Black Girl Magic

In the words of Alice Walker, “to acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God; or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrow, is always a measure of what has gone before”. 

I grew up around strong black women and Alice Walker told the truth when she said that remembering our heritage is acknowledging the people who endured struggles before us. Our ancestors not only made us who we are, but they equipped us with magic abilities that cannot be seen. The idea that my blackness is more than just my skin tone and is a mere millisecond of the black lives whose experiences define what it means “to overcome”, is hard for people to understand. We have overcome racism, we have overcome injustice, we have overcome abuse, we have overcome hatred, we have overcome inequality, and we have without a doubt overcome pain. It is not what people see that defines black heritage, it’s what people don’t see. It’s the secret sauce of courage and hope hidden in the hearts and minds of black women and men. 

But why Black Girl Magic, you might ask? Because there is something required, almost demanded to be black and a women in society. Besides their biological make-up, what made Rosa Parks different from Martin Luther King Jr.? Or Alice Walker different from Langston Hughes? Or Michelle Obama different from Barack? I think Maya Angelou describes it best… 

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

As a Black female staff member at USF, former student-athlete and fierce believer in the power of sports to change culture, I am grateful for the opportunity to be my authentic self around both students and staff. Stereotypically, most people assume that my sport was basketball or track and field, but the swimming pool has and will always be my sanctuary. I not only participated in the predominately white sport of swimming, but I also grew up in the suburban neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts, which granted me privileges that many of my black peers were not afforded. I am a product of a privileged education, a privileged environment, and privileged opportunities. Yet, I was raised by a mother who grew up in what she calls the “south side” of Chicago and a dad who still calls The Bronx, New York, home. They both understood poverty, being disadvantaged, and growing up in neighborhoods that required navigating their young lives carefully. My parents are a huge part of who I was as a student-athlete, who I am as a professional, and who I am becoming as a person. Their combined 70+ years of being educators and coaches within two opposite educational settings, Boston (urban) and Newton (suburban), taught me the inequities that continue to disadvantage black lives in schooling and environment. For example, I vividly remember my mom explaining how she had to take pieces of glass out of my dad’s afro in the 1970’s, after rocks were thrown into buses during the desegregation of Boston Public Schools.

Thus, living in privilege does not capture my journey as a black female who has seen and experienced the limitations society has inflicted on me. The daily struggle to affirm myself, build my self-esteem and take pride in the dark pigment of my skin has been years in the making. When I think about my own Black Girl Magic, it’s simply that I have learned to be okay being on the outside of the box that some people try to keep me in. Black girls don’t swim and they shouldn’t be as educated and driven as I am, right? I should have thrown in the towel over and over and over again throughout my life, but the Black Girl Magic inside of me won’t quit. I cannot give up in reaching my divine potential. USF has allowed me to grow in ways that have forced me to use my voice in order to pursue positive change. I continue to reflect on ways that I can be an imperfect example for black female students, student-athletes, and staff who are rising to pursue excellence. To all the black women, past and present, who have endured their own mental, emotional, and/or physical struggle, to the ones who have mentored and shaped me, your magic was not in vain. And to all the black girls who are standing proud at the intersections of all of their identities, keep Black Girl Magic alive.