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The Black Girl’s Guide to Staying Alive
An Essay for Black Girls everywhere.
Last night, in the long hours of the evening, I wept for the life and loss of 19-year-old activist, Oluwatoyin Ruth Salau. I thought about my tumultuous upbringing both as a West African-Black American girl in America. I thought about my time as a runaway on the streets of Pittsburgh, PA., about the times I mistook friendly faces for friends. I thought about how I could have been Toyin, a girl fighting for the togetherness of her people while forced to fight her people, alone. I watched video of her proudly proclaiming her stance in support of the preservation of all black lives, if only she’d grown up in a community that echoed those sentiments.
Running from abuse at the hands of nuclear relatives, found herself relying on the kind gestures of members of her community to navigate her inopportune independence. Where she sought protection, she was preyed upon, where she sought shelter, she instead suffered additional assault. And when she demonstrated the audacity to demand that the man who violated her be brought to justice for his violence, she would pay for her persistence with her life.
Toyin was failed too many times. First by the Nigerian community, to whom her ethnic identity belongs. One that comes with a culture often caught red handed playing in the patriarchal cookie-jar of…