Of all the stereotypes and tropes that abound about Black women, the one that is the hardest to shake and causes the most harm is the “angry Black woman” trope. It seeks to frame us as mean, aggressive, and ill-tempered; it is used most to silence and separate us from healthy emotions. To be a Black woman in the United States is to walk through a lens of duality where too often, we stuff down our feelings in settings where other people are never expected to dull themselves.
Recently, I was reminded of how enduring and harmful this stereotype is when my 20-year-old daughter, who holds an entry-level management position at the retail shop she works at, tried to correct a white female co-worker of similar age over a mistake. But the co-worker decided that she felt threatened by my daughter and escalated the situation to tears, aka the infamous “white woman tears,” even trying to shift blame to my daughter for her own mistake…and my daughter’s manager suggested she soften her stance and tone.
My daughter texted her father and me—a flurry of heated texts—upset that she was being asked to be nicer (and she hadn’t even been mean or overly stern to begin with) to a young white woman who made a mistake and then was painting my daughter as the villain for doing her job, which includes offering guidance and correction. It hurt me, but my initial internal response was: Welcome to the real world of race. Where minding your business and doing your job can earn you the undeserved label of “angry Black woman.” My daughter spent several days upset because it was her first experience with this and, as I told her, it won’t be her last. I have tried my best to shelter her from the harshness of Black womanhood and the labels put on us unfairly. I learned the lesson at 16; she got to 20 before earning her first angry Black woman label. I suppose that is progress. Meanwhile, how is it that young white women in progressive areas who espouse progressive, anti-racist values still know how to weaponize their tears against Black humanity when they are forced to sit with discomfort?
I have been off work for a few weeks and while it has been a time to rest, it has also been a time for sitting with my feelings and realizing that the current state of Black womanhood in this country is a place of abject misery and anger. Anger as the Trump administration silently and also overtly attacks (notably by removing them over and over from leadership positions in government) Black women, and most folks are too distracted to notice our systematic removal from society.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about how in a matter of a few years, the calls to support Black people and listen to them have gone from viral hashtags and think-pieces to silence at a time when Black women are under siege. The piece was partly inspired by Katica Roy’s piece on MSNBC about how over 300,000 Black women have exited the workforce this year. The story didn’t gain much traction outside of Black spaces, which I guess shouldn’t even be surprising. I even had someone try to argue with me that the numbers weren’t that bad, but this past weekend, The New York Times picked up the story and provided more in-depth data, and the uncomfortable and racist truth is that Black women are quietly being removed from the workforce.
It was reported that between February and July of this year, Black women lost 319,000 jobs in the public sector. At the same time, white women saw an increase of 142,000 jobs, Hispanic women saw an increase of 176,000 jobs, and white men—they saw the largest increase among all groups with an increase of 365,000 jobs. Historically, government jobs were the driver that created the Black middle class. What does it mean when we are systematically purged? Even my sector, the non-profit sector, is feeling the hit, as many nonprofits are funded either directly or indirectly from government funding. I will say this: The nonprofit sector was the first place that, as a young woman, I saw women who looked like me in top leadership positions and that indirectly played a role in my choosing a life in the nonprofit sector and not the corporate sector, despite earning a master’s in management.
While the economy isn’t great for many, it is really not great for Black women and, by extension, our families and community. While I am glad for the news stories telling our stories and validating what many of us have been saying for months in our private spaces, it is cold comfort in a country that is no longer interested in the leadership of Black women.
Since Trump returned to office, I have lost a third of my income and I am feeling it.
A decade ago, when my marriage was winding down, I had to think long and hard about how I would afford to live sans a spouse. My now ex-husband had been the breadwinner during our marriage. The fact is, he earned enough that it helped to underwrite my initially very low-paying nonprofit career and allowed me not to work for several years as I wrapped up graduate school and briefly became a stay-at-home mom during our daughter’s earliest years. It was his income that allowed me to take positions to gain experience, thus creating a future career foundation. When we were talking about separating, it was clear that my salary from my day job wasn’t going to be enough long term to live on. Rather than take another job, I decided to create BGIM LLC, and start offering anti-racism and organizational training and consulting, along with monetizing my writing which, at that point, I had been doing for almost a decade with little remuneration.
I was one of the first old-school bloggers to move to the Patreon platform and sign up monthly patrons. From 2015 to 2020, I went into full-time hustle mode to build a financial foundation for myself between being an executive director, writer, and speaker. I did well enough to dig myself out of debt, hit the 800+ land of credit scores and see myself breaking away from the generational debt and poverty that my parents lived and died with. I love my parents, but it was extraordinarily hard having to financially help out at the end of their lives, particularly with my dad whose almost one-month stint in hospice was primarily covered by me when his insurance company stopped paying and we were told he would have to be moved to home hospice which they would cover, except it was logistically not possible.
