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Unlearning “What Goes On In This House, Stays In This House”
If you’re Black American, you have heard and perhaps uttered this phrase countless numbers of times. It is what it sounds like. You don’t speak about your home life to others. It is most typically addressed to children in preparation for them entering the rest of the world(i.e. school). See I understand this phrase and concept wholeheartedly. It damn sure was drummed into my head enough. I know enough about our Black history and contemporary that makes it necessary to hide the unsavory parts of Black lives with Black people’s pain. And I see the other side of a toxic mindset that has allowed countless levels of abuse to go unabated, especially for children who grew to be the adults who nurse those open wounds, who continue to live a walking series of nightmares.
I realize that me writing is actively dismantling that rule in my life and it is scary. I realize there are white people who read my stuff. And that makes me feel weird cause white people with white lives can validate all the bullshit they believe about me and my kind. And I feel guilty for having these feelings and…
