What Makes A "Professional" Black Girl? with Dr. Yaba Blay

to have you here. Thank you for having me. You know, I have to tell people that if you have not seen the web series Professional Black Girl, if you are not following Professional Black Girl on Instagram, you are missing out. Everybody who knows me knows that I am full of doom and gloom. But the place that I go to for sunshine, for happiness, for the celebration of black women is Professional Black Girl. Yeah, but tell me what made

you launch Professional Black Girl? You know, a Professional Black Girl was a project that I actually didn't set out to make into a thing. It kind of became a thing. I actually was trying to do another show that didn't pan out, But essentially I was living in North Carolina for about three years in Durham, and when I moved there, I came across one of the largest beauty supply stores

I have ever seen in my entire black life. It is a converted grocery store, so they're like, wow, something aisles of product and hair and just all kinds of things. And I have always loved beauty supply store, so random actually had ascerations of owning one. And so really the first time I oh, yeah, the first time I went there, I was there for like two hours, and it was

just like an adventure for me. And so, of course I had moved to a new city, and so my home girls were coming to visit and see about me, and every time one would come, I'm like, you want to go to beauty World. And so we'd be in Beauty World like kids in a candy store. And I mean, we could go down an aisle, open up a bottle of pink or moisturized or smell it, and immediately be transported back to our team. And what I recognized was that, you know, we bonded so much over not just beauty culture,

but what felt like essentially a black girl experience. And so I just had this bright idea. I wanted to film another series that would be based in the beauty supply store. Unfortunately, the proprietor of Beauty World would not let me film in the store, which is a whole other critical conversation, but in any case, the plan originally was to do this show in the beauty supply store and then to end each segment with a feature of

what I was calling a professional Black girl. At that time, I had already started using the hashtag professional black Girl as a way to note and shout out things that I saw that were like peak black girl nows. And so when I say a professional Black girl, the professional part is subversive. Right Again, attached to that moment in time in my life, I was teaching at an HBCU, which I felt was going to be a great home coming, which it was for the most part, because I had

spent most of my career teaching at PWISE. But what I know just was that my black women colleagues and counterparts, many of them, were training our black women students away from themselves, meaning they were saying things to them. You know that you have to look this way, dressed this way, speak this way in order to be seen as professional in the quote unquote real world. So whether they were doing that at HBCU, this respectability I mean, because that's

like peak respectability politics right there. I mean yeah. But again, you know, with proper contextualization, we know the history of HBCUs right that many of them weren't even started by black people. They were started by well meaning white folks who wanted to show niggros how to act. So it's in line with the history, right that you have to basically change who you are in order to be received

well in the quote unquote real world. And so you know, having students who might have been named Keisha Danielle being advised to go by k Danielle or being advised to put on another voice, you know when they answer the phone for a job interview and things of that nature. And you know, me too black for my own good, I was completely you know done, because I'm if you could see me right now, my eyes are like wide open, like I am like out done to put on the yes I put on what take the base out of

your voice? To take the black out of your voice? You know, And again it's no particular shade to HBCUs alone because most of the world acts that way, right, most of the world treats us that way. Most of the world has that expectation of us that we have to change fundamentally who we are in order to be

received well. And so me saying professional black girl was a way for me to turn that language on its head, so that if you're a little black girl, you know, dancing in front of your computer tiktoking like, that's professional. You know, if you got your baby hair's laid, that's professional. And so the things that I connected as like peak black girlness, I was calling that professional black girl. So

I just connected those dots. And so the first season, if you watch the web series, is essentially on my home girls who came to visit, and I did segments with each of them talking about what made them professional black girls. And so I knew that folks would enjoy it and appreciate it. I was not prepared for it become a thing. Usually the projects and campaigns that I've done, I've got a plan somewhere in my head. I didn't have a plan for this. It really just became what

it is and what it's become on its own. I mean, did you realize just how needed it was, right, Like, did the need surprise you that people were you know, essentially, and I said this at the top, you created an oasis for black women in the desert of our lives. We are so invisibilized in so many spaces and places, and you see us where you shocked by that the one thing that you didn't plan right to pop off, it really did pop off on its own. I wasn't

surprised or shot. It definitely took me aback, but I rolled with it. You know, here we are, y'all love it, Let's keep it going. I wasn't prepared for it, if anything, and I really did, Like I said, I didn't have a vision for it, and I didn't know what it would take to keep it going. But we kept going, and so it was interesting. And you know, it started

as the web series. I posted on YouTube and Facebook, and then when it was over, of course, folks are like, what's next, and I'm like, well, I don't have any more money, so I don't know what's next. So that's when I launched the Instagram page. So the Instagram page actually came almost a year after the first season of the web series, launched and that was just the way to try and hold folks over, and so it has really grown in those last almost three years. Now then

