revisiting solange's "a seat at the table" after you've found your spot

 

 

unfortunately, i was one of the tragic few people that did not listen to solange's 2016 album, a seat at the table when it initially came out. i'll admit it. i was a bit of a hater. however, upon revisiting itconsistently over the last few months, it really does stands as one of the best records released in the last decade. period.

 

if i had to describe the album in a few words, they would be "growth","manifestations," "grief" and "healing". while these are things that may have needed at the time the album came out, much like i lament in my musings on sza's ctrl, i think that for the longest time, i avoided this album because it addressed the very things that i hated about myself. and moreover, instead of confronting them as solange suggests, i decided to take the mental high road and dip out instead.

a seat at the table has often been hailed as a "call and response" to the Black community and seeks to dissect both the misery and joys that comes from being Black. its power not only derives from its quiet discussions on the politics of hair, Black womanhood and the all the other things that have been taken from Black people to keep them quiet and complacent within a society does not welcome them. however, its a call to arms for those who have lifted the metaphysical veil on internalized racism and are looking for somewhere to articulate these frustrations and more. here, solange offers a "space" at the aforementioned table among her ancestors and other fellow Black people for this discussion and simply proposes this question along the way: "where do we go from here?"

 

this is something that i am still working to figure out as i become more comfortable with with my own sense of Blackness. i constantly find myself thinking about my Blackness' role in my friendships, relationships, the music i listened to, the places i visit and just about everything i do. sometimes i feel like i am driving myself crazy thinking about my own Blackness. (wow, this really sounds like an ibram x. kendi book) it feels really extra and unnecessary to have to do that all the time and most of the time it is often just that, extra and unnecessary. but i went so long without thinking about it at all, that its kind of just been burnt into my brain to have to consider certain things anytime i make any decision.

 

let's be frank for a minute: growing up, i was a Black person with very few Black friends. i'd burnt off my hair from years of relaxers and had literal chemical burns on the top of my head from too many trips to "the shop." the shop, for all of you (e.g: white people) unfamiliar with this phrase, is a beauty salon. however, not just any beauty salon, but one that exists in the basement or lower-level of someone's home that they've somehow converted into a beauty salon. more than often, you'll see the standard wash stations, hair dyers and African art that server to disguise the fact that you're getting your hair done in someone's friend-of-a-friend's or aunt's basement. however, after you've sat in the waiting chair for more than 45 minutes from the start of your appointment, been asked to reschedule several times after waiting for more than an hour and had to take many breaks forperson doing your hair to eat or have a conversation on their phone while you still have a head full of conditioner, you'll remember where you are. this was also often a reminder that i was Black and no blowout could distract from that.

 

i would start to cry when my mom pulled up to this person's house because i didn't understand why i couldn't just go to "a real hair salon" like my white friends who went to great clips (yeah, i don't know what crack i was smoking when i was a kid, but great clips is not a hair salon). i would cry even more after my mom beat my ass for trying to undo the bumped end situation that i had going on in my hair (seriously, it just did not hit). however, through all the tears, i sucked up the chemical burns atop my skull and my crunchy dorito ends because, in the end, my hair looked like all my white friends' hair and that made me happy. however, many years later, upon hearing "don't touch my hair" for the first time, instead of feeling empowered about my mane and its connection to my identity as a Black person, i felt slightly attacked.

 

the song weaponizes its lyrics against the people trying to take away the of bodily autonomy of Black people. namely regarding the issues that Black women face when trying to preserve some form of individuality through their hair. the song reclaims the Black body and sets boundaries in place for those trying to disrupt that connection. 

"don't touch my hair / when it's the feelings i wear/ don't touch my soul / when it's the rhythm I know / don't touch my crown / they say the vision I've found / don't touch what's there / when it's the feelings I wear"

however, i couldn't the same for my body and my hair because i didn't feel that connection. my identity was built around trying to emulate the white people. i straightened my hair. i dressed in only aeropostale and forever 21. i was loud enough to stand out, and cartoonishly so, but not aggressively so as to, again, fit in with the white people me. because if they let me into their space, i won. i knew it wasn't right, but it made me comfortable. moreover, listening to solange confidently address her body and hair as her own made me jealous and uncomfortable about the ways in which i had so desperately changed myself to fit into a crowd i never belonged to in the first place.  

 

but acceptance is the hardest part and once i fully began to see myself for who i was (a thick-lipped, big nosed, kinky curly haired Black person) and who i wasn't (skinny, tall, white, etc), i was free.

or at least i thought i was until the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. i don't want to say that the murder of this unarmed Black man awoken something in me, but it incited something me that i didn't quite recognize and moreover, a feeling that made even more uncomfortable than my first run-in with the album. 

 

and that's anger.

 

now i've been angry my whole life and i have a plethora of things that never fail to grind my gears on sight. the dan ryan between the hours of 12 pm - 3pm. fast food salads that cost more than $4. white women wearing box braids or durags. white women who just stand in the way when the can clearly hear you saying "excuse me." however, upon listening to one of the best tracks of the album, "mad", i recognize now that some of that anger is kind of justified. Black people are dying at the hands of the police. our culture is constantly being jacked from us and we're being told that we're not enough. we don't have a place at the table and more than often, we're made to feel as if we don't deserve one. and as a result, we're scared. we're angry. and more importantly, we're tired and there's this constant state of paranoia surrounding these feelings. why am i so mad? should i feel that way? no one else feels this why so why am i so pressed? do i keep pushing or should i just push it all down before "it gets all up in the way" like lil' wayne laments in the song. before i heard the song, i really did think that this was all in my head. for most of my life, i only hung around white people who never had to consider these things. no one was having these kinds of conversations with me, so, ultimately, i felt crazy thinking about these things all the time, but i wasn't crazy, i just wasn't ready.

it is in this album that solange welcomes me, and other like-minded individuals, to a table and i, even as reluctant was i was at first, eventually took my seat. it was a process and an experience, and one that i am still working on, but one that i have finally acknowledged as valid. in a world where racism still runs rampant and is destroying lives and communities of Black individuals, its really important to be able to fight back. its something that has to be done when Black people are dying at the rate in which they are. whether it be by the police, policies keeping them from fresh food and proper housing, or even if it is just the mental destruction of the Black mind and its individuality, Black people are under attack and i no longer have the privilege of shying away from that. its time to get uncomfortable and time to do something about it.