When I say that I am unattractive or ugly, I am not internalizing the dominant culture’s assessment of me. I am naming what has been done to me. And … - Tressie McMillan Cottom

Whiteness exists as a response to blackness. Whiteness is a violent sociocultural regime legitimized by property to always make clear who is black by fastidiously delineating who is officially white. It would stand to reason that beauty’s ultimate function is to exclude blackness.

Those spaces to read are a privilege.

black women are 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related causes that are white women.