Speaker 1: Welcome to PM mood, the no Talking Points, no Bullshit
Speaker 1: podcast that takes you behind the curtain, off the red carpet,
Speaker 1: and to the front lines of progress with change makers
Speaker 1: and innovators that are doing the work to shift our
Speaker 1: culture and expand our social impact. I am so so
Speaker 1: excited to welcome to PM mood. The wonderful, the fabulous scholar, activist,
Speaker 1: public speaker, creator, brilliant mind behind Professional Black Girl, doctor
Speaker 1: Yaba Blair. Welcome to PM Mood. I am so excited
Speaker 1: to have you here. Thank you for having me. You know,
Speaker 1: I have to tell people that if you have not
Speaker 1: seen the web series Professional Black Girl, if you are
Speaker 1: not following Professional Black Girl on Instagram, you are missing out.
Speaker 1: Everybody who knows me knows that I am full of
Speaker 1: doom and gloom. But the place that I go to
Speaker 1: for sunshine, for happiness, for the celebration of black women
Speaker 1: is Professional Black Girl. Yeah, but tell me what made
Speaker 1: you launch Professional Black Girl? You know, a Professional Black
Speaker 1: Girl was a project that I actually didn't set out
Speaker 1: to make into a thing. It kind of became a thing.
Speaker 1: I actually was trying to do another show that didn't
Speaker 1: pan out, But essentially I was living in North Carolina
Speaker 1: for about three years in Durham, and when I moved there,
Speaker 1: I came across one of the largest beauty supply stores
Speaker 1: I have ever seen in my entire black life. It
Speaker 1: is a converted grocery store, so they're like, wow, something
Speaker 1: aisles of product and hair and just all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And I have always loved beauty supply store, so random
Speaker 1: actually had ascerations of owning one. And so really the
Speaker 1: first time I oh, yeah, the first time I went there,
Speaker 1: I was there for like two hours, and it was
Speaker 1: just like an adventure for me. And so, of course
Speaker 1: I had moved to a new city, and so my
Speaker 1: home girls were coming to visit and see about me,
Speaker 1: and every time one would come, I'm like, you want
Speaker 1: to go to beauty World. And so we'd be in
Speaker 1: Beauty World like kids in a candy store. And I mean,
Speaker 1: we could go down an aisle, open up a bottle
Speaker 1: of pink or moisturized or smell it, and immediately be
Speaker 1: transported back to our team. And what I recognized was that,
Speaker 1: you know, we bonded so much over not just beauty culture,
Speaker 1: but what felt like essentially a black girl experience. And
Speaker 1: so I just had this bright idea. I wanted to
Speaker 1: film another series that would be based in the beauty
Speaker 1: supply store. Unfortunately, the proprietor of Beauty World would not
Speaker 1: let me film in the store, which is a whole
Speaker 1: other critical conversation, but in any case, the plan originally
Speaker 1: was to do this show in the beauty supply store
Speaker 1: and then to end each segment with a feature of
Speaker 1: what I was calling a professional Black girl. At that time,
Speaker 1: I had already started using the hashtag professional black Girl
Speaker 1: as a way to note and shout out things that
Speaker 1: I saw that were like peak black girl nows. And
Speaker 1: so when I say a professional Black girl, the professional
Speaker 1: part is subversive. Right Again, attached to that moment in
Speaker 1: time in my life, I was teaching at an HBCU,
Speaker 1: which I felt was going to be a great home coming,
Speaker 1: which it was for the most part, because I had
Speaker 1: spent most of my career teaching at PWISE. But what
Speaker 1: I know just was that my black women colleagues and counterparts,
Speaker 1: many of them, were training our black women students away
Speaker 1: from themselves, meaning they were saying things to them. You
Speaker 1: know that you have to look this way, dressed this way,
Speaker 1: speak this way in order to be seen as professional
Speaker 1: in the quote unquote real world. So whether they were
Speaker 1: doing that at HBCU, this respectability I mean, because that's
Speaker 1: like peak respectability politics right there. I mean yeah. But again,
Speaker 1: you know, with proper contextualization, we know the history of
Speaker 1: HBCUs right that many of them weren't even started by
Speaker 1: black people. They were started by well meaning white folks
Speaker 1: who wanted to show niggros how to act. So it's
Speaker 1: in line with the history, right that you have to
Speaker 1: basically change who you are in order to be received
Speaker 1: well in the quote unquote real world. And so you know,
Speaker 1: having students who might have been named Keisha Danielle being
Speaker 1: advised to go by k Danielle or being advised to
Speaker 1: put on another voice, you know when they answer the
Speaker 1: phone for a job interview and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: And you know, me too black for my own good,
Speaker 1: I was completely you know done, because I'm if you
Speaker 1: could see me right now, my eyes are like wide open,
Speaker 1: like I am like out done to put on the
Speaker 1: yes I put on what take the base out of
Speaker 1: your voice? To take the black out of your voice?
