I often feel conflicted when I hear the phrase “You are a strong Black 

woman.” I usually think, “Of course I know that,” or “Do I otherwise seem 
weak?” It’s a phrase that elicits a flurry of emotions from me, ranging 
from confusion to almost accepting my moment of strength.

Over the years, I have had to grapple with this phrase. On one 

hand, I am all for understanding and emphasizing the strength 
behind being a Black woman, but on the other hand, it feels like it takes 
away from our vulnerability. To me, nothing makes you stronger than 
being vulnerable and being able to communicate your feelings. Over 
the years, Black women have always had to be strong for themselves, 
their families and their communities. 

As Malcolm X once said, “The most disrespected person in America 

is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the 
Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black 
woman.” This doesn’t only mean being looked down on for being both 
a woman and Black, but it also means being underestimated, which 
has been made evident through Serena Williams her entire tennis 
career or Allyson Felix in her fight for maternal rights with Nike. It 
means knowing we have to consider what we name our children so 
they aren’t discriminated against when they are applying for jobs.

Beyond this, Black women are the most unprotected people 

in America. For example, when Megan Thee Stallion was shot in 
the foot by Tory Lanez, the internet made jokes about it instead of 
having empathy. Our pain is constantly undermined or receives 
little to no attention even when it is most pressing. In all walks of life, 
Black women are oversexualized or deprecated for their looks or 
unappreciated in general. Even in work settings, Black women have 
to wear certain outfits to feel respected and be seen as an equal no 
matter how hard we work. We have to shield ourselves from prying 
eyes even as young girls.

In general, as Black women, we are constantly called “emotional,” 

“irrational” and “temperamental.” However, when we show our 
strength, we are called “demanding,” “controlling” and “aggressive.” 
We are all strong, but we all have areas of our lives where we are 
vulnerable. I would rather connect with the people around me, 
emotionally and intellectually, instead of having to constantly walk a 
tightrope or stay reserved and “strong.” I continue to learn to adapt 
by looking at the women in my life who radiate strength, poise and 
compassion in spite of the circumstances that try to restrict them.

One of the strongest women I know is my mother. This is not 

because of the strength she needed to raise my brother and me, but 
rather because of how she never saw herself as small, despite being 
5’3”. She refuses to be underestimated and always stands her ground. 
Her strength is evident in her eloquent words, her posture and her 
smile. My mother is always strong, but her power is often shown 
through different outlets such as humor, her tears or the way she hugs 
me. 

We don’t need a phrase to constantly remind us we are strong, 

because strength is ingrained in us. Our ancestors had no choice but 
to be strong, no choice but to be the roots in their house, no choice but 
to be part of the armor that protected their families. Black women 
are “strong” in not only the traditional notions of strength, but also 
in our love and vulnerability. To be a Black woman is so much more 
than strength, and “strength” should not define who we are. We are 
defined by our loving hands, our words of wisdom, our ability to help 
our community and everything in between, not by our strength alone.

Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
 Wednesday, October 27, 2021 — 9

A reflection on three things that bring beauty 

for those who need inspiration finding it in everyday places 

T

he sky: One of the biggest flaws of human 
nature is we become so used to what sur-
rounds us, no matter how incredible it may be, 

and we forget how miraculous it is. Every single morn-
ing, the entire scope of the horizon drips with gold, rose, 
violet and monarch orange. The sun lights the sky into 
a blue powerful enough to illuminate the entire world 
around us from millions of miles away. After revert-
ing back to a marble of warm and cool colors, the sky 
darkens into pitch black and glitters with stars, encom-
passing a moon that illuminates the stillness of the 
night. In a world that’s been incredibly industrialized, 
with every other corner a construction site or an office 
building, the constancy and simplicity of the sky’s pres-
ence have always reassured me. It’s amazing to think 
that when we look above, that same sun, moon and sky 
has been over the human species since we began to 
exist. When you need to escape from the rush of your 
life, just look up and take it in. Take in the fact that there 
is a whole other realm above you whose sunshine and 
rain mimic the fluctuation of human emotions. It goes 
through its ups and downs, the sun rises and sets, the 
sky shines and rains, the moon appears full one night 
and then disappears the next, just like the way we feel 
can change within every given moment. The sky con-
nects us to a network much larger than just the human 

species or other living organisms. It lets us look up and 
see a part of the universe within us. Or, as Rumi says, 
“To see the moon that cannot be seen, Turn your eyes 
inward and look at yourself, in silence.”
F

lowers: There are hundreds of kinds of 
flowers, all of which come from a seed, and 
yet bloom unique from one another. There is 

a surprising amount to learn if we observe the process 
in which flowers grow. They start rising after they’ve 
been buried, and are completely unseen to the eye 
until they sprout above the ground just the tiniest 
bit, eventually turning into a fragrant, beautiful, 
vibrant flower that people stop to stare at. It serves 
as a reminder that we, like flowers, still have the 
chance to flourish even after we feel like we’ve 
been beaten down. Starting from somewhere small 
doesn’t necessitate that we won’t be able to bloom 
and accomplish phenomenal things. Flowers are 
beautiful because they show us that even though 
our circumstances and successes may come from 
seemingly negligible beginnings, if we reach our full 
potential, we can grow into extraordinary people 
who can accomplish remarkable things.

