Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with. That whole belief... that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness... all of that just began to burst open.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the challenge to existing social privileges and norms posed by the Black Power movement.
Margo Jefferson reflects on how the Black Power movement was a significant challenge to the social privileges that were ingrained in her upbringing. She highlights how the idea that one must conform to an ideal of whiteness to succeed began to shatter, revealing the need for broader social change and recognition of Black identity and power.
In practice
During a speech on racial equality, one might quote Jefferson to highlight the necessity of confronting social norms.
We talk about how we think, believe, suspect Michael Jackson treats children. We don't talk about how WE treat child stars. Child stars are abused by the culture. And what's more treacherous than when the rewards of child stardom issue from the abuse?_x000D_ Child stars are performers above all else. Whenever their triumps, they are going to make sure we see everyone of their scars. That's the final price of admission.
I think it's too easy to recount your unhappy memories when you write about yourself. You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles.
So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.
Depression is so treacherous - it can be so alluring as well as punishing. After all, it's yours and yours alone - no one else can interfere with it.
I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.
Like dancers with choreography or actors with scripts, jazz singers could take material that was known, even loved, then risk interpreting and revising it. They could conceal even as they revealed themselves. Inflection, timing and tonality were their language, at least as much as words.
If the National Football League, an organization notoriously known for not standing behind their athletes of color, can come out to make a statement to condemn racism and their systemic oppression and admit they were wrong for not listening in the past, then the 'Bachelor' franchise can most certainly follow suit.
Once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work.
Nothing is going to change, unless someone does something soon
I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century.
It is fair to write about the change in your magazines. But what I want to see is the change on your covers ... When the covers change, that's when culture changes.
The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.
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