'Just keep being you': Angel Reese's words ring true for Black women who have heard all the criticisms before

Her edges almost certainly still firmly laid under her new "CHAMPS" hat, her wavy weave falling over her shoulders like a shawl, her crown on the table in front of her, in just a few sentences Sunday night, LSU's Angel Reese spoke for so many of us.

So many Black women knew exactly what she meant after she and the Tigers won their school's first women's — or men's — basketball national championship about the box we're expected to inhabit — not too loud, not too proud, not too accomplished. Lessons some of the aunties among us had to learn as adults trying to navigate life, through years in office environments, press boxes or hospitals, but ones Reese has figured out at just 20 years old.