Chandra Gill: My Sistas, To Save Black Girls, We Must First Save Ourselves-Part 1

By Chandra Gill

Easily, this article can be re-directed to address all African-American and (even) Latino youth for that matter. Or ‘better’, why not write about our young men who so desperately need to be ‘saved’ from America’s pervasively ignorant perceptions of them? Shouldn’t we seek to ‘save’ them immediately, if not first?

Time and time again, we’re reminded that our young black men are increasingly present in jails and absent as fathers. Daily we’re inundated with messaging that suggests too few of them graduate college in juxtaposition to the many who aspire to a music career in Rap. So, we have to help ‘save’ our boys soon, right?

Well wait, what about the young girls? What do we make of their realities; their pain? What about their self-imaging, self-esteem and self-value or lack thereof? Aren’t they sadly, just as devalued and disposable according to prevailing social norms? Have we conveniently ignored the alarming statistics regarding the growing number of girls in jails? In continuing on with my point here, please know that I’m not interested in some ridiculous competition over who needs more help; our young men or women? Let’s get real about this: All of our children need us. America’s youth need adults to be adults, period. White,rural youth, Latino, urban youth, African-American, suburban youth, all need us. Make no mistake about it, affluent or ‘well-to-do’ African-American parents are struggling with their children too, in a myriad of ways. Some of those parents failed to account for extreme depths of racism & inequality, when they relocated, believing that having equivalent salaries to their White neighbors would help lessen their troubles. Few are shown the research which explains how Black suburbia children are often times just 5% of white districts, yet accounting for over 70% of said districts expulsion rates.

Yes, this issue is larger than the conversations we’re having regarding our children. Yes, we need to ‘save’ our young black boys. But too often this solely implies ‘inner-city’, ‘urban’ and ‘underprivileged’. Whereas I don’t refute the help needed in that arena, I insist that it’s a lot larger than what we’re told daily. (We’ll talk more on this later). Here, we simply want to make the case regarding the sisters of those Black boys…the mothers, aunties, grandmothers and daughters of those young men.

A recent study highlighted how over 1 million women have been misdiagnosed with cancer. In a conversation with Mable Taplin (whom I invited to join me in writing this series), she immediately stated, “I’d like to know the racial demographics and income level of those women misdiagnosed.” Interestingly, the conversation was contextual to our typical, let’s catch up, spirit-driven talks around Healing, Counseling and Jesus (of which we should probably write a book on, titled such. Especially, since so many of us, refuse the help we so need because we are already ‘saved’ and filled with the Spirit).

Let me assert here, neither of us as God-fearing women denies the power of the Holy Spirit or God. In fact, our life stories suggest otherwise. However, what is most apparent is that so many of us, in fact, deny ourselves in the name of acknowledging God’s power. In other words, being filled with Spirit doesn’t negate the other things inside of us that perhaps warrant therapeutic attention.

Allow us to restate the obvious: Cancer is real and it is serious. Preventative screening, knowing symptoms and treatment options are critical to survival. Equally important are the under-discussed risk factors such as stress and other lifestyle choices. Many of us fail to make the connection between stress and the development of many diseases, despite a lot of research that suggest the same. As Black women it is imperative that we continue those discussions regarding our pain as Black women; our hurt, our stresses and fears. How do we heal and what treatment options have we chosen that are also critical to our personal survival?

As Black women, if and when we’re honest, we’ve created very few spaces to actually heal. We’ve disregarded the significance of healing specific to our quality of life. What does this then say to our young girls; our daughters? Some of us are so strongly trained in the area of coping and existing that we’ve confused it with living. I’m grateful for my strong mother who embodied the tools to navigate a cruel society angst to Black people. I’m blessed abundantly in having a father who too possessed the strength needed to survive the era of openly, racially charged Chicago. Yet, after learning of my own need to heal, I believe this understanding of strength is often misunderstood and miscalculated.

We’re taught to be strong but when are we taught to heal? We’re taught to be resilient but at what cost? We’re taught to be understanding, even when there’s no peace and we’re told to be accepting even when it’s unloving and unclear to us. So how do we heal? When? Should we? Recently, in one of my many speaking engagements to our nation’s youth, I was reminded of this developing truth regarding healing. I was reminded of how our communities still refuse counseling, therapy and healing because, “that’s for crazy people” or “our situation ain’t that serious yet”. “…for crazy people”? “Yet”? Huh? It’s hard to believe that as victims of abuse and with our close connection to slavery, we can actually deny needing help. It’s even harder to digest those of us refusing to get help even as we personally identify tenets of physical and emotional abuse in our own lives. The fact that we’ve accepted trauma as a mere side effect to living denotes the severity of our struggle, the profundity of our plight.

Back to the motivational speech I gave to those inner city, Chicago students. After I finished, a 14-year-old freshman girl, having experienced some of life’s most evil blows indirectly (yet I believe divinely) shared with me her adult-like trauma. My heart hurts in thinking of what she poured into me that morning, in just her 1^st week of high school. No child;  Black, Latino, Native-American, etc… should have to endure what she shared. Yet, so many of our babies are experiencing these irreversible situations. The question she indirectly, yet divinely, presented is: who ‘saves’ the girls? And how? This series is about those little girls in America, who like our boys, need to be ‘saved’ too. It’s about the little girl in us, as grown women, who scream for healing despite the appearance we give off to the world. This is about us as Sistas making the courageous decision to first ‘save’ ourselves, realizing they’re watching us. They not only need us, they need for us to be whole. It is about us doing whatever we need to do so that we can ‘save’ our young girls too…