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Black American Women Aren’t Beautiful Enough

Bren Kelly
10 min readOct 3, 2022

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Malcolm X was right!

She wants you back, in her heart

There’s a massive clickbait title bound to cause some nasty reactions against this white make writer here. But hear me out first before you let me have it. (Unless you are a white male, then go ahead.)

It occurred to me “suddenly” the other day — after still trying to “do the work” of educating myself on our shared white supremacist history that has structured our police reactions leading to the death of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, or _____ (fill in one of the many). I thought: OMG, why aren’t our black women more celebratory than these?

By “these” I meant the dancing and singing descents of Yoruba in Brazil as seen on a documentary on Netflix, Bigger Than Africa. And it hit me there like a ton of sadness: Because America thoroughly wiped out all gods of beauty from African black women (and men to be fair). The white's length, efficiency, and thoroughness eliminated all traces of the beauty goddess that shone down and from within black America women.

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The European Brazilian overlords were not so thorough. Their slaves were allowed to “fool them” by hiding their native goddess and gods in the Catholic Churches. Also, because the Catholics had hundreds of saints, just like the kidnapped and enslaved Yoruba, they thought it could be a good way…

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Bren Kelly
Bren Kelly

Written by Bren Kelly

Engaged in Inequalities, dismantling Western Consciousness, confronting American narratives, seeking inherent injustices to address.

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