'I can’t write about black history' by Hosanna, akt young ambassador 

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Black History Month. I’m going quote a post from Instagram by Talawa Theatre Company: ‘Black History is more than a month’.

I would like to emphasise that Black History is much more than what history books tell us. Black history is always shown through tales of strife, death, slavery, prejudice, murder, protests, or how black people overcome this.

History… it’s supposed to be a long time ago, but it feels like black people were going through this yesterday, last week, last month, last year. That’s because it’s still going on. Unfortunately, this suffering is being felt today and it’s being continued. It’s going to take more than a month once a year to fix over 400 years of slavery, less than 70 years after it was abolished. Micro aggressions and police aggressions are still very prevalent today. I don’t need to remind you of the negativity associated with ‘black’.

I am not going to write about black history.

I would like a reminder of black positivity. I wish I could see more black love from the world because there has been so much brilliant stuff that black people have contributed to society. It’s a shame I don’t know that history so well. All I can say is that a lot of great things in this world, not only have been influenced by black people, but have come directly from us. Not just through African culture, Caribbean culture; music, food, art drama, dance, social media, style, us as people. Good things come from who we are.

I properly came out as queer last December, a few months before the world plunged into the most hectic standstill of all time.

Once I thought I must be the only black, queer, woman of faith... That was an extreme analysis of my life. The funny thing about being alone, is it can make a person feel alone. Sometimes I need people to remind me that I’m not.

I used to debate with myself about how queer I am. Am I queer enough…?

Obviously that sentence doesn’t make sense. I don’t need to be anything more than who I am, to be who I am. My point is, I am still learning or relearning what I believe about myself and my own history. My definitions of beauty and gender have been ingrained by the West but learning about all the positive assets to my black history, my queer history is allowing me to interrogate my views of myself and others.

That’s exciting because any shame in me, conscious or unconscious, gets eroded away when I learn about all the parts of who I am.

There is good, there is empowerment, there is praise and validation in black and queer histories that coexist with each other, both in me and the world past and present. The more I can find out about that, the better.

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