Sistah Distrust
Aug. 12th, 2008 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wlotusIn Audre Lorde’s essay on how Black women distrust and tear down one another (Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger), she describes in painful detail the misplaced anger Black women often take out on one another, rather than directing it at the racism and sexism that caused their pain. She talks about the hatred between Black women as the norm in her life, and she hearkens back to the days when Black women were more likely to support one another, especially back in Africa. I read her essay as a view on her personal experience, but not as something I could personally relate to. My experience has been such hatred is the exception, not the norm. In my world, Black women usually support Black women.
Or do they?
That certainly was not the case in my childhood home. My mother had a lot of criticism about girls being sneaky, having bad attitudes, and needing a much firmer hand than boys. I have always been sensitive about how others view me, so my child self was devastated by her words. (I am nearly 40, and such claims still cut through me.) It was painful to know the most influential Black woman in my early life was the most openly critical of Black girls, including this Black girl. Not even the boys I knew were quite so harsh so much of the time. With that foundation, how in the world did I end up feeling a sense of sisterhood with other Black woman?
It must have come from my peers, starting with my biological sister. She understood, like no one else could, how painful it was to be who we were in our shared environment. She did not laugh at my tears or dismiss my frustrations; in fact, sometimes she shared them. When I felt like there was no one else in the world I could talk to who would understand I knew I could talk to her. But the misplaced anger Lorde writes about was present even in my relationship with her, for underneath my sense of camaraderie was a growing sense of competition: first for our mother’s approval, and later for boys’ approval. To my eyes, she seemed popular with boys, while they often ridiculed me to my face. Because I was a child, I did not understand the larger family and social dysfunction that led me to compare myself to her rather than appreciate how we complimented one another in the world, and I blamed her for my pain. But unlike the women Lorde wrote about—she wrote how Black women often view one another as competition for the few viable Black men (who, she ironically noted, rarely stick around anyway)—I somehow recognized that my sister would be there for me, and that knowledge trumped competition when the chips were down.
My relationship with my first cousin was less angst-ridden, but no less supportive. She is the only child of my mother’s only sister, so some of the same Mother-Daughter dysfunction was present in her home. (Our mothers did not invent their perceptions of Black girls in a vacuum; they learned it from their shared environment when they were little Black girls.) Because she could understand some of what we were going through, our cousin was always supportive, always willing to listen, and (when the situation was safe enough to do so) always willing to share what was on her mind. She did not escape the ingrained distrust of Black women, though. In addition to loving my biological sister and me, she hated us for having the kind of academic achievements her mother would constantly throw in her face. As a result, she felt like she had to compete with us for her own mother’s approval. But again, unlike the women Lorde writes about, our cousin was able to put that sense of competition aside; she realized my sister and I were not the ones making her feel inferior—we were certainly were not the ones bragging about our academic achievements to her and telling her to be like us—and chose to focus on our shared histories and three-way sisterhood. Long before The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, there were The Smarties, and she did her part to make sure nothing would come between us.
Throughout the years I have met other Black women who have been just as supportive of me—my best friend in high school, whom I lost touch with in the early 90s and would love to find; my best friend from college, who is still a friend and confidant 20 years later; and several Black women I have met in the past year, to name a few—and who have not let the ingrained hatred Lorde describes ruin their ability to relate to me. Even when I look at myself, I see a general distrust of people (born from seeing the seedy underbelly of human nature more often than I care to remember), but not a specific hatred of Black women or a view of them being more of a threat to my existence than, for example, White or Asian women. I feel blessed to have Black women as some of my closest friends and confidants. Our shared cultural roots and womanhood give me a sense of being at home. I feel more emotionally supported by them than I feel with men of any race. When I am unsure of myself, I look to them for inspiration on how to navigate through life as a Black woman in a White- and male-dominated society. I am sorry that at the time of writing her essay, Lorde felt that experience was the exception, not the rule. But I am grateful to her for sharing her experience; perhaps her words are what paved the way for me to have such healthy relationships with other Black women, today.
Or do they?
That certainly was not the case in my childhood home. My mother had a lot of criticism about girls being sneaky, having bad attitudes, and needing a much firmer hand than boys. I have always been sensitive about how others view me, so my child self was devastated by her words. (I am nearly 40, and such claims still cut through me.) It was painful to know the most influential Black woman in my early life was the most openly critical of Black girls, including this Black girl. Not even the boys I knew were quite so harsh so much of the time. With that foundation, how in the world did I end up feeling a sense of sisterhood with other Black woman?
