Dr. Rema Vassar, Michigan State University Trustee
Last week, I danced my press ’n’ curl out celebrating twenty years of Black Girls Rock. Somewhere between the music and the joy, DJ Beverly Bond pulled me behind the turntables for an impromptu lesson. She showed me how to read a room, how to listen for the beat, and how to blend one sound into the next so the music never stops. A DJ doesn’t play one song on repeat, the way I do in my car. No, she brings different sounds together and makes them move as one.
That is what Beverly has done for two decades with Black girls. She affirms their brilliance, builds their leadership, and gives them a stage when the world offers them a sideline. Generations of girls she poured into are now women, and many of those women are now leading.
The BGR party capped a month of magnificence: a powerful youth policy summit, and three Black women ushered into their doctoral degrees in just two weeks. Dr. Maisha Massey studied how Black girls inherit survival lessons from the women who love them, and how we can pass down freedom instead of fear. Dr. Paris McCarthy built a sisterhood network for Black women leading in school athletics, where too many of them stand alone. Dr. Daisy Holley designed a framework to help college students find their footing in their second year.
I watched each of them become. Together.
In her defense, Dr. McCarthy said four words that have stayed with me: “We need each other.”
We do.
I will be honest, because honesty is the only foundation sisterhood can stand on. I’ve experienced a public disagreement with another Black woman. It is the only one of its kind in my life, and I do not want it. I feel an allegiance to us that will not allow me to tear us down, even in defense of myself. Sure, I want to be understood. However, I do not want to hurt Black women. We’re connected, like it or not, and when I hurt any one of us, I hurt myself.
Black women have been the conscience of this nation. We organized the movements, nursed the wounded, taught the children, and told the truth when no one wanted to hear it. We have carried more than our share, often without credit and rarely with rest. We are the leaders this moment demands.
That does not mean we must always agree. Our diverse thought is our intellectual superpower, like a DJ’s crate full of different records. And we’re wonderfully, beautifully, and formidably diverse. From Whitney to Chaka to Anita to Roxanne Shanté, Black women get the people going! Disagreement and dissent offered with respect make our thinking sharper and our solutions stronger.
What we cannot afford is contempt.
So here is what I believe we owe one another. We must listen to one another. Honor one another. Care for one another. Cheer for one another. Show up for one another. And above all else, protect one another. We must want the best for each other, because our individual lives and our collective futures are bound together. As we go, so goes the world.
We stand at a pivotal moment in political history. The choices made in the coming weeks and years will shape the lives of our children, our grandchildren, and their children. The narrative of this moment will be what we say it is. What we create together will remain long after the noise fades. Let’s make a timeless harmony.
Co-creation is the only way forward. Beverly Bond knew it twenty years ago when she breathed life into Black Girls Rock. Three newly minted doctors know it now. I am choosing collabs and duets with dope Black women.
As the song says, last night a DJ saved my life. Sisters, keep the music playing. Bring your best moves. Lock in so we can ride the beat together. We need each other.
Dr. Rema Vassar is a professor of educational leadership at Wayne State University, founder of the Sankofa Scholarship Collective, and a member of the Michigan State University Board of Trustees.