Perhaps this is why one day in New Haven, staring into the semicircle of oak trees in my backyard, I wondered what it would mean to ask random white men how they understood their privilege. I imagined myself — a middle-aged black woman — walking up to strangers and doing so.
Black mamas are sitting in prison awaiting trial for being too free. For bringing Black children into a world that fears and punishes them. For writing bad checks to feed their kids. For defending themselves in a world that assaults them daily. For protecting their family members. For crimes they haven’t even been tried for—with bails set too high for their families to pay—forced to wait while the court system pressures them to take guilty pleas for crimes they didn’t commit so they can go home on probation.
What time is it? It’s time to get them out.
Black women have the unique experience of being subjected to both misogynistic and anti-Black violence, but are never positioned equally amongst non-Black women or Black non-women. Black women experience all of the pain their counterparts do and yet are somehow regarded as second-class.
This history and its legacy leave me feeling that my anger about the world ascribing femininity to my body without my consent borders on betrayal to Black women. How can I claim to support Black women when there are times I resent the fact that I am perceived as one? Can I do both? The more steps I take to be comfortable in the body my spirit occupies, the more it feels like my transness and my Blackness stand in opposition to one another.