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Please Don’t Forget About Black Joy This Month

Raven J. James
ZORA
Published in
5 min readFeb 10, 2021

Two Black women laughing together at the beach.
Photo: Thought Catalog/Unsplash

Another year, another Black History Month.

My place of hire, specifically the diversity and inclusion committee, wants to celebrate Black History Month with a watch party later this month. (Cool, I guess?) They sent out a survey to get our feedback on what movie we should watch. The options included selections like the highly anticipated Judas and the Black Messiah, Ava DuVernay’s exceptional 13th, Selma, and Just Mercy.

Honestly, I don’t know who is going to want to “celebrate” Black History Month by attending a virtual watch party with their co-workers on a Friday night. Especially when I know that the old White men (aka the people who should likely see these films the most) aren’t going to bother participating.

Another thing I wanted to know was why they wanted us to choose from those specific films. From this list we have: the tragedy of the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party, an informative documentary about the disproportionate arrests and imprisonment of Black people, and two somewhat “uplifting” films in where neither one really gets a “happy ending.”

Black trauma: The genre no one wanted

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ZORA
ZORA

Published in ZORA

A publication from Medium that centers the stories, poetry, essays and thoughts of women of color.

Raven J. James
Raven J. James

Written by Raven J. James

Writer | Entrepreneur | Blogger | Dreamer | Pro-Oxford Comma; Feel free to check out my blog at www.serendipityandsuch.com

Responses (21)

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I've been rewatching "A Different World" lately and thinking how groundbreaking that show was on so many levels. Even decades later, it is sadly refreshing and unusual to see a sitcom that centers Black people (of all different shades, hairstyles…

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I loved the points you made here. I think this is especially so true for schools, and particularly elementary schools like my place of work. It's important for Black children to see their history as more than trauma, but it's also important for…

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Thank you for this article. So important and beautifully explained. I still have much to learn. I struggled with this a lot when I was a high school English teacher in the city - our curriculum included the important texts from Black and African…

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