A girl on TikTok said there are no fine men in Atlanta and I disagree. If anything, it’s too many fine black people, men and women living in Atlanta. 😭
Acts of service men are dangerously attractive.
Fixing problems, making sure you’ve eaten, charging your phone, carrying your things… that’s romance to me.
In 1998, I was fired from my corporate job while 9 months pregnant because and I quote, “my priorities would be elsewhere after the baby is born.”
The lawyer I hired told me I didn’t have a case because discrimination like “that” was almost impossible to prove.
So I got pissed.
Took the LSAT. Went to law school. Passed the bar. Had 3 more kids.
Twelve years later, another woman from that same company was fired for the same reason. She sued them for a million dollars, and won, partly because I had kept every piece of evidence from what happened to me years prior demonstrating a systemic pattern of discrimination against women.
That company no longer exists. My law practice is thriving. And that baby they said would derail my priorities? She’s a brilliant attorney now working at my firm.
Turns out my priorities were indeed, elsewhere.
I remember a couple of years ago, a ex-coworker around the same age as me (20-something, conventionally attractive white woman) said to a group of us while we were talking about Beyoncé, “Beyoncé intimidates me.” And she was genuinely concerned by that feeling. Everyone went silent.
I immediately had a flashback to grad school when another white classmate once told me that I intimidated her too when she first met me, yet she couldn’t explain why. My ex-serial people-pleaser self was internally distraught at the time. 😭 (I was the only Black male in the class at the time. Everyone else was white, Hispanic, or Asian.)
Years later, it all suddenly clicked. So many people cannot fully grasp Beyoncé because she represents a level of Black excellence, confidence, discipline, beauty, power and cultural impact that society never taught them how to comfortably process without centering themselves.
Instead of simply celebrating excellence, they experience it as intimidation. What they are often reacting to is not Beyoncé herself, but the insecurities and biases reflected back at them through her very presence.💡