Seun Shokunbi - Editor

Every other friend I’ve spoken to is reeling over Jaguar Wright’s Piers Morgan interview. Even news outlets are reporting on the singer-songwriter becoming “White famous” by spreading allegations about the most powerful Black celebrities. I wanted to write a piece about this, especially on commentary about her mental health being the cause of her chaotic behavior. I went on an eight-hour rabbit hole into what could’ve led Jaguar to this point in her life.

Then I gave up.

The more I dug into Jaguar’s psyche, the more I asked myself what is it going to take for Black women to heal. I asked because I saw many of the triggers in her life that led me to give up in so many ways. 

Most Black women wouldn’t want to admit that they could’ve easily become Jaguar. However, many of us could easily become her for two reasons: epigenetics and resistance to the change necessary to reverse the systemic, harmful impact on Black women’s epigenetics.

Scientific studies examined by the BBC prove that the Black colloquialism “generational curses” is a health epidemic that worsens the longer it persists. Epigenetics is the study of how chemical and environmental factors alter the way genes function, for better or worse. 

In sum, genes are equally affected by how happy your mother was while pregnant, what she ate during gestation, and the extent to which she cared for you once you were born. Additionally, your environment weighs as heavily as parenting on your genetic well-being.

That means despite your parents’ best efforts to shield you from it, society’s ills can literally make you sick.

Remember Jaguar Wright? Well, she shared her harrowing history of sexual abuse and child neglect in a 2020 interview (with Tasha K, an equally controversial Black media personality). She also said in the same interview, “People are afraid of me for a reason. They have a right to be. I’m dangerous.” 

That’s when I realized I could’ve been Jaguar Wright, and that I should approach her with caution and grace. Black women become dangerous when the ways of the world pummel us relentlessly. When society refuses to let up or give us access to what would heal us—physically, emotionally, and financially—we’re prone to adopt maladaptive behaviors to stay alive.

Capitalism is the most insidious, deceptive stratagem to debilitate Black women. Jaguar Wright, Tasha K, and Candace Owens grift the fuck out of other Black women (and, apparently, White men) to survive in a system that underemploys Black women, making them the lowest wage earners globally. If we can’t find a well-paid job in a “respectable” industry, why wouldn’t we look for other ways to get money?

Prejudice is a second line of defense when Black women succumb to respectability politics. In the EU, women of African/Black descent who are college-educated are still the “most affected” by racial discrimination. American Black women have the most degrees in their country, yet earn the least. We cannot student loan debt or Ivy League school ourselves into economic safety.

And no, society shows no sign thus far of giving Black women what they’d need to heal from these assaults on their lives. Fewer Black women have access to adequate health insurance that’ll cover things like therapy or psychiatric medication. It seems easier for men like Toure to laugh Jaguar Wright off as a nutcase, instead.

I was supposed to publish this article a day earlier, as my contribution to reflections on World Mental Health Day. Later, I found out about Black Girl Day Off, created to encourage Black women to honor their mental health with actionable advice. I liked the sentiment but wondered how practical it would be for someone like me, still hustling to build my company to the point where taking a break would be profitable.

But what I read, watched, and observed about the genetic plague on Black women’s lives finally led me to give up, temporarily. I laid down, took a 3-hour nap, before I could finish this piece and present it to you today.

Although I didn’t fully take today off, I will let go of the pressure to hustle non-stop. That pressure to keep going stems from generations of scarcity written into my DNA. It’s a symptom of an illness passed down from my mother, who reminds me to this day how emotional and financial abuse almost wrecked her life. Which is a marker of the pain that her mother (my grandmother) experienced growing up, watching her widowed mother (my great-grandmother) scrape to survive without a man to provide for her.

I give up pretending that I’m okay. And I give up judging other Black women for how they try to become okay.