No one gets to tell you who you are

A friend shared a link to Gabrielle Union-Wade's Instagram post of an interview with Venus Williams at age 14.

Says Gabrielle:

Speaking up for yourself, for a cause you believe in, for your co-workers, for what's fair and just, or even for your children can be scary. The fear of backlash, the fear of being labeled "difficult" or "aggressive" or being othered is ever present and real.

Watching this clip again brought up so many feelings for me. Angry with the interviewer, who like so many, gets unnerved by the confidence of Black women and girls. The push to make Black people 2nd guess ourselves, our abilities, our accomplishments, our dreams. This push to squash our spirit at such young ages and watching this proud father step in and protect his child and watching this child KNOW her father has her back. It's powerful and necessary.

I think about all the times I wished someone had my back but instead watched me suffer. I think about all the times I felt frozen and incapable of speaking up. Frozen in fear of retaliation, loss of access and opportunities and just kept my head down and stayed silent. The cost of my silence has been some erosion of my soul.

This clip is a reminder that we are all worthy of love, respect, decency, care, compassion and protection. We all we got. Take care of each other. #BlackHistoryMonth @venuswilliams 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

(Line breaks added for ease of reading.)

You can also watch the clip on YouTube.

It's powerful. And although I cannot know what it is to be a Black woman, it resonated deeply. I talk frequently to Black and other women of color who have experienced this casual yet violently racist dismissal throughout their entire lives. It is heartbreaking because it is so familiar and it grooms women of color in a particular way for abuse. These women - WE are brilliant, effervescent, passionate, and face an exhausting array of systemic obstacles, microaggressions and racist and sexist abuse daily. We all suffer from the lost potential as a result.

What I wish I had known and what I want my children and all of us who are systemically told otherwise to know is - no one gets to tell you who you are.

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Banner photo by Fauzan Saari on Unsplash.