By Mind Evolution
The time has passed for us to keep asking for a seat at tables where we have been purposely left out. It’s time for us to start creating and maintaining exclusively Black spaces. For too long we have been talking about why representation matters, and people understand it when it comes to their own representation, but it’s conveniently forgotten when it’s time to include everyone else. What if we looked at representation differently and instead of looking for mainstream to give us space, we created our own. Not speaking to politics or education, but in regards to our own self-awareness.
As we know Black people are so dope that everyone is checking for what we do already. They have been able to steal from us, repackage and sell us back to us because we haven’t understood our own worth in the larger system. I will no longer apologize for being my authentic Black self, because everything about me as a Black woman has been a commodity to someone else. Down to my attitude and sass, gay men have turned it into characters and are making money off of imitating Black women. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery mediocrity can pay to greatness according to Oscar Wilde, and of course they know we are great, have known it longer than most of us. Phonte said, “Get a little status and they think you too regal, that’s the nature of people, why you think muh’fuckers like to feed pigeons but try to shoot eagles?”, it’s because when you know you are great there is always someone who wants to take you down.
But an eagle is an eagle no matter what a pigeon thinks. Just like we gotta be great no matter what the powers that be say. The powers that be are only in power because we have allowed them to be. We all remember the popular table in middle school and how a select clique made the decisions on who was cool enough or not. I never wanted to degrade myself enough to ask to sit there, and I was not going to pull up a chair and look like the odd man out. Instead, my friends and I had our own table, we talked and laughed about the things we enjoyed. Lunch was no longer the dreaded moment of the day where you had to prove you were good enough, we were good enough for us. I had a few associates who were given seats at the popular table, and it cost them dignity, and a few lunch plates. When they got tired of the constant performing to fit in they were welcome at our table.
When you build the table, you control the narrative and the outcomes, like becoming popular nerds. It can feel like a hopeless, losing battle when you are building your own table from scratch, but if more of us opted for our own tables we could amass the resources needed to overthrow the current powers that be.
Once we stop giving away our ideas and solutions for space at the cool table, we are able to generate grand ideas and solutions for ourselves. Mainstream is cool, and so is owning the rights to the way you show up in the world, and not relying on someone else passing the mic. It takes too long for the mic to be passed, meanwhile time is passing you by, the audience is losing interest and the speaker before you has used most of your time. Eagles don’t ask pigeons for space on the ground, they take their rightful position in the sky, as we all must learn to do the same.
