Aimée Oyinlade Okotie-Oyekan
Now I say it slow as if the teachers who called the roll so many years ago would hear me and
Say it right instead of shadowboxing with the syllables. To save them the trouble and myself the embarrassment, I just became A-O-dot-O
This was back in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, or Bodymore, Murderland, if you're from the wrong parts, and my heart at the time had no desire to find meaning in this song of a name my Nigerian ancestors claimed
Aimée Oyinlade. I did not know Aimée , the love. I could not taste Oyin, the honey. And I surely could not embrace Ade, the crown passed down by Oyekan I, Oba, King of Lagos, Nigeria, my grandfather's grandfather
Maybe it's because my mom and I are British by birth and so a Nigerian passport's worth is worth less. And the safest place for a Nigerian to be is not home, but in the West where skin is white and pockets are fat, we'll just ignore that all we work for goes to Uncle Sam's hat. I wanted to be an American.
And so I'd grow, safe and separate from all I'd know had we loved ourselves and stayed in Ilado. But it's okay, because the Chesapeake Bay and its estuarine ways taught me to love the natural world. And as a Black girl, I knew about race, but it was with haste that my mom would correct my English whenever I started to talk like those Black Baltimore kids.
2007. The big move to Georgia brought a lot of change and I couldn't imagine why we moved to a place where racism thrived and all the houses looked the same. Nonetheless, I still hated my name. I even shortened it for a time. And with a zeal for science, I knew that DNA stood for deoxyribonucleic acid and I could ID all the layers on a continental shelf before I tried to analyze or investigate why I didn't like myself.
2018. It was a gap year. And something began to shift. You see, by then, the science was irrefutable. We were all in deep shit. But there was something else. You see, the cost of climate change was not borne equally. It was Black and brown communities hit first and worst
African cities like the one I'd escaped were feeling the heat. At the same time, there seemed to be more Black bodies dying in American streets or maybe I was finally paying more attention.
For the first time, I was hyper-conscious of what my Blackness meant. Environment and race became the lenses I saw through and I brought these thoughts with me to grad school where my mind blew.
Not only were climate and race connected in outcome but in process. You see, climate was only allowed to proliferate because we accepted certain communities deserved environmental distress
It was colonization and slavery that fueled the exploitation and capitalism that grew the industrial revolution and progress that spewed all these greenhouse gases into our atmosphere
And so you racist, elitist environmentalists don't look at me crazy or call me a fool when I say inequality needs to be rooted out if our planet is to cool.
But sometimes I falter because I'm still learning to like myself. And being a Black face in a space that has intentionally erased anyone that's not white and male means I'm constantly balancing, yeah, I can do this, and nah, I'm gonna fail
I'm up and down and in and out. You see, I can't be me. I have to be tough and hard, and it's hard when you feel like an other
And fellow sisters and brothers of color who are meant to be aligned are looking for holes to poke. You know, they say all skin folk ain't kin folk.
But anyway, you can only hide inner conflict for so long until it appears, and unfortunately, it was the Oregon Legislature People of Color Caucus that has to witness my tears.
On this day, I was giving a presentation on some legislation I helped co-create. House Bill 2488 would change Oregon's land use system to mitigate climate change and drive out the hate that controlled access to space and made Oregon a damn near all-white state.
I wasn't in two minutes in before my eyes welled and my voice swelled, but I still tried to tell the story of our bill. I did not stop.
Afterwards, I dug deep. I asked myself, what is wrong with you? What about that meeting made you cry, boo-hoo? I think it was Representative Janelle Bynum's icebreaker question, what makes you, you
And so today, I'm still sitting with that. And as a matter of fact, I am so damn tired of keeping up with this strong, resilient Black woman act. I feel deeply I know that, and I want to change the world with the climate justice initiatives we can enact
But how can I do that if my own lack of self-love is inherently anti-Black?
Aimée Okotie-Oyekan - Story of Self Lyrics
Aimée Okotie-Oyekan - Story of Self Lyrics
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We currently do not have these lyrics.
