We are bold. We are brassy. We are courageous. Yes, we are strong. But we are also vulnerable. We are delicate. And we are vigilant. I did not intend to use this platform to discuss or pontificate about current events or politics. But in January, 2025, nearly every conversation I have with other mature Black women ultimately culminates around that very thing. “Girl, did you see the news?” I have been trying my best not to since the 2024 presidential election, but that isn’t working anymore. And if this electronic record of an authentic Black woman is to be of any significance at all, it must be thoughtful, and honest, and maybe ruthless. I too, must be vigilant. I must stay woke.
We are profoundly aware of our place in this place that many others outside of it previously believed is the land of milk and honey. As Janie Crawford’s grandmama says in Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel by Zora Neale Hurston, Black women are “…de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.” No matter how many degrees we have, how many jobs, how expensive our weave, or how soft our life may be, we have never felt this as much as we do today. And it is on the lips of every Sistah I meet.
Some of us feel depleted—and there are even some who feel hopeless. Still others continue to move through this life, as we knew it to be eight years ago, as though national or world events do not, will not affect them. Every day now, there are new developments in the current administration that will affect so many people. Even those women who believe that this neo-government is for them will soon learn that it is not. So, if already Black women are the lowest on the American totem pole, at what rung will we be relegated to next? The view of the immediate future is growing increasingly grim.
But if anybody can rally folks together, it’s Black women. Shout out to Sistah Stacey Abrams! We will walk neighborhoods, bake pies, hold meetings, fry some chicken, throw rent parties, and raise some funds for the causes we believe in. We did as much in this last election. They say we voted overwhelmingly, some 92% of us, to hold on to a democracy that has, since its inception, struggled to maintain a delicate balance between good and evil, right and wrong, love and hate. But at this hour, it feels as though the balance has been breached to support our worst American nightmare—a nightmare potentially more hellish than what we’ve been through in the past.
But I am a Black woman. And while we watch it burn, I remain faithful. Vigilant. And WOKE.
SPITTING OUT BONES 