Foreword: My poem and the words that follow are about my liberation from fear of this well-known stereotype. I hope it helps free other black women who have had similar experiences. I hope it helps those coming from a different perspective to explore how they’ve been socialized to interact with black women and make some positive changes. Please note I do not speak for all black women. I speak for myself and my lived experiences, though it will resonate with many.
The Angry Black Woman is an archetype created to demonize black women who dare express their anger. It was created to dismiss a black woman’s need for this powerful, God-given emotion and intended to keep her quiet, submissive and controlled. You may not have experienced firsthand the consequences of expressing your anger as a black woman, but you more than likely have been influenced by it.
At work, at school, on television, in social circles in churches, in schools, and in government there are examples of consequences being handed out to black women who try to hold white counterparts accountable to the rules, ideals and agreements of the spaces they are in. And it’s not just anger, actually, it’s any expression of disappointment, disagreement and discontentment that can have her labeled and excluded from the perceived benefits of just going along to get along. In many cases it only takes one sincere expression of anger and she is villainized, punished, ostracized, demoted, fired, evicted, imprisoned, and/or assassinated.
You can see it at play in caricatures and editorial illustrations of Michelle Obama. You can see it at play when our current president focuses on a black political adversary’s anger instead of intellectually debating the points she brought up. You can see it at play in the suspension of Jemele Hill from ESPN for expressing controversial views about the NFL. You can see it at play in the circumstances surrounding the arrest and hanging of Sandra Bland after she challenged the reasoning behind her traffic stop. You can also see it on your job, amongst your friend circles and communities if they are racially integrated spaces.
I hate to admit it, but this stereotype has been a most effective tool of oppression in my personal and professional life. I have spent a lifetime suppressing and brushing over this emotion, daintily skipping over the need for acknowledgements of wrongs and the correcting of behaviors from others, just so I can avoid being handled like our society has historically handled the Angry Black Woman. I allowed my fear to shape the highly calculated way in which I have presented myself in this society.
Schools, churches, my home, and the media taught me that if I “play nice” I could avoid negative outcomes and achieve success. I told myself as long as I suppressed my anger (and other emotions hinting at it) things would always work out. But after spending decades suppressing, retreating, diminishing myself and settling for environments that don’t want to experience the entirety of me, because they are obviously afraid of the entirety of me, I’ve realized this is not a winning strategy.
My studies of holistic medicine tell me that most physical illnesses can be linked to unresolved emotional, and spiritual turmoil. I believe it to be no coincidence that black women suffer higher rates of common underlying conditions such as hypertension and obesity as well as mental health issues like anxiety and depression. I see with clarity now, that the sacrifice of not showing up as our full selves in exchange for the unguaranteed successes and/or the false security of avoidance of threatening consequences is far too great.
So right now, in the midst of an international protest asserting the indisputable value of black lives, I am embracing the Angry Black Woman inside of me. I haven’t spent enough time with her. She has been silenced and locked away only to come out when no one except the ones I love the most are looking. So right now I am loving her as she has loved me, my entire life. She has patiently waited for me to have conversations on her behalf. So I will give her time. I will learn her significance. I will learn to let her express herself in the healthiest of ways, because that is what is healthy for me and I will model it for my daughters and other little black girls.
The people in my life will have to get used to her. She will be a part of their interactions with me at some point if we are having authentic human experiences together. I will be better for it and they will be better for it. Furthermore, I will no longer be talked out of the importance of fully expressing this emotion by scriptures. None of the ones I’ve encountered say keep anger inside, tuck it away, don’t process it, don’t express it, pretend it doesn’t exist. In fact it is modeled by Jesus, that sometimes we need to turn some tables.
What is unhealthy is to hold anger in. To let anger come up and out of us is to be free. So when I hear that we (black women in the middle of a health and social pandemic) are staying angry too long. It’s more like, many of us have years worth of unexpressed anger finally coming up and out of us. Our souls know we need to get it out, lest we perish. It’s a cleansing like no other to let this beautiful and necessary emotion come out of our bodies. Feeling and expressing our anger when we have been mistreated, threatened and abused is in fact one of the most natural of ways we are loving ourselves.
Some of us will write about our anger, some of us will vocalize it, some of us will protest it out, some of us will exercise it out, and some of us may turn some tables just like Jesus did. Like peeling an onion, we will be processing our anger with people, institutions, events and concepts in layers. Some of us will also process the anger we have with ourselves for conceding to this destructive programming and societal pattern as long as we have.
Know that it’s She is who we need to forgive swiftly. She is who we need to love like nobody’s business right now. She is where we need to apply the scriptures and universal truths first. I invite others to practice and study the scriptures on patience because black women have been more than patient with this dehumanizing stereotype and the pain it has caused. Likewise, allies should examine their belief systems and how they’ve been conditioned to not tolerate the full spectrum of emotions from black women.
In closing, I am confident that the Angry Black Woman in me will settle down when she is ready, when she feels heard, when she feels confident she has a seat at my emotional table, when she sees justice for her people, when she experiences freedom for herself and all that she has given birth to. I trust and know that she will.
