The brutalization of Black women goes back to our arrival in this country in chains. Enslaved African women were beaten and raped as if they weren’t even human. That made their hurt and pain seem like something normal, and it continues to this day.
This is only a part of what my daughters are going to have to confront. The United States also has one of the highest rates on the planet of women who die during childbirth, a rate that has doubled since 1987. This is a national disgrace, and it is even worse for Black women. According to Pro Publica, Black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die while giving birth. Even Serena Williams almost died during childbirth. Serena Williams!
Researchers say that they can’t explain these mortality stats. They cite risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes, but then they tell the world that the cause of increased maternal death for Black women is unknown. That is either ignorance or cowardice in the face of obvious truths. The cause is the weight of racism, sexism, and the stress that Black women have had to carry for generations as the heart of families, while they earn 63 cents on the dollar. That’s the cause. The greatest testament to “Black girl magic” I can think of, other than the daily miracles my girls create, is the way Black women have persevered despite centuries spent trying to bring them down.
Now that I have daughters, I understand further what women’s rights are all about. They have become immediate and urgent to me, when they weren’t before. This is just me, being honest. Women’s issues were someone else’s problem, and because I have a dick and balls, I felt like it was not mine. But knowing that sexism and gender violence and employment discrimination are going to be real obstacles in their lives makes me want to fight for girls and women with all my heart. I wish it didn’t take having daughters for men to realize that this is their struggle, too. It should be enough that we are all human and we should want equality. But the reality is we live in a world where women—especially Black women—aren’t valued, and that often means that until we are looking at the world through our daughters’ eyes, we just don’t get it like we should.
My daughters are the reason I am working with an organization called iamtheCODE, the first African-led global movement to mobilize government and private sector investors to advance STEAMED (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, Entrepreneurship, and Design) education. I got involved because I want to expand opportunities for girls to be whoever they want. This became a focus of mine after a random exchange with an old friend from back home. We were catching up, and I told him I had three daughters, and do you know the first thing he said to me? Not “Congratulations” or even “That’s cool!” He said, “Oh, you better get a shotgun. That’s going to be hard.” Why can’t people say, “You have daughters, man they’re going to be blessed. They’re going to be something great.” If I had a son, they would say, “Your son is going to be the greatest player ever!” So I wanted to fund and develop an organization that could encourage girls to pursue the kinds of jobs where they’ll be sitting at the table and creating the new world.
Then there’s the idea that I need a shotgun to “protect them.” That is so absurdly sexist, it’s crazy. It denies the ability of a young girl to have aspirations higher than being an Instagram model. It dumbs down my relationship with them to being the guardian of their bodies instead of a champion of their minds and their personal and political growth.
I want to teach my daughters, above all else, that their generation is going to be decisive, and, as young people, they need to get off their behinds and realize the power they have. They are the future. I tell them that if you don’t like the type of education you are receiving, you should research something yourself. You can look up anything you want—but please, check the sources. You can teach yourself to do almost anything with YouTube. Right now, I could go look up how to fix a refrigerator and actually find a step-by-step tutorial.
Unlike in past generations, the information is out there. It’s a click away. But if you don’t have a thirst for it, you’ll be on screen all day, watching jackasses light themselves on fire or “Top 30 Wardrobe Malfunctions.” We absolutely need great teachers, but young people can’t wait for someone else to educate them. They have to educate themselves. And they have the power to do it.
I am also vigilant about what my daughters are taught in their schools. We live in Hawaii during the off-season, and when I learned that my daughters weren’t studying Black history in their classes in Hawaii, I connected with a local historian and we put together a Black History Month program for the school. In the process I learned that Black history is central to Hawaiian history. The first African people arrived in Hawaii by the early 1800s, and Black people held it down on the island for centuries. Now I’m on the board of the Hawaiian Africana Museum, which is an actual thing. I
