Protect Me: The Prayer of a Black Woman Who Is Tired of Pouring into Cups That Secretly Resent Her

In this episode, I teach you about the two-fold Sacrificial Bargain, the impossible choice that Black women have been forced to make for generations:OPTION 1: The Boomer Sacrificial Bargain (Silence + Community)You have a collective. You have a movement. But you have to stay silent about abuse. You have to protect predators. You have to sacrifice your truth for the sake of "unity."OPTION 2: The Gen X/Millennial Sacrificial Bargain (Truth + Isolation)You refuse to stay silent. You name the abuse. You refuse to protect predators. But you lose the collective. You end up isolated, doing it all alone.Either way, Black women lose.I connect this impossible choice to the freedom fighters we celebrate, Huey P. Newton, Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King Jr., Assata Shakur, Elaine Brown, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and show you how even within those revolutionary movements, Black women were making the Sacrificial Bargain. We were expected to sacrifice our bodies, our voices, our leadership for the sake of the collective.I analyze the "ride or die" narrative in hip-hop, Tupac's "Keep Ya Head Up," Jay-Z's "Bonnie & Clyde '03," Biggie's "Me & My Bitch," Future's "Mask Off", and show you how hip-hop taught us that being a "ride or die" woman is the highest form of love. But what hip-hop didn't teach us is: What happens when the man you're riding for resents you? What happens when you're "riding" but he's not driving?I compare Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976) and HBO's Lovecraft Country (2020) to show you the evolution of the Sacrificial Bargain. The Logan family had a collective, but it required secrets. Leti is telling the truth, but she's doing it alone.Can we build a third option? Can we build a collective that refuses silence AND refuses isolation?I teach you about Melissa Harris-Perry's "Crooked Room", the disorienting psychological space that Black women navigate where no matter which way we lean, the floor is tilted against us. I connect this to Mary J. Blige's "Not Gon' Cry" and Beyoncé's Lemonade to show you how Black women artists have been trying to navigate the Crooked Room for decades.And I share what a man recently told me: "Read The Art of War by Sun Tzu." At first, I didn't understand. But then I realized: He's telling me to be more strategic. He's telling me to stop fighting battles I can't win. He's telling me to stop pouring into cups that secretly resent me."The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."The enemy is not men. The enemy is the Sacrificial Bargain. The enemy is the expectation that I will sacrifice myself for love. The enemy is the belief that I need to build men up in order to be worthy of love.And the way to defeat that enemy is not to fight it directly. The way to defeat it is to refuse to participate in it.