I'm like, okay, I want a season two. Then we're going to have to create it. And so I launched the Kickstarter and was able to raise the funds needed in order to film season two, which is based in New Orleans, and that kickstarter we may go in two days, and by the end of the thirty day campaign we had almost doubled it. And so again it was just really affirming and again just really making me aware, as she said, how much it was really needed and how

much we just really want to see ourselves. And so I was shocked by anything. I think. I was shocked by the simplicity of it. You know, like we're not asking for much, Like even in the spaces that we would name black right in the media and the quote unquote black shows that we get, the black programming that we get, it's still a particular type of blackness. It's still you know, whether it's stereotypical or whether it's one

that it's aligned with respectability. Everybody can't relate. So either you're looking down on it and being too critical of it or you're aspiring to be that, and there's really not a lot of middle ground to say, like, that's me, that's a reflection of me just as I am. And so I really believe that, particularly for black women and for black girls, that's what professional black girl represents for them. It's just a simple reflection of who we are, without judgment,

you know, with lots of affirmation. One of the things that I particularly love, and I mean the full disclosure to people listening. I send Yaba pictures and videos like everybody else does. On a regular basis. I see something, I'm like, oh, this has to be buzzing. Normally you've already seen it and I've already put it in your election. But one of the things that I do love is when you kind of check people in the comments section.

You know, you can kind of see in some ways with some post how respectability politics kind of comes in.

Where you'll post a video, like you said, of a young black baby girl, you know, dancing or rapping or whatever, and then always in the comments will be, well, I hope she knows her ABC's or like I hope you know, I hope she's getting an education, or that mother shouldn't have done, you know, So how do you deal with again you check folks in the comments, But I know that it must be disheartening too, right because you're creating this space to celebrate all the different layers and levels

and contextualizations of blackness, and yet you see that play out. I mean at first, I mean, I was of course taking it personal, not just because it was my project, but it's also me, you know what I mean. I don't see myself separate from black women and girls in the variety of ways that we show up in the world.

But I think, if anything, what was disheartening, and I say was in the past tense because now in this moment, I make conscious decisions about who I'm going to engage, and while I'm not a lot of times I let the comments sit there and let the community deal with them, or I just selete and block them. You know, I don't want to spend too much time in that negative space.

But the thing that is hurtful and disheartening is, for the most part, yeah, they're white trolls that come through and say whatever they say, but a lot of it is from us, and so again, me trying to meet

folks where they are not trying to judge. I know where those comments come from, because again, there is this anxiety about how we present ourselves in the world and what that will mean ultimately for our conditions in this country, as if those things are aligned, as if white supremacy is actually making a decision where you're doing something this way and that's why we are treating you this way.

One has nothing to do with the other, right, And so I think for me, it's more disheartening that we same situation with having gone to an HBC, you having taught at an HBC, you having worked at an HPCU. It's disheartening to know that a lot of times we are most critical of ourselves. But again it's very much deeply seated in internalized white supremacy. And so again, you know, I make decisions about who I engage, but it also

fuels me to want to do it more. The thing that's also interesting, and I'm keenly aware of right now, and I question is I don't know that professional Black Girl would be what it is, or would have been able to become what it is, had I not been doctor Yaba Blay. It's like I have the privilege of affirming the variety of ways that we are, because folks would be like, well, she must know what she's talking about because she's a doctor, or maybe this is research,

or you know, both and kind of thinking. And so I wonder if I wasn't doctor yaba blay, if folks would take this seriously, which is also a problem. Yeah, and you know what, I didn't even think about that, but I wonder. I wonder if not for that, but also your very large body of work. Right, I was very fortunate enough that you asked me to be a part of Pretty Period, And I want you to talk about Pretty Period as well, because again, you do so

much to block white supremacy and lift us up. And I know for me in the work that I do, how challenging that can be. But I look at you from the outside and I say, wow, she really turns these what feels like some days insurmountable challenges into exceptional beauty. And I feel like Pretty Period was one of those moments. So can you talk about that project and that work. I'm in that project hashtag pretty Period, and the visual project that came out of that was really Again, when

