…now that I’m an Angry Black Woman

at least i'm still here

Even though most of my encounters involve well-meaning or, at the very least, decent people, it’s extremely difficult to not process these experiences through the lens of trauma. Consequently, my vision is shaded by red, rage-hot, rageful.

How could it not be?

I am angry. I am angry all of the time.

And I worry for myself and my health, because I’m not just angry as a woman. I’m angry as a Black woman in America, a demographic that is disproportionately affected by autoimmune diseases, according to the Society for Women’s Health Research. Black women face unimaginable social stressors and economic disparities only to be gaslit into thinking that we’ll push through due to our unwavering strength.

If rage is a silent killer, then the Strong Black Women brigade succeed as backup, an accomplice in murder as they hand off the gun.

Anyone who dismisses someone’s struggles with platitudes about resilience and bravery is an opp.

If my critiques do not apply, let them fly.

Otherwise, take a deep breath.

Sit with me and the discomfort of my sorrow for a moment, because it’s not that my misery loves company but rather it demands acknowledgement.

I demand acknowledgment and a right to experience the full range of human emotions, equally as deserving as everyone else. I reject the attempts to silence me and mine.

I am not strong. I am exhausted and frustrated. I refuse to pretend that I’m not, just because Black female suffering forces you to reckon with the ways in which you fail to be a productive member of society.

Every four years, after the U.S. presidential election, chronically-online liberal Americans love to either a) boast about the importance of listening to Black women or b) express grief over people refusing to listen to Black women.

For a little razzle-dazzle, they might throw in a picture of Malcolm X with his famous quote about my beloved community: “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman."

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Everyone loves to post Brother Malcolm’s words while lacking the self-awareness to realize that they act as the weapons fashioned against us, in all areas of life. I don’t care to focus on the election nor the desire to reap benefits from the imperial core. Because if you’re only awake once every four years, you don’t give a damn about me or Black women or any marginalized group anywhere, for that matter.

Where is your voice when it comes to the rising Black maternal mortality rates in the U.S.? The pet-to-threat phenomenon in the workplace that irrevocably affects our ability to thrive, let alone survive, our career trajectories?

Do you speak up for Black women and girls? Or do you just see us as mules for emotional labor, to provide support or clarity, as you struggle to grapple with the anti-blackness ingrained in the spirits of your fellow, nonblack loved ones?

Anti-blackness ties directly into capitalism, the main contributor as to why the world is literally on fire, so do you care about us now? Or are Black women just soulless vessels to you, a necessary justification as you deplete us of our resources, our lingo, style, and essence?

Imitation will never flatter me.

Neither will false promises of change and support from those who refuse to face themselves.

People love to promote healing and prayer without addressing the elephant in the room — the inherently sick world that we live in — because apparently delusion breeds hope whereas the truth acts as a gateway to nihilism.

So maybe that’s why people hate Black women, because we hold up a mirror.

Maybe that’s why I’m so angry.

I wonder if it was always meant to be this way. Perhaps it was fated.

I grew up watching TV characters like Pam from Martin and Dijonay in The Proud Family, and I quickly clocked the ways in which people weaponized the stereotype of the angry Black women (and girls) against them. They were often treated as less than for not being as dainty and approachable as their counterparts (it isn’t lost on me that their friends are light-skinned).

Since children are impressionable, I’m neither surprised nor horrified by the fact that I shaped my personality around avoiding a perfectly natural emotion. I watched the dismissal of women who looked like me – both on AND off the screen – for exhibiting rage while people lauded other races of women for their spiciness, reinforcing a different, yet still harmful, stereotype (Sofia Vergara’s role as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett in Modern Family comes to mind).

For so long, I tried to fight my emotions, because I saw the ways in which people treat angry Black women as laughing stock. Or worse, they use our rage as an excuse to dehumanize us.

I didn’t want to be that, so I became the best people pleaser.

A monument to agreeability, I’d go along with whatever people wanted, until suddenly I woke up one day and reckoned with my dissatisfaction. I navigated life as a shell of myself, so hollow that of course I craved the echoes of other people’s opinions and guidance.

Anything suffices as a filling source, when you’re empty.

Whether it was family, friends, or strangers, I allowed myself to be trapped in a prison of my own making, suffocated by a lack of self-assurance. Thankfully those days are over.

I guide my light. In doing so, I send love to myself and to every other Black woman who feels robbed of a better world, even though we always knew it was possible.

Weeks ago, when Nikki Giovanni passed, people circulated a video of her that remains imprinted in my brain. At the Chicago Humanities Festival’s 2019 Year of Power, Nikki Giovanni did what she always did best: speak life into Black women and our dreams by emphasizing our greatness. She connected our intrinsically expansive ways of being to a world outside of ourselves, focusing on life beyond Earth:

The only people that can go into space are Black women, because we’re the only people that have gotten along with every damn thing. That’s the truth. Think about it. And then they dragged us over here, we get sold by our African ancestors, we get purchased by our European ancestors, we get purchased again by our American ancestors. And we have babies. We have whatever it is they give us. And we name them. And we love them. So, you know, when we get to Mars and there’s some Martian up there, they gonna do the same thing. We gonna find ourselves pregnant with some little Martian. We’re gonna rub its little head and tell the baby you all right, you’re gonna be alright. You gonna be alright. And that’s what Black women do. We try to teach it to the world. The world ain’t listening. But that’s what we’ve been trying to teach. It’s a wonderful thing to be a Black woman. I’m gonna recommend it.

I agree wholeheartedly and I’m forever touched by Giovanni’s words.

It is beautiful to be a Black woman. We’re not monolithic, but many of us are often right. And yet, no chorus of “I told you so” assuages the devastation that corrodes the hearts of those who anticipated the reign of terror before its arrival.

Still, as rage and sadness seemingly consume me, as I fight to prevent resentment from whittling me down into a bitter hag, I try to remember to zoom out and focus on the big picture.

Black women — angry or not — will always breathe life into our surroundings, in this timeline and the next.

“I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. If I speak to you in anger, at least I have spoken to you: I have not put a gun to your head and shot you down in the street; I have not looked at your bleeding sister’s body and asked, ‘What did she do to deserve it?’” – Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”