Speaker 1: You know, And again it's no particular shade to HBCUs
Speaker 1: alone because most of the world acts that way, right,
Speaker 1: most of the world treats us that way. Most of
Speaker 1: the world has that expectation of us that we have
Speaker 1: to change fundamentally who we are in order to be
Speaker 1: received well. And so me saying professional black girl was
Speaker 1: a way for me to turn that language on its head,
Speaker 1: so that if you're a little black girl, you know,
Speaker 1: dancing in front of your computer tiktoking like, that's professional.
Speaker 1: You know, if you got your baby hair's laid, that's professional.
Speaker 1: And so the things that I connected as like peak
Speaker 1: black girlness, I was calling that professional black girl. So
Speaker 1: I just connected those dots. And so the first season,
Speaker 1: if you watch the web series, is essentially on my
Speaker 1: home girls who came to visit, and I did segments
Speaker 1: with each of them talking about what made them professional
Speaker 1: black girls. And so I knew that folks would enjoy
Speaker 1: it and appreciate it. I was not prepared for it
Speaker 1: become a thing. Usually the projects and campaigns that I've done,
Speaker 1: I've got a plan somewhere in my head. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a plan for this. It really just became what
Speaker 1: it is and what it's become on its own. I mean,
Speaker 1: did you realize just how needed it was, right, Like,
Speaker 1: did the need surprise you that people were you know, essentially,
Speaker 1: and I said this at the top, you created an
Speaker 1: oasis for black women in the desert of our lives.
Speaker 1: We are so invisibilized in so many spaces and places,
Speaker 1: and you see us where you shocked by that the
Speaker 1: one thing that you didn't plan right to pop off,
Speaker 1: it really did pop off on its own. I wasn't
Speaker 1: surprised or shot. It definitely took me aback, but I
Speaker 1: rolled with it. You know, here we are, y'all love it,
Speaker 1: Let's keep it going. I wasn't prepared for it, if anything,
Speaker 1: and I really did, Like I said, I didn't have
Speaker 1: a vision for it, and I didn't know what it
Speaker 1: would take to keep it going. But we kept going,
Speaker 1: and so it was interesting. And you know, it started
Speaker 1: as the web series. I posted on YouTube and Facebook,
Speaker 1: and then when it was over, of course, folks are like,
Speaker 1: what's next, and I'm like, well, I don't have any
Speaker 1: more money, so I don't know what's next. So that's
Speaker 1: when I launched the Instagram page. So the Instagram page
Speaker 1: actually came almost a year after the first season of
Speaker 1: the web series, launched and that was just the way
Speaker 1: to try and hold folks over, and so it has
Speaker 1: really grown in those last almost three years. Now then
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I want a season two. Then we're
Speaker 1: going to have to create it. And so I launched
Speaker 1: the Kickstarter and was able to raise the funds needed
Speaker 1: in order to film season two, which is based in
Speaker 1: New Orleans, and that kickstarter we may go in two days,
Speaker 1: and by the end of the thirty day campaign we
Speaker 1: had almost doubled it. And so again it was just
Speaker 1: really affirming and again just really making me aware, as
Speaker 1: she said, how much it was really needed and how
Speaker 1: much we just really want to see ourselves. And so
Speaker 1: I was shocked by anything. I think. I was shocked
Speaker 1: by the simplicity of it. You know, like we're not
Speaker 1: asking for much, Like even in the spaces that we
Speaker 1: would name black right in the media and the quote
Speaker 1: unquote black shows that we get, the black programming that
Speaker 1: we get, it's still a particular type of blackness. It's
Speaker 1: still you know, whether it's stereotypical or whether it's one
Speaker 1: that it's aligned with respectability. Everybody can't relate. So either
Speaker 1: you're looking down on it and being too critical of
Speaker 1: it or you're aspiring to be that, and there's really
Speaker 1: not a lot of middle ground to say, like, that's me,
Speaker 1: that's a reflection of me just as I am. And
Speaker 1: so I really believe that, particularly for black women and
Speaker 1: for black girls, that's what professional black girl represents for them.
