Begum's Mind

Blanx•i •e•ty (c) /BlaNG'zīədē/ noun Feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease associated with the daily turmoils of being Black in AmeriKKKa \ usually due to the possibilities of unknown outcomes ____________________ Anxiety is real and alive in the Black community, even though we don't want to acknowledge it. It comes coupled with depression often and we all know that when it comes to mental health, we love to play like it can't affect us. So, we probably don't even realize that anxiety heightened from being Black is even possible. No, I'm not saying being Black is a bad thing, or that it's going to always cause feelings of despair. I'm not saying that every Black person is going to even relate (we know there are outliers), but, I am going to point at the fact that we may have heightened moments of anxiety due to being Black in America. Think about it. Every day we see on our social media feeds and TV screens that another person who looks j

What a friend we have in anxiety. Just the word alone can cause an adrenaline rush. It drops in like the best friend you've always thought about: shows up unannounced, stays for long periods of time without a care, keeps you up all through the night! I am not shy about my anxiety. Whenever I have an opportunity to tell my story, I do. Not to try to find pity in people, but to open the conversation for those who think it's something to be ashamed of. So many of us battle with anxiety now in our 20s that it's almost like it's something we should have been told about as a progressive stage along with periods and wet dreams. I have touched on the topic of mental health previously in "13 Reasons Why Pretty Hurts: An Ode to Mental Health", but I still don't think it's enough. Anxiety for a lot of people is more than just that feeling of nervousness before a big test, or a presentation in front of the entire office. Anxiety is something way deeper and can

________________________________ You did it! You successfully used a years long argument and divide to cause dialogue based on division once more. You pitted Black people who attend a Predominantly White Institution against Black scholars who attend/ed a Historically Black College or University. It may not have been your intentions, but it surely is what occurred. This was your chance to uplift Black heritage and the deep pride that comes with attending HBCUs, as well as celebrate education in the Black realm. Instead, you had to do it by using a PWI experience as the juxtaposing experience for one of an HBCU calling it inauthentic to do one versus the other. You plastered the statement " Sorry, you can't have an authentic Black HBCU experience attending a PWI " across photographs of different shades of ebony showing us all the Black girl magic. But, couldn't you have made this segment less problematic? Could you not have uplifted HBCUs without