The Thunder of Significance: Affirmation and Probing

“Daughter of Significance”, from the eponymous series

Happy 100th Black History Month, teastained women! I wanted to share this exhortation with you. Transparently, as someone who’s currently experiencing misogynoire discrimination on the job, I have chosen to direct the loudness that would want to possess me into the trumpet with which I have been ancestrally bequeathed, so as to edify and uplift fellow sojourners. This, after all, is Journeying Soulfully. Sometimes you have to stand firm not as punishment but to study the things with the audacity to attempt to break you. You have to study the nuances of their evils and document it so next generations can swiftly identify an enemy.

There has long been an obsession held by society and its treacherous agents (staring at immigrant cultures who will perpetuate the violence of antiBlackness to have proximity to whiteness) to “put a Black woman in her place”, to humble her or cause her to resign from her confidence and appropriate a manor that proves she is indiscriminate, obsequious, and accessible to all. It’s a profane agenda carried out with sinister smiles, corporate jargon, quiet meetings, public laws and other ordinances established to ensure that Black women are demeaned whether overtly or through stealthy acts. Let’s take New Orleans’ Tignon Laws as an example.

The Tignon Laws were enacted by New Orleans’ Spanish governor Esteban Rodriguez Miró in the year 1786. The laws—mandating Afro-Creole women to cover their heads in turbans/ wraps when in public— were intended to be a dress code publicly enforcing the second class (caste) status of Afro-Creole women. The psychological ramifications of this law are as a patriarch on a family tree of racial terrorism (both loud and quiet), as they were the idealogical foundations of how Black women are considered, targeted, and retaliated against for standing in our regality— by white people, and especially white-passing hispanic peoples. It’s always important to learn the root of State-mandated, social violence against you. Such ideas form our spiritual warfare as Black women: feeling as though we need to apologise for our strength; tone-policing ourselves to tame the command in our voices, altering our behaviour so as to not be seen as “intimidating”, and lowering our defences around harmful people just to prove ourselves accessible and “humble”. US history is replete with precedents for the battles enacted against Black womanhood. While many of these terrorist tactics wage war on our safety and stability, many of them are specifically aimed at the quality of our dignity and how it directly connects us to the Divine.

According to Erik T. Baker’s 2020 paper, Sumptuary Laws: The Tignon Legacy of Louisiana, Afro-Creole women “were to be viewed as unequal in society…”. Baker continues to explain Gov. Miro’s founding motive to setting a socioeconomic tone in Louisiana that patterned after the social norms to which white Americans were accustom (USA had not yet purchased LA).

“…it was clear that Miró had to ensure American’s that Louisiana did not veer too far from their previous societal norms. One way that this was achieved was by implementing sumptuary laws that would serve to regulate the amount of wealth that Creole women could display. This was because in this new society that was forming under Spanish rule, society was to be class focused and with this distinction no persons identified as being of African descent could have been viewed as ‘more esteemed’ than a White person.’
…
Indeed, this from Miró’s perspective, would curtail women of color from openly competing with White women while also making laws regarding race and status applicable in a more definitive way.”

Behold, a spiritual origin of the social sneer and attack on Black women’s significance. Confirming the timelessness of Spanish-directed disposal of Black women to propitiate whiteness, Baker continues,

“…there were also other things that Miró did to suppress the freedoms that enslaved Creoles had in Louisiana such as banning the use of drums out of fear that rebellions were being communicated through these secret rhythms… new restrictions were created to align their slavery system with that of their American counterparts…”

And so we see here that the Tignon Laws were especially instituted to console whites entering Louisiana that they would not be discomfited by having to regard Black/Creole women as equal members of society. There’s much to unpack there, namely in how PoCs in power will wilfully bend whole atmospheres and construct exaggerative structures to empathise with whites’ demonic assignment to violate and destroy. Humiliation of Black women seems to be the methodology of choice to communicate submission to the agendas of whiteness and white narcissism. But Black women remain victorious. As Baker’s paper concludes, Black women’s regal resolve prevailed:

“Although having the least amount of agency within Louisiana’s patriarchal society, these [Afro-Creole] women were masters at repurposing laws so as to not allow these laws to rob them of their dignity and essence. It is this culture that remains intact and is alive and well until this day.”

Afro-Creole women’s response to the Tignon Laws? To ornately decorate their head coverings. Like the changing of water into wine or a snake into a staff, that which was ordained for Afro-Creole women’s humiliation was miraculously changed into

From Jim Crow and Black Codes to corporate attacks on Black women to the demoralizing media presentations that erode and defame Black women’s character with their condemning portrayals, there’s always been a steady attack on the self-esteem and sovereign stance of glory that Black women naturally hold. Meanwhile, the world gaslights and slanders us, convincing us that we are not being punished for connecting with our sacred manner and movement through the world with our heads held high. No, it’s supposedly all in our minds, the connection between choosing and walking in the dignity our spirit narrates into us and being placed in scenarios where we are “put in out place”.