Speaker 1: It's just a simple reflection of who we are, without judgment,
Speaker 1: you know, with lots of affirmation. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I particularly love, and I mean the full disclosure
Speaker 1: to people listening. I send Yaba pictures and videos like
Speaker 1: everybody else does. On a regular basis. I see something,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, this has to be buzzing. Normally you've
Speaker 1: already seen it and I've already put it in your election.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I do love is
Speaker 1: when you kind of check people in the comments section.
Speaker 1: You know, you can kind of see in some ways
Speaker 1: with some post how respectability politics kind of comes in.
Speaker 1: Where you'll post a video, like you said, of a
Speaker 1: young black baby girl, you know, dancing or rapping or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then always in the comments will be, well, I
Speaker 1: hope she knows her ABC's or like I hope you know,
Speaker 1: I hope she's getting an education, or that mother shouldn't
Speaker 1: have done, you know, So how do you deal with
Speaker 1: again you check folks in the comments, But I know
Speaker 1: that it must be disheartening too, right because you're creating
Speaker 1: this space to celebrate all the different layers and levels
Speaker 1: and contextualizations of blackness, and yet you see that play out.
Speaker 1: I mean at first, I mean, I was of course
Speaker 1: taking it personal, not just because it was my project,
Speaker 1: but it's also me, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: don't see myself separate from black women and girls in
Speaker 1: the variety of ways that we show up in the world.
Speaker 1: But I think, if anything, what was disheartening, and I
Speaker 1: say was in the past tense because now in this moment,
Speaker 1: I make conscious decisions about who I'm going to engage,
Speaker 1: and while I'm not a lot of times I let
Speaker 1: the comments sit there and let the community deal with them,
Speaker 1: or I just selete and block them. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to spend too much time in that negative space.
Speaker 1: But the thing that is hurtful and disheartening is, for
Speaker 1: the most part, yeah, they're white trolls that come through
Speaker 1: and say whatever they say, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: is from us, and so again, me trying to meet
Speaker 1: folks where they are not trying to judge. I know
Speaker 1: where those comments come from, because again, there is this
Speaker 1: anxiety about how we present ourselves in the world and
Speaker 1: what that will mean ultimately for our conditions in this country,
Speaker 1: as if those things are aligned, as if white supremacy
Speaker 1: is actually making a decision where you're doing something this
Speaker 1: way and that's why we are treating you this way.
Speaker 1: One has nothing to do with the other, right, And
Speaker 1: so I think for me, it's more disheartening that we
Speaker 1: same situation with having gone to an HBC, you having
Speaker 1: taught at an HBC, you having worked at an HPCU.
