Black Women’s Mythology Revisited or “Loving my Inner Conwoman”

I recently had one of those days when you realize that actually, your life is one big lie. It becomes clear as the crystal in houses with lots of maids and butlers ( who else, but those in such houses can afford crystal of any quality worth speaking of, and who but the servants would otherwise bring the crystal to its state of clarity?) or--do not despair, ye proles!-- very good dishwashing liquid, that you have been lying to everyone just by your existence and your corporeal self. For example, everyone has always thought me slender, indeed THIN, but as a result of having a superb tailor at home and excellent shopping skills abroad, these beguiled people do not see the bulges and overflows that would otherwise appear in inappropriate places on my person. [Digression, Anon, do you see what I mean about my sub-clauses and dependent phrases? Totally without discipline, modesty or prudence, let alone shame. To continue:] You are, in fact, a fraud in-itself and for-itself. You embody scam, scams, scamicity, scamaciousness and all other manner of iniquitous deceit and deviousness. Your so-called competence at work is a joke, every single compliment ever to come your way was based on pity, and, naturally, any awards or prizes or publications were achieved entirely by accident aggravated by the fact that the people in charge had you mixed up with a total stranger with a similar name. It follows, therefore, that you’ve been lying to your friends your whole life too, or why would they ever have bothered to befriend you, instead of disdaining you like the pond scum you are? Bottom dweller, begone!

By some inadvertent miracle, you have managed to keep the truth of your absolutely worthless, pointless, zygote-that-should-never-have-been true self from your nearest and dearest, who have, poor things, bought into your cleverly Copperfield-conjured and flattering illusion of yourself. (You do i’ wiv mirrors.)

Today,however (ominous organ music, please) Your Nemesis Cometh! Today is the day when you are going to be busted. This is the day that the awards committee will decide they want their fifty-thousand dollar grant back because your project is rubbish; your department will realize that they mistakenly sent their rather splendid offer of employment to you instead of to that really cool applicant from Santa Cruz; colleagues who had formerly admired, encouraged and indeed, supported your ambitions line up to go on national television to declaim that they believe themselves to have been under hypnosis at the time; your students, in a Damascan moment of their own, shall have, yea, the very scales drop from their eyes and at last comprehend the stark fact that you know nothing about your subject, or about anything else, whilst we’re at it. Plus, all your least favourite, most obnoxious and maximumly/maximisedly horrid relatives come to visit, and insist on telling everyone of their connection to you, whilst also explaining how similar and close you have always been. There you will be, with your picture-of-Dorian-Gray-ish soul buck nekked and exposed, with all its deformities and warps in full public view. These things of course, ultimately don't actually happen, but expecting them to makes the situation quite horrifying enough. Those of you with active imaginations, beware. The more creative you are, the more alarming the scenarios you can envision.

In my less drama-queen moments, I know quite well there are many reasons to have those sorts of days, and really, I am lucky that I do not have them very often. To make up for the lack of frequency, however, I seem to amplify mine to infinite intensities. Perhaps that is why I take note when I DO have them, trying to figure out what brought them on. I am not bi-polar myself,(sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, honestly) but it is true, however, that having this rather unlovely day did make me empathise deeply with those who are afflicted thus, so perhaps it was not all for naught. My moral fibre must have received quite a booster shot there. Usually I can track the spoor of my melt-downs to specific periods of unusual stress, or specific events, or something that my mind had hidden from me but was worrying away at by itself (it is well known that my brain is in the pay of my enemies, the bastards!) or just a particularly unfortunate and unexpected matrix of the contexts and events and decisions that produce my daily life.

On the other hand, I have decided that there is a general sort of enabling condition that makes these days possible, especially if you are black, a woman, and in fairly competitive or challenging circumstances. What is this necessary if not sufficient condition? Why, THE MYTH OF THE STRONG BLACK WOMAN, of course. It is so simple and so clear that it is somewhat amazing that we are still bamboozled. You see, we (“we”being the black women who are the “johns” of this particular scam) think that being an SBW is something to which one should aspire; we feel complimented when we are included in the category of others similarly valorized; and we blame ourselves for any indication that we are falling below the standards of the SBW. Is this not the most delicious trick ever played on anyone? On some levels, it is so beautifully clever that it leaves those Anglo Leasing schemers in the kindergarten class of con-artists to which they rightly belong. It is said that the greatest feat that Lucifer, Son of Morning, the Fallen One, etc., ever achieved, was convincing people that he did not exist. Well, SBW have been inflicted and infected with the reverse syndrome. The greatest achievement the rest of the world ever achieved was convincing black women that SBW existed, and that our job was to grow up into one such, subsequently to be one in the most exemplary fashion possible, and faithfully to remain one without pause or rest until the grim reaper relieved us of the burdens of our mortality.

