≡ About BLK

The term BLK is not to lump all women of color under the race Black, anymore than women who are not Black should be lumped under the race White. Instead, we use the term to celebrate the common, underlying difference in various women of color, despite their race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status. It is undeniable that there is an invisible seam lying right under the surface that connects us all as women. And this strength has yet to be tested until now.

The term BLK comes from this: the more I looked at the word the more I realized you could not deny its existence. I could jumble the letters up , change the appearance, remove letters; everyone who looked at it still figured it out. It was “black”. Then I made a connection, the same logic could be applied to women of color.

I can relax my hair, dread it, iron it, and put it in a curly weave or extensions. I could dress gothic or trendy, classy or cheap and tacky or couture. My English could be without dialect or accent, country as homemade biscuits and gravy, regional or no English at all yet I am still identifiable as a woman of color. Others may not know just where I am from but they know it is an origin of color, whether it be tropical, Asian, African or born and raised American. The seam was there and it was irrefutable and undeniable. Therefore, I took the letters “a” and “c” from the word and…yep, it was still “black”,

in a different form but the same.

The first issues of the online magazine debuted in April 2006 and had been a work in progress for roughly a year. It was exhilarating and scary, a proverbial rollercoaster of emotional and financial stress. And there finally came a time whwre I had to choose between paying the rent and paying the assistant. I chose rent. However, at no point did I ever entertain the thought of dropping this project. Of passing the buck, thinking that someone else would figure it out. There is a void that needs to be filled. Most publications for women of color target one woman of color in specific. Maybe it is easier that way, I am sure there are some very practical and pragmatic reasons why they do but the premise of BLK is different: to unite us as women of color. Therefore, I regrouped and decided that a blog would be more feasible and appropriate. Blogs have gained tremendous popularity and in some instances credibilty as a viable platform to reach out and be heard. Now we can still help create the BLK brand and element as well as work on viable ways to create a print platform.

As a young Black woman the in fighting that I have been exposed to is phenomenal; Puerto Ricans don’t like Dominicans, Dominicans don’t like Blacks and Blacks don’t like other Blacks of various complexions. It is mind boggling because when I sit down with other women of various ethnicities and we chitchat on being young twenty-somethings in the city, the themes have been consistent. The subtle forms of discrimination or off hand remarks that we face at work, struggling to assimilate without losing the ethnic culture that we hold so dear, often putting ourselves through school while working full time; trying to make sense of the duality around us as young women, striving to reach the higher echelons of society and continually going under, over, around or right through the challenges and obstacles that we face as women of color. Immigration, financial stability, the struggles with your reality and that of past generations and sometimes the “homeland” and single-parenthood are just a few of the many themes that we face.

So began my journey to create a fun, funky, comprehensive, forthcoming but slick publication that would do just that: face them. Sometimes we will provide some solutions and sometimes more questions but we will face them. We won’t push them under the carpet, nervously smile them away, ignore them, justify them or act like they aren’t there. And while we are doing all this facing, we will do it while being dope in our own ethnic right without shitting on anybody else. There is enough fuck-upedness going on between us all without us dumping more in the cesspool.

So let down you locks, weave, braids, curls, tresses, put your feet up and enjoy.

Let me know what you think…hit me up at Tanya@blkgrl.com