I think of the body of my work. Most of it is a reflection of my own existence. You know, unlike many academics, you know, we're trained to separate ourselves from my work allegedly, right that there's this thing. What am I trying to say, Danielle, We're supposed to remove ourselves? Oh yeah, so how much? I don't do that? But yeah, you're like, what's that word? Right? We're supposed to be

objective somehow. Thankfully for me, the blessing is that I was trained in Black studies at Temple University, the home of afrocentricity, and we were trained to center ourselves that as black people, particularly, that it is dangerous for us to separate ourselves from black people in order to quote unquote study them. So I've always centered myself in the

work that I do. So my dissertation was on skin bleaching in Ghana because I am a first generation Gunny and born in America whose maternal aunt bleached her skin for most of her life. She died unexpectedly. I've always believed that it was because of the long term effects of having those chemicals on and in her body, and

so I wanted to research that. It became my dissertation, Skin color politics my expertise since because I'm a dark skinned black girl who grew up in color struck New Orleans, and I knew that I would black black, you know, from a very early age. I knew colorism from the time I was a child, before I even had the

language for colorism. And so pretty period for me. Whereas a lot of my academic work seemed to, as you say, doom and gloom, it seemed to as a lot of the work we do as black people and poor and about black people, our approach to fighting white supremacy oftentimes is unveiling and unmasking the incigious ways in which it operates and functions and impacts our lives right, which is

necessary work, but it's also draining work. I remember coming to a point where it's like, I don't know how long I can keep doing this because I don't want to get out the bed every day to deal with this world, you know. And so there was a turning point for me where my approach to fighting white supremacy was to sensor black joy and black possibility and black hope.

And I feel like it is an honor to our ancestors to nod to our ancestors to recognize that, like, we're not supposed to be here, you know, Like how did we survive? And I will not dismiss joy as a part of our survival mechanisms. And so pretty Period was really about turning the conversation of colorism on his head in a particular way to say, yeah, we know these things are happening, not to dismiss them. We're going to continue to do work to call it out, but

we're also going to affirm who we are. So no, I'm not pretty for a dark skinned girl, I'm pretty period, right, So we can question beauty standards in the ways that they are seated in white supremacy and the ways in which oftentimes our beauty or our ability to be seen as beautiful as predicated on white normative standards of what beautiful is. And so we are always comparing ourselves to white standards, we will always come out in the negative,

you know. And so pretty period was about affirming who we are as we are, because again, I'm such a visual person. I know how much representation matters, even censoring my own experiences, but I know how important it is for us to be able to see ourselves, which is why I'm so in love with social media in this moment, for better or for worse. But I love that in this moment, we are not solely reliant upon the quote unquote mainstream black or white to show us ourselves. So

y'all can create whatever shows y'all want. But we also don't have to buy cable anymore. We don't have to tune it into your network. We've got lots of creative, brilliantly creative folks creating content online. You know I don't have cable. Yeah, a lot of people cut the corn, you know. You know I can see myself every single day on my phone, on my computer. You know. The benefit of this generation now has hashtags Melanan magic, Melan mondays. You know, so many folks bigging up Melanan, so many

folks honoring the beauty of dark skin. Like, that's beautiful to me that we don't have to wait to the mainstream to show us ourselves. Because I was twenty four years old before I saw was that alect wack. Yeah, I lect wak on the cover of Elle magazine, and I remember literally jumping up and down in the aisle of the A and B in New Orleans seeing her image on that magazine. I was twenty four years old.

Even though you know, again the dark the light thing is all relative to experience, right, So what folks might have been saying even now, what folks say, are dark skinned women in the media, they don't look like me. The hair doesn't look like mine. So yes, I affirm it. Thank god they're there. Thank god we do have some variety now. But I'm still not seeing myself. Now I can look on Instagram and see women my complexion and

darker and everybody's affirming that they're beautiful. That's magical to me. You know. I want to go back to one of the things that you just said with regard to centering black joy as a way to battle against white supremacy, because the idea, right like, there was something that just came up recently on social media, social media, Black Twitter having to come to the rescue of a young black woman entrepreneur, you know, having her hair products in Target

and her commercial airs. You know, in the commercial, she's talking about the fact that she wants other young black girls to be able to see that they can be creators, that they can be entrepreneurs, that they can do these things, these white women came for her in the comments in the reviews to trash this woman's products, all because, all because, she said in the video, I hope that young black girls can see that they can be entrepreneurs. Yea, all

