By: Kerstan Nealy (’22), Editor-In-Chief
I spoke with a mentor the other day, and they told me how they felt that the world had turned on itself. They felt that the world was on fire, with social orders being overturned and families bearing the weight of generational transgressions. They were sympathetic to plight and nuanced in their understanding of right and wrong. Black and White existed to them, but they chose to center Blackness, and allow for shades of grey to appear in their social analysis. My talk with them was not long, but it was groundbreaking for me. While I did not agree with everything they said, I took away from them a sense of something I had previously been unable to define. I took away from them the importance of centering Blackness.
I thought I had long centered Blackness as someone raised in a household where Blackness was celebrated. Yet, somewhere while forming my own identity, I had decentralized Blackness. I had become more reactive to the thoughts of others, moving in ways to ensure that I did not reaffirm the stereotypes that Black people had been pegged into. I thought of Black excellence as confined to certain ways of interaction, of magic as existing in narrow forms. As I openly spoke out against capitalism as a system of oppression, as “professionalism” as a destructive force, I had not analyzed my thoughts of Black worth that were based in White supremacy.
In centering Blackness, there no longer becomes “Black excellence,” being Black is excellence upon itself. It no longer requires sacrificing my mental health to make every word perfect or joining every organization to feel satisfied. Black Girl Magic in a world where Blackness is centered is not a response to White people. It does not solely come from Black women who look a certain way, or who uphold the main tenets of respectability politics, or who are “perfect.” My ma is magical when she bakes peach cobbler perfectly browned on top, and when she calms down tensions with a simple look. I am Black excellence when I define my wash and go perfectly, mixing products to create the perfect combination. We are magical simply because our very existence is joy, is change, is magic. We are creators, storytellers, people who are not perfect, but who bring worlds into being. Excellence is within us, and it does not need to be streamlined into a degree or job to be worthy. We are worthy all on our own. In centering all Blackness, there is joy.
