Where My People At? A Constant Striving for Visibility

I was thinking the other day about visibility and how important it is to see yourself in movies, on television, on billboards, and in magazines. We discuss this here at BNP frequently. We’ve picked up visibility, unwrapped it, shone a light on it, and let it glow in the ether while you whip your hair back and forth basking in its realness.

As much as we’ve talked about the importance of visibility, I don’t think that we can ever talk about it or act on it enough. The importance of visibility is why sites like Black Nerd Problems, and even figurative entities like Black Twitter, exist. On visibility, poet and activist Nikki Giovanni says “…You’ve got to find a way to let people know you’re there.” So, here we are and here we stand and here we shout and stomp our feet in gladness when other people seem to see us. Speaking for myself, I get excited when a new commercial comes out showing Black girls with natural hair and dark skin doing everyday things like, you know, drinking milk or eating cereal; the everyday things that we all do. I also get a nice little flutter of butterflies in my tummy when I see a gay or lesbian couple on an advertisement shopping or just walking down the street hand-in-hand. Many of us shout for joy at these depictions of marginalized folks getting visible play doing the regular shit that folks do. I mean, eating cereal may seem like nothing, but it’s real life. Black folks don’t just jump public transportation everyday singing Coca-Cola jingles. I …