lives matter. I just don't you know some days and I you know, the question that I have for you is just like, how do you hold on to joy? For me, it's a struggle on a day to day basis. I mean, I host another show called Woke as Fuck for Christ's sakes, like it is a daily struggle to try and be that conscious every single day. How do you, in the face of white supremacy that just never seems to slow down, that never seems to get exhausted, continue to cent her joy in your life. I'm very particular

about what I allow into my space. In a lot of ways, I'm willfully ignorant. I don't tune into everything. I don't watch the news. Call it what you want to, but if I did, I'd be depressed every day. It would be doom and gloom for me. I'm not willing to sacrifice myself, my health, my mental health, my well being just to be informed. I know what the world is I know what the world is going to be. I don't want to see it every single day. Now. That doesn't mean I don't want to fight it. That

doesn't mean that I don't come to see it. But it means that I'm not centering my life on looking for it or being consumed by it. For me, I find it a privilege to be very particular about my environment, about who I let into my space, about what I let into my space, and quite honestly, my life is black as fuck, and I love feated in black stuff. I go to black things, I talk to black people, I love on black people. My work is about black people.

So yeah, at white folks, they follow a professional Black Girl. Lots of white folks follow and support my world, even to know that season two A Professional Black Girl was filmed by a white man and his wife, and I admit that I was hesitant at first to work with them. For everything that I am right, I want to support

and work with black creatives primarily. But my co producer, who was on the ground in New Orleans, which I needed because I wasn't in New Orleans at the time, she was like, look, I work with them, they are amazing. Trust me. I trusted her, and it was one of the best experiences creatively that I've had. And what I appreciate about them was the fact that he knew to

step back. He knew this wasn't about him, he knew that this was about black women and girls, and he would always always defer to me to make sure that this message was coming across how I wanted it to. And I appreciate him so much for knowing his place. And many people don't have that opportunity to work with white people in that way. And so yeah, I'm very particular about I work with, you know, the kinds of environments that I'm in, the kind of experiences that I have.

I recognize again that it is a privilege I don't have to work with white people on a daily basis. And again, there are white folks who support my work, but they also know their place, right, They're not coming in my comments talking about oh, when I was little, or what about me? Most of the folks that come into the comments with that don't even follow the page. They probably found a post on their Explore page. They

want to come and lend their voice. And so because I ask Petty as I am, I will let you write an entire paragraph thinking that you're about to engage, and then I'll just delete it and block you move on. Scrolling is free. You don't have to stop here in saying anything. But again, it is how white supremacy functions. It is the fact that you feel entitled to lend your voice to a space that is not for or

about you mind your business. And I'm so very tired of folks always trying to create these fun also equivalences, these comparison points that don't exist. Well, what if white women came out and said white girl magic, or what if white women came out and said they were only doing their work for white women? You do say it,

you don't say the words. But when Elle magazine, when elect work was on the cover of their magazine in nineteen ninety seven, the first time a black woman was on the cover of their magazine, and they're then fifty something year history, you've been saying all white girls. You've been saying white girl magic. When we get one black girl on a billboard, you've been saying all white girls.

When you come and you feel entitled to trash a black woman's company simply because she supports an affirm other black girls and wants to inspire other black girls. That's your entitlements because you think that it should be all white girls only, like you already do it. We just have the audacity to tell you. So you try to couch it as something else. You try to play it off. You don't want to call it what it is, which is white supremacy. And now that we're checking you on it,

you feel some type of way. It can't work that way. No, you can't silence us. It can't work that way. What I have always loved about you and your work is the audaciousness of it. To me, it is the visualization of how dare you right? And it's so profound because the entitlement is so very real and so deep. Yeah, that a majority don't even know that they are being entitled right, That they are showcasing their privilege on a

regular basis no doubt. And I mean, I'm proud of my work, and again I do see it as a privilege. But I also have to remind folks that loving us costs. It costs me to be audacious in this way, it costs me to be unapologetic. I've never been on a ten year track in the Academy. I'm not even working in the Academy right now. From my it's a self

imposed sabbatical for my own mental health. Because for as black as my work is, for as much as the public appreciates it, the Academy does not because I won't apologize, because I won't conform, because I have to argue with editors about capitalizing the be in black that I have to concede to creating a footnote to explain why I capitalize be like, I'm constantly having to justify and white explain my existence because your audience is white and that's

who I should be writing for. That doesn't affirm me. That doesn't work for me, but it also doesn't pay my bills, right, So I always let people know that, like loving us cost, I'm constantly asking for support. I don't enjoy asking folks for money, but if I don't, I won't get to do the work that I do, because the mainstream is not supportive of my work in that way, particularly not black. Mainstream White folks love it.