Afro-Creole women’s responses to the Tignon Laws teaches us today, that DIGNITY is a technology of being undefeated. That our total compliance is impossible. That our mandated uniforms, when adorned become the dress of resistance. That the fixation on the volume of our dignity is a conscientious premeditation. A volunteered psychosis. That our “NO” can indeed manifest as an a decorated headwrap.

Significance bag charm

The truth is, attempts to chop Black women down to size will surely continue. They come with the slander that we think we’re better than others (—and we ARE), or that we’re “mean” for carrying on in the exclusivity of our existence, or intimidating because we are discriminate with who we allow access to our Self and soul. Yet history shows that when Black women occupy their regality with self-affirmed opulence, EVERYONE wins. But even moreso, it’s precisely because our people win by our dignified countenance and sojourn, that our affirmed dignity is a threat to the State and its mandate for social caste. Our dignity bears a radiance that is ungovernable.

The mindset cultivated to hold onto your significance as a Black woman (and I mean 2 Black parents—fight your nonBlack parent) isn’t merely a topical affirmation. It’s not a piece of clothing. It’s a deliberate, studied morale; a diligently-apprehended dignity that forms the covenant by which you carry yourself. Black women operating in their significance do not owe the world an explanation or a window into the backstory of their countenance. We do not owe the world a footnote or commentary as to why our head is held high and we do not dignify certain people, conversations, environments, etc. with our presence or actions. This is the motive to The SIGNIFICANCE series (headscarf, journal, notecards, and pouch).

Significance head scarf

The focused attention on the confidence possessed by Black women, which has historically stimulated heinous ideations of punishment, retaliation and torture by whites and non Black PoCs. Why? because we’re the blueprint. And when the BLUEPRINT walks like they know who they are, what’s in heaven can be commanded to take place on earth: justice, revenge, curses on enemies, and returning of stolen things to their rightful owners. That’s called alignment.

Significance speaks to direct lineage to the Divine; something not hybridised or spliced or segmented or split to make way for an alternate gospel of fear and contempt. Insignificant things cannot hold the message, cannot relay the fulness of a Divine word. Insignificant beings cannot hear from the Creator. Cannot receive Divine assignments. Out of envy, they wage warfare against you.

And in your Significance, you author books of triumph in the midst of their orchestrated tribulations. You speak denouncing and exposing words that render their secret agendas laid bare before your Light. You send those curses back onto them and their generations. You carry this power.

The Purpose of Being Despised

Recently, during a moment of expressing anger at a racist work incident, a dear friend reminded me of Toni Morrison’s admonishing, that the purpose of evil (especially racism) is to distract you. I believe we are all bearing witness to this in our lives and in our times. The sinister change in the air where “different cultures” can all stand united, with the latent sutures being the despising of Black people—especially Black women. It’s not accidental. It’s not coincidental. It’s warfare. And you must take AUTHORity, using your journal writings to author declarations that charge atmospheres dedicated to antagonising and dehumanising you.

The attack on your significance is meant to disorient you.

The attack on your significance is to intercept your destiny.

The attack on your significance is to drain you of ideas.

The attack on your significance is to control your behaviour.

The attack on your significance is to derail your aspirations.

The attack on your significance is to deplete your energy.

Your significance makes you ungovernable.
Your significance signifies that you have been Divinely created and mandated.
Your significance speaks to your sacredness.
Your significance alarms the insignificant.
Your significance alerts those bent on creating fictions to contend with your testimony.
Your significance is under attack because it carries the blueprint
for a Sovereign Black future.

The ordinances of chattel slavery demand that you accept mistreatment as natural and in the silence of your thoughts and the lowliness of a mind that seeks self-improvement before detecting a threat on your character. Don’t waste your time rehashing their intentional evils. Do not waste your time overmanipulating the consistency of their despising you— it’s thick roux; it’s congealed wax; it’s hard clay. When you over manipulate any substance, it changes form. In the same way, if you keep having a mental discourse with how much you are hated, you will make an enemy into an ally.

Your work is in authoring words that form declarations returning evil back to its sender. You must sever fear’s hands on your voice, womb, and feet. Dismantle confusion and disorientation stirred by gaslighting and wicked schemes against your character, to denature and demoralise you. Speak joy and WISDOM over yourself so that your conduct is not communicating that you exalt their evils more than your Divinity.

Don’t dedicate overtime to excuse yourself against their wickedness. Don’t brainstorm ways to prove them wrong when they set out to defame and demean you. Your job is to carry the testimony of one who regards and forms language against the enemy until they are extinguished. And your words have power! Walk in your SIGNIFICANCE.

I love you, Teastained Woman! Blessings to you!