Black Women: Wrapping Our Pain in Pretty Packages | Frances Cudjoe-Waters | TEDxSMUWomen

At its core, racism denies your humanity. At its core, sexism demeans and demands that you accept less than full person-hood. At the intersection of race and gender, there is little chance to be truly free. I didn’t realize that I had been doing the very thing I swore I would never do. I had gotten so good at presenting my pain, frustration, anger and hurt as a black woman to predominantly white audiences in conversations and every day life that I did not realize how exhausting it had become. So, I finally decided, I had had enough of polite conversation. I would speak my truth and declare as Beyonce had in Lemonade, “I Ain’t Sorry." Frances Cudjoe-Waters is the mother of three incredible boys and the wife of an amazing husband - all of them on the endangered list in 2017 America. After focusing on civil rights issues as a Harvard Law student two decades ago, she never thought she would see the reemergence of situations like Charlottesville, VA and the spree of killings of black bodies with repeated acquittals by white juries - something she'd only studied about in the 90's as history from the 1960's, but now lived again in the late 2010's. She is passionate, loved and loving. And somehow seeks ways to facilitate discussions between all types of people from all different places. And didn't realize until preparing for this talk, how much of a toll this always "even-ness" and dispassionate intellectualism can actually take as we all seek to just be human. Her family was recently featured by the Dallas Morning News with a profile of her family on the front page of the Sunday paper 2017. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx