This Juneteenth, we pause to honor not just a moment of emancipation but also the spiritual and ongoing work of liberation that continues in voices like Siyana’s. Her essay reminds us that freedom isn’t a destination but a daily practice of naming truth, reclaiming language, and engaging in what she calls the “never-ending conversation” of building what we need when existing systems fail us.
Siyana brings us into her world with unflinching honesty: the classroom where “that was so sad” becomes the only response to Black suffering, the workplace where “sassy” marks her as disobedient for refusing to perform submission. But her story doesn’t end with harm. It transforms pain into theory, experience into wisdom, and nourishes the spirit from silence into blueprint.
Through frameworks like “White Pity,” “power in leaving,” and “kids with bigger legs,” Siyana offers us new language for understanding how oppression operates and how we might resist it. Her dissection of the word “sassy” reveals how language has disciplined Black women across centuries of generational control, from the plantation to today’s classrooms and offices.
These aren’t just observations. They’re analytical tools that illuminate patterns others miss or ignore, helping us not just name what’s wrong but feel our way toward what’s possible. Her work reminds us that belonging, like freedom, is not a one-time achievement but a practice -- recreated in every classroom, every conversation, every act of discernment.
Siyana’s voice joins a growing chorus of youth in this series -- a rising college sophomore among them -- who transform lived experience into knowledge that serves both liberation and spiritual resilience. Like those called to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, her frameworks refuse invisibility. Her approach shows us what counter-storytelling looks like when it’s done with both courage and care, embodying America’s promise of listening to the youth and their elders.
In this series, we’ve committed to hearing young voices not as victims to be saved but as teachers with wisdom earned through navigation others never attempt. Siyana embodies this perfectly. She’s not asking for pity or praise. She’s sharing blueprints for the transformation many claim to want but few dare to design.
~Dr. G
Building What We Need
Siyana Z. Da’Briel
As my fingers gripped the door handle, I brushed my hair away from my eyes. The smell of perfect curls hit me – achieved with a 450-degree flatiron and no heat protectant. I wondered if the curl pattern I feared had just changed from 4A to 2B. Those curls were hidden for reasons I didn’t yet understand. I hoped my waterproof mascara lived up to its name so no one could see the tear from the broken girl’s eye. I returned to the space that made me cry myself to sleep, mentally preparing for the newly discovered phenomenon: White Pity.
That moment was about more than a bad day. It was about the emotional and spiritual cost of navigating systems never built for me. It was about how harm compounds in classrooms, dorm rooms, and workplaces where I’m constantly reminded that I don’t belong. I wasn’t just tired. I was exhausted from carrying the weight of other people’s comfort while my own humanity remained invisible.
This is the reality for students like me: we’re expected to perform belonging in spaces that systematically deny us the conditions to actually belong. We’re told to be resilient while the systems that break us remain unchanged. But what if our exhaustion isn’t a personal failing? What if it’s evidence of institutional violence disguised as normal?
When Classrooms Become Battlegrounds
We were assigned a 40-page court case about Parchman Farm. I climbed to the third floor of the library, spent five cents per page to print it, annotated everything, and researched every word until I could confidently use 1970s legal language in casual conversation. I didn’t come to class just to learn. I came ready to engage with the brutal history of Black men enslaved on a prison farm after Jim Crow supposedly ended.
The first classmate to speak said four words: “That was so sad.”
There is something so infuriating knowing we all read 40 pages of these Black men being raped, beat, shot, degraded like it was still 1619. The average college student knows about 30,000 words. And out of all those words, that was what came out? Those four words?
That’s what I call White Pity. It’s a phenomenon where people reduce horror to sentimentality so they can feel sympathetic without confronting the system behind the harm. It allows them to acknowledge pain while avoiding responsibility. The same person who could talk for five minutes about injustices white men face suddenly had nothing substantive to say about Black suffering. White Pity isn’t just inadequate. It’s violent. It transforms our trauma into their emotional release. It lets them feel good about feeling bad while changing nothing. It reduces centuries of systematic brutality to a moment of performative sadness.
So I sat quiet the rest of the class. Something my teachers never saw from me. That neglect of words wasn’t just poor participation. That was me recognizing that some conversations aren’t designed for dialogue. They’re designed for performance.