Like the growth of a flower, Tagore’s description of a 

flower’s purpose can be embodied by us as well:

“Flowers are 
The Earth’s endless effort
To speak
To the listening heaven.”

T

ea: Sitting in front of a window, rain hitting 
the windowsill, a book in hand and an earthy 
cup of steaming milk tea is how I’d describe 

my perfect night. To me, chai is special because it’s 
been a part of my routine since I was a kid. Before I 
started kindergarten, my mom would give me three 
sips of tea a day, and since then, it’s been a constant part 
of my life. No matter how busy I get, even if I’m late to 
class or I’m missing an important meeting, nothing 
comes before my one cup of tea in the morning and my 
one cup of tea at 4 p.m. I drink the same kind of chai 
every day, the kind my parents and their parents had 
before they immigrated from Pakistan. It’s become a 
family activity, everyone sitting down and drinking 
tea together, sharing their funny stories or unique 
experiences of the day. You may not like tea. But find 
something that brings you so much simple joy that it 
may become your daily teacup, something that lets you 
step away from the world and breathe a few breaths of 
relaxation. Find a shared experience you can do with 
the people you love that creates space for conversation 
and community. Find your tea, anything that lets you 
reflect on how you are feeling with people who value 
listening to your experiences so that no matter what 
else is going on in your life, happy or sad, you will 
always find a moment to relax and take it in one sip at 
a time.

The complexity of chai can be best explained by 

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “There is a great deal of poetry 
and a fine sentiment in a chest of tea.” 

Strength of a 
Black woman

SIMONE ROBERTS

MiC Columnist

Texts as texts

KARIS CLARK
MiC Columnist

In the car. On the bus. In the 

classroom. In the bathroom. In the 
store. At the game. In the theatre. 
Right when we wake up. And 
right as we go to bed. Incessantly 
throughout the day and deep into the 
night, texting takes up a tremendous 
amount of our time, often without us 
even realizing it.

We’ve all seen the commercials 

cautioning 
against 
texting 
and 

driving with the staggering statistics 
to boot. On a smaller scale, we’ve 
witnessed professors profess to 
their pupils their disdain for texting 
in class, threatening not to pass 
those who do so, yet nonetheless, 
students still find a way. But what is 
it about this simple act of electronic 
communication 
that 
has 
the 

capability to apprehend our attention 
and prompt us to precipitously situate 
ourselves in precarious positions? 

Is texting a pathological pastime 

to which our society must acquiesce, 
or is there a deeper mystical meaning 
to our messages? A sacred essence of 
our daily digital conversations? If we 
see texts as texts, documentations 
of our social experience carrying 
with it divine implications, we might 
get a better understanding of our 
underlying reliance on them as a 
mediating tool for communication.

Jungian psychotherapist Thomas 

Moore, in his book “Soul Mates,” 
dedicates a chapter to “Letters and 
Conversations.” He claims that 
writing letters has a profound effect 
on our soul in the sense that it serves 
our “soul’s organ of rumination 
rather than the mind’s capacity for its 
understanding.” 

Writing letters requires ample 

reflection. 
Unlike 
face-to-face 

conversation, our words are chosen 
in precise, proximate and purposeful 
manners and we give extreme weight 
to what we decide to disclose and 
what we choose to conceal. All of this 
reigns true for texting, which can 
easily be seen as an advanced form 
of letter writing and sending. Moore 
maintains that there is an artfulness 
and thoughtfulness inherent in this 
method of expression. 

Many of us have had the 

experience 
of 
ruminating 
over 

our word choice in the process 
of revealing bad news, texting a 
crush or engaging in an argument. 
Sometimes pressing send can feel 
like launching a missile. Even the 
shortest response can fill us with 
an insurmountable dread. One text 
can make a day or ruin a week, and 
waiting for a text back can fill us with 
anxiety like no other. Of course, this 
is only exacerbated when texting 
is our only means of long-distance 
communication with an individual. 
A text from an old friend or flame 
can be a game-changer in a rather 
mundane day — for better or for 
worse.

Our texts have the capacity 

preserved for posterity, as we 
allow each recipient to revel in the 
revelation of our own transient 
thoughts, emotions and experiences 
as soon as we press send. There’s 
an element of enormous trust 
between the sender and recipient, 
so fundamental to our texts, which 
is predicated on this notion of 
revelation and disclosure. In texting, 
we reveal information that we 
wouldn’t dare to discuss in person. 
We deal out details and disclose 
important truths, trusting that our 
musings are mediated in confidence. 
Yet, as French philosopher Georges 
Bataille asserts, any accumulation of 
knowledge is also an accumulation 
of non-knowledge. The more we 

unveil to one another, the more 
we realize how much more there 
is to be unveiled. The dangers of 
divulging in this medium manifest 
in the impermanence of our modern-
day devices. Unlike face-to-face 
conversations, anything we say via 
virtual communication can easily 
be shared without our permission, 
taken deliberately out-of-context, 
re-purposed, 
re-defined 
and 

ultimately used as a “receipt” for later 
occasions. In other words, oftentimes 
in texting, curiosity can kill the chat. 

