Quoted: Yes, Black Women Have a Right to Be Angry

By On May 18, 2011 · 14 Comments

When we embrace our curvy bodies, we’re told we’re fat. When we accept our thin frames, we’re accused of lazy or bad cooks. We’ve been charged with nursing and caring for  the children of our white employers from Antebellum times through today, but we’re constantly being portrayed as bad mothers. We put a weave in our  hair trying conform to a beauty standard that has nothing to do with us and we’re still called “nappy-headed hoes”. When we go to school, get degrees and a career, we’re “un-marry-able”. If we work and have kids early instead of going to school, same thing happens. When we or others decide to celebrate us, white women scream out “REVERSE RACISM” but we have to comb through 50-11 magazines with white women on every page to find ONE with a Black woman on the cover. We bare it all in a video or keep condoms in our nightstands and we’re called  sluts. We dedicate ourselves to The Church or are decidedly single and we’re prudes or “bitter”. All too often, we are forced to choose our race over our gender or risk feeling the wrath of our Brothers, despite having to live with the realities of both. From Saartjie Baartman aka “Venus Hottentot” to Satoshi Kanazawa’s “scientific” study claiming Black women being less physically attractive than EVERYBODY else, we’ve been studied like freaks of nature instead of just regarded as human beings with the same value as all others.

We’re pretty much damned if we do, damned if we don’t. So, the stereotype of “The Angry Black Woman” is rooted in a very visceral truth. We’re tired of this shyt. Stop telling us to stop getting upset. Stop telling us to not be mad despite having to deal with this crap  ALL THE TIME. Why are we supposed to put up with this reckless disregard for our humanity with a smile on our face? Because we’re women? Because we’re Black? Please, miss me with that bull. We are HUMAN first. This anger is righteous and all ignoring it and the causes of it will do is create a dyspeptic breeding ground for spiritual, psychological, social and physical dis-ease.

 

–Excerpted from “The Matriarchal Legacy of The Black Woman’s Anger”

Photo Credit: Lynette’s Two Cents

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  • kayjay

    Giving a mini standing O in my corner of the woods! 

  • Anonymous

     Amen!

  • http://liferequiresmorechocolate.blogspot.com/ sunt97

    I wish someone would approach me and say, “did you know that you were labeled as unattractive”?  They would lose their life.

    Peace, Love and Chocolate
    Tiffany 

  • Zedster

     *finger snaps*

    Ah, what a great way to start my day.

  • Jenaras mommy

    I really enjoyed this article. And for the record black women are some of the most beautiful women on earth in my opinion.

  • http://twitter.com/undrcoverhippie yoli bee ☆

    Lovely. 

    I haven’t been angry like this in a long while. I haven’t been angry like this since I was 18-years-old and leaving for college Smalltown, USA and just really starting to realize how much race matters. When I made blog entry after blog entry with my realizations–angry because I had nowhere to go in real life with these thoughts, angry because I felt isolated, angry because being black is never easy and I don’t understand why I am shit on so much just for being me. 

    Last night I asked my mother the questions that have been bugging me the most: WHY is OK to completely shit on the self-esteem of black women? WHY is there no one ever willingly to defend us openly and on a public stage? WHY are we the only women whose men make it OK for men of other races to stay these things about us? WHY do they give them  ammunition? What have we done that’s so horrible as to deserve this? My mother replied with, “we have to defend ourselves, defend each other” but at 20-years-old, I am already TIRED of having to defend myself and other black women. For once, just once, I’d like to see our honor defended by someone else on a grand stage. Sigh. Something so simple, and we will never get it. I’m tired. And angry. And still beautiful :)

  • badu

    Then there’s when you keep being told the energy you’ve found surviving all this is anger/hate against them. Yet when trying to surpress this, you’re weakened to the point of being bully fodder or unable to function above mediocrity.

    People resent your survival, yet wish to continue what makes it necessary. Damned if you do/don’t, indeed.

  • Logoskaieros

    Anger here is a sign that you haven’t given up on the idea that you are worth as much as any other person, and that your happiness matter.  

    Anger can also move you to action you wouldn’t normally take (like defending your self worth b/c you finally don’t care if people are going label you irrational or bitter or whatever.)

    I commend* the anger of black women who probably put up with more bullsh*t than I myself would be able to handle in a consistently healthy manner, and who stay the amazing, beautiful people they are.It is inspiring to see what people are capable of surviving when they live in a world at times bent on their marginalization, silence, and less-than status.  Of course, that inspiration is always tempered with sadness (and anger!!) of the knowledge that–as bad as I know the world can be through my experience of just one axis of oppression–it must be utterly overwhelming at times to experience that kind of hostility on multiple fronts of your life.  *Not like you need my approval to be justified, of course.

  • Jenni

    This is very true. I shared a link to the post “Picture This: Chromatic Comics Remixes Your Fandoms” on Facebook since many of my geeky friends also claim to be quite liberal/progressive. Several agreed with me about my arguments about our white privilege & that link is one of the things that helped with my argument. But others decided that they could no longer associate with me b/c I read from “Hate” sites such as Racialicious. Yep. They declared this place a Hate site b/c of a few people wondering what the world might be like if more of our mainstream fictional superheroes weren’t white. Well, I don’t miss them. And for whatever it’s worth, whenever I hear some one whine about an angry Black woman (or man, or angry Asian person, angry Latin@ person, etc), I’m going to keep saying, “Well, I think they have good reason to be angry.”

  • Anonymous

    This quote is hanging in my cubicle. On bright yellow paper.  

  • http://www.dirtyprettythangs.com PBG

    Make sure you link back to my blog if you do. Thanks.  

  • Aiyo

     this has been reblogged

  • blakdiamon

    “The most disrespected, unprotected, neglected person is the black woman.” -Malcolm X (Happy Birthday!)

  • Pingback: A New Take on The Angry Black Woman « Thinking Without Borders

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