Strong Black Woman

Does the archetype Strong Black Woman a help or a hindrance?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, Angie Clemens. I am your host of the Can I Borrow Your Skin podcast? And we are here in July. I cannot believe we are already in July. This is a topic that I wanted to cover in June for uh just male mental health because this is something that is very uh ties into male mental health very succinctly. But because I did the interview on the Survivor of Rape Academy, that kind of pushed me a little bit. So we're gonna jump into it. It is the idea of the strong black woman, and the reason why this ties so much into male mental health, it is because most men will tell you that they were raised by a strong woman. And most black men will tell you they were raised by strong black women, and it is this idea that as a strong black woman, as a black woman, you are strong, and everything is strong black woman this, strong black woman that, strong black woman, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And to a certain extent, as a black woman, I absolutely play up that idea, and for a lot of people, they don't realize that the strong black woman, that whole ideology came from antebellum and slavery and the Jim Crow South, because it was the mammy. Black women were bred and designed to raise the children of the master, and that's what they did. And wet nursing actually came out of uh slavery times where the black woman, the black slave who was pregnant and breastfeeding her own children would also breastfeed the children of the master. And in some cases, both of the children were the master's children, but obviously he did not claim the Mulata child. And the sequel to my book, Can I Borrow Your Skin? Uh, it's called Permission Granted, is about the idea that you can finally put down the weight because there is so much strength in a black woman, but there's also a lot of stress that comes along with being the strong black woman. You suffer through your own pain while helping others, you hold everyone else up while you yourself are shrinking. And we have unfortunately taken on this moniker where we will make sure everyone else is straight before we then focus on ourselves and we will pour out our cup and give to everyone else and constantly and constantly, constantly pour out, pour out, pour out, pour out when there's no one or even us ourselves are not refilling our own cup, and so we run into this idea that we are empty before it's time for us to do things for ourselves, and it's not even an idea, like we are empty before it's time to give to ourselves, and I myself fall into the the category of the black auntie, and what the black auntie is is first of all, I'm an aunt. I I think that I'm on a great I'm a great aunt and I'm here for my nibblings in so many ways, and not just the nibblings that are mine through genetics, but the niblings that are mine through love. And every all my niblings know that they can call me, text me, and I'm there. But my black auntiness extends beyond family and friends. Like, I'm the black auntie at my job. Like, I don't work in human resources, I've never worked in human resources, I don't have that skill set to a certain degree. However, when there's a problem, regardless of who the problem is with, people come to me and I help. I will solve those problems. And that is that narrative of the black auntie. People will lean on their aunt until that aunt cracks. She won't break, but she will crack and she won't tell them, uh, it's too much on me. I'm I'm I'm I'm cracking. Give me a minute. You you dust yourself off, you wipe away those tears, you put some duct tape on that crack, and you say, Okay, what do you need next? And I am trying to get myself into this mindset, and I'm sure there's a lot of other black aunties out there that need to put themselves in this mindset of is this really my job? Is this really for me to give? Because I will give and give and give of myself, even to people that don't deserve what I am giving. Like they don't deserve me at all, they don't deserve my resources, they don't deserve my love, they don't deserve me, and I know that, and that you know, that's not just co-workers, that's friends, that's family, that's a friend of a friend, a family of a friend. I will give. And I know that I'm a giver, and I need to stop being a giver because what happens to givers is we tend to find takers, and takers will just take from us, and they will do the things that is unnecessary, and they will deplete all of our resources, and I need to, for myself, not continue to give, and part of it is this idea that sometimes I want to slay and look effortless when I am doing these things and I am giving of myself, and I want to, you know, be this independent person. I, you know, I'm resilient, I uh and I make these sacrifices for people. But when you continually do that, you put yourself in this role, well, people start to expect that. And I don't want to be the person where people are continually expecting me to give. Because I can't always give. And it took, uh, and it is taking me years and years and years to get to that place. But one of the parts that's very hard, you know, when you're the strong black woman or you're the competent auntie that will give to everybody, is uh you need permission to put down that load, right? You need permission to show some pain, you need permission to show some sort of weakness, you need permission to not be superwoman, you need permission to be yourself and to not have to continually give of yourself, you need this permission, and you don't want to have to put yourself in this place and in this role where you're constantly having to give. It's nice to be dependent upon, it's nice that people know that you are dependable, but you are not a super person, you are not always strong. It is okay to have this weakness, it's okay to have this pain, it is okay to not be okay, and that is good, and so you need to be okay with it too. And there's a lot of time and a lot of things that for us as black women, as women who embody the idea that all black women are strong and we're strong black women, that we don't give ourselves that permission. And that's one of the reasons why, and you know, spoiler alert, if you read, if you have not yet read Can I Borrow Your Skin, the main character Nicolette gives so much of herself that she loses herself. And in the follow-up novel, which I named Permission Granted, and I named it Permission Granted because I wanted Nicolette to get to a point where she gave herself permission to take off the moniker of strong black woman, set it down, and start living life for herself. Now, I am not actually finished writing the book, so I'm gonna give you guys that knowledge now. But that is the goal of this book, is to allow Nicolette to be like, you know what? Yes, I am a strong black woman, yes, I am dependable, yes, I am an independent person who can manage and survive on her own. But yes, I experience pain. Yes, I have weakness, no, I am not superwoman. No, I am not perfect, and yes, I am okay with that, and I think that that is something that uh black women should become okay with and black men. Black women are not where you need to go all the time to get fixed or to help solve a problem for you, not with you, for you. And we need to be okay with that as a as a culture, as a society. Black women are powerful, they're beautiful. We will do a lot of things and we will give and give and give, but we should not have to give our all. We should not always have to be strong, and that should also be okay. So, whether you are a strong black woman, a strong white woman, a strong Hispanic woman, a piece of bacon, whatever, jump down in these comments. Let's have some discussions about the idea and where it came from, where it should go. Because I know that as a culture, to overcome the stereotype of mammy and super women, black women are like, oh, you you want me to be mammy? I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna show you what a strong black woman looks like. Let me put on my crown, I'm gonna dust off my shoulders, I'm gonna adjust, I'm gonna sit with my back straight and tall, and I'm gonna show you what I look like. But we went too far because, in order to regain ourselves, in order to humanize ourselves, we took away from the idea that we're strong all the time, that was put out in the media, and we took it to our society and we were like, yeah, we run this, we're amazing, we're great. But in so doing, we also took away our ability to be able to show weakness and pain. So let's take that back, ladies. Thank you. Bye. Like, subscribe, comment.