Getty Images By Jasmine Browley ·Updated December 15, 2021
“It’s about time.”
That’s what many of us have been thinking when we hear about the recognition of HBCUs, and the tremendous accomplishments Black alumni have achieved. This is particularly true for Black women. From Vice President Kamala Harris’s win to the Black women corporate titans, HBCU graduates deserve their flowers.
Fortunately, IHeart radio recognizes this, and have partnered with Hyundai to present“Black and Inspired HBCU Celebration,” special four-episode podcast series that celebrates Black culture and the passionate alumni community of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). The latest episode titled “Black Girl Magic” on-air personality Angela Yee of the nationally syndicated morning show, “The Breakfast Club,” sits down and chats with Actress Meagan Good and Real Housewives of Potomac Gizelle Bryant for an uplifting episode celebrating the beauty, power and resilience of Black women; honoring their many achievements.
The ladies start the episode discussing how they felt about having their vice president not only be a Black woman, but an HBCU alum. Gizelle Bryant shared that she was tremendously impacted by the presidential election because she understands what that means for her young daughters.
“When Barack Obama won his first presidency, of course, that was just a monumental feat for all Black people,” Bryant said in the episode. “Um, but of course, he was still a man. So to see Kamala Harris be the vice president meant so much more to my children…little girls, they’re able to see, okay, I can aspire to be at one of the highest offices in the United States. She looks like me, and her hair is like mine. She speaks like me. Um, you know, me and the vice president are in the same sorority; they know all about my sorority. So that for them resonated so much more than a Barack Obama. No shade to him. That was amazing. But again, women, Black women are so overlooked and sometimes treated as if we’re not a part of the conversation.”
The ladies also touched on the dark side of being a strong Black woman with ambitions. Bryant spoke about some of the misperceptions thrust upon her and the other castmates of the show. “…They started seeing, okay, not all Black women are the same and we should not put them in all one category,” she explained. “And no, they’re not all just walking around angry. And just because they stand up for themselves does not equal angry just because they say exactly what they want and they’re direct about it. It does not equal angry. It just equals that we’re confident. We know how to speak. We know how to articulate our words. And we are very clear as to our value in our work. So, it took a while, but I would say as far as Bravo is concerned, they want to learn. They want to do better. And so, I don’t have any issues with where we are, but it was a struggle. I’m going to be honest. It was a struggle for white people to realize that Black women are not angry all the time. And we’re not all the same.”
Meagan Good also discussed why being a Black woman is her super power.
“But a lot of times, just because of the color of their skin and you suddenly realize how powerful you are and in the minutes and not look at it like, wow, that’s, that’s unfair because, you know, growing up, I go out for certain roles and they would hire a girl who didn’t look like me,” she said. “And I was like, why did I come in the room in the first place? And I would feel like the odds were stacked against me. And then I realized like, oh, no, like that’s my superpower. When I do get a job, everything was stacked against me. And I got it anyways. It means so much more because I had to work so hard for it. It tells me how powerful I am that I constantly keep going through these hurdles and coming out on the other side. And what’s even better than that is that I get to create opportunity for the little brown girl behind me so that she doesn’t have to work as hard, but she still won’t understand.”
The post First Listen: IHeart’s New ‘Black Girl Magic’ Podcast Brings Together Angela Yee and Gizelle Bryant to Talk Ambition, Power and Woman appeared first on Essence.
