"Being black in America has meant that your very existence is a problem: the object of the slavery question, the miscegenation threat, the Jim Crow solution, the Negro problem, the black family crisis, the welfare dilemma, the crime problem, or the nation’s racial scar. The social and political realities of American racial inequality make black people themselves into a constant problem that has to be observed, analyzed, and solved. Blackness has often been framed as a cancer that eats away at the nation.41 Stigmatizing blackness means that African Americans must constantly contend with social shaming."

� Melissa V. Harris-Perry  Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. Yale University Press.

(via daniellemertina)