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.💡
I’m sitting here at 3am crying! Watching all of my Renaissance & Cowboy Carter memories! I really had the BEST YEARS OF MY LIFE… WORKING FOR BEYONCÉ🥹
While I was getting tattooed over the weekend, there was a No Kings protest going by the shop and a Ukrainian artist just sighs and says, “your people need to learn about fire”
🔥 New York City is in the streets right now.
Night is falling, and thousands of anti-ICE protesters are marching in solidarity with Minnesota, turning Manhattan into a moving wall of resistance.
6th Avenue is completely filled and SHUT DOWN.
After he’s gone. It will be:
“I never agreed with him. It was the political moment and I got caught up in it. I never believed in him. I was just afraid.”
No MF. We will hold you accountable for ALL time. You don’t get out of it. We will remind you every time you talk.