Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of a Costly Performance

Introduction: A Half-Told Tale of Black Womanhood

Introduction A Half-Told Tale of Black Womanhood It is not that Black women have not been and are not strong; it is simply that this is only a part of our story, a dimension, just as the suffering is another dimension—one that has been most unnoticed and unattended to. —bell hooks, Talking Back T he defining quality of Black womanhood is strength. As a reference to tireless, deeply caring, and seemingly invulnerable women, the claim of strength forwards a compelling story of perseverance. Critical figures in this narrative include prominent social activists of the last two centuries, such as Sojourner Truth1 and Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks. Each is invoked and revered for embodying a courageous , unselfish commitment to the protection and enfranchisement of the dispossessed. As an account, however, the persuasiveness of strength is not limited to such historical exemplars. Also noted are family members and intimates. Although managing lives of hard, unremunerated, and often low-status work, such mothers and grandmothers have never—as the story goes— attenuated their feminine commitments to the men and children in their lives. Like women in more privileged and protected circumstances , they, too, have been responsible and respectable. This widely accepted tale of who Black women really are also 2 / Introduction draws us to the attitudes of friends, coworkers, and celebrities who carry themselves with determination and a convincing sense of being “phenomenal” (Angelou 2000) women regardless of their portrayal and treatment by others. In short, strength advances a virtuous claim about any Black woman whose efforts and emotional responses defy common beliefs about what is humanly possible amidst adversity. And herein lies the problem. Because the idea of strength appears to honestly reflect Black women’s extensive work and family demands, as well as their accomplishments under far from favorable social conditions, the concept seems to provide a simple and in fact honorable recognition of their lives. However, appearances are often deceiving, and much of the acclaim that the concept of strength provides for Black women is undermined by what I argue is its real function: to defend and maintain a stratified social order by obscuring Black women’s experiences of suffering, acts of desperation , and anger. As bell hooks (1989, 153) suggests in the epigraph, strength is a half-told tale. Within this incomplete narrative, “most unnoticed and unattended to” have been Black women’s human vulnerabilities . Swept under this cover story are what Black women experience disproportionately—disparagements and violations of their minds and bodies, foreclosed opportunities to experience full citizenship , and social responsibilities that fall to them as people of color, who are women, and too often also poor (see, for example, Duffy 2007; Richie 1995; Roberts 1997; Williams 2002). In a society woven from resilient threads of sexism, racism, and class exploitation , strong Black women occupy a particular discursive and material space. They are required to be, as Zora Neale Hurston (1937, 14) famously described, “de mule[s] uh de world.” Their speci fic function in the script of American social relations—distinct from the roles of other race–gender groups—has been to take on the burdens and complete the tasks that enable society as we know it to continue. A Half-Told Tale of Black Womanhood / 3 Strength is a “mystique” (Friedan [1963]1983). It derives from the American fascination with self-made personalities and a structurally transcendent, victorious individualism. Thus, strong Black women are important characters in a redemptive narrative or “sincere fiction” (Vera, Feagin, and Gordon 1995) of race, gender, and class relations. As “invented greats” (Irvin Painter 1996), strong Black women embody precisely those qualities that inspire a grossly simplified and thereby sentimental statement about American social reality. To assert the idea of strong Black women during slavery, segregation, or contemporary institutional racism and intra-racial sexism is to maintain a reassuring conviction: that personal actions and agency trump all manner of social abuses. Therefore , the presence of “strong Black women” soothes many a conscience that could be troubled by the material conditions forced upon such persons and the toll of organized injustice on their humanity . In other words, strong Black women do not simply exist, they play critical roles in the societal imagination and in social life. It is therefore questionable whether we can afford to live without the reassurance, comfort, and hard work they are invoked to provide...