The African American Woman's Burden

The African American Woman’s Burden

 Old Mr._______ talkin’ trash ‘bout Shug…folks don’t like people being too free.-Celie, from “The Color Purple”

Being in the Divinity School has made me think about my gender more than I have in a very long time because it is mentioned so frequently. We are reminded of gender inclusion and gender neutrality rather consistently but as a Black woman, gender has a different connotation.   Growing up, gender was a constant issue for me because it seemed to be an albatross around my neck.  Everything I wanted to do like climb trees, ride around the neighborhood on my bike, shoot cap guns, and jump off the roof of my grandmother’s house was always prohibited because I was a girl.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing with dolls and dressing up in my mother’s and grandmother’s clothes and shoes, sneaking in their makeup collections, and playing with nail polishes as well, but I always felt that the things I did want to do should be dictated by what I felt like doing, that which I felt would be liberating, not my gender.  I just wanted to BE and DO without any restrictions, much like my boy cousins, but my adventures were usually relegated to the porch and front yard because it was not considered proper for a young lady to be running around with a lot of boys.

  One of the first lessons I learned when I reached puberty was that there was a separate set of rules for Black women than there was for white women. White women seemed to fight for the desire to have an individualized identity outside that of being wife or mother, but Black women fought to be acknowledged at all.  I distinctly remember being told, “Black women don’t have the luxury to do what they want to do, they do what they have to do”, many times just to stay alive.  From close observation of my mother and grandmother, I learned that being an African American woman came with an unspoken amount of responsibility to their families, employers, society and the community in which they live. Much like the African American women Canon addressed in Black Womanist Ethics, this often resulted in them putting themselves last, void of affirmation, self-care and self- love.  Because of hundreds of years of exploitation, abuse, and the silencing of Black women’s voices, it is important that African American women love and affirm themselves uncompromisingly as a manner of justice for themselves that they have been denied far too long.

For as long as I can remember, storytelling has been a part of my heritage.  My grandmother told me stories about growing up in the south, being Black in the south, a woman in the south, and about losing her mother at a very young age-an event that would change the course of her life forever.  When her mother died, she was forced to quit school to take car of her father and her siblings.  Although her mother’s dying wish has been that her children, specifically her girls get an education, my great grandfather did not honor this request because educating women was not valued.  I believe one of the greatest misfortunes in life is for a Black woman to grow up without a mother because when there is no one else in the world or even in one’s household to valid them and love them, a mother will be there to do it, passing on what ever knowledge and lessons she learned in life that will help being a woman of color just a little easier. So those stories that were passed seemed to be the canons that governed generations of my family because there was no formal education, but those stories were full of wisdom and love.

One of the first stories my grandmother told me was the story about the death of her mother.  It was something that always had a profound affect on her.   In 1936, her mother died because of the negligence of her white physician who gave her the wrong shot.  My grandmother remember rather vividly the agony her mother went through as her arm began to swell and turn blue as they waited for her to die.  Even more heartbreaking was the fact that nothing happened to the doctor because my great grandmother was Black. Years, later my mother and I found the death certificate online and it clearly indicates that the doctor was at fault, but I guess it goes back to the sentiment that America has had about African American women since slavery, black women were not counted and consider as human beings at all.[1]

The notion that the lives of Black women are the most unloved and devalued human being in society has been a hard pill to swallow.  As I read Dr. Cannon’s book, I realized not much has changed in the way in which society views us.  Even in 2013 we are viewed as overly sexual beings that crave sex inordinately.[2] This is seen in the portrayal of us in TV shows, music videos, and in various forms of media. If we are not overly sexualized we are ridiculed and made fun of in the forms of stereotypes like Madea, Big Momma, and Rasputia, who are portrayed by men, which also plays into the idea that we are either overtly sexualize or genderless.  We are constantly reduced to being defined by our bodies, and nothing else.  Even my great grandmother was reduced to just being a black body, nothing more than a body to be experimented and operated upon, for the purposes of ‘medical education’ and the interest of medical science.[3]

More heartbreaking is that when Black women do rise above the self-hatred they have been indoctrinated with in the form of systematic rape, being seen only as domestics or field hands,[4] and have the moxie to love themselves and understand unapologetically that every life is a reflection of the divinity, the world both Black and white seek to destroy her.

I really thought about this a lot after reading about Zora Neale Hurston and watching The Color Purple.  It wasn’t just white men and women who felt threatened by Hurston’s “free spirit” and self possession, it was Black men as well.  They sought to destroy what was the very essence of who she was:  her ability to tell her story and the story of other women just like her.  The same held true for Sofia in The Color Purple.  Sofia was bold, self-possessed, audacious, and above all she loved herself unapologetically, and because of this her husband sought to “knock” her into what he felt was a woman’s place, which was any position that was not equivalent to his, and because she dared to yield to the role of maid for the mayor’s wife Mrs. Millie, she consumed by a system much akin to slavery.  I also thought about this in terms of Shug Avery, whose behavior was seen so unbecoming to that of a woman’s, she was seen as being somewhat manly.

As I reflect on all that we’ve read, I keep coming back to the question:  who gets to determine how I get to define myself as a Black woman in this day and age and why?  Why must I be defined by others perceptions of who I am?  Even in the academy, I am a ghost who wanders down the halls who is as virtually invisible to my white counterparts as I am to some of my Black male counterparts who feel that ministry (although I don’t want to go into ministry) is “man business”. Or constantly trying to get those who have “othered” me to understand where I am coming from as an African American woman, so I won’t be labeled as an ABW-Angry Black Woman when I am reduced to being nothing more than my wild hair or tattoos as if those are the things that allowed me to be admitted to Vanderbilt.  Or the numerous times when I have been subjected to a bad joke about twerking or asked about twerking because I am assumed to be an expert.   What has been painfully clear is that there are millions of women, some in the Divinity School who go through the same thing I go through or worse, so why are we silent about it?  Why do we not look to seek refuge in each other more than we do, instead of bearing this burden invisibly through a myriad of emotional pain?  

I think that I too have bought into the myth of the strong Black woman and what that entails, but what I have learned is that in a sense it takes away our humanness, which is something we can’t afford to give away because we have so little left.  I have often thought about my role as an educator in an urban high school in Houston, TX where there weren’t many Black women in the classroom and there were so many faces that looked like mine who needed someone to restore, if not give them the dignity they never possessed and I fully understood that my role was not just to teach or get a check, my job was to uplift the black community.[5] 

Now that I am in the academy, I see that I too am looking to those who look like me to help me navigate my way through this process, which operates in the same manner that the world operates towards Black women. I think about people like Dr. Cannon who did not have a support system while she pursued her Masters and PhD.  It is a tedious process, and at times, I wonder if I will make it out sane.  I would like to do a study on Black women and the academy and the how it impacts their physical and mental health, and how they deal with other African American women who come behind them.

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[1] Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics  (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1988),31.

[2] Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics  (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1988),37.

[3] Hortense Spillers, Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 208.

[4] Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics  (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1988),46.

[5] Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics  (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1988),48.