A Quote by Melissa Harris-Perry

From childhood forward, our hair is one of the most critical, defining aspects of our embodied selves as black women: how we get it done... how we have to focus on it... the questions we have to answer about it... and so forth.
I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair - yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.
As a public person, I've always tried to reflect what is embodied in our defining ideals as a nation about equality and fairness and justice and so forth.
If we knew how often the obedience of others is affected by our own, and how often our stepping forth soon brings forth a whole platton of helpers, and how often our speaking forth soon creates a chorus - we would be even more ashamed of our slackess and our silence.
All of us are many different people over time. We have our childhood selves, people that we remember, but they're very different to our adult selves and the way that we create our own naratives is not that dissimilar, I think, to how a biographer structures their narrative of a life.
For many women, how our hair looks and feels is an everyday part of our lives, whether we always want it to be or not. And ultimately, feeling good about yourself is good for your life and who you are. So if having the best hair you can have means you feel better about your day, then go get that hair. And don't feel guilty about it!
How deeply do any of us know our own selves? Ask yourself. We hold a picture of how we wish to be and hope it goes forever unchallenged. Passing through life never pursuing aspects of our natures with which we'd rather not reckon. Dying strangers to ourselves.
Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities.
I think that we are all much closer to our childhood selves than we often think, so when we read about childhood, it can surprise us how immediate or moving it is, when perhaps those feelings are just there, waiting to be accessed all the time.
There are many things that black women can continue to do to help black folk. First, black women have historically been among the most vocal advocates for equality in our community. We must take full advantage of such courage by continuing to combat the sexism in our communities. Black women, whether in church, or hip-hop, don't receive their just due. Second, when black women are in charge of child-rearing, they must make ever so sure to raise black children who respect both men and women, and who root out the malevolent beliefs about women that shatter our culture.
Black women are some of the most colorful women in the world. We come in all shadeshave so many hair textures..eye colors..body types. In this generation, it's sad to see so many black girls claiming ethnicities that they know nothing about in hopes of impressing a man or appearing 'exotic'. So many people act as if being black and beautiful is impossible. It's not. If we wanna get technical and look at our history, almost every black American is mixed. But we must stop implying that a woman's beauty comes from a part of her that is not black.
Racism and sexism are not "problems" or "topics." They are ways of defining reality and living our lives that most of us learned along with learning how to tie our shoes and how to drink from a cup.
The scriptures teach us the ways of the Lord. They answer questions about how to live today. They bring a light and a spirit into our lives that we can get in no other way.
We're all born with the capacity to be our best selves - to be who we really are. Then we hear the messages that exist in our fear-based society, and we get beaten down. Being confident means peeling away the doubt, fear, and worry and getting back to our core. Confident people have learned how to get back to their pure selves.
How do we keep our inner fire alive? Two things, at minimum, are needed: an ability to appreciate the positives in our life – and a commitment to action. Every day, it's important to ask and answer these questions: ‘What's good in my life?’ and ‘What needs to be done?
I think our work as movement leaders isn't just about our own visibility but rather how do we make the whole visible. How do we not just fight for our individual selves but fight for everybody?
Money is a mystery. Not only is our behavior with respect to money sometimes puzzling and erratic, but our feelings about money are often contradictory, illogical, deep-rooted, and scarcely known even to our most secret selves. We are getting better at handling money, but what it means to us, how we use it to express ourselves, and how it can help us become all that we are meant to be remain murky issues.
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