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Swirling with Christelyn Karazin

The art of attraction isn't just about colour or creed, it's about chemistry and a whole bunch of other things. Swirling author Christelyn Karazon discusses.

Valuable Advice ALL Black Women Can Use

Posted by Christelyn, 28 Jan

As black women, we face a unique set of challenges at the intersection of our race and sex. Cultural mores, seen as “the done thing” in the black community, such as birthing out of season, accepting scraps, and working ourselves to the bone for everyone else’s benefit but our own, is taught, in word or indeed, from one generation to the next. With the advent of social media, there has been an awakening to other ways of thinking. For many black women, the ideas put forward, like “choose character over color”, or “don’t have more children than you can afford”, can seem like a deeply personal attack. However, despite how black women may feel, there is one small thing that can positively impact black women for generations.

What is that piece of valuable advice?

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Be teachable.

A willingness to have your own beliefs challenged is a simple way to open a whole world of options to you. After all, that’s how we learn, right? We see or do someone do something a certain way, and upon seeing that way be successful, we can try to emulate it ourselves. Unfortunately, too many black women have a mindset of having to experience something for themselves to believe it. One does not have to stick your hand in an open flame to know the resulting burns would be painful. Instead, it would be more beneficial (and cause less heartache) to learn from the highs and lows of others. As the saying goes- only a fool learns from her own mistakes. A wise woman learns from the mistakes of others.

Being teachable is not without difficulty.

The aforementioned cultural mores have an impact, but there is also the arrogance of youth. Many younger black women think they simply know better and choose to ignore good advice from older wiser women. This is not unique to black women, mind you, but due to our unique position in the world, our inability to heed wisdom from the women before us can be detrimental.

Another difficulty is the resistance to learning from an “imperfect” messenger.

All too often, other black women demand perfection from a potential teacher and cling to a mistake she might have made as evidence that she is unfit to give advice. If you think about it, who better to learn from, than someone who has lived the experience? It’s all well and good to get information from women in their ivory tower, but diversifying your learning portfolio will only help you in the long run.

Christelyn Karazin is the co-author of Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate, Mixing Race, Culture and Creed. She also operates the popular blog, Beyond Black & White, and operate the first forum dedicated to black women interested and/or involved in interracial relationships.