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Guest Editor's Letter: Who Really Cares About Black Women?

One of my defining moments of recent times happened earlier this year, while I tried to navigate my husband as he drove us through the Cambridgeshire countryside. The SatNav had gone into a tailspin because most of the roads didn’t exist for it, and I had my husband’s phone in my hand, which I kept trying to shove in his face to show him which way he should turn. I know my left from my right, I just couldn’t work out what the map app was trying to tell me since nothing on screen was matching anything in the real world. Why was this a defining moment? To explain that, I’ll have to go back a bit.

Back, in fact, to when Tobi asked me to write this newsletter. The plan had been to write about how to take care of yourself as a black woman in the frankly terrifying atmosphere we were living under. It seemed everyone was out to explain ‘real’ racism to us, trash our hard-won realities and force us to accept they knew better about every aspect of our lives. In our different ways, we black women were battling back but, as we know, this struggle – as constant as it can become – exacts a physical, mental and emotional toll on us; I wanted to write about how to bolster and take care of yourself while you are fighting back. And then, a pandemic virus hit and the world changed all over again.