Does Delta Sigma Theta Have a Black Feminist Care Praxis?
I don't know...it didn't. This is based on my experience, and my experience only. I may get a cease and desist cause they are a business, but I don't care. I'm a Black feminist cultural critic.
I crossed DST in Spring 2012. I was exhilarated. I had a fade at the time…damn near bald, and I loved everything there was to love about DST. Or so I thought. Well, I’m lying, but from the point of view of a 20-year-old…I was 90% in love with my chapter. I can reveal the 10%, but I choose not to at this point in my life. Check with me in another ten years, and I may not give a damn.
To tell this story, I have to begin from the very beginning, but before you continue reading, you should know this story discusses rape, abuse of power, and trauma. If this is not something you can handle, you SHOULD NOT CONTINUE READING!
I’m not going to put up my chapter and pictures and such cause I really don’t care to do all of that. I’m sure the people who will read this, who know who I am in real life, understand. And I’m sure this will be shared down the grapevines cause this is how these things go. You see…when people say things, write things, create videos and such…people usually don’t address them directly. They don’t call, message, or reach out to the person to talk to them. They speak to EVERYONE ELSE about them! That’s how it’s always worked. So if you know, you know.
To start off I would like to say I know this is not everyone’s experience, and I would hope not. I hope people actually get the sisterhood they require and deserve from this org, but I DID NOT. And that’s that on that.
So from the beginning…
At the age of 6-11, I was raped by one family member (I won’t name right now). At 15, I was molested by my uncle (my mother’s brother). Also, at 15, I was molested by my stepbrother. My mother did not believe me. She said I was still sensitive from what happened with my uncle. From 16 until the time I went to college, I was raped by my other uncle (also my mother’s brother). He also normalized this…so no, it was not violent or abnormal. This is to let you know the headspace I was in at 17 when I entered college.
A few weeks later, I turned 18, and my advisor became like a mentor, father, and uncle to me. He was everything to me. A year later, he transitioned our relationship, abused his power, and began “dating” me. He was actually not the first. There were a total of 3 professors who abused their power, and 1 of whom I thought was going to rape me. But my advisor was the only married one. He is the one who matters in this story. Someone reported him, and then there was a Title 9 case, and I had to go and be interviewed and such. There was a soror who was a part of this. She was the president or in charge of our chapter at the time. She only did this because her daughter asked her to…her daughter worked at the school as well, in admissions. (I’m pretty sure). Okay, so while I’ve skipped ahead some…let me go back just a little.
The summer before I turned 19, I could tell something weird was going on with the professor. He kept calling me, and I wouldn’t answer. My mother kept asking me why I wouldn’t answer. I just said… “I’ll talk to him at the end of the summer.” Eventually, I called back maybe a few weeks before school, cause I couldn’t keep putting him off. He said, “Aye, young, why you keep ignoring me?” The whole convo felt weird, and I could tell (because I had been groomed my entire life) that things had changed. We got off the phone, and I just knew things would never be the same, and I sat there, and it felt like hours. School started, and usually his family took me out for my birthday cause I was usually alone in that town where college was. But they couldn’t make it cause it was my first year starting as a RA (resident assistant). He took me to a seafood spot, and the whole time, it was weird and weird energy. My energy has never failed me, even when I didn’t listen to it. After lunch, he messaged me…and so I called my uncle (yes, the same uncle who raped me). I asked him what he thought, and he said, “Go for it, and after you fuck him, call me and tell me everything.” I know this sounds fucked up and weird, but this is my truth, and I’ve healed from it. Either way, the professor and I became essentially in a “relationship.”
While I was also in another real relationship and dealing with another professor, like I said, abuse of power was surrounding me, and I was drowning in life. But to everyone else, I was smiling Black studies Afro wearing Phil. No one knew what was happening in my real life except my rapey uncle.
So, I was really into Black studies and my books. I happened to stumble upon an organization that was spat upon in a march and proceeded to continue marching in the face of white folks. I was like “who the fuck are these Black women…and how can I learn more?” I felt like (even though I wasn’t marching in front of white folks), I needed strength. Next thing you know, I found out they were Deltas. I was 19 at this point. Had just turned 19. I was like “oh hell yeah, sign me up.” So, I asked my advisor (the same professor you all know) where they were on campus and what was going on. He gave me the rundown on what happened to them on campus. They were coming back at the end of that Fall. I was excited because I thought, “They’re fucking revolutionaries, and I gotta be a part of this sisterhood.” I didn’t know they stepped and did all that shit yet! LMAO!
I was just such a baby revolutionary at the time, I was like “this is my shit, and I gotta be a part of it no matter what!" So once they came back on the yard, I made myself known with a vengeance. I attended EVERYTHING! I tried my best in my classes! I was already doing community engagement and service, but I turned it up a notch. And I tried to get to know them as people. Cause I truly wanted sisters. I had one, and I guess I had two in real life (not the article for that), but not for real. So in my eyes…I’m like “I’ll have sisters for life, and like-minded revolutionaries.” (naive, right). But that’s how I thought at 19.
Fast forward to 20, and I had a relationship with a good number of them, and if I didn’t fuck up, I knew I could be on line. Either way, I got online and CROSSED! It wasn’t easy, and our line wasn’t the easiest, strongest, or closest. (Not our doing, or maybe it was.) We were young, impressionable, and we were just in a fucked up circumstance. Like I said…I’m not here to spill all our tea. But we didn’t have the best odds for 100% sisterhood at the time, and a Black feminist care praxis. At the time, I wasn’t even a Black feminist. I had not even heard of Black feminism yet. I believe that Delta should promote more, if you ask me. But who am I other than a Black Queer feminist PhD candidate who does and lives this shit? I breathe it. And all I know is…If we had a semblance of the theories and shit I read in our stuff we attained while online, we would have been wayyyyyy more synced!