Speaker 1: It's disheartening to know that a lot of times we
Speaker 1: are most critical of ourselves. But again it's very much
Speaker 1: deeply seated in internalized white supremacy. And so again, you know,
Speaker 1: I make decisions about who I engage, but it also
Speaker 1: fuels me to want to do it more. The thing
Speaker 1: that's also interesting, and I'm keenly aware of right now,
Speaker 1: and I question is I don't know that professional Black
Speaker 1: Girl would be what it is, or would have been
Speaker 1: able to become what it is, had I not been
Speaker 1: doctor Yaba Blay. It's like I have the privilege of
Speaker 1: affirming the variety of ways that we are, because folks
Speaker 1: would be like, well, she must know what she's talking
Speaker 1: about because she's a doctor, or maybe this is research,
Speaker 1: or you know, both and kind of thinking. And so
Speaker 1: I wonder if I wasn't doctor yaba blay, if folks
Speaker 1: would take this seriously, which is also a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know what, I didn't even think about that,
Speaker 1: but I wonder. I wonder if not for that, but
Speaker 1: also your very large body of work. Right, I was
Speaker 1: very fortunate enough that you asked me to be a
Speaker 1: part of Pretty Period, And I want you to talk
Speaker 1: about Pretty Period as well, because again, you do so
Speaker 1: much to block white supremacy and lift us up. And
Speaker 1: I know for me in the work that I do,
Speaker 1: how challenging that can be. But I look at you
Speaker 1: from the outside and I say, wow, she really turns
Speaker 1: these what feels like some days insurmountable challenges into exceptional beauty.
Speaker 1: And I feel like Pretty Period was one of those moments.
Speaker 1: So can you talk about that project and that work.
Speaker 1: I'm in that project hashtag pretty Period, and the visual
Speaker 1: project that came out of that was really Again, when
Speaker 1: I think of the body of my work. Most of
Speaker 1: it is a reflection of my own existence. You know,
Speaker 1: unlike many academics, you know, we're trained to separate ourselves
Speaker 1: from my work allegedly, right that there's this thing. What
Speaker 1: am I trying to say, Danielle, We're supposed to remove ourselves?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so how much? I don't do that? But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're like, what's that word? Right? We're supposed to be
Speaker 1: objective somehow. Thankfully for me, the blessing is that I
Speaker 1: was trained in Black studies at Temple University, the home
Speaker 1: of afrocentricity, and we were trained to center ourselves that
Speaker 1: as black people, particularly, that it is dangerous for us
Speaker 1: to separate ourselves from black people in order to quote
Speaker 1: unquote study them. So I've always centered myself in the
Speaker 1: work that I do. So my dissertation was on skin
Speaker 1: bleaching in Ghana because I am a first generation Gunny
Speaker 1: and born in America whose maternal aunt bleached her skin
Speaker 1: for most of her life. She died unexpectedly. I've always
Speaker 1: believed that it was because of the long term effects
Speaker 1: of having those chemicals on and in her body, and
Speaker 1: so I wanted to research that. It became my dissertation,
Speaker 1: Skin color politics my expertise since because I'm a dark
Speaker 1: skinned black girl who grew up in color struck New Orleans,
Speaker 1: and I knew that I would black black, you know,
Speaker 1: from a very early age. I knew colorism from the
Speaker 1: time I was a child, before I even had the
Speaker 1: language for colorism. And so pretty period for me. Whereas
Speaker 1: a lot of my academic work seemed to, as you say,
Speaker 1: doom and gloom, it seemed to as a lot of
Speaker 1: the work we do as black people and poor and
Speaker 1: about black people, our approach to fighting white supremacy oftentimes
Speaker 1: is unveiling and unmasking the incigious ways in which it
Speaker 1: operates and functions and impacts our lives right, which is
Speaker 1: necessary work, but it's also draining work. I remember coming
Speaker 1: to a point where it's like, I don't know how
Speaker 1: long I can keep doing this because I don't want
Speaker 1: to get out the bed every day to deal with
Speaker 1: this world, you know. And so there was a turning
Speaker 1: point for me where my approach to fighting white supremacy
Speaker 1: was to sensor black joy and black possibility and black hope.
