The Miriam Mirror
I’m meditating on the beauty of my blackness this dayclean. Like the sublime SiStar Nina Simone said in Young, Gifted and Black, oh what a lovely precious feeling it is to know myself as a beautiful Black Woman, and to deeply appreciate my culture. Especially since it was not always this way, at the individual or societal level.
Sometimes looking back on the history (and present resurgence) of anti-blackness, I feel the need to take a heavy hand to protect and promote blackness. I just have to be mindful that lifting my culture up does not require me to put others down. I think about Miriam, a bold leader in biblical times; she was a prophetess who interpreted the Divine’s work, and she was a ‘waterer’ of the people. But when Miriam tried to discredit her brother for marring outside of his race, things did not go the way she had hoped. #MiriamMirror