“You think my black looks better on you.”

If you have not yet seen the spoken word poem “Hide Your Shea Butter.” By Crystal Valentine and Aaliyah Jihad, check it out first:

This poem hit home for me the moment I first saw it. Because it is all the things I have been saying for a while now. The black community has nothing of their own. Everything we make and create is not only taken from us, but we aren’t even credited in the first place. I wanted to just expand my thoughts on a few things that these amazing sistas mentioned in the video and give a deeper insight why we are now taking our culture back!

Kylie Jenner

For the past few years now, Kylie Jenner has been a major influence in pop culture. From her colorful hair color choices to her curvy shape, many young girls look to her for inspiration. But who is she getting inspiration from? Black women.

Since the beginning of 2016, we have all picked up on the subtle and not so subtle changes Jenner has made to her appearance over the years. She went from a pretty ordinary white guy into a bombshell light-skinned black woman in just a few years. First starting with the fullness of her lips then to the roundness of her ass, slowly but surely, I, a grown black woman, was starting to see features of myself on this young white girl.

Not to say that some white women don’t have big butts or full lips. But in the past years, a “fat ass” was not a compliment to them. Go back to the 90’s, half of the workout videos were dedicated to keeping a slim butt. Jump to 2010’s and it is the complete opposite.

Hide your cocoa butter

In recent years, black women have been on a revolutionary journey with our natural hair.Taken to our kitchens, that have become beauty salons and science labs. Mixing and matching all kinds of oils, butters, and food based items to achieve beautiful, healthy hair. From Mayo and eggs to honey and coconut oil. Shea butters and olive oil. We have used things that not only can go in and on our bodies, but that can go in our hair as well. Black hair companies like Shea Moistures and Carols Daughter helped us take out all the guessing work on what will and will not work in out hair.  But within the last year or so, we have seen more “white” companies starting to incorporate these same kind products in their line up now. When before a lot of their products were based around vitamins like vitamins E, tea tree oils, and almond oils to name a few.

I say Bantu knots. You say mini buns

WHAT THE FUCK ARE MINI BUNS! Sounds like what they would call bite-size cinnamon rolls or something. Mini buns are actually called Bantu knots. Believe to have been originated in the Zulu tribe, is a popular hairstyle choice for natural black women.

The name mini buns come into play when fashion designer Marc Jacobs had his model wearing the style in his 2015 spring fashion show.About a year later, the conversation was brought up again when beauty blogger, Mane Addicts gave a hair tutorial on the “Mini Buns.” Another fine example of how black culture is stolen with no credit given to us.

“You think my black looks better on you”

Why? Because society has praised and congratulated white people for the same things that they ridicule us for. Especially black women. For years I was teased about my fake hair. black women are counted out and put down because of it. Jokes are always being made. But now, women of all races wear extensions, wigs, and weaves. And no one bats an eye. They say, “oh well it could be her real hair, so it’s okay.” What kind of ass-backward shit is that? Because her extensions and pass for real she can do it, but because I got some 20 long straight hair, that couldn’t POSSIBLY ever be mine, it’s not okay? Almost every time of woman now wants A round ass and big thighs. When before, when black women who were born with these shapes were called fat ass and discarded because they weren’t sized 2’s. They think my black looks better on them because it’s seen as beautiful and sexy on them, but not me.

“You think getting black dick makes you black”

About half of my cousins are mixed. But only one is half white. Her mother, from what I know, primarily other dated black men even before marrying my uncle. But I can honestly say that even though she is married to a black man with a black child, she is still very much white. And I love her for that. Because too often when she not only white women but other women who date black men put on a show about who they are because of who they date.Again, why? Because these days black men are damn near protesting against dating black women for whatever reason. While looking for the same features we have,(Big butts, full legs, wide hips etc..) in other women. One thing I hear consistently about why black men won’t date black women is attitude. The myth of the angry black woman. Like we are the only women in the world to get angry ever! I’ve seen angry Asian women, angry latin women, who are also known for being feisty, and I have seen crazy, angry white women. Who you think be the one chopping off cheating husbands penises and shit?  All women get angry, but somehow we’re the ones with the label.

“We are leaving white folks to be creative on their own”

From fashion to hairstyles to music and movies, black culture is continuously stolen from us. If we bring up that fact, so how we’re being racist. But every time a black person plays a white character, or even a character that is supposed to be black,  white people freak out. Remember when the internet world blew up because of black actress, Amandla Stenberg, play Rue in the Hunger Games. A character that is clearly written as black in the novels. Somewhere along the way, we lost something. The world got more comfortable with our “Blackness” and our “Black ways.” They wanted to do what we could do. But that still didn’t mean us black folks were apart of the club. Still, even as they listen to out music and watch our movies, we are still counted out. We are still put down. We aren’t allowed anything of our own anymore and aren’t allowed to speak out against that fact either. Everything is taken from us. At this point, Should we even be surprised? I will say this, though, we will no longer be silent and hold our tongues. When injustice is around, we will speak out against it. We will not have our voices lost in the noise. We will not hand out passes. We will take back what is ours and protect it. They are doing the same things they always have since they stole our ancestors from their homes some 350 years ago.The only difference is we aren’t doing the same thing.

I also want to make clear, the problem isn’t just white people. It’s society as a whole. It’s the tv shows, it’s the music. It’s black people too. The System we live in was set up to keep out black people. You have to think about it from the point of view of everything that pretty music our entertaining world revolves around, was all established during the times where being black was damn near and criminal act. The world and this country have never fully accepted black people. They do a lot of pretending, but never fully accept. So when we see the rest of the world feeding into that, instead of helping to prevent it from happening, it’s a little hard to not feel like the world is against you. But I know, all together, this is something we can stop, we just have to be willing to do it together.