Brittany Packnett Instagram – at some point in 2020, I became the Black death girl on tv.
Nevermind my intellect or expertise on any of the things they originally hired me to discuss. Most of the time, I had to say the things exploding in our collective hearts and hold myself together enough to say them.
The days I held myself together poorly ended up being my most “viral” moments—ones I had to be convinced by my friends to post because they were too hard for me to look at. I was never ashamed of speaking up for us—but I was worn down by the assignment. I don’t want the viral moment from Black pain—because I work daily to ensure Black pain stops being the constant.
Being that person forced me to consume the media of terror we face in order to be prepared to speak to it. Eventually, I began to avoid it and refuse to watch it.
But then it would be time for broadcast. And the video would play over the screen before the camera cut to me. And the unending dam of my grief would open wide on television, live after seeing what I thought I had escaped.
The hotbed of these conflicting feelings are so known to us that the heat never escapes my chest. It’s a permanent fixture. Whether I’m responsible to find words or not, share knowledge or not, give meaning or not, the pressure sits like a knot behind my sternum and gives me grief—grief I often don’t have real room to release.
Because what Black girl truly has the room right now?
We are prepping for virulent misogynoir this election while trying to get one of us across the finish line and simultaneously push for peace across global genocides. We can’t scroll without unprovoked attacks on everything from our dateability to our femininity to our bitterness—all results of the very systems and attitudes you depend on us to fight for you. We set the blueprint on Sunday calls and wake to videos of a brutality specifically reserved for us.
I see and thank the Black girls making room.
And I see those of us who just can’t bear to yet.
And I see you, Sonya Massey.
I can’t make another name a hashtag. | Posted on 24/Jul/2024 19:53:45
