{"id":195280,"date":"2015-10-21T07:18:47","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T11:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/?p=195280"},"modified":"2015-10-21T07:18:47","modified_gmt":"2015-10-21T11:18:47","slug":"quote-rihanna-on-being-self-aware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/?p=195280","title":{"rendered":"Quote: Rihanna &#8211; on being self-aware"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/10\/12\/t-magazine\/rihanna-miranda-july-interview.html?_r=0\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/12tmag-rihanna-toc-t-blog4271.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>I wanted to ask her about being a young black woman with power in America but it seemed somehow wrong to speak of this; maybe she was postracial now. So I directed my question to a younger Rihanna, and asked if she had suddenly felt aware of race in a different way when she moved to New York. She hesitated, and when I nervously began to apologize, she interrupted. \u2018<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>\u2018You know, when I started to experience the difference \u2014 or even have my race be highlighted \u2014 it was mostly when I would do business deals.\u2019\u2019 Business deals. Meaning that everyone\u2019s cool with a young black woman singing, dancing, partying and looking hot, but that when it comes time to negotiate, to broker a deal, she is suddenly made aware of her blackness. \u2018\u2018And, you know, that never ends, by the way. It\u2019s still a thing. And it\u2019s the thing that makes me want to prove people wrong. It almost excites me; I know what they\u2019re expecting and I can\u2019t wait to show them that I\u2019m here to exceed those expectations.\u2019\u2019 She sounded like a young black professional trying to make it in the corporate world, and I guessed she was \u2014 just on a very different scale. \u2018\u2018But I have to bear in mind,\u2019\u2019 she continued, looking right at the voice recorder, \u2018\u2018that those people are judging you because you\u2019re packaged a certain way \u2014 they\u2019ve been programmed to think a black man in a hoodie means grab your purse a little tighter. For me, it comes down to smaller issues, scenarios in which people can assume something of me without knowing me, just by my packaging.\u2019\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/10\/12\/t-magazine\/rihanna-miranda-july-interview.html\">A Very Revealing Conversation With Rihanna &#8211; The New York Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wanted to ask her about being a young black woman with power in America&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":195281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124715115],"tags":[203672],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195280"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195284,"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195280\/revisions\/195284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/195281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harlemcondolife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}