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English
Aimée Oyinlade Okotie-Oyekan
Now I say it slow as if the teachers who called the roll so many years ago would hear me and
Say it right instead of shadowboxing with the syllables. To save them the trouble and myself the embarrassment, I just became A-O-dot-O
This was back in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, or Bodymore, Murderland, if you're from the wrong parts, and my heart at the time had no desire to find meaning in this song of a name my Nigerian ancestors claimed
Aimée Oyinlade. I did not know Aimée , the love. I could not taste Oyin, the honey. And I surely could not embrace Ade, the crown passed down by Oyekan I, Oba, King of Lagos, Nigeria, my grandfather's grandfather
Maybe it's because my mom and I are British by birth and so a Nigerian passport's worth is worth less. And the safest place for a Nigerian to be is not home, but in the West where skin is white and pockets are fat, we'll just ignore that all we work for goes to Uncle Sam's hat. I wanted to be an American.
And so I'd grow, safe and separate from all I'd know had we loved ourselves and stayed in Ilado. But it's okay, because the Chesapeake Bay and its estuarine ways taught me to love the natural world. And as a Black girl, I knew about race, but it was with haste that my mom would correct my English whenever I started to talk like those Black Baltimore kids.
2007. The big move to Georgia brought a lot of change and I couldn't imagine why we moved to a place where racism thrived and all the houses looked the same. Nonetheless, I still hated my name. I even shortened it for a time. And with a zeal for science, I knew that DNA stood for deoxyribonucleic acid and I could ID all the layers on a continental shelf before I tried to analyze or investigate why I didn't like myself.
2018. It was a gap year. And something began to shift. You see, by then, the science was irrefutable. We were all in deep shit. But there was something else. You see, the cost of climate change was not borne equally. It was Black and brown communities hit first and worst
African cities like the one I'd escaped were feeling the heat. At the same time, there seemed to be more Black bodies dying in American streets or maybe I was finally paying more attention.
For the first time, I was hyper-conscious of what my Blackness meant. Environment and race became the lenses I saw through and I brought these thoughts with me to grad school where my mind blew.
Not only were climate and race connected in outcome but in process. You see, climate was only allowed to proliferate because we accepted certain communities deserved environmental distress
It was colonization and slavery that fueled the exploitation and capitalism that grew the industrial revolution and progress that spewed all these greenhouse gases into our atmosphere
And so you racist, elitist environmentalists don't look at me crazy or call me a fool when I say inequality needs to be rooted out if our planet is to cool.
But sometimes I falter because I'm still learning to like myself. And being a Black face in a space that has intentionally erased anyone that's not white and male means I'm constantly balancing, yeah, I can do this, and nah, I'm gonna fail
I'm up and down and in and out. You see, I can't be me. I have to be tough and hard, and it's hard when you feel like an other
And fellow sisters and brothers of color who are meant to be aligned are looking for holes to poke. You know, they say all skin folk ain't kin folk.
But anyway, you can only hide inner conflict for so long until it appears, and unfortunately, it was the Oregon Legislature People of Color Caucus that has to witness my tears.
On this day, I was giving a presentation on some legislation I helped co-create. House Bill 2488 would change Oregon's land use system to mitigate climate change and drive out the hate that controlled access to space and made Oregon a damn near all-white state.
I wasn't in two minutes in before my eyes welled and my voice swelled, but I still tried to tell the story of our bill. I did not stop.
Afterwards, I dug deep. I asked myself, what is wrong with you? What about that meeting made you cry, boo-hoo? I think it was Representative Janelle Bynum's icebreaker question, what makes you, you
And so today, I'm still sitting with that. And as a matter of fact, I am so damn tired of keeping up with this strong, resilient Black woman act. I feel deeply I know that, and I want to change the world with the climate justice initiatives we can enact
But how can I do that if my own lack of self-love is inherently anti-Black?
Now I say it slow as if the teachers who called the roll so many years ago would hear me and
Say it right instead of shadowboxing with the syllables. To save them the trouble and myself the embarrassment, I just became A-O-dot-O
This was back in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, or Bodymore, Murderland, if you're from the wrong parts, and my heart at the time had no desire to find meaning in this song of a name my Nigerian ancestors claimed
Aimée Oyinlade. I did not know Aimée , the love. I could not taste Oyin, the honey. And I surely could not embrace Ade, the crown passed down by Oyekan I, Oba, King of Lagos, Nigeria, my grandfather's grandfather
Maybe it's because my mom and I are British by birth and so a Nigerian passport's worth is worth less. And the safest place for a Nigerian to be is not home, but in the West where skin is white and pockets are fat, we'll just ignore that all we work for goes to Uncle Sam's hat. I wanted to be an American.
And so I'd grow, safe and separate from all I'd know had we loved ourselves and stayed in Ilado. But it's okay, because the Chesapeake Bay and its estuarine ways taught me to love the natural world. And as a Black girl, I knew about race, but it was with haste that my mom would correct my English whenever I started to talk like those Black Baltimore kids.
2007. The big move to Georgia brought a lot of change and I couldn't imagine why we moved to a place where racism thrived and all the houses looked the same. Nonetheless, I still hated my name. I even shortened it for a time. And with a zeal for science, I knew that DNA stood for deoxyribonucleic acid and I could ID all the layers on a continental shelf before I tried to analyze or investigate why I didn't like myself.
2018. It was a gap year. And something began to shift. You see, by then, the science was irrefutable. We were all in deep shit. But there was something else. You see, the cost of climate change was not borne equally. It was Black and brown communities hit first and worst
African cities like the one I'd escaped were feeling the heat. At the same time, there seemed to be more Black bodies dying in American streets or maybe I was finally paying more attention.
For the first time, I was hyper-conscious of what my Blackness meant. Environment and race became the lenses I saw through and I brought these thoughts with me to grad school where my mind blew.
Not only were climate and race connected in outcome but in process. You see, climate was only allowed to proliferate because we accepted certain communities deserved environmental distress
It was colonization and slavery that fueled the exploitation and capitalism that grew the industrial revolution and progress that spewed all these greenhouse gases into our atmosphere
And so you racist, elitist environmentalists don't look at me crazy or call me a fool when I say inequality needs to be rooted out if our planet is to cool.
But sometimes I falter because I'm still learning to like myself. And being a Black face in a space that has intentionally erased anyone that's not white and male means I'm constantly balancing, yeah, I can do this, and nah, I'm gonna fail
I'm up and down and in and out. You see, I can't be me. I have to be tough and hard, and it's hard when you feel like an other
And fellow sisters and brothers of color who are meant to be aligned are looking for holes to poke. You know, they say all skin folk ain't kin folk.
But anyway, you can only hide inner conflict for so long until it appears, and unfortunately, it was the Oregon Legislature People of Color Caucus that has to witness my tears.
On this day, I was giving a presentation on some legislation I helped co-create. House Bill 2488 would change Oregon's land use system to mitigate climate change and drive out the hate that controlled access to space and made Oregon a damn near all-white state.
I wasn't in two minutes in before my eyes welled and my voice swelled, but I still tried to tell the story of our bill. I did not stop.
Afterwards, I dug deep. I asked myself, what is wrong with you? What about that meeting made you cry, boo-hoo? I think it was Representative Janelle Bynum's icebreaker question, what makes you, you
And so today, I'm still sitting with that. And as a matter of fact, I am so damn tired of keeping up with this strong, resilient Black woman act. I feel deeply I know that, and I want to change the world with the climate justice initiatives we can enact
But how can I do that if my own lack of self-love is inherently anti-Black?
Writer: Aimée Okotie-Oyekan
Copyright: Lyrics © O/B/O DistroKid
Copyright: Lyrics © O/B/O DistroKid