Variety: Black history, to me, means my Mississippi mother was right after all. She often told me that “Any room you walk into, assume you belong there.”
Ironically, I’m not sure my mother– a domestic, sharecropper, and factory worker for much of her life– ever fully realized that feeling for herself.
1 comment:
This is a beautiful article. As a Black woman, a lot of what Anthony Sparks wrote deeply resonated with me. When Sparks spoke about the way that agencies told him and his wife that they were too upscale to play “ghetto” Black characters, it really got me thinking. I was a little bit confused by the way Sparks described his reaction to those comments, however, after reading further into the article it began to make more sense. Being happy to be the exception to a stereotype is no better than actually being a part of the stereotype. The quote at the very beginning from Sparks’s mother that said, “Any room you walk into, assume you belong there,” also struck me hard. To me, it means that if you walk into a room lacking the utmost confidence and make yourself smaller than you really are, you will never get anywhere in life. You will never be noticed. You will never be seen as anything other than what you portray yourself to be, and if you make yourself small, you will be seen as small. If you walk into a room like you know you belong there, the room will take notice in your presence.
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