20 phrases by Djamila Ribeiro to learn more about black feminism

You can’t talk about human conscience while black people don’t have equal rights and aren’t even treated as human.

The invisibility of black women within the feminist agenda means that they do not even have their problems named. And there is no thought of emancipatory solutions to problems that have not even been mentioned.

For most of my childhood and adolescence, I was not aware of myself.

My daily struggle is to be recognized as a subject, to impose my existence on a society that insists on denying it.

In my journey of discovering myself black I adopted new idols and especially new idols, when I saw that in the social pyramid the meat of the black woman is not even the cheapest, because she is considered rotten.

Beauty standards are totally harmful to the construction of the black child’s self-esteem and that is why it is important to have other references, to understand that black people also think about the world and that they are part of the construction of society.

Feminism must contemplate all women, it is necessary to realize that you cannot fight one oppression and feed another.

Empty opinions on such serious issues, by themselves, may not even kill, but they sure help to pull the trigger or drop the corpse to the floor.

You can’t fight what you can’t name. And when you don’t know where you come from, it’s easier to go where the mask says you belong.

You cannot be selective when it comes to combating machismo.

Here in Brazil, as this myth of “racial democracy” was created, that everyone loves each other and everyone is nice, the black subject himself often finds it difficult to understand that our society is racist.

Faced with so many humorists who reproduce oppression, legitimize order, I am left with the definition of the brilliant Henfil: “the humor that counts for me is the one that punches the liver of those who oppress”.

Speaking is not restricted to the act of uttering words, but of being able to exist.

Not listening is the tendency to remain in a comfortable and comfortable place of the one who calls himself/herself able to talk about the Others, while these Others remain silenced.

Being an intersectional feminist means realizing, for example, that not all men can be treated the same. Black men suffer racism and can be discriminated against by a white woman in this matter. In the same way that a black man can be sexist with a white woman.

If I fight machismo but ignore racism, I’m feeding the same structure.

The desire to be accepted in this world of Eurocentric standards is such that you literally hurt yourself not to be the black girl with the stiff hair that no one wants.