Bloggers For Black Lives: Black Style Bloggers Unite Against Racial Injustice and Police Brutality

Bloggers For Black Lives

Before I am a blogger or a beauty-lover, I am a writer. I studied Journalism and English in Undergraduate school, and secured my MFA in Nonfiction in Graduate school. So in times of turmoil I turn to prose to help me make sense or process how I feel. I’ve been this way since I was a child, and I think I’ll always be this way.

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While I believe the human experience transcends race, Black writers have always been adept at artfully articulating the black experience in a way only we can. So what I do when I learn another black person has been the victim of injustice? I read. I write.

I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two –
And see what worms are eating
At the rind. -Langston Hughes

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Bloggers are routinely shamed for not “saying something,”  or posting about how we feel about social issues on social media, but I don’t see it that way. The only word I can use to describe how I’ve felt the last few months is traumatized. I’m still processing, and to me, a quick social media post calling out police brutality or reiterating what everyone else has said feels trite and in authentic. This, however, feels real. It feels right.

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I’m a creative, and my creative process cannot be bound by anyone’s sense of how and when my response to stressors should take place.  That’s why when Femi of In Fashion I Trust asked me to participate in this Bloggers For Black Lives campaign I immediately knew I wanted to take part.This is my response: in my way and in my time.

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I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. (But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

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Check Out These Other Bloggers For Black Lives

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“You’re so dark.” “Why is your hair like that? Ours is prettier.” “You can’t be a doctor, think of something more realistic.” “You’d be the perfect shoe-shiner or house maid in our next play” These are the ridiculous and very real and personal comments I heard at school in Boston at 5 and 6 years old.” Secrets Des Soeurs

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“We in the black community face the fear that at any moment, we can be harassed and our life potentially taken away from us because ‘we look bad’, ‘we wear hoodies’, ‘we sit on porches’, ‘we play music too loud’, ‘we didn’t obey a traffic signal’, ‘we sell cds’ link: In Fashion I Trust

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“We’re often told that style is a way to speak to the world without saying a word. So, today, I’m proud to use my style to speak out against the violence against black bodies.” Economy of Style

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“As a black style blogger, I see opportunities for the industry to grow in the area of inclusion. I’m happy to use my voice to call for action, to spark change in the way that we are represented in the fashion industry.”  Tiffany Ima

To join or to find additional bloggers taking part in this campaign simply search for the hashtag #bloggersforblacklives on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

 

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