It is really terrifyingly, astonishingly and ineffably well-crafted, this myth. Insofar as, so long as we are kept either desiring, or believing ourselves actually to be, Strong Black Women, there is no amount of pure nonsense, abuse, overwork, ingratitude, exploitation, underappreciation, and just plain shit that we will not put up with. You see, SBW, of course, can make ten dollars stretch into meals for a week, clothes for everyone, payment of bills, and school fees, etc.,— this is just a well known and, indeed, required characteristic of SBW. SBW are, by nature, ready, nay, eager to work five jobs at a time so as to feed and clothe their nearest and dearest without expecting, and more properly, absolutely rejecting any help. One has, after all, one’s pride as a Strong Black Woman. SBW are also expected to give command performances as free, endlessly sympathetic and reliable therapists, counselors, substitute mothers, and wise women, who willingly provide free emotional and mental labour to everyone else.

You have a problem? Go and cry on an SBW shoulder, which is guaranteed (why else are they SBW?) to be there, to provide cleenex, food and appropriate ego validation and finally, to manage to complete the four hours worth of work interrupted and delayed by your tales of woe. This function of the SBW is usually taken advantage of by non-SBW without so much as a “by your leave”, much less an offer to return at a more convenient time. This is because of course, your (non-SBW) problems are real and agonizing, your world has been shattered by recurrent crisis #57, and you know that the SBW will understand, even if she has never had such a crisis herself. SBW, nota bene, cannot themselves complain, may not have moments of self-doubt, and never need a sympathetic ear as a balm to their problems, which a) they rarely seem to have and b)they are anyway self-evidently capable of dealing with on their own in the expected silent fortitude of their kind. SBW, it is understood, do not suffer emotionally as much as the other, more fragile and helpless non-SBW population: because they ARE strong, and thus, better able to endure. This is like having a bullet-proof vest when the shooting starts: the unprotected get to scream and wail and run for cover whilst the SBW who are already armoured and thus have no fear, should promptly assume their assigned rescue service, feeding service, administrative, and problem-solving roles. Whence, in addition to everything else, comes the ugly fact that SBW are granted less time for grieving, assumed to have less sense of loss and suffering and required to have a faster recovery time from trauma than everybody else, so that they can go and take care of the anguish and malaise of others. Well, naturally. It is an SBW thing: you wouldn't understand and are very careful not even to try.

Think about it. How do we think of Micere Mugo (or insert favourite female role model here?) Do you know how much CRAP that woman has had to go through? Do we ever ask ourselves what sort of toll it took on her, what scars were left, whether she ever needed to lock herself in the bathroom and weep, if she ever thought of giving up and why she didn't, what demons plagued her at night whilst the world slept, what private spaces of knowing pain and knowing suffering her poetry comes from, whether she ever lost her faith and her certainty in the cause, and if, indeed, by now she is not so tired by all those years of giving, giving and giving--to us, I am reminded to add--that if we had any decency we would stop taking from her? It is not that we have been to the well one too many times, rather it is that we seem to think that the well itself will continue to be there even if we dismantle its walls and supporting platforms in a sort of Platonic "the perfection of the form of the well" fantastical complacency.

Many of us who have or have had the kind of mothers or aunts or honorary aunts whom we admire and who make us proud and to whom we owe, well, um, that would be-- everything?— should know what I mean. Whilst acknowledging all their sacrifices, their struggles overcome and their achievements, have you ever thought that they accomplished then not BECAUSE of some spurious “extra” strength but despite the weaknesses common to us all? I’ve thought of my own mother, whom I have idolized my whole life, because she did just amazing things. She was the first this and the first that. She was the only African woman ever to do x. She left a lasting legacy through her work in y. She also managed to bring me up, protect and shelter me, and mould me into a competent human being…but what about her life? How often do I ask myself if she was ever frightened, insecure, confused, lost? How often do I ask if she ever yearned for opportunities lost, regretted decisions made, missed absent friends? The answer to that would be “once.” Today. Because before today, she was just absolutely perfect and pristine. Before today I would have reacted to such a suggestion of human failings and fears in MY mother with snorting and indignant incredulity—except I realized how wrong that would be. Pedestals do not really give one much room to move or to be.

The problem with the myth of the SBW is this. It falsely supposes that SBW have powers, skills and capacities beyond those of ordinary mortals (sort of like super heroes) so that their achievements are a)not as difficult to attain as they would be for others and b)somehow inhere in the very quality of SBW-ness, itself. When you look at this logic for long enough, it becomes pretty obvious that we don’t need to thank SBW or even to congratulate them. After all, they have only achieved what their innate SBW-ness allows, nay, compels them to achieve. Where is the agency of these women here? How do we honour them by making their achievements banal by not contextualizing them in human frailty? If Superman leaps over a tall building at a single bound, well, yawn, stretch and change the channel. If I were ever to leap over a tall building at a single bound, I WOULD EXPECT SOME SERIOUS ATTENTION, ASTONISHMENT, ADORATION and for everyone to realize that having done all this leaping about, I would fairly obviously need a good long rest. Conversely, I most certainly would NOT appreciate having immediately presented to me another building, over which I am also expected to leap without question or hesitation.

Well, that is it for me. SBW are permanently OFF the list of things that I want to be when I grow up. I am going to treasure and revel in and treat tenderly all my weaknesses and mistakes and failures—all of which I have in amazingly copious quantities--because they make my achievements that much more precious to me.

Let the Age of the Weak Black Women begin!!!