5 Most Memorable #BlackGirlsAllowed Moments of 2017

In 2017,DangerousLee.biz became BlackGirlsAllowed.net

Why?

The short story is that I’m sick of White people and men.

Keep reading for the long story.

Scroll down if you’re anything like me and hate reading the commentary before list posts.

If you see Carly Simon and Taylor Swift you’ve gone too far.

This website has produced content that appeals to many different types of people since 2008, though women (Black and White) have always been my core audience.

It was created as a place for me to highlight my work. Like stops on the Keep Your Panties Up and Your Skirt Down book tour, announcements of any public appearances, and upcoming episodes of my podcast on Blog Talk Radio.

Basically I had a few “fans” and I was trying to build my audience and my brand.

I thought I was on track to become a writer who published lots of books year after year.

Not so much.

But, I like creating websites and I have a degree in web design.

It grew into The Dangerous Lee Network where it became a mildly popular entertainment website that was once featured on Kathie Lee and Hoda. And to my surprise it became popular for its fashion content. I had a daily stream of high quality content written by myself and contributing writers as well as ad revenue. I was on a roll!

That roll was slowed, will explain later.

Then I changed it again and made it a place to feature people like me, starving artists; creative entrepreneurs who were promoting themselves independently online. I changed the name to The #FeedArt Network.

It didn’t take off as well as I’d hoped but I’ve seen more than a few websites with a similar mission pop up since my project was created and there are now many websites offering opportunities and a larger audience for independent artists online.

I never really had a passion for any of these versions of the website. That’s a lie. I had a lot of fun with The Dangerous Lee Network when it was poppin’.

All my hard work was on its way to start paying off when Google cock-blocked many of the top websites by creating an algorithm that affected website rankings and traffic in a major way.

DangerousLee.biz toppled.

#BlackGirlsAllowed 2017 — I had high hopes that year.

So, I said to myself: Take the skills and experience you’ve used to get millions of views at DangerousLee.biz and put them to work for other businesses so you can earn a steady paycheck. I’ll do my own thing as a side project.

In September of 2016 I was fired from a job where I increased leads by 50% the first quarter and 20% the second quarter. I worked 9 months as a Marketing Specialist for a total idiot at a noise reduction company who was textbook racist and a sexist asshole creepily obsessed with Disney in an office where I was in the stereotypical position of being the only person of color on the staff. It caused me to throw my hands up in regard to working for other people. I couldn’t do it anymore.

If I hadn’t been fired, I was going to quit eventually.

Working for this man and his company lit the fire that helped me make the decision that I will work exclusively for and with Black women.

I also remembered that I started Black Girls Allowed as a side project on WordPress in 2013 and I was also publishing an annual list of The Most Beautiful Black Women every year.

It seems so obvious now. I am a Black woman. But, I was always so focused on appealing to the masses and finding a way to work with everyone.

That “come together as one” state of mind hasn’t worked well for me. All I got outta that was a lot of nothing, disappointment, and heartbreak.

It was as clear as the African nose on my face the entire time.

Black women are not a side project – I purchased BlackGirlsAllowed.net and made it my main squeeze!

#BlackGirlsAllowed was born.

I Was Born Controversial

Being born a Black girl is controversial.

You pop or are pulled out and you unknowingly are now a permanent resident in a world where you are seen as less than everyone else on the planet because of racism and White supremacy. You’re at the bottom of the barrel. Unlovable. Ugly. Loud. Mean. A Bitch! A whore!

It’s a lie, of course, and your beauty will be secretly (or not so secretly) revered, but we navigate through life with this gaze. Most of us are ignorant to it, like being in the sunken place, until we reach a certain age or have experienced a big chunk of life and have met people along the way from different walks of life.

I didn’t fully piece together until recently how me being a woman and especially a Black woman has had such a negative affect on my life. I knew I was a “double minority” but I didn’t internalize those experiences at the time because I am like many Black women; confident, smart, hardworking, I have a degree, and I had high hopes.

