Be a Flame that Ignites the Fire
This past week I was fortunate enough to be graced by the presence of the one and only, Krystal DaMuse. Krystal is the textbook definition of a Renaissance Woman. Her positively infectious personality has allowed her to advance into the world of event planning, producing, and hosting. Before breaking into her entrepreneurial role, she worked a 9 to 5 job in the fortune 500 arena. Her experiences in corporate America taught her to be business savvy, giving her the confidence to step away and pursue her aspirations.
First and foremost, Krystal is a speaker, but she is also a doer. She has worked on a plethora of projects, such as selling her own merchandise at The Black Flea Market in Raleigh, NC, and hosting open mic nights showcasing premier poetry at City Soul CafĂ©. The Black Flea Market is a bi-weekly pop-up market featuring an array of local Black entrepreneurs and their products, live music, and home-cooked food. The market’s mission is to keep “circulating the Black dollar and promoting generational wealth.”
Late last year, a group of Black women embraced the vision of the Black Flea Market and took it one step further. They opened The Black Friday Market, a brick and mortar business located in Downtown Raleigh offering retail space for Black business owners to sell their products in-store and online commission-free. This space provides a platform for entrepreneurs from the local Black and Brown community while offering a daily shopping experience for customers that makes “everyday a Black Friday.”
“We are our most successful selves with one another. The Black Flea Market, the Black Friday Market, and City Soul CafĂ© offer a space where our foundation of ‘it takes a village’ and ‘we are better together’ is realized,” Krystal remarks. In this age of independence and the “do it yourself” mentality, these settings allow the Black community to share their passions, products, and poetry with people from all walks of life. These welcoming environments amplify Black voices and reinforce a sense of unity and comradery across cultural groups. Krystal said, “We want other people that do not look like us, that don’t go to the places we go, to come into these spaces so they can see that the differences that separate us from them are irrelevant in a context of mutual love and genuine concern.”
Social media is a powerful tool with endless reach. In the past year alone, it has captured the attention of millions and ushered in an important conversation about the widespread prevalence of systemic and institutionalized racism. In doing so, more people have become exposed to and educated about the harsh reality of being a Black or Brown individual in America. Yet social media can only do so much, for it can quickly devolve into performative activism done for ones’ own benefit. When individuals and corporations condemn police brutality and racial injustice behind a screen but fail to actively work towards anti-racism, their allyship is self-serving and inadequate. We are in a time and space where social media has the potential to raise awareness, but we must consciously break down the barriers “for awareness to transcend into action, because when you can stand and watch, you too are complicit,” Krystal notes.
Regardless of intent, “we have a certain circumference or perimeter that we don’t go out of,” Krystal remarks. Each day we go about our lives and exist within the comfort of our own bubble. When we venture into a space foreign to us, our implicit biases influence our reactions and perceptions, no matter how open-minded we may be. But with the help of cultural brokers, or individuals that invite people into unfamiliar spaces, the cultural exchange and convergence of identities can be mutually beneficial. “We need more allies to say ‘come in this space with me,’ because white people have always been welcome, but we need to facilitate these interactions,” says Krystal. As Krystal puts it, these infiltrators and cultural ambassadors need to “be on fire, because if you have duds then it means nothing, goes nowhere, and no progress is made.”
Progressive change does not happen overnight, it truly is a marathon, but individual actions culminate in monumental reactions. Krystal left me with this quote: “You are the impact. We always want to downplay our individual roles, and we want to believe that everyone else has the power to make something grow, move forward, or progress, but that is not true. We are the impact, and if we don’t do what needs to be done, no one else is going to do it.”
We must continue to care beyond ourselves, about those beyond our perimeter, and to tap into our empathy. Krystal reveals, “we often have people interested [in our culture], but not on fire for our cause, so the potential for art and culture experiences to help our society evolve starts and stops right there.” If you wish to support the Black community, visit Black-owned businesses, dedicate your time and energy to anti-racist work, and spread the word about the experience. Furthermore, be sure to actively seek and engage with cultural brokers like Krystal that energize their passion for social justice and entrepreneurial spirit to erode socio-cultural boundaries for the betterment of all.
The good news is that Krystal and several other local change champions collaborate with P1t to offer meaningful and fun experiences where we can enjoy ourselves, grow as human beings, and support underserved microentrepreneurs and businesses. On Saturday, February 27th, Krystal is going to offer a virtual immersion into Raleigh’s multicultural art community. She titles it “The Soul of the City.” Due to the Covid19 pandemic, this experience will be streamed live through Facebook for free. If you are intrigued with the soul of Raleigh’s Black and Brown community, we encourage you to join this event. Krystal’s invite is for everyone to “join me virtually on Feb 27th, so that you can visit in person really soon.”
Written
by: Izzy Norman, B.S. Political Science student at UNC Chapel Hill
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