Speaker 1: And I feel like it is an honor to our
Speaker 1: ancestors to nod to our ancestors to recognize that, like,
Speaker 1: we're not supposed to be here, you know, Like how
Speaker 1: did we survive? And I will not dismiss joy as
Speaker 1: a part of our survival mechanisms. And so pretty Period
Speaker 1: was really about turning the conversation of colorism on his
Speaker 1: head in a particular way to say, yeah, we know
Speaker 1: these things are happening, not to dismiss them. We're going
Speaker 1: to continue to do work to call it out, but
Speaker 1: we're also going to affirm who we are. So no,
Speaker 1: I'm not pretty for a dark skinned girl, I'm pretty period, right,
Speaker 1: So we can question beauty standards in the ways that
Speaker 1: they are seated in white supremacy and the ways in
Speaker 1: which oftentimes our beauty or our ability to be seen
Speaker 1: as beautiful as predicated on white normative standards of what
Speaker 1: beautiful is. And so we are always comparing ourselves to
Speaker 1: white standards, we will always come out in the negative,
Speaker 1: you know. And so pretty period was about affirming who
Speaker 1: we are as we are, because again, I'm such a
Speaker 1: visual person. I know how much representation matters, even censoring
Speaker 1: my own experiences, but I know how important it is
Speaker 1: for us to be able to see ourselves, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm so in love with social media in this moment,
Speaker 1: for better or for worse. But I love that in
Speaker 1: this moment, we are not solely reliant upon the quote
Speaker 1: unquote mainstream black or white to show us ourselves. So
Speaker 1: y'all can create whatever shows y'all want. But we also
Speaker 1: don't have to buy cable anymore. We don't have to
Speaker 1: tune it into your network. We've got lots of creative,
Speaker 1: brilliantly creative folks creating content online. You know I don't
Speaker 1: have cable. Yeah, a lot of people cut the corn,
Speaker 1: you know. You know I can see myself every single
Speaker 1: day on my phone, on my computer. You know. The
Speaker 1: benefit of this generation now has hashtags Melanan magic, Melan mondays.
Speaker 1: You know, so many folks bigging up Melanan, so many
Speaker 1: folks honoring the beauty of dark skin. Like, that's beautiful
Speaker 1: to me that we don't have to wait to the
Speaker 1: mainstream to show us ourselves. Because I was twenty four
Speaker 1: years old before I saw was that alect wack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I lect wak on the cover of Elle magazine, and
Speaker 1: I remember literally jumping up and down in the aisle
Speaker 1: of the A and B in New Orleans seeing her
Speaker 1: image on that magazine. I was twenty four years old.
Speaker 1: Even though you know, again the dark the light thing
Speaker 1: is all relative to experience, right, So what folks might
Speaker 1: have been saying even now, what folks say, are dark
Speaker 1: skinned women in the media, they don't look like me.
Speaker 1: The hair doesn't look like mine. So yes, I affirm it.
Speaker 1: Thank god they're there. Thank god we do have some
Speaker 1: variety now. But I'm still not seeing myself. Now I
Speaker 1: can look on Instagram and see women my complexion and
Speaker 1: darker and everybody's affirming that they're beautiful. That's magical to me.
Speaker 1: You know. I want to go back to one of
Speaker 1: the things that you just said with regard to centering
Speaker 1: black joy as a way to battle against white supremacy,
Speaker 1: because the idea, right like, there was something that just
Speaker 1: came up recently on social media, social media, Black Twitter
Speaker 1: having to come to the rescue of a young black
Speaker 1: woman entrepreneur, you know, having her hair products in Target
Speaker 1: and her commercial airs. You know, in the commercial, she's
Speaker 1: talking about the fact that she wants other young black
Speaker 1: girls to be able to see that they can be creators,
Speaker 1: that they can be entrepreneurs, that they can do these things,
Speaker 1: these white women came for her in the comments in
Speaker 1: the reviews to trash this woman's products, all because, all because,
Speaker 1: she said in the video, I hope that young black
Speaker 1: girls can see that they can be entrepreneurs. Yea, all
Speaker 1: lives matter. I just don't you know some days and
Speaker 1: I you know, the question that I have for you
Speaker 1: is just like, how do you hold on to joy?
Speaker 1: For me, it's a struggle on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1: I mean, I host another show called Woke as Fuck
Speaker 1: for Christ's sakes, like it is a daily struggle to
Speaker 1: try and be that conscious every single day. How do you,
Speaker 1: in the face of white supremacy that just never seems
Speaker 1: to slow down, that never seems to get exhausted, continue
Speaker 1: to cent her joy in your life. I'm very particular
Speaker 1: about what I allow into my space. In a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, I'm willfully ignorant. I don't tune into everything.
