The Acne to my melanin

The name “Imbokodo” is an isiZulu word that means “rock” and comes from a popular African proverb which says, “Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokodo!” (“You Strike the Women, You Strike the Rock!”). I dislike how society has put certain groups of people in a position where they feel like they must qualify themselves. I understand that on their end it is probably an attempt at self-love and is probably a net positive, but I do not like the fact that they are in a position where they must do that. I saw a post on Twitter by a young black woman and the caption was about what a blessing her dark skin was. It was also not my first time seeing a post like that. The fact that she has to tell us (and herself) that, because we as society told her skin wasn’t right fills me with anger; anger that’s only surpassed by my shame because I played a role in it too at some point.  This qualifying of your value and humanity is something that I see with oppressed groups such as people of colour, women,...

Very few sayings amongst my peers irk me like “its not that deep”. Everything is deep and everything is personal. If it is done to my person by another person then it is personal. How we treat others is directly affected by the ties we have to them, not necessarily the ones they have to us because that is just not how it works. People do the things they do to you…because it is you. There is no other reason to be honest because they probably would not have done the same to their grandma, mother, or their child, but they had absolutely no problem doing it to you. You have every right to be livid, and you can react as you see fit (if it is legal of course) because they did to you as they saw fit.  This extends to speech as well; people often say that the world is too sensitive or that people cannot take jokes anymore. They say that because they can no longer get away with being terrible people without consequences, they try and shift the blame onto those who feel aggrieved by their wo...

For something that sustains us on a day-to-day basis, platonic relationships do not seem to receive enough appreciation. Romantic relationships often take precedence over them and I can see how that happens with the added element of intimacy. Western culture's obsession with romance since the days of Shakespeare’s writing, compounded with Hollywood’s obsession with meeting “the one” has not helped the case of platonic relationships. However, considering that most relationships we have are not romantic, we sure do overlook a significant portion of our lived experience.  When people think of relationships, they often think of someone to hold hands with, cuddle with, and stroke your fragile ego. Those are romantic relationships, and they are only a fraction of relationships. If “relationships” were represented by 100%, romantic relationships would be less than 10% of that, and yet, they tend to receive 90% of our efforts. It is the non-romantic relationships with those around us that ...

In my quest for information and knowledge, I often find myself in corners of the internet that are…different to say the least. Nothing indecent or illegal of course, just weird. I then immerse myself fully in that world and if you are around me, you can generally tell what type of content I am consuming during that time by the things I keep bringing up.  This is something that hurt me in the past because I was just consuming information and these different ideas were affecting the way I approached certain issues, and it took burning my fingers a couple of times before re-evaluating the way I went about looking for information and the type of information I entertained. I now try to consume content that’s consistent with my values and avoid any that conflicts with them, and when I do go to the dark side, I do it fully aware that I am in the valley of the shadow of death so I always have my flashlight with me.  One way to evaluate a position I hold, or that I am looking into is t...