Black Girls
*Note - at the end of this poem you will find a reflection about its inspiration
—
Black girls get upset too easily
so I was told.
My story already written.
Black like darkness, like nighttime
when everything is silent like a good
black girl ought to be.
Girls who refuse to shrink like wilting
flowers into the background where you
think we belong –
get shamed. Whispers
behind our backs even as we get praised
for having a strong backbone.
Upset is not enough, we get angry,
frustrated, sad, don’t reduce us
to one word when we can feel
too. My opinions are valid, are not
meant to shame you, are not
something I whip out like a weapon.
Easily, you say, as if I do not
hold my tongue several times
each day, I choose my battles.
Stop telling my story for me.
Consider why you don’t think that
black girls deserve to have feelings.
—
Reflection
I wrote this poem in response to two prompts:
· Share your 6-word “Race Card” along with stories that have shaped your experience. Project into the future how your experience with race will influence your life.
· The Race Card Project is a play on the phrase “playing the race card,” framing race as a form of currency. What is exchanged with this identity? What is gained and what is lost?
When I was in middle school I was first introduced to this stereotype of black girls as playing a sort of emotional race card. In general black women are stereotypically portrayed as loud, aggressive, unfeminine, and several similarly negative identities. But in particular, I was introduced to the idea that my emotions were part of a careful manipulation designed to get attention and get what I wanted: that because of my race my emotions were my race card.
At the time, I was going through a lot of other, bigger issues, and I never really realized that this message has stuck with me until years later when someone asked me why “black girls get angry so easily.” It was an interesting thought for me, mostly because I don’t consider myself or my mother, or any of my black female relatives or friends as people who get angry easily. But it brought me back to that place where, again, the emotions of black women were being spoken of in terms of other people’s perceptions. It wasn’t until I got into tumblr, which is a very popular social media site for social justice, that I began to unpack this idea. To me, this fascination with and dehumanization of black women’s emotions into a negative word such as “angry” or a patronizing word like “upset” does serve as a race card in a sense. It presents the idea that all black women’s emotions are carefully calculated to gain a reaction, and ties all of our emotions to our race and to manipulation.
I wanted my poem to respond to this, but I wanted it to do so in response to young girls, particularly. Though as an adult this message is incredibly frustrating, as a child it is mostly confusing and alienating. It is difficult to have your feelings stripped from you, to be told that your feelings are not genuine. As I went through a severe depression, I was told that my emotions were little more than a plea for attention, for people to feel bad for me. On the other hand, as I also attempted to address in my poem, to my face people would commend me for being unafraid to speak my mind. Dealing with conflicting messages surrounding something as personal as feelings and opinions is something that nobody should experience. Nobody deserves to have their feelings or experiences invalidated.
Therefore more than anything, I wanted to break down and re-write the story. So, my poem starts with the race card, the way it is typically handed out. But as the poem breaks apart each word, and the inherent messages hidden in the 6-word card, it comes to a different ending with a question that I wish I’d had the nerve to ask back then. I wanted it to end with that re-written truth. Black girls, like all other people, deserve to have feelings.