Speaker 1: I don't watch the news. Call it what you want to,
Speaker 1: but if I did, I'd be depressed every day. It
Speaker 1: would be doom and gloom for me. I'm not willing
Speaker 1: to sacrifice myself, my health, my mental health, my well
Speaker 1: being just to be informed. I know what the world
Speaker 1: is I know what the world is going to be.
Speaker 1: I don't want to see it every single day. Now.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean I don't want to fight it. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that I don't come to see it. But
Speaker 1: it means that I'm not centering my life on looking
Speaker 1: for it or being consumed by it. For me, I
Speaker 1: find it a privilege to be very particular about my environment,
Speaker 1: about who I let into my space, about what I
Speaker 1: let into my space, and quite honestly, my life is
Speaker 1: black as fuck, and I love feated in black stuff.
Speaker 1: I go to black things, I talk to black people,
Speaker 1: I love on black people. My work is about black people.
Speaker 1: So yeah, at white folks, they follow a professional Black Girl.
Speaker 1: Lots of white folks follow and support my world, even
Speaker 1: to know that season two A Professional Black Girl was
Speaker 1: filmed by a white man and his wife, and I
Speaker 1: admit that I was hesitant at first to work with them.
Speaker 1: For everything that I am right, I want to support
Speaker 1: and work with black creatives primarily. But my co producer,
Speaker 1: who was on the ground in New Orleans, which I
Speaker 1: needed because I wasn't in New Orleans at the time,
Speaker 1: she was like, look, I work with them, they are amazing.
Speaker 1: Trust me. I trusted her, and it was one of
Speaker 1: the best experiences creatively that I've had. And what I
Speaker 1: appreciate about them was the fact that he knew to
Speaker 1: step back. He knew this wasn't about him, he knew
Speaker 1: that this was about black women and girls, and he
Speaker 1: would always always defer to me to make sure that
Speaker 1: this message was coming across how I wanted it to.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate him so much for knowing his place.
Speaker 1: And many people don't have that opportunity to work with
Speaker 1: white people in that way. And so yeah, I'm very
Speaker 1: particular about I work with, you know, the kinds of
Speaker 1: environments that I'm in, the kind of experiences that I have.
Speaker 1: I recognize again that it is a privilege I don't
Speaker 1: have to work with white people on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: And again, there are white folks who support my work,
Speaker 1: but they also know their place, right, They're not coming
Speaker 1: in my comments talking about oh, when I was little,
Speaker 1: or what about me? Most of the folks that come
Speaker 1: into the comments with that don't even follow the page.
Speaker 1: They probably found a post on their Explore page. They
Speaker 1: want to come and lend their voice. And so because
Speaker 1: I ask Petty as I am, I will let you
Speaker 1: write an entire paragraph thinking that you're about to engage,
Speaker 1: and then I'll just delete it and block you move on.
Speaker 1: Scrolling is free. You don't have to stop here in
Speaker 1: saying anything. But again, it is how white supremacy functions.
Speaker 1: It is the fact that you feel entitled to lend
Speaker 1: your voice to a space that is not for or
Speaker 1: about you mind your business. And I'm so very tired
Speaker 1: of folks always trying to create these fun also equivalences,
Speaker 1: these comparison points that don't exist. Well, what if white
Speaker 1: women came out and said white girl magic, or what
Speaker 1: if white women came out and said they were only
Speaker 1: doing their work for white women? You do say it,
Speaker 1: you don't say the words. But when Elle magazine, when
Speaker 1: elect work was on the cover of their magazine in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, the first time a black woman was
Speaker 1: on the cover of their magazine, and they're then fifty
Speaker 1: something year history, you've been saying all white girls. You've
Speaker 1: been saying white girl magic. When we get one black
Speaker 1: girl on a billboard, you've been saying all white girls.
