On Friday, Solange Knowles shared a horrifying story on Twitter about her experience at a Kraftwerk concert, when she was bullied by four white women who yelled obscenities and threw food at her in front of her husband and son.
We got part of the story that night, when the singer and fashion icon furiously tweeted about it in the immediate aftermath, but on Sunday, Knowles decided to channel her feelings about the incident — and what it meant for her as a Black woman — into a longer post.
The resulting essay, entitled "And Do You Belong? I Do," is a must-read on the experience of Black women in so-called white spaces.
"You’re full of passion and shock, so you share this story on Twitter, hands shaking, because you actually want these women to face accountability in some kind of way," she writes. "You know that you cannot speak to them without it escalating because they have no respect for you or your son, and this will only end badly for you and feel it’s not worth getting the police involved. So, you are hoping they will hear you this way. You know when you share this that a part of the population is going to side with the women who threw trash at you."
She later continues, "You realize that you never called these women racists, but people will continuously put those words in your mouth. What you did indeed say is, 'This is why many black people are uncomfortable being in predominately white spaces,' and you still stand true to that."
Wrote about the tone, being a minority in predominately white spaces, & having trash thrown your way when u speak up https://t.co/QW7xow2106
— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 11, 2016
Read the full post here.
(Photo: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)
TRENDING IN STYLE
COMMENTS