Moreover, Moore asserts that the 

“person whom we write our letters to 
is more imaginal than actual.” 

We have a perception of that 

person in our mind as we write out 
our message that is mostly made up 
and, for all intents and purposes, 
a falsified fantasy. We never truly 
know what the person behind the 
screen is actually thinking, doing or 
feeling when we text them, contrary 
to how they might communicate 
with us in the conversation. 

Yet it’s the transient nature of 

texts preserved for posterity that 
endows them with a divine quality. 
As Moore states, “Re-reading (is) a 
form of reflective meditation.” 

Texts are a portal to the past. They 

dissolve the lines between space 
and time, giving us more insight 
into our own or other’s feelings in 
a fleeting instance. Going through 

old texts from my family and close 
friends has made me see how our 
communication with each other has 
changed over time.

I recall recently re-reading texts 

from my old phone and coming 
across a group chat I had with 
close high school friends in 2019, 
the summer before I came to the 
University of Michigan. It was a very 
anxious August, as I prepared myself 
to move away from my hometown. I 
likened the experience of choosing 
between colleges to committing to a 
marriage, claiming I felt like a bride 
getting cold feet before her wedding. 
I talked about my expansive plans 

for my college experience and the 
different clubs I wanted to join — 
some of which I didn’t and some 
of which I did. Some of the things I 
dreamt about doing then, I would 
despise doing now. Yet other dreams 
became reality — like writing for a 
satire paper and joining an improv 
team. When I first went through 
those texts, I didn’t recall being that 
anxious before starting school (yet 
rightfully so) and I had forgotten 
wanting to be in all the clubs I never 
joined. The things I did want to do 
which came true shocked me as 
well. I couldn’t believe how long 
ago I had considered being a part of 
certain groups or organizations. Yet 
as psychology researcher Elizabeth 
Kensinger recounts, our memory is 

widely subject to distortion, causing 
us to forget basic details of past 
events from where we are, who we 
are with, what we are doing, etc. 
Our accounts of events are likely 
to change over time. Retroactive 
interference also makes it so that 
newly gained information interferes 
with our retrieval and memory of 
past events. In this vein, our old 
texts being recollections of events in 
relative real-time, allow us to recall 
more accurately how we felt in the 
past. 

At first, I wanted to write those 

texts out to be an exemplification 
of my blissful ignorance, overt 

ambition and immaturity, but 
then I also found very similar 
texts this August, as I dwelled 
on my own anxiety and fears 
about returning in person after a 
year of virtual schooling. In the 
present, we’re divorced from our 
dialogues of the past, and our 
perception of what we wrote way-
back-when is significantly altered 
with time. I’ve cringed at how I’ve 
responded to texts a week ago, 
was totally surprised at texts sent 
a month ago and utterly confused 
at conversations from a year ago. 
Nonetheless, I always admire how 
much I’ve evolved yet at the same 
time stayed the same. Much like 
back then, I still spend ample time 
storytelling over text to my friends, 

persisting in giving a creative, 
chronological retelling of every 
peculiar instance of love, hate, 
drama and comedy I come across 
in the day-to-day. Maybe it’s just 
the writer in me, but I really do be 
texting way too damn much. 

In looking through old texts, 

I’ve noticed the subtle intricacies 
and complexities that vary yet also 
persist in my various conversations 
with individuals — how others and 
myself respond to exciting news 
and announcements (acceptances, 
jobs, promotions, releases, etc) 
or pressure and duress (losses, 
rejections, break-ups, etc). I also 
noticed the differing ways I said 
the same thing — in essence — 
to different people. Changes in 
dialect, code-switching, omissions 
of certain facts or the adding in of 
certain details, all became clear and 
clarified how I related to that person 
at that moment. In written form, it’s 
easier to recognize the distinct ways 
in which the people closest to us 
exhibit what Erich Fromm denotes 
as the four basic elements of love: 
care, responsibility, respect and 
knowledge.

Care and respect manifest in the 

simplest of syllables, the “I / love 
you” texts, sometimes given with 
reservation and other times with 
jubilation. It’s the paragraphs of 
pensive consideration and concern, 
the 
checking-in 
and 
hearing 

out. Responsibility manifests in 
responsiveness 
(responsibility 

meaning “being able and ready to 
respond”). When I was verbally 
accosted walking down the street 
in February, I was able to turn to 
my close friends over text who 
assuaged my fear and fright at the 
moment. Knowledge manifests in 
the knowing of those we’re closest to, 
being able to interpret what they’re 
saying and communicate effectively 
with them through such a separating 
mediated medium. 

Moore posits that “finding 

words that truly express our 
feelings and experiences is an 
achievement of a high order.” 
With this in mind, we should 
strive to see our texts as [holy] 
texts. By doing so they become 
an artful and expressive means 
of communication rather than a 
trivial tool for talking.

SYEDA RIZVI
MiC Columnist

Design by Melia Kenny

Design by Jessica Chiu