Won’t Be Black Today, Thanks

Written By Pink Flowers

I’m tired of being Black, y’all — for realz!

Lol! A bunch of fools read the lead-in and cancelled my ass. As if they were even on my radar. But, seriously, it’s bad enough I have to speak English and deal with a colonized mind every day of my life, but do I really have to walk around with a label that got stuck on me and people of my general ass phenotype however many centuries ago, by a bunch of people who thought my complexion was offensive?

How is the term Black any different than the term n*99er? Really? They both were meant to degrade people who were not fair skinned. If Europeans had been trying to flatter Africans, they would have called us golden, bronze, earthen, rich, deep, even brown. Black doesn’t describe a single human skin tone on the planet. Langston Hughes wrote about it too, so don’t get mad at me. I dare you to try and cancel Langston! But he pointed out the obvious, that in European culture, black is bad and white is good...period.

Sure, people reclaim, shit and flip it and all that. Whatever. I’m tired of making due with what other people have bothered to toss my way. That’s just a fancy way of saying “Uncle” and acting like you were really just trying to get your mother’s brothers attention. Lies! You cried uncle ‘cause you was licked. You just done forgot you was licked.

Yes, y’all in the game of domestication of Africans in America, Africans, for the most part are not the winners. Get butt-hurt all you want, but if you are walking around doing your best to fit in to the sterile culture White America has modeled for you, your ass has been kicked. That includes White people, many of whom—Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Turkish, Armenian, etcetera —weren’t White when they got to the U.S.

So, no, I’m not feeling the Black thing today. I wanna find a new name for what I am that isn’t something Europe turned its nose up to. I wanna name myself in a way that celebrates the glory that is me. I guess that’s why I’m Notorious Pink! Lol!

Pink Flowers

Pink Flowers is a Black trans artist, peacemaker, educator, and pleasure activist whose work lives at the intersection of embodiment, governance, and cultural transformation. Trained in Theater of the Oppressed, Art of Hosting, and Navajo-informed Peacemaking practices, Pink designs spaces where conflict can be addressed, power can be examined, and joy can be reclaimed.

Her artistic and pedagogical practice draws from African trickster cosmology, Brazilian Joker traditions, shamanic ritual, and cooperative economics. She is the founder of the award-winning Falconworks Theater Company (2005–2021), which used popular theater to build civic capacity and participatory leadership in historically marginalized communities.

Pink served for over five years as a trained Peacemaker in the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, facilitating restorative processes within the New York City court system. From 2015–2018, she worked in cooperative business development with the Center for Family Life, supporting worker-owned enterprises in immigrant communities.

She currently serves as Director of Education and Training for the Inter-Cooperative Council in Ann Arbor, where she leads leadership development and conflict engagement initiatives. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Stretch Festival in Berlin and the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference.

Across ritual, performance, mediation, and institutional design, Pink’s work asks a central question:

What becomes possible when we refuse shame and choose conscious power instead?

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