I had faith that I could overcome.

I didn’t give a shit about the negative things people thought of me because I knew they weren’t true. I knew they were rooted in racism but I was naive. It didn’t matter to me that people were racist. If I was good enough I’d be able to show them and they’d accept me. But people thought what they thought and I wasn’t given equal opportunity because of it. It didn’t matter how good I was.

When I did get the job my hard work went unnoticed and unappreciated. I didn’t get certain opportunities that I most likely deserved or that I qualified for just because I am a Black woman.

Black women are not typically raised to be weak, so we are living in a system that sees us the exact opposite of the way we function and see ourselves in the world. This is the conundrum. Because we come with the attitude that anyone should have who has their shit together. Combine that with the fact that we don’t take shit from anybody and it’s often if not always seen as “Angry Black Woman”, bitch, mean, difficult, and so on.

It’s not a complete lack of humility but we think highly of ourselves. We must.

This means being a Black woman has and will affect me in ways that I can’t control no matter what I do. Even if I was meek and had low self-esteem I am seen as a monolith. I wasn’t fully aware of the depth of the discrimination I was facing but it was making me become an angry and bitter person unconsciously, then consciously. So much so that today I keep a Shit List that everyone has a spot on.

Living in a world run on racism and White supremacy eats away at your soul even when you’re persevering.

But how can you not be angry and be a Black woman? You have the right to be angry at the way the world treats you but you don’t want to be angry. You don’t want to fit the stereotype because if you do they win. You don’t want to sit in that anger but you also can’t ignore it.

Your feelings are valid, but you’re tired of feeling them. You wanna feel something different but there are no other feelings.

You might think, other than my mama who really loves me? Even our own men fight against us!

The realization is that this is racism and White supremacy at work in your life.

Sexism, toxic masculinity, and misogyny, by-products of the above, have also negatively affected my life greatly, in ways that I didn’t always recognize.

I knew a lot of experiences I’d had with men were fucked up, including sexual molestation as a child, but I didn’t always know what to call it or how to process it. Processing it all is still an issue I face.

Studying psychology helped me to understand myself and others quite a bit but it also opened Pandora’s box on how I view humanity. Ignorance really is bliss, it’s a false bliss but bliss nonetheless.

It’s why I smoke so much weed.

These are some of the experiences that I want to talk about on BlackGirlsAllowed.net and I want to hear what other Black women have to say about their life experiences as a Black woman. Our stories of Black feminism need to be documented.

Not just the bad, but the good too. We seem to be defined most by our bad experiences, because we often have so many, but there are some nuggets of positivity in everyone’s life.

And not every Black woman’s journey has been as unhappy as mine and there are certainly women who have lived lives that would make mine look like a Disney film.

Men are Men

Only 12 pieces of new content were created in 2017 but the 5 most memorable #BlackGirlsAllowed moments revolve around topics related to interracial dating, colorism, and White people with Black (African) heritage.

Black and White people having sex and making babies intrigues people a great deal. One could even say we are obsessed with it as a culture. This includes me since I write about it a lot. But, that’s because I am a Black woman who has slept with a White man and I am raising a racially ambiguous looking child.

Let’s take a look at how Meghan Markle’s engagement to Prince Harry has taken the world by storm. Meghan is also a racially ambiguous looking woman who was raised by a Black woman and that fact is at the root of damn near every story written about her as well as whether or not her skin tone and facial features fit the phenotype to even be considered a Black woman.

Simply put, it’s lazy reporting and (yawn) racist. When I see articles that state her engagement is giving Black women hope I wonder which Black women they’re referring to? Little girls who believe in fairy tales?

Not me! I don’t give a shit about her engagement to Prince Harry. I don’t give a shit about anyone’s engagement. I’m too old and too wise to let another woman’s engagement give me hope that I’m gonna find a good man, White or Black to marry, especially since I don’t want to and never have wanted to be married.

