Dear Black women, focus on your own interests. The time for fighting everybody else’s battles and trying to rescue everyone else is over. Let me state it more bluntly – sisters, save yourselves. Yes, I know you’ve been conditioned to nurture and look out for everyone else, but yourselves. So let me ask y’all – where has that gotten you? How well has putting yourselves on the back burner worked out for you? There comes a time when you have to set priorities. Now is the time to prioritize yourselves.
Charity Begins at Home
It goes without saying that charity begins at home. If your house and your neighbor’s house were both on fire, which fire would you put out first? It only makes sense to put out the fire where you live first. After you’ve saved your own house, then you could focus on helping your neighbor. As selfish as others might try to make that sound, continued selflessness and self-sacrifice could have you in some tragic situations. It’s the same thing with Black women. As Black women, we’re facing so many major issues that we need to focus on. Currently, Black women have the highest eviction rates in the United States, Black women face high rates of femicide, we hold the majority of student loan debt, Black women have the highest infant mortality rate in the United States, we have the highest maternal morbidity rates and extremely high rates of heart disease. It goes without saying that our house is on fire and we need to put it out. We don’t have the bandwidth to divide our attention. Now is the time for us to focus on our own interests and fixing our own problems.
You’ve Got Your Hands Full With You
Now, looking at all the issues I’ve listed above facing Black women, I’d say we’ve got our hands full straightening them out, wouldn’t you? If I’m being honest, these issues are just the tip of the iceberg. Add in other issues like mental health and the pay gap and the list gets infinitely longer. We can’t make deep inroads into solving our own problems if we’re always off fighting everyone else’s battles. Sorry to sound selfish, but we’ve got our hands full with our own issues. What’s the message pilots give passengers about their breathing masks before take off? Secure your own breathing device before helping others. Black women, we have to secure ourselves before we go off trying to help anyone else.
If We Don’t, Who Will?
The truth of the matter is no one’s coming to save us. No one is going to fix our problems. If we don’t focus on addressing the problems facing us as Black women, who will? We can’t keep fighting for everyone else with the hopes they’ll turn around and return the favor. It hasn’t happened yet. The only way we’ll see any change in our problems is if we focus on addressing them ourselves. We can’t expect anyone to do what we’re not willing to do for ourselves. If our problems aren’t important enough to us for us to focus on tackling them, why would we expect for them to be that important to others? We have to make our interests our number one priority. Also, by our interests, I specifically mean what we define as our interests, not what others try to dictate our interests should be. If we don’t, who will?
What are your thoughts? Should we focus on our own interests? Drop a comment below. Also, if you found this post helpful, please share it.
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