Black Girl From Eugene: Cut the lie off at the source
4 min read
by Ayisha Elliott, Black Girl From Eugene
I’ve never been someone who goes along with the rules. Authority was always clearly about positionality, access, and power and something in me just knew, early, that it only worked if I played along.
From a very young age I was giving my parents grief with this energy. Luckily I was raised in the ’80s by revolutionary, hippie-leaning parents who didn’t shut that down; they met it with openness. They wanted to see where that kind of intelligence, so young, would go. There are so many ways this mindset can serve anyone navigating this ever-changing world we share.
I keep returning to something bell hooks said in an interview:
“Often white people will meet a Black person who completely challenges every racial stereotype that they’ve ever had. Rather than giving up the stereotype, they create a special category for that person, and say, ‘Well, you’re not like other Black people,’ instead of saying, ‘My ideas of Black people were too narrow.’
“And that’s the tragedy of any kind of prejudicial thinking—that when we confront the circumstance that tells us it is not so, we frequently don’t enlarge our sense of things. We actually come up with new ways to protect and defend that way of thinking.”
That observation led me to the power dynamics embedded in the culture of whiteness that most people within capitalism, consciously or not, are upholding. Not tied racially, but tied to the culture of white supremacy itself. The unspoken rules we abide by without thinking.
Our individual experiences within this culture vary enormously, and why any of us acquiesces is different but we are assumed to share spaces in exactly the same way, despite the fact that the space itself was designed to uphold that culture. So Black and Brown people inside those spaces are tap dancing, code-switching, shrinking, or disappearing entirely for safety and access, while white-bodied people grip the role of authority by some implanted version of instinct.
Both realities are conscious and subconscious but both are legible in the why of how we stay in the roles assigned to us. The role might be your job title, your label, your position. Beneath it all, America’s definition of who counts, who is centered, was built around a very specific image: white, affluent, heterosexual, cisgender men. Everyone else exists, in that architecture, as a commodity.
We were taught the necessity of our roles early. The urgency of maintaining those roles has always been determined by whoever poses the greatest challenge at any given moment.
What we’re watching now, in real time, is that the entire premise is coming apart. The lie that human value is determined by utility to capital is losing its credibility. When you consider who this cultural norm was created to protect, and then look at how everyone from the global majority has exceeded and thrived despite their very real, organized effort to prevent that, you start to understand the desperation behind doubling down on the lie.
Now, rather than renegotiate the terms of who counts, they are moving faster than ever to replace those very humans with technology. The negotiation of value isn’t being reformed. It’s being removed from the table entirely.
I’ve been writing a lot lately about community and about the expansion of what a group of people can be and do together, in the present and active moment. The release of who we’ve been told we are.
We can share without stealing identity or culture. We can preserve language and cultural practice while exchanging knowledge and resources. The idea that someone else wants everything you have, that scarcity is natural, comes from the same group of people who are sitting on top of every essential resource and distributing it to the highest bidder, then pointing the finger at those of us with the most community.
Division makes us easier to manage. That’s not an accident. It doesn’t require violence to maintain peace. It doesn’t require someone to starve for others to eat. These are chosen conditions, not inevitable ones.
The lie and the logic that sustains it are the same: If one Black person is trustworthy, that’s only one Black person. The categories are the defense mechanism.
We have to cut the lie off at the source. And by we, I mean each of us. No race required, no title, no elevated circumstance. Just the willingness to stop performing the categories that were never made for us. No apologies, it’s just a hard no.
Ayisha Elliott is a relational leadership coach assisting in centering introspective alignment to intention and impact, who will work with any organizations. Contact her by email: BlackGirlFromEugene@gmail.com. You can subscribe at BlackGirlFromEugene.substack.com.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ayisha Elliott. All Rights Reserved. Read by Ayisha Elliott for KEPW Whole Community News and reprinted with permission. You can follow Ayisha on Instagram and Substack.
Image of bell hooks credit Alex Lozupone (Tduk), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
