First

“In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line. But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.”

Viola Davis was the first black woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Actress in a Drama last night. That was the first line of her speech. It’s a quote from Harriet Tubman, given in the 1800s. She said it because it is still so applicable to how black women are forced to look out into the world around them.

I started work today. This is my first full-time, permanent job. I am the only black associate starting at my law firm this year, period. Even though there are so many black partners and other associates to whom I can reach out, it is still so scary to be the only one–again, in this day and age, in 2015. When I called my mother on the way home, she said that I should use this as an opportunity to put myself ahead. And I’m sure I will. I know I have to. But I keep thinking that, if for nothing else, I have to do it for those who won’t be the only oneswhen their time comes. I have to make it so they don’t have to be the only ones.

Viola Davis thanked the other black women who are in leading and strong supporting roles on television rightnow for pushing us across that line, into that field, into the arms of those white women and the world.

I am crossing that line. Everything in my life has pushed me closer–my good public schools, my Spelman education, my masters in London. My law degree at Harvard was probably what brought me up to the line, close enough to feel my toes poke against it. But this job, at the premier law firm in Washington, D.C., this is me crossing the line. I feel it. I sat at lunch with Eric Holder, the last Attorney General of the United States, today. I listened to a talk by a senator. I am at the table. I am over the line. And those white women better put their fuckin arms down and move back so they don’t get knocked over when I run by them.