This pattern wasn’t confined to the classroom. I soon discovered it echoed in other professional spaces where I sought to belong. When I started a new job, for instance, I walked in with standards, not expectations. There’s a difference. An expectation is hope or optimism. A standard is a requirement. It must be there. I expected mutual respect, but the job failed that standard. Consistently disrespected, silenced, needing to scream to be heard, and of course my name being butchered, I kept to myself. When I didn’t respond submissively to disrespectful treatment, I was called “sassy.” That word hit different because I knew its history.
Sassy originates from English. One of the few words to truly be American. One of the earliest written accounts shows it was used by slave owners to describe when an enslaved Black woman was being disobedient, when she was not being obedient to ‘massa.’ Sassy has never been used on Black women in a historically positive way. Whether you like it or not, these are facts, not opinions. Black women being called sassy is degrading. Insulting. An insult we encourage by neglecting to dissect the history of the word.
Redefining the Terms of Engagement
Here’s the truth nobody wants to hear: we are being abused. Especially Black women.
I don’t use that word lightly. The Oxford Dictionary defines abuse as treating someone “with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.” Can this be applied to race? If you answered no, you’re wrong. It’s usually called racial harassment or discrimination. Softer words for what’s actually happening. But the Black community needs to be realistic. We are being abused.
As Black women, we tell each other: be seen, be heard, be respected, stay and change their minds. But this expectation places the entire burden of transformation on those experiencing harm while protecting the systems that create it. It’s Stockholm syndrome. We’re taught to be grateful for scraps while trying to fix the very people and systems that harm us.
There is power in leaving. Sometimes, sure, you can’t leave. Not financially, not practically. And I’m sorry for those who have to endure that. But when you can, choosing to leave racial abuse isn’t weakness. It’s strategic resistance.
When I left that job, people acted like I’d failed. But I didn’t quit. I opted out. I stopped participating in my own diminishment. I chose to preserve my energy for spaces where I could contribute without having to fight to exist first. That’s not failure. That’s discernment.
The reality is this: if you’re in a space that’s less than 50% Black or 50% comfortable with Black women, you are the diversity. And you are most likely being abused. We have Stockholm syndrome about it. Sometimes we must leave, let the abuser see what they’re missing. If you can do this with politicians, you can do this with institutions and the people who have access to you.
I had the realization that a majority of students pursuing the same career path as me were actively trying to cultivate a space that limited diversity, praised exclusivity, and prided themselves on inequity. That’s when I knew: this isn’t about individual bad actors. This is systematic. This is intentional. This is abuse.
Blueprints for What’s Next
I don’t just want to critique the system. I want to build something better. And that starts with how we see each other.
The people who made themselves our adversaries? They’re just kids with bigger legs. They need nurturing too. They may need to be untaught what school and society taught them. But that unlearning cannot and will not come at our expense.
Sometimes your parents let you fail. They let you burn without them. It’s time we start looking at other groups of people as our children. Not to control them, but to hold them accountable with love while protecting ourselves from their tantrums.
This means hitting your discernment button. Ask yourself: Is this a moment to endure or to walk away? To educate or to protect? To invest energy in change or to preserve energy for survival? There’s no universal answer, but there is power in choosing consciously rather than defaulting to endless accommodation.
I’m tired of the never-ending conversation about being Black, about safety, about belonging. But maybe that conversation can become something else. Maybe it can become a blueprint. One where we protect our spirits while building what we need. One where we refuse to normalize harm while still believing in transformation.
We can love people and still refuse their access to us when they use that access to cause harm. We can believe in growth while setting boundaries. We can hope for change while protecting our peace.
We can’t completely neglect them. They’ll burn the family that is society to the ground. But we must remember: neglect is harm too. And harm, in any form, is still abuse.
I don’t have all the answers. But I know this: I’m not here just to survive their systems. I’m here to build new ones. The question isn’t whether they’ll let us belong in their spaces. The question is: what will we create when we stop asking for permission?
I’ve already started building. The blueprints are ready. Who’s ready to construct? Who’s ready to bridge belonging in collaboration?