Woman Up! Graduation Speech
Taylor’s Speech:
"I remember last school year when the wonderful Mrs. Green left a very vague letter on my desk on the last day of school asking me if I was interested in doing some type of study with the University of Michigan. I’m not gonna lie, the whole UofM part is what sparked my interest, and I decided to go for it. But little did I know that by going to the first meeting with Harleen and Dr. Haniff I would be altering my entire outlook on life. In the beginning of this journey, I was like who is this woman that I’m trusting all of my personal business with, and what is she going to do with all of this information? And I mean that, we got very personal very fast, she had me crying by the second meeting. What I didn’t know that she would be one of my biggest cheerleaders in the end. What began as a “study” ended as a way to gain personal confidence and relevance in today’s society.
In the beginning of summer I was just your average young black teenage girl. I had little to no self-confidence, I didn’t quite make the connection to how I fit into everyday society besides just being a statistic, and even the few things I was passionate about, I had no idea what I could do about it. That’s where what we now know as woman up came into play. My eyes were instantly opened to things that were relevant to me. We talked about things like the societal issue with skintone, systemic sexism, and how you don’t need a man to run your life. Through these conversations I have noticed that I pay more attention to the things that we hear about in the media that I would’ve found irrelevant before. Things like black lives matter movements and how I am part of it because I’m black, but also how the media usually centers around black men and it usually doesn’t show coverage of the issues that black women have to face. Another example would be how if you look at the top music charts today lots of these songs can have a cool beat but no real meaning or they have sexually offensive words, but that’s what sells.
One of the other major takeaways I gained from this program is that it made me realise that I have a voice, a voice that I thought was unimportant before but is one of the main ways I can contribute to society now. No way in a million years would I have even considered coming before a crowd of this size before, but because I have learned that my voice matters it has become that much easier. Being able to sit with the other girls from Belleville and be able to share the knowledge that I have gained has just been confirmation that this program is a great way teach young girls life lessons and skills that you can’t learn anywhere else, at least not like this. I just wanted to take a moment to thank Dr. Haniff, Harleen, and all of the UofM students because you all have been a true influence in my life in more ways than you could imagine."
