Big Brother American Season 23: The Azah Defense (Contains Spoilers)

So. As I’ve already told y’all, I’m a Tiffany stan. But thanks to the wise words of a brilliant Black woman (@albcanada on Twitter), I’m now an Azah stan too.

At first, I thought what everyone thought, what some people still think: that Azah wasn’t doing much other than talking to people, laying in the bed, cooking and reading the Bible.

But as Diamantè reminded me, at its heart, Big Brother is a social game. Azah wasn’t just talking, she was building bonds and relationships with people that in their eyes made her someone they could trust. And in Big Brother, that’s hard to come by.

Azah also did something I’ve never seen anyone do: she told one of the biggest competitive threats in the game, if not the biggest, Christian, he was her target…while he was HOH…and she didn’t get nominated for eviction. Not only was she not nominated, Christian never even considered nominating her and the next week, he told someone he trusted Azah more than other people because she was honest. ICONIC.

Honesty became Azah’s currency in the house. To my knowledge, she’s kept every deal she’s made and never saw the block until Final Four and even then, Xavier mostly nominated her to take away from her that she’d never been nominated.

To people who think Big Brother is all about competitions, they may look down on Azah because she didn’t win one until Final Five. But guess what? When she did win Head of Household, her target went home, which is one of an HoH’s goals.

Now, of course I can’t talk about the negative, hateful and racist things said about Azah without talking about colorism. I usually don’t like to teach about such topics but for those of you that don’t know, according to the Oxford Dictionary, colorism is “prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.” Now, I’d like to add because colorism is the grandchild of racism and white supremacy, dark-skinned people of color are often treated worse than light-skinned people of color by people outside of their ethnic/racial group as well.

Azah has been called a dog, anti-woman, had her culture discussed by people who have ZERO idea what they’re…