on black punk love, love yumii of the breathing light

What woman doesn’t like to hear that her man loves her? Well ladies, here’s a black man that LooOoves you! Stars in our eyes from the wise words from Yumii of NY punk/alt band The Breathing Light. Punk Love, the realest love.

By: Yumii Thecato of The Breathing Light

Black girl, my partner in crime, you are my everything. Sometimes its damn near criminal to want freedom. I really appreciate my sisters in this struggle. I want you all to know that I see you all in life and on the internet and I take notice. As a black male in a punk…. whatever lifestyle I am so proud that when I see you all singing in bands, playing instruments, forming bands, rapping, modeling, dancing, making zines, making your own cloths, writing, educating, booking shows, building websites, opening online stores, lookin fly, aggressive skating, biking, surfing, boarding, designing, filming, traveling, photographing, networking, drawing, painting, debating, speaking out, lookin fly, organizing, being active in community development, fighting in this struggle and def lookin fly my gut does flips like the Jessie White tumblers. We are on the front lines of one our generation’s biggest struggles. How can we fix so many institutionalized problems when at many times we handle these things up front, fucked up and in your face. We are the ones who have had our hair uncomfortably touched, spoken down to and have had to be representatives for our entire race at times.

I have a friend who is an alternative model and she struggles to physical tears literally having to carve a way into and reset old European beauty standards that have existed in our society for decades. It’s crazy to think that countries not far from the United States harbor young dark skin girls who are bleaching their skin in order to escape poverty, ascend economically and create employment opportunities’ for themselves and their families.  I want to tell you that you all are beautiful to me. I feel like our society doesn’t tell you this enough, that black men don’t tell you this enough and for sure it is many among you all that lack the feeling within themselves. It takes someone like you to be really strong and go against society’s standards and a society in a society’s standards. A lot of people are always telling you what to do with your body and your mind but you are the only true masters of those realms. You all give life to the future. You all carry the future for 9 months inside your bodies and without you all there will be no future. I’m so proud sometimes when I see you all in all white spaces and sometimes in all black spaces. Some of our people see you rebelling and think you are crazy or imitating white girls. Eventually though they will be following in your footsteps.

You all give life to me and reassurance that we can be anywhere and do anything. You all reflect the beauty I see when I look at my mother, when I look at my grandmother, when I look at my family and my friends. You all give me something I can relate to, a feeling of home, a feeling of kinship. I see myself in you all. I see all the times I got pissed off when I never saw myself or the music I liked reflected on bet or the many discussions I’ve had with other black people trying to explain our lifestyle or the conflict we feel when the relation between our different identities are so difficult that we can’t even understand how to deal or cope with. The pains you feel when you encounter bull shit I feel as well. When people deny you of your blackness, they also deny me of mine. Some of us in these subcultures
cannot see that.

Some of us have encountered real traumatic experiences within them, so much to the point where we don’t know who the hell we are at all anymore. So, in order to heal we accept defeat. We heal our wounds by creating fresh new ones. Sometimes we allow ourselves and others to deny you of your beauty and respect. In the process unknowingly we deny ourselves of the same. When I was in school if you were black and strange you got put down. If you were black, strange, and a female, nobody wanted to talk to you, be associated with you or let alone date you unless they weren’t black themselves. I’m pretty sure those things haven’t changed to much depending on where you are but, as you can see from this site though you were/are never alone. I’ve said this before but I really don’t feel that people stress this enough.

I LOVE YOU and I WANT YOU TO LOVE YOURSELF (if I was physically there with you reading this I would give you the biggest soul-lifting hug I could muster). If you can’t look in the mirror and see beauty as a black person as well as see beauty in other people that look like yourself, there’s something wrong. Unfortunately our society and even our world are very anti-black. We need more black positivity and more Black Love. Black love is intense it can turn poverty into riches and guide black youth out of trouble. Black love can make our neighborhoods safer for everyone as well as fix this lowered self-image we have as a people. Everything we do/are is either said to be hood, ghetto, ratchet or just plain ugly.  Black love doesn’t necessarily have to dictate who you date, partnership or marry but it is how you look at yourself and how you see other black people. We need so much love its fucking crazy. I feel so much negative reinforcement day by day. It’s so much hate directed towards us and self-hate we pump and fuel in ourselves that at times it can be fatal (black suicide has never been a myth). I feel like it’s a part of who we are to care about each other. As alternative black individuals we have to care about ourselves and our community as a whole (even if we don’t physically live there) because if we don’t who will?

We can’t ask or rely on other people to give us the love we should have for ourselves. We can’t ask or rely on others to give us the help that we need to give to each other. For us there is no such thing as Charity. To me charity means that one group of people are always helping out another group of people just enough so they are dependent. For us it is survival because we have been the dependent group for so damn long. We in a crisis self-destruct mode, young black boys are killing each other mercilessly. It is ok for black men to beat black women like they are less than human. It’s fine to see black women beating the shit out of each other for web videos, news cameras, and television
shows. Some may feel that those individuals have nothing to do with them but it’s all connected. When people see you and I they also see those videos, they see those images, those stereotypes, that dysfunction. The same brutality that was shown to us through slavery, Klan chases and police beating are what we give to each other. We are given the tools to destroy ourselves. We fear one another now. We fear our own children.  Instead of love we hate each other for our actions but, nobody can see why the fuck they are acting this way in the first place. A lot of this shit is not and has never been natural for us or anybody. Everywhere we go they have preconceived notions of what we
will do to each other or to them without knowing us personally. In some cases those notions can lead to irrational actions toward us and at times death being the ultimate result (Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Rekia Boyd and just recently Jordan Russell Davis).

As you can see the duck hunt ain’t gonna stop any time soon. Dig?

I am my sister’s keeper and I keep you all close to my heart. Once again I LOVE YOU. If you have friends or family who you think need this message please share this with them.  Everybody has that weird girl in their family or knows that weird black girl in class, on your block or even it’s you. If you need to print this do it, save it, pop it out every once in a while and read it, whatever.  Just know YOU are LOVED and this is FOR YOU. Stay afloat, stay black positive and love the reflection that looks back at you and the reflections that you pass by day to day. Fuck society saying of what we are! Some of you have borne the future, some you will bear the future but YOU definitely ARE the FUTURE. Time to build!