One of the few surveys of public attitudes about black girls was conducted in 2014.4 The majority of those surveyed said that black girls need less p… - Tressie McMillan Cottom

The hyper-visibility means that you both can't hide, but also never really feel completely seen by authority figures and by your peer groups. Trapped in that space of hyper-visibility, I think, is where we wrestle with the ideas of, 'What part of me matters?'

The assumption of black women’s incompetence — we cannot know ourselves, express ourselves in a way that the context will render legible, or that prompts people with power to respond to us as agentic beings — supersedes even the most powerful status cultures in all of neoliberal capitalism: wealth and fame. In 2017 Serena Williams gave birth to her daughter. She celebrated with an interview, as is the ritual custom of celebrity cultures. In the interview, Serena describes how she had to bring to bear the full force of her authority as a global superstar to convince a nurse that she needed a treatment. The treatment likely saved Serena’s life. Many black women are not so lucky.

...we find that what black feminists promised all along was true: to know the most present marginalized oppressions is to know the future.