Speaker 1: When you come and you feel entitled to trash a
Speaker 1: black woman's company simply because she supports an affirm other
Speaker 1: black girls and wants to inspire other black girls. That's
Speaker 1: your entitlements because you think that it should be all
Speaker 1: white girls only, like you already do it. We just
Speaker 1: have the audacity to tell you. So you try to
Speaker 1: couch it as something else. You try to play it off.
Speaker 1: You don't want to call it what it is, which
Speaker 1: is white supremacy. And now that we're checking you on it,
Speaker 1: you feel some type of way. It can't work that way. No,
Speaker 1: you can't silence us. It can't work that way. What
Speaker 1: I have always loved about you and your work is
Speaker 1: the audaciousness of it. To me, it is the visualization
Speaker 1: of how dare you right? And it's so profound because
Speaker 1: the entitlement is so very real and so deep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that a majority don't even know that they are being
Speaker 1: entitled right, That they are showcasing their privilege on a
Speaker 1: regular basis no doubt. And I mean, I'm proud of
Speaker 1: my work, and again I do see it as a privilege.
Speaker 1: But I also have to remind folks that loving us costs.
Speaker 1: It costs me to be audacious in this way, it
Speaker 1: costs me to be unapologetic. I've never been on a
Speaker 1: ten year track in the Academy. I'm not even working
Speaker 1: in the Academy right now. From my it's a self
Speaker 1: imposed sabbatical for my own mental health. Because for as
Speaker 1: black as my work is, for as much as the
Speaker 1: public appreciates it, the Academy does not because I won't apologize,
Speaker 1: because I won't conform, because I have to argue with
Speaker 1: editors about capitalizing the be in black that I have
Speaker 1: to concede to creating a footnote to explain why I
Speaker 1: capitalize be like, I'm constantly having to justify and white
Speaker 1: explain my existence because your audience is white and that's
Speaker 1: who I should be writing for. That doesn't affirm me.
Speaker 1: That doesn't work for me, but it also doesn't pay
Speaker 1: my bills, right, So I always let people know that,
Speaker 1: like loving us cost, I'm constantly asking for support. I
Speaker 1: don't enjoy asking folks for money, but if I don't,
Speaker 1: I won't get to do the work that I do,
Speaker 1: because the mainstream is not supportive of my work in
Speaker 1: that way, particularly not black. Mainstream White folks love it.
Speaker 1: They want to figure out a way to do it,
Speaker 1: but still they want to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: do it that won't make white people uncomfortable. The thing
Speaker 1: that's the hardest is to know that a lot of
Speaker 1: black creative spaces are also concerned with making white folks
Speaker 1: comfortable and too much at stake for me, just in
Speaker 1: my own sense of self, you know, and there have
Speaker 1: been a loss of folks mentors, my father, my family,
Speaker 1: like can you just get a job with benefits please,
Speaker 1: you know, want me to adjust, you know, and to conform,
Speaker 1: just so that I can be okay. And I'm okay.
Speaker 1: You know, the love from my community does feed me.
Speaker 1: But you know, I just I think that that is
Speaker 1: what makes the work so amazing. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is what makes Professional Black Girl so wonderful, is
Speaker 1: that the community helped you do it right, that it
Speaker 1: was literally for us, by us, And I think that
Speaker 1: that's what makes the project so extraordinary, the platform so extraordinary,
Speaker 1: because you know, you put out a call and folks
Speaker 1: returned and with an answer, And I think that that
Speaker 1: says a lot about what you are doing, how you
Speaker 1: are centering us, and I just I appreciate you so
Speaker 1: incredibly much for it. One of the questions that I
Speaker 1: am asking my guests at the end of our interviews
Speaker 1: is how do you doctor Yaba Blay get in the
Speaker 1: PM mood to change the world. How do you get
Speaker 1: yourself inspired to change the world. Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean like, I think we inspire me. I think
Speaker 1: my community inspires me. I think that again, I am
Speaker 1: censored in us and our experiences and our culture and
Speaker 1: our history. I am absolutely always inspired when I read
Speaker 1: stories about folks who have passed on, folks who have
Speaker 1: done this work in generations past, our ancestors, Like I
Speaker 1: read a piece on zor Neil Hurston the other day
Speaker 1: that brought me to tears, and it made me just
Speaker 1: want to continue to do the work in her honor.
