Episode #5: Chelsea Childress Mixed Bowl: The Podcast

"I'm not sure if you're familiar with the singer Azealia Banks, but she came out with this song, and I believe I was in 10th grade going to 11th grade, and it's called Liquorice. And it was the first time I ever saw a dark-skinned, brown-skinned, female artist, talk about her skin color and love it and embrace it. She associates her skin color with black liquorice. It was an influx of self-love. And I just thought it was so cool and so empowering and then I started realizing... hey, I'm really cool, I love my skin color, I love being a black girl, I love all these things about me that society has told me not to like. And I think that's where I gained this strength over time... I didn't always look at why is it that people value light-skin over dark-skin, why is it that people value curly hair over kinky hair. And then I started understanding those things more and understanding, well those girls probably didn't hate me specifically, but they've been taught to hate me because society pits us against each other."