To survive as a Black person in America, I have to assert that when micro-aggressions penetrate my skin like a parasite, I will not let them burrow deeper into me where they can eat me from the inside out.
What is a micro-aggression?
1. Getting to paw through a Black female colleague’s hair
2. Commenting to others about how fascinating you find it
3. Calling the Black woman “angry” or “oversensitive” for minding
4. Not remembering this happened—or
5. Telling us to get over it.
When you feel us like a piece of fabric, it summons a genetic reminder of standing there naked at auction, of being sized up and sold off according to the size of our birthing hips and ripeness of our breasts.