To the white, privileged, the well intentioned liberals who have studied us, slept with us, and sympathized with our struggle, and to the with-it pop academics who lived in the hood or built houses in Haiti because you know us, love us, worked and fought on our behalf, know this: all that affords you no right and no access to this. I deeply appreciate your sympathetic, possessive, or loving service, but you cannot have this. Nope, not this, not now, not ever. You cannot have our cool ass Black style. You cannot determine its existence. You cannot define it. You cannot be the primary source of the validation of its creation, nor give the expert explanation to penetrate the collective cultural imagination. You can’t have credit for discovering its brilliance…
(Source: larepublicadedet, via karnythia)
