For the past hundreds of years, black women have been given compliments about how “strong” they are and how they can easily combat any difficulty and how we can easily solve problems with no doubt. It’s like a mask we’ve been trained to put on and wear for the rest of our lives, however, this is simply unrealistic and unfair and damaging to our mental health and wellbeing. This needs to come to an end.
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Calling us strong, enforces the idea that we manage to be okay despite living through the immense amounts of trauma we have had to experience due to the color of our skin. It is time to recognize that not all of us are okay and are not in a good headspace because for many of us we experienced racial prejudice ever since we were young girls up until our adult life. Being told that we are strong essentially dehumanizes us, it results in black women feeling worse when we do feel normal human emotions and it makes others feel guilty about ignoring our pain and sadness or right to feel upset.
Historically
Some historical texts regard black women as individuals with a “supernatural ability” to bare pain. By creating the false narrative that black women are meant to bear more pain, consequently dehumanizing us over time.
One important thing society needs to realize is that a black woman has thoughts and feelings just like every other race of women. For the last hundreds of years, we have been depicted as people without any feelings and ambitions, we have had to learn how to live in such a world that fosters so much hatred and we have had to learn how to get through it and how to succeed. Therefore, society has seen us doing so and has deemed us as “strong”, but this “strongness” doesn’t come from a place of glory, but instead, hardship and struggle, which does not make being strong a compliment.
The Superwoman Schema
Psychiatric Nurse Cheryl L. Giscombe studied psychological stress and health of black women, and here are the five elements of which she found:
- Feeling obligated to present an image of strength.
- Feeling obligated to suppress emotions.
- Resistance to being vulnerable.
- An intense drive to succeed despite limited resources.
- Feeling obligated to help others sacrifice.
Now after looking at these five elements, we can all agree that being strong comes at a price at the expense of our mental health. This leads to us feeling as if we cannot take time to reflect on the experiences we’ve had because we are black, causing us to continue without any time to heal, leaving an open wound that never heals. Why is it that we have had to suffer like this? and bear the pain of colorism, racism and texturism, forcing ourselves to believe the only way of getting through it is to be “strong”. This whole concept has lead to society having the inability to sympathize with us and gaslight our experiences. This brings me to why labeling a black woman as “strong” is not a compliment because of how it stems from the hardship our community has had to face throughout history.
Things To Say Instead
- You don’t have to suffer in silence. We will make a change.
- Let it out, you’re safe, you do not have to be perfect.
- What you have been through is painful and damaging, the way you feel is normal and valid.
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Previously published on “Equality Includes You”, a Medium publication.
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Photo credit: Jessica Felicio on Unsplash