They want to figure out a way to do it, but still they want to figure out a way to

do it that won't make white people uncomfortable. The thing that's the hardest is to know that a lot of black creative spaces are also concerned with making white folks comfortable and too much at stake for me, just in my own sense of self, you know, and there have been a loss of folks mentors, my father, my family, like can you just get a job with benefits please, you know, want me to adjust, you know, and to conform, just so that I can be okay. And I'm okay.

You know, the love from my community does feed me. But you know, I just I think that that is

what makes the work so amazing. And I think that that is what makes Professional Black Girl so wonderful, is that the community helped you do it right, that it was literally for us, by us, And I think that that's what makes the project so extraordinary, the platform so extraordinary, because you know, you put out a call and folks returned and with an answer, And I think that that says a lot about what you are doing, how you are centering us, and I just I appreciate you so

incredibly much for it. One of the questions that I am asking my guests at the end of our interviews is how do you doctor Yaba Blay get in the PM mood to change the world. How do you get yourself inspired to change the world. Oh, I don't know. I mean like, I think we inspire me. I think my community inspires me. I think that again, I am censored in us and our experiences and our culture and

our history. I am absolutely always inspired when I read stories about folks who have passed on, folks who have done this work in generations past, our ancestors, Like I read a piece on zor Neil Hurston the other day that brought me to tears, and it made me just want to continue to do the work in her honor. You know that we have folks who fought for us in a time where they had so much more to

lose in doing so, including their lives. You know, not to say that we can't lose our lives, but like just in the moment of Jim Crow, in the moment of enslavement and conversation, we had folks who are audacious then, you know, And so if they could do it, then my privilege ask can do it now, you know. So I think I'm inspired by their struggle. I'm inspired when I look at my grand baby you know, in the world that she lives in, and as much as it's better,

in a lot of ways, it could be worse. You know. I'm inspired by her, by her generation, by the use to try and do as much as I can to continually change their experience because these changes are incremental, right. I know that I won't live to see the end of white supremacy. My grand baby might not live to see the end of white supremacy. But like we can't deny that our experiences of it now are incrementally different than the experiences that our ancestors had, So I can't

afford not to fight. Well. I hope that you continue to fight. I shape the work that you do. Professional Black Girl is my happy place. And what is next? What is next for Professional Black Girl? I don't know. I try to stay present as best as I can. Good. My mother would love you. She's a Yogi and she tells me all the time, Danielle, stay present, Danille in the moment. Yeah, and try and again. The word is try. I think you know. I just said this the other day at an event that I did. Both love to

ask what's next? I choose to take that as an affirmation of the work that I do means they want to see more. But I also caution folks, particularly when speaking to creatives, like that question, can produce lots of anxiety. There's a lot of pressure to create, there's a lot of pressure to keep up. It's also part of the reason why a lot of folks work is done in haste and it's raggedy. Yeah, you're trying to keep up, and they're trying to hurry up and put stuff out there.

And again, we deserve better, we deserve more, We deserve people's concerted effort and attention, and so try not to rush up into doing new stuff, into doing more, particularly if you're not supporting it. Right. But I think Professional Black Girl is just but one manifestation of the work that I want to do. So I'm looking at the variety of ways that I can continue to create and sustained community as well as do other creative work. I think my overall goal is to continue to educate us

about us. You know, one of the things that makes me want to peel my skin off is to see young people online fighting about racism and not even knowing what racism is. You know, folks online talking about racism and not even knowing what racism is, not understanding context, not understanding white supremacy, not understanding history. And I recognize that I've had the opportunity to teach about these things,

but in a very privileged space called the academy. I'm wondering how I can bring that type of information to the community in ways that they can access. So I'm working on it. I mean, it sounds like you are working literally on everything and all the time, as many creatives do. Doctor Yaba Blai, thank you so much for joining PM Mood. I appreciate you so much, and thank you so much for the beauty that is professional Black Girl. It just inspires me every single day to keep going.

And I can't tell you how much inspiration I need on a regular basis. Sticky P Well, thank you for tuning in, for following, for sharing, for liking, and definitely for affirming the work that I do. I appreciate you. If you want to hear more from me, check out my live daily political talk show, Woke, a f daily at DNR Studios. You can subscribe now at www dot DNR studios dot com. Slash Woke