Listen to the Stories of Black Girls

Listen to the stories of Black girls,
treated like a non-native, invasive species
in this ecosystem of predominantly white spaces,
filled with smiling white faces,
your hair is so pretty... is it real?
Always a slight, a misconception, an uncomfortable question.
Prioritizing their own curiosity of a Black girl's body, over the feelings taking physical shape inside that same body they so curiously inquire about.
A curiosity born from the willful ignorance of their white ancestors.

Listen to the stories of Black girls,
unable to fully express their pain
I can't say anything, they'll think I'm just being a dramatic Black girl
White girls’ tears viewed as harmless, vulnerable, innocent, attention-grabbing,
a problem to be fixed,
a damsel to be saved.
Black girls’ tears labeled dramatic, disruptive, angry.
A misconception pushing them further and further away from their truth.

Listen to the stories of Black girls,
whose white teachers ask them to remove their hats.
It’s not a hat, it’s a Hijab
Classmates make fun of the white boys who have a crush on them,
a crush born from the fantasization modeled by their white ancestors
I don’t feel worthy
They don’t recognize my beauty.

Listen to the stories of Black girls,
sitting in American history classrooms in 2025
That’s white people problems
Sharing the quiet part out loud
We woulda been on the plantation, baby. We woulda been slaves.

Listen to the stories of Black girls,
They’ll tell you what it feels like listening to the whitewashed version of history.
Taught by their white teachers, who’ve been ordered, by white legislators,
to teach “little white lies,” of omission
See how the word “white” can even make a lie seem harmless?
John Locke. Thomas Jefferson. Their “great accomplishments”
It wasn’t great to us because we weren’t free
Consider how lonely she must feel,
to hear her teacher praise a man
who raped and impregnated her enslaved ancestors.
Irredeemable, horrific behavior,
now referred to as “great.”

Listen to the stories of Black girls,
whose white teachers will send them to the office,
but refuse to send them to the nurse.
“You’re fine go sit back down,
I know you’re just trying to get out of class”
The emptiness inside, she can’t describe.
It called her attention in the form of a bellyache, now ignored.
Denied. Unacknowledged. Untreated
A lump in my throat I just sat there like an outcast
And just like that, the emptiness spreads to other places in her body.
The same body white girls and women are so curious about.

Not curious enough to ask "How are you feeling?”
Not curious enough to be included in medical research
Not curious enough to ask why Black girls are hyper-sexualized
Not curious enough to question why they see that teenager as an adult
Not curious enough to listen to the stories of Black girls

Listen to the stories of Black girls
and you’ll have no choice
but to admire the Black women they become.
Soft despite harshness
Intelligent despite exclusion
Articulate despite imposed, expected silence
Resourceful despite theft
Fully alive, despite the attempted assassination of their identity  

Listen to the stories of Black girls
and you will be radicalized

Listen to the stories of Black girls
and you will learn to trust Black women.

Listen to the stories of Black girls
humanity depends on it.