It must have come from my peers, starting with my biological sister. She understood, like no one else could, how painful it was to be who we were in our shared environment. She did not laugh at my tears or dismiss my frustrations; in fact, sometimes she shared them. When I felt like there was no one else in the world I could talk to who would understand I knew I could talk to her. But the misplaced anger Lorde writes about was present even in my relationship with her, for underneath my sense of camaraderie was a growing sense of competition: first for our mother’s approval, and later for boys’ approval. To my eyes, she seemed popular with boys, while they often ridiculed me to my face. Because I was a child, I did not understand the larger family and social dysfunction that led me to compare myself to her rather than appreciate how we complimented one another in the world, and I blamed her for my pain. But unlike the women Lorde wrote about—she wrote how Black women often view one another as competition for the few viable Black men (who, she ironically noted, rarely stick around anyway)—I somehow recognized that my sister would be there for me, and that knowledge trumped competition when the chips were down.
My relationship with my first cousin was less angst-ridden, but no less supportive. She is the only child of my mother’s only sister, so some of the same Mother-Daughter dysfunction was present in her home. (Our mothers did not invent their perceptions of Black girls in a vacuum; they learned it from their shared environment when they were little Black girls.) Because she could understand some of what we were going through, our cousin was always supportive, always willing to listen, and (when the situation was safe enough to do so) always willing to share what was on her mind. She did not escape the ingrained distrust of Black women, though. In addition to loving my biological sister and me, she hated us for having the kind of academic achievements her mother would constantly throw in her face. As a result, she felt like she had to compete with us for her own mother’s approval. But again, unlike the women Lorde writes about, our cousin was able to put that sense of competition aside; she realized my sister and I were not the ones making her feel inferior—we were certainly were not the ones bragging about our academic achievements to her and telling her to be like us—and chose to focus on our shared histories and three-way sisterhood. Long before The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, there were The Smarties, and she did her part to make sure nothing would come between us.
Throughout the years I have met other Black women who have been just as supportive of me—my best friend in high school, whom I lost touch with in the early 90s and would love to find; my best friend from college, who is still a friend and confidant 20 years later; and several Black women I have met in the past year, to name a few—and who have not let the ingrained hatred Lorde describes ruin their ability to relate to me. Even when I look at myself, I see a general distrust of people (born from seeing the seedy underbelly of human nature more often than I care to remember), but not a specific hatred of Black women or a view of them being more of a threat to my existence than, for example, White or Asian women. I feel blessed to have Black women as some of my closest friends and confidants. Our shared cultural roots and womanhood give me a sense of being at home. I feel more emotionally supported by them than I feel with men of any race. When I am unsure of myself, I look to them for inspiration on how to navigate through life as a Black woman in a White- and male-dominated society. I am sorry that at the time of writing her essay, Lorde felt that experience was the exception, not the rule. But I am grateful to her for sharing her experience; perhaps her words are what paved the way for me to have such healthy relationships with other Black women, today.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 12:17 am (UTC)Their loss. You are cool. They are not. xoxoxo
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 01:26 am (UTC)1. That didn't stop me from developing close relationships with Black women.
2. It added to my expectation of being neglected and mistreated by Black men around my age.
Thank goodness my wariness of men overall has been tempered by the friendships I have had the honor of forging with several over the past year.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 02:32 am (UTC)My thoughts go beyond race to say that many, many women are not good to each other. I think we are programmed to be nasty to each other (reference how many white women feel about Hillary).
Interesting post.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 03:00 am (UTC)Re: Sistah Distrust
Date: 2008-08-13 05:01 am (UTC)When it came to issues with my sister, I felt (and sometimes still feel) my sister resents me because I was "favored" over her. I felt the same way about my half-sister, but wasn't mature enough to understand that I needed to focus my anger toward my father for his role in creating the schism that emotionally abusing her. But in both cases, this can easily happen in any family, so I can't label it a "black" thing.
Back to my first paragraph...the thing that shocked me most, and woke me out of my fantasy, was the thought that we were all black women at this job. It should be easy for us to get along, relate to one another without the extreme corporate airs, and get the job done. It seemed that we should all come together and support one another, being that it was the one work environment where the majority of workers were black. It didn't work that way. I was still an outsider in their eyes, and I believe there were a number of factors--having a college degree, being hired by a white man and assigned to a black supervisor who had no say in the matter, being outspoken, being from New York (doesn't sit well with Southerners, it seems)--that contributed to my experience at this one job. no matter what the reason, however, I became very distrustful of working in a predominantly-black environment ever again.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 11:09 pm (UTC)Lorde was writing as a Black woman about the things unique to a Black woman's experiences that would feed the tendency to tear one another apart. She talked a lot about how people of color are forced to deal with racism from a very early age every day of their lives, how female people of color are forced to deal with sexism in addition to that, and how that hyper-exposure to those forms of hatred affects how they relate to other people. She contended that the anger Black women often leveled at one another was a misdirection of the anger they felt at the racism and sexism they experienced in a world that hated them for being Black and being female. So while women tearing down women isn't purely a Black problem, Lorde's take on it, as a Black woman in America, is going to be quite different from White women or other women of color.