Come visit Interrupting Privilege at the Northwest African American Museum! Click here to learn more about the exhibit

My Full Expression Got Diverted

Listen as a Black mother shares with her daughter how she’s muted in her joy by white partner and friends. She recalls how sometimes with her white friends, if she has a bad day at work, there isn’t space to feel and instead her expression is immediately diverted toward problem solving. This is a kind of muting that tempers her full range of feelings because she constantly feels like she has to regulate her joy in the midst of whiteness.

I’m listening to my music, our music. It makes me happy, it makes me joyful. It’s loud in my ears and I want to dance… And I don’t feel like I have that space with this particular person… so I think there kind of a muting, of self-modulation.