Akilah S. Richards

At the end of my thirties, as far as friendships go, I’ve certainly made my rounds. On one end, I’ve had the same best friend since I was 13.

Black hair, like Black identity, is diverse and nuanced, but it still stands out as different from White hair. The point is not that all Black hair needs to look the same, but that we share the experience of feeling pressure to alter our appearance, to present a version of ourselves solely to satisfy the White gaze. When we truly own our bodies —the fat, skinny, scarred, hairy, melanated, unconventional bodies we walk around in — they will no longer be things to defend or hide or alter.

How does a 10-year-old Atlanta-based black girl with Jamaican parents, shoulder-length locs, and zero interest in school become deeply immersed in the studies of Finno-Ugric language groups and Eurasian migration?

My beliefs about people’s rights, including my own, are a significant factor in how I define myself, how I identify, and how I treat other people. And since I happen to be raising people, my approach to parenting must reflect those beliefs too.

The reality is that any person I love, including my daughters, can deeply hurt my feelings. Does this mean that I hold my daughters to the same level of emotional accountability as my husband or my best friend? Nope, but for it damn sure doesn’t mean that I morph into some feeling-less version of myself because I’m a mother, either.

No black man, woman, or gender non-conforming person is safe from the terrorism of police brutality and racist white people’s actions against us, let alone our most vulnerable citizens, our children.