How the fuck was I going to get my father who was in a near vegetative state home to my island in Maine? No, I paid the daily rate until he passed away and then I took care of expenses related to his death. I would do it again without hesitation because my father, well…what he lacked in material wealth, he made up for in other ways. I am who I am because of him and the sacrifices he made. No, I was happy that I had done well enough in life to be able to help.
In more recent years, I was planning for the next act of my life once my daughter was comfortably situated and had been planning to spend part of my year in the South, close to my son and grandbabies—summers and spring in Maine, fall and winter in Tennessee—growing my consulting practice, aggressively saving for an eventual retirement, and living my first adult years without raising kids, looking forward to hitting auntie stage as we call it in the Black community, except with my grandbabies.
Fast forward to reality and everything I have spent the last decade-plus building has been shattered by this administration. Contracts canceled and almost-clients pulling back because of concerns over the executive orders. Speaking gigs that had been in the pipeline suddenly gone. So much so, I have had one speaking engagement this year and all they could offer was $500. It has been well over a decade since I was offered such a paltry sum for my work. The explosion of Substack and self-funded media has meant a reduction in paying subscribers and patrons; in the last week of August alone I lost over $200 in monthly patronage from donors.
At the same time, white indie creators are raking it in. Word on the creator street is that as a purple-check verified account on Substack, Aaron Parnas of Meidas Touch is probably making in excess of ten thousand a month on Substack, plus his earnings on TikTok and direct giving on Venmo.
Meanwhile, all the Black women in my writing circles are setting up Go Fund Me’s for vital support. Hell, as my teeth grinding worsens and I realize my dental insurance won’t cover anything beyond the visit and x-rays—and with the loss of a third of my income—what would have been taken care of has become harder to do, especially as the price of everything goes up. People tell us it is the economy and while there is some truth in that, the other truth is that people find ways to support what matters to them. Always have. For a lot of people, they have moved on from racial and social justice ideas and the administration has given them cover to do so.
While I am grateful to have a job, I also know this year’s fundraising season will be brutal as every nonprofit that used to receive government funding directly or indirectly will be doing the same dance I have done for years. So, who knows what will happen next year? Now, I can afford to keep a roof over my head, food in the fridge, and pay down some debts while occasionally throwing caution to the wind to treat myself to fun. Considering how I grew up, I am grateful for this, but I am also angry as hell.
I am angry that this administration has decided that Black women need to be “put in our place,” I am angry that too many of my white colleagues and so-called allies remain silent at this moment and, frankly, aren’t showing up. I am angry that when the executive orders against DEI work went out, my now-former speaker’s bureau’s first thought was to change the language in the work I do. I am sorry but promoting “belonging” isn’t going to dismantle the systems of white supremacy that are now endangering us all.
I am angry that I am in my 50s and after a lifetime of raising kids—literally, I had my eldest at 19—my middle act and last act might resemble the scarcity I worked hard to get out of. I am mad that my life’s work has been subjected to tomfoolery and ignorance by thin-skinned white men and their followers. I am angry that the most mediocre and frankly sub-mediocre white men are wreaking havoc upon our country and world, clinging to their so-called glory days.
I am angry that Black women have been gaslit by society and deemed a problem and turned into a trope when expressing our emotions. Instead, we have been trained to suppress our emotions to our own detriment.
Hello, stress and hypertension. But at 52, I am ready to fully embrace that scary mantle. Yes, I am an angry Black woman, and I want more people to become angry because anger, when directed and cultivated, has the power to move the needles. I want a world where we are not targeted and erased. I want a world where Black mothers no longer must have the talk on navigating white emotions and watching our feelings, lest we lose our jobs and livelihood. I want a world where my two little granddaughters won’t need to play extra-nice with white girls who cling to Black tropes when they can’t manage their own feelings and own their mistakes.
I write this knowing that Black emotions can be overwhelming and no doubt someone will feel uncomfortable, probably uncomfortable enough to unfollow because rather than sitting in self-examination as a white-bodied person, my words will seem like an attack and indictment of all white folks
And, well, maybe you aren’t that kind of white person but still, if you can’t sit with the uncomfortable truth that as a white person you have the privilege of being an individual, not a group that must tip-toe around the fragility and frailness of whiteness—then you are part of the system that actively seeks to destroy you as well.
But in a much bigger way destroy those who don’t look like you first.
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