Speaker 1: You know that we have folks who fought for us
Speaker 1: in a time where they had so much more to
Speaker 1: lose in doing so, including their lives. You know, not
Speaker 1: to say that we can't lose our lives, but like
Speaker 1: just in the moment of Jim Crow, in the moment
Speaker 1: of enslavement and conversation, we had folks who are audacious then,
Speaker 1: you know, And so if they could do it, then
Speaker 1: my privilege ask can do it now, you know. So
Speaker 1: I think I'm inspired by their struggle. I'm inspired when
Speaker 1: I look at my grand baby you know, in the
Speaker 1: world that she lives in, and as much as it's better,
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, it could be worse. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm inspired by her, by her generation, by the use
Speaker 1: to try and do as much as I can to
Speaker 1: continually change their experience because these changes are incremental, right.
Speaker 1: I know that I won't live to see the end
Speaker 1: of white supremacy. My grand baby might not live to
Speaker 1: see the end of white supremacy. But like we can't
Speaker 1: deny that our experiences of it now are incrementally different
Speaker 1: than the experiences that our ancestors had, So I can't
Speaker 1: afford not to fight. Well. I hope that you continue
Speaker 1: to fight. I shape the work that you do. Professional
Speaker 1: Black Girl is my happy place. And what is next?
Speaker 1: What is next for Professional Black Girl? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I try to stay present as best as I can. Good.
Speaker 1: My mother would love you. She's a Yogi and she
Speaker 1: tells me all the time, Danielle, stay present, Danille in
Speaker 1: the moment. Yeah, and try and again. The word is try.
Speaker 1: I think you know. I just said this the other
Speaker 1: day at an event that I did. Both love to
Speaker 1: ask what's next? I choose to take that as an
Speaker 1: affirmation of the work that I do means they want
Speaker 1: to see more. But I also caution folks, particularly when
Speaker 1: speaking to creatives, like that question, can produce lots of anxiety.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of pressure to create, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure to keep up. It's also part of the
Speaker 1: reason why a lot of folks work is done in
Speaker 1: haste and it's raggedy. Yeah, you're trying to keep up,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to hurry up and put stuff out there.
Speaker 1: And again, we deserve better, we deserve more, We deserve
Speaker 1: people's concerted effort and attention, and so try not to
Speaker 1: rush up into doing new stuff, into doing more, particularly
Speaker 1: if you're not supporting it. Right. But I think Professional
Speaker 1: Black Girl is just but one manifestation of the work
Speaker 1: that I want to do. So I'm looking at the
Speaker 1: variety of ways that I can continue to create and
Speaker 1: sustained community as well as do other creative work. I
Speaker 1: think my overall goal is to continue to educate us
Speaker 1: about us. You know, one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: me want to peel my skin off is to see
Speaker 1: young people online fighting about racism and not even knowing
Speaker 1: what racism is. You know, folks online talking about racism
Speaker 1: and not even knowing what racism is, not understanding context,
Speaker 1: not understanding white supremacy, not understanding history. And I recognize
Speaker 1: that I've had the opportunity to teach about these things,
Speaker 1: but in a very privileged space called the academy. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering how I can bring that type of information to
Speaker 1: the community in ways that they can access. So I'm
Speaker 1: working on it. I mean, it sounds like you are
Speaker 1: working literally on everything and all the time, as many
Speaker 1: creatives do. Doctor Yaba Blai, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining PM Mood. I appreciate you so much, and thank
Speaker 1: you so much for the beauty that is professional Black Girl.
Speaker 1: It just inspires me every single day to keep going.
Speaker 1: And I can't tell you how much inspiration I need
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. Sticky P Well, thank you for
Speaker 1: tuning in, for following, for sharing, for liking, and definitely
Speaker 1: for affirming the work that I do. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear more from me, check out
Speaker 1: my live daily political talk show, Woke, a f daily
Speaker 1: at DNR Studios. You can subscribe now at www dot
Speaker 1: DNR studios dot com. Slash Woke