Anywho….So I CROSSED! A few months later, the whole Title 9 thing happened. NO SERIOUSLY! A few months later! I also turned 21! And baby, when I say I started drinking! My drink of choice back then was some tequila called Pepe. It was like 10 dollars, and it was my everything! Either way, I got pregnant by this other guy whom I barely knew. We took a class together, and I hated him in the class. He was a misogynoirist and always talking. But when the liquor talked…it didn’t matter to me anymore. I felt like the world was coming down on me cause of the Title 9 case. My line sisters (not all) were talking about me to everybody, saying I was an embarrassment to them. My prophytes were calling everybody saying the same thing. They never called me. The person in charge of our organization at the time took a person out to lunch who was part of the Title 9 case and instructed them to keep me in the dark, specifically to prevent one of my sorors (who sadly just passed) from telling me anything. She wanted me in the dark. Luckily, she told another of my line sisters, who told me. At this point, I was disposable, alone, and I had no sisterhood, and I WAS PREGNANT. Homecoming rolled around, and my linesisters didn’t know I was pregnant.
One of my line sisters texted the chat saying, “Phil, you need to be here cause you haven’t done anything in a long time anyway.” At that moment, I told everyone I was pregnant and had been sick. What they didn’t know is that the sperm donor at that time was calling me every day, telling me he wished he could kill me and the baby (he was very violent). I had my mother come down for 2 weeks, because I was close to having a miscarriage. I was in physical and mental pain. I thought I had experienced the most pain in my life until I had a miscarriage in 2022. It is the most excruciating thing. Worse than childbirth (I’ve had three children naturally), because you know you’re producing death. But yes….she said that. When I went onto the plot, she said nothing to me. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t care. She went on to become a dentist. I hope she has a care praxis for her patients that she didn’t have for me back then, regardless of whatever she perceived of me or thought she knew of me.
That’s the thing. No one is perfect. I’ve wronged people in life…and when able, I’ve apologized. I’ve found them, their profile or phone number, and genuinely apologized. Whether they’ve accepted it or not, I can’t determine. I can only seek to make amends. But what I can say is only one person on my line apologized for talking shit to me, and I’ll name her..Deonney. She apologized when I joined our line group chat years later, explaining how their words had hurt me and how it made me feel like I didn't have a sisterhood. She was the only one. They just said a general sorry. But she typed an entire paragraph in her role. I honestly took her sincere apology to heart, although we never had a close relationship. We still never formed one after that. And that was fine with me. But she did the right thing.
The DST national convention is either ongoing or has just concluded, and one of my line sisters posted pictures. They look beautiful. But then I saw the person who was in charge of the org when I crossed, and who tried to keep me in the dark, and never reached out to me to see how I was doing as a fucking 20-year-old girl. I didn’t tell ya’ll. A year later, I went to homecoming (my last time ever). I spoke to her, and she said so dryly, “Hello Phil.” I said, “Oh, okay, then.” And walked away. That night I went to a bar with my fav line sisters at the time, who I also don’t talk to anymore (one told me I was being too negative in my early twenties). I was going through suicidal ideation, my mother was trying to destroy my life and had told me she had started back-talking to my uncle, who molested me, and I had actively tried to commit suicide. (Even with having children). She has gone on to become a doctor in pharmacy. Hopefully, she has developed a care praxis as well. Either way, we went to the bar, and the daughter of the president (I don’t remember all the terms, ya’ll) said, “I’m so disappointed in you Phil…you disappointed me.” I said, “Okay, sorry.” And her line sister was beside her. Mind you, they were almost 30-year-old women telling a 22-year-old who was abused. I’ll never forgive her for that.
Oh, so yeah, about me. I don’t always believe in forgiveness, but I also don’t harbor ill will. But think about that…I was blamed for being abused, and yeah, I got pregnant, but my life wasn’t over. But to me…by the words of everyone else, it felt like it.
Today…I’m still healing from being raped (I also was raped and assaulted by multiple people in college as well), molested, abused, violated, and manipulated by family members, people in power, and others. But the people who were supposed to be my sisters, and talk to me and figure out what’s going on, never cared to ask. They only saw the outcome…not the symptoms. Not the cause. Not the root.
I have been fortunate to form a community with deep Black feminist care praxes. Very fortunate. But that era of my life took a long time to heal from. It truly did. The people who I thought I would have a lifetime of sisterhood with…who would stick with me through ANYTHING! It wasn’t true. You see, they taught me that love and sisterhood were CONDITIONAL! As long as you don’t embarrass them, as long as you are respectable, as long as you make them look good, then you’re worthy of being in their good graces and circles. But the minute you misstep or need just a bit more, then that’s a bit too much!
You see now…I’m married, have children, and am a PhD candidate at a prestigious university. I’ve received honors, grants, and I’m on a vastlyyyy different trajectory than they would have everrrrrr imagined. They may not agree on my research topic, or me being nonbinary, or me being pro-abortion, pro-trans, pro-sex work, an abolitionist, etc. But I have the check boxes checked now, which, on the outside, many would love. But what the fuck does that matter if a person doesn’t genuinely help you navigate the storms to help you see the rainbow?
Thank you for being here and reading this. This may be a bit heavy for some. Please take care of yourself, and if you are a soror, please think of the ways you can develop a better care praxis. If you would like to join, think of the ways your love can be unconditional in your sisterhood! All of my Love! <3