Aissa Sica is 26 years old and has been living in Berlin for the last one and a half years. She runs a blog called POC Stories (previously called Womxn of Color) and interviews women and non binary people of color. She started the blog as an independent project back in 2018 and continues to run it independently while working her full time job. She was born and brought up in France and started the blog because she doesn’t see herself represented in media. She doesn’t think it’s fair, it’s 2019 and feels whatever representation her community gets is based on stereotypes. She wanted to change this.
The two main issues that she realised women face are sexualisation and racism. “All women are sexualised because of their ethnicity but women of color are sexualised even more because of the long history of slavery and colonisation. It resulted in women getting brutally insulted.”
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The story that stayed with Aissa Sica was about the black woman she met in Austria. The girl was living in a small city and used to be a high school student. There were only two people of color in her school. Her classmates started to bully her, passed comments about her, insulted her and said horrible things about black people. Nobody came to her rescue. There was nobody to defend her. She couldn’t rely even on her teachers. She went into depression and had to stop going to school because she started getting panic attacks. “For me it was new because someone was bullied so much just because of their ethnicity and the impact that it had made on her mental health” said Aissa.
But some people believe these are standalone cases and feel reverse racism exists as well. Aissa says you cannot compare both because for her reverse racism doesn’t exist. “At some point you get really frustrated because of institutionalised racism, the fact that you always have an obstacle because of your ethnicity, you have to find 10 times more just because you’re a black person.” For her, reverse racism is just an invention of white people. “For others, it’s different. Whites don’t have any impact on their life when they want to get a job, a house or send their children to school because of reverse racism. Both just cannot be compared.”
Talking about who inspires her, Aissa said that it’s very clichéd but her inspiration has been her mom. “I admire her because she didn’t have an easy life but she made it. She was born in France because my grandfather was fighting for France for liberation. My grandfather is from Guinea, West Africa and it was part of France then. He has been a soldier for France and came here. My mum was born in the center of France. They were very poor at first, living in a slum, and had to face a lot of racism because they were the only black people in the village. She studied but she had to stop it. Now, she is working at the court and even though she still gets so many experiences, so many obstacles, she never stops.
She is very determined and never gave up on her dreams. She was also beaten up my father for 20 years but she never gave up on me. It was difficult for her to be there for me but she wanted that I at least keep going on with my studies even though it was not easy to live with my violent father. But she kept pushing me, pushing me. It is thanks to her that I am here today in Berlin and writing this blog because somehow she gave me strength to be determined like her.”
A few years ago if Aissa had to go out with her natural hair and makeup, she would laugh at it. But now, it doesn’t matter. She walks around confidently being her natural self. What’s the secret? She says, “I think I was just fed up of straightening my hair, wearing braids and saying that my hair doesn’t grow all the time. I didn’t take care of them. I was tired of the beauty standards and so I visited a lot of blogs. I realised you can be black and have long hair. I was ignorant at first but then I read a lot. My hair were so damaged already and it took almost 10 years to reverse that and get my natural hair back a bit. But again, I was in depression back then, I didn’t take care of them. Now, I have started to look after them, I want to grow them longer. I feel better with myself.”
“It’s not just hair but bleaching the skin as well. A lot of this happens in India too, also in the country of my father. I will just say that you’re hurting yourself, why don’t you stop. You are damaging your mental health by bleaching, you can die, you can have cancer. It is one of the reasons you should stop, it’s so very dangerous to you. I know you’re under pressure, you want to look what it is said is beautiful but you need to decolonize your mind, you have to stop thinking how it was 20 years ago. The sad part is that unfortunately a lot of parents still teach their children today that they should be lighter to succeed in life or to have a partner. Mostly, it’s you who has to change yourself and be comfortable as you are. It takes a lot of courage.”
We tell people to educate themselves, to read more and be cautious of what’s happening around them. But there’s so much content out there that it can be overwhelming even for someone who genuinely is interested. Aissa feels that we should try to reach out to people who have gone through this. It’s difficult to find people but try to contact someone you admire or someone you know and talk to them. Having a conversation with someone has much more impact than reading on the internet or reading books. She herself was reading blogs but she was also talking to her cousin which made change easier and more comfortable for her. “Talk to someone about what you want to do for you and how you want to change, find someone to follow.”
On being asked if she thinks social media can reverse all these years of biases that the traditional media has created, Aissa says that she feels Youtube is a very powerful social media because it has given the floor to women who didn’t have the opportunity to be represented in the media, have more exposure and visibility now. Women of color get invisible in the traditional media most of the times. “With youtube, we get visibility, we can talk about a lot of topics like colorism, how to take care of your hair, have more confidence in yourself, etc. It’s a tool to empower people.”
In the end she just says that if you want to do a project, just take the initiative. Nobody else is going to do it for you. “Whatever success I have or not, at least I tried. Just do it and see how it goes. You have to believe in yourself. Stop asking if people will like it or not, just do it.”
We believe that stories are powerful and they can change the world. We cannot help or empathise with each other unless we really understand each other and stories are a way to bridge that gap. We truly admire Aissa for the work she’s doing and love the inspiration she’s bringing to the world.
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