Soulful Strides to Promotion & Tenure (February 2025)
A Love Letter
Valentine's Day is the one day of the year when people celebrate the love they have for each other. And I guess in this season of chaos, uncertainty, and discord, love is a great thing to celebrate. Love is one of those words that serves as a noun and a verb. According to Merriam-Webster, love (noun) is defined as a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; the object of attachment, devotion or admiration. As a verb, it is defined as to feel or show active self-giving and concern; to feel or express reverent devotion toward. Regardless of its grammatical context, I think we can agree — it is powerful.
But for all its power, love can also be performative - especially on a day like this, where grand gestures and material gifts often take center stage, usurping the true essence of love itself. Yet love, at its most profound, isn’t about what can be seen or measured; it’s about what is felt, nurtured, and affirmed from within.
So that being said, what if, instead of the usual traditions, we used this Valentine’s Day to embrace a quieter, deeper kind of love. A Valentine’s Day that is focused on loving the fullness of our whole selves—our intellect, our emotions, our hair, our body, our language, our disposition, our choices, and our story? What if, for once, we made this day about celebrating our own love—buying ourselves the candy, the flowers, the gifts (not that we can’t accept them from others), but simply because we deserve them and shouldn’t wait on someone else? Better yet, what if we moved beyond the performative ways society tells us love should look and actually celebrate being in love with ourselves? What if we loved what we saw in the mirror today every single day? What if we loved our Blackness in every area of our lives - our work, home, dreams, aspirations, the whole lot? What would it feel like to actually love every aspect of our bodies and our existence - to love our Blackness?
bell hooks writes in her book Black Looks: Race and Representation, “to love Blackness is dangerous in a white supremacist culture - so threatening, so serious a breach in the fabric of the social order, that death is the punishment.” And in the context of promotion and tenure, this “death” is not physical, rather it is the loss of professional acceptance, restricted access, and the constant threat of systemic retaliation.
The world has long devalued, criminalized, and attempted to erase Blackness. But to love ourselves—our Blackness—fully, openly, truly, and unapologetically is a radical act, a direct challenge to a dominant racial order that insists we diminish ourselves to fit within its confines. In this day and age where division drowns out unity, self-interest overshadows selflessness, and too many hearts are hardened by hate, fear, pain, or indifference, our ability to love our Blackness is an act of self-affirmation—it is an imperative. It means embracing every part of who we are. For Black women, loving our Blackness, our self-love is not just personal, it is political and revolutionary. It is an act of defiance. It is a love affair with ourselves—a deep, unwavering commitment to cherish our beauty, our history, and our brilliance.
This Valentine’s Day, treat yourself to some real Black love - you know the kind of love we root for because it is radical in its ability to heal, nurture, empower, and sustain. It is tender, sweet, strong, and passionate. It affirms our joy and our humanity. It refuses to be broken, bears witness to struggle, remains unwavering, and, despite all odds, continues to grow. So, today, let that love begin with you. Love yourself fully, unapologetically, and without condition because the love we give ourselves, that Black love, isn’t just for a single day - a Valentine’s Day - it’s for a lifetime.
“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”
— bell hooks