This Friday, NJIT’s Office of Prevention and Advocacy will be welcoming Dr. Brittney Cooper, Howard University professor and co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective to a symposium called — rather appropriately for the week of Valentine’s Day — All About Love: A Call to Black Feminism & Its Call to Freedom. 

I remember reading “The Crunk Feminist Collection” when I was in high school — I didn’t quite understand the nuance of womanism, which is what many in the community feel is a better way of practicing feminism while still celebrating Black womanhood. 

She wrote in hip hop; I read in the frame of academia. She talked about Black culture and feminism in a way that spoke to my heart, but I didn’t have the tools to synthesize it properly.  

As a Black woman, sometimes the only Black woman in my classes at NJIT, it is both illuminating how welcoming others can be and frustrating that sometimes our own can be not as supportive as they could be. In predominantly white institutions, Black women are not nearly fighting against the current but often end up rowing backward.  

For many women of color, Black women in particular, the white feminist movement has not done the necessary work in embracing Black female identity. For us, the love wasn’t there. It had to be taken.  

For Black women that are not considered conventionally attractive, or come from different cultures within the diaspora, or even are of a different gender, it has been a long road to find that love within ourselves and our own people.  

My days were spent in an environment that didn’t allow me to express my full womanhood — or rather, girlhood — in a healthy way. Rather than being honest with myself about my own experiences shaping my ideas about Black feminism, race, and sexuality, I let others control the narrative.  

Now it’s time to take control of ourselves and our stories. 

I know this will be an excellent discussion about Black feminism, what it means to love as a Black woman, and much more.