I’ve got to take my crown off to Celina Ceasar-Chavennes, a Liberal Member of Parliament from Whitby, Ontario, Canada. She rocked her braids for solidarity with young girls and women who have been shamed for wearing their natural hair.
This melted my heart. Something you very rarely see is a strong BLACK WOMAN wearing her natural hair on Parliament Hill among other government officials! Kudos to her for being brave (can you imagine?) enough to be herself. See her in this video telling them what time it is:
Yet I ask myself, why do we have to be brave to be who we are? Though the reality is, as a person of colour you sometimes have to be (maybe a lot of times that we are almost numb to it), as we are rarely accepted for who we are and what we look like.
This saddens me, and it has got to change, but only the woman/man in the mirror can evoke this change. I remember when my girlfriend hushed my voice about black issues because there was a white person in the room because “we don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable”.
I don’t want to apologize for being me, do you? I do want to be the best version of myself in my brown skin whether I’m rocking my afro, braids or straight hair. Being anybody else is entirely too much. I’m hoping examples like Celina Ceasar-Chavannes will galvanize us to be who we are and be the change we want to see.
Have you been hushed about your ethnicity or culture? What do you stand for? Let's talk about it!
Comment below and let's get the conversation started.