I’ve never understood the hype of marriage. Just hearing someone gush about getting married makes me sick.

Men are not princes (and you are no princess) and neither is Harry in the sense that he’s not a perfect man or mate. Spare me!

Meghan Markle is actually a pretty intelligent and very interesting woman. There’s so much more to focus on other than her Black heritage, but again to be Black is to be controversial in a world ruled by White supremacy.

Also, because there are White men having sex with Black women as some sort of bet or something to try out to see what its like. Not because they are in love or want to build lives and families with us.

There’s also a sect of White men who really believe in their puny lil’ hearts that they are the ideal mate for every woman regardless of how ignorant, shitty, stupid, racist, ugly, lazy, or misogynistic they are. But hey, that’s White Privilege. Why wouldn’t they think they’re Gods gift to every woman?

They’re why the world is fucked up, btw.

To some, me saying that is more offensive than the fact that it’s…true.

And, that’s why DangerousLee.biz is now BlackGirlsAllowed.net

BLACK GIRLS – BLACK GIRLS – BLACK GIRLS

Black Girls Allowed to be bold

Black Girls Allowed to be blunt

Black Girls Allowed to be controversial

Black Girls Allowed to be loud

Black Girls Allowed to be proud

#BlackGirlsAllowed is looking for Black women to feature and Black women to create content.

The Top 5 Most Memorable #BlackGirlsAllowed Moments of 2017

#5: A Black Woman Dealing With White Peoples Fragility and Privilege Online & IRL

via GIPHY

White privilege and White fragility are terms that have been thrown around quite a bit but because White supremacy rules the world it only makes sense.

Dealing with White peoples micro and macro-agression is tiring to deal with over a period of decades.

Example of White fragility: A White man had the audacity to tell me that Martin Luther King, Jr. would be ashamed of me because I spoke a truth about racism and White supremacy.

Example of White privilege: I had another White man tell me that he didn’t think being called a Cracker was offensive because it was a term used to describe slave masters. The same White man also seems to get some kind of sick joy out of the fact that White men are our biggest terrorist threat.

I think it’s because most people don’t see White men as a threat, like they do say a Black boy walking down the street wearing a hoodie carrying candy and a bottle of tea.

Yea, pretty sick.

#4: Did You Know Carly Simon Has Black Heritage?

Check the comments on this one. Me sharing the fact that a White person has Black heritage is a harsh reality for some to take. They obviously haven’t had an Ancestry DNA test yet. They’ll probably kill themselves when they do.

#3: The Half Series – When Black People Look White

This 3-part series was written many years ago but it still manages to be one of the most read think pieces on the website.

The comments section of this one is also highly entertaining!

via GIPHY

Michael Jackson’s kids, Prince and Paris (most people say they see the resemblance in “Blanket”,so he’s excluded), and singer Halsey fit the bill of children with a Black parent who look White.

Drake and Halle Berry don’t fit this bill either. Most people were surprised to learn that Halle has a White mother because of her skin tone and facial features.

Zendaya, pictured above with her parents, also wouldn’t be a proper example of a person with a Black parent who looks White but she is light skinned and will be playing the role of Anita Hemmings, a light-skinned Black woman who passed as White (both of her parents were mixed) and was the first Black woman to graduate from Vassar.

#2: ASK A BLACK GIRL – Is it normal for White men to be attracted to Black women?

Beware of any man who says this bullshit. He’s shady AF and she knows it. You need to see her Blackness because it’s important.

#1: The Story of Dangerous Lee

I don’t know where my life or my story is going in 2018 but I can say with certainty that my 2018 will be filled with #BlackGirlMagic and so will yours if you hang with me!

Follow #BlackGirlsAllowed on Twitter and Facebook.

Fun Fact: Visiting DangerousLee.biz will take you to BlackGirlsAllowed.net.