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When Can Black Women Simply Be?

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She asked the question then, and I ask it now, Who will revere black womanhood? When can we live with protection of our innocence and celebration of our beauty? When can we be seen as wholly women and not a caricature of some imagination that stretches back to the 1662 Virginia Law of Maternal Descent? When will our white sisters stop being angry at us for the color of our skin and the bend of our curl, the tell-tale testaments of their white husband's dalliances in the quarters that created hues as milky white as their own skin?  When? When will our daughters be protected against the unwanted glances from their men who buy, sell, and travel to exotic places to indulge their appetites with black and brown poor women?  When will we simply be alive without being considered loud or wanton or militant because we wear our hair without poison?  When will the value of our motherhood be deemed enough for us to invest in our children the way the white mothers at home are championed for doing and not called lazy welfare cheats?  When?

Abbey Lincoln asked questions like mine in her Ebony magazine article.  Read it and ponder it.

I am a black woman and I have black daughters.  I am unapologetically black and proud, intelligent and thoughtful, artistic and true.  No permission sought for my expressions of self, I am and they are, and we will be, even if the collective do not think it is our time yet.

What say you?
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