another reason we are expected to carry everyone today, then the lesson has been turned upside down.
Education should expand your choices.
It should never quietly take them away.
I honor those who came before me by living with courage, clarity, and freedom.
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