Rage and Peace
“We are, largely, who the world around us says we are”
Originally Posted by danneunscripted on January 26, 2021
Ihave spent the better part of my 40 years on this planet trying not to be the very person the world says I am: An angry Black woman. I speak softly. I wait until I am addressed. I stay out of conflict. I act in a respectful manner. I use proper English. I stress out about timeliness and the size of my earrings and the patterns on my clothes, all in an attempt to avoid stereotypes. I check my tone and check my emotions and check my self, again, and again, and again. I have spent most of my life, shaping and fashioning this shell into acceptable versions of the world’s expectations until there was nothing left but a shell. A bitter, empty shell – burned and bruised and broken and utterly unknown to me.
Whether based on stereotyped versions of ourselves or glorified versions of those who are deemed beautiful and valuable, the world spends quite a bit of time giving us unsolicited advice about who we ought to be. These opinions shape our identity. Oftentimes, we spend our youth chasing them and our adult lives finding our way back. This has been the case for me. On the cusp of my 40th birthday, I was in the midst of an existential crisis. I was questioning everything I thought I knew, everything I had been taught and had taught myself to believe. What did I really believe? Who was the God I claimed to love? Who had determined what our relationship should be? Who had defined my role in life? Who decided I was Black? Could I be Black? Why did I have to identify as my “skin color” when my skin was not in fact black?
Who had defined me? Who had erased me? What happened to my story?
The more I explored these questions, the more they converged into one particular question: why shouldn’t I be an angry Black woman? I am more and more aware of what whiteness has done to me. How it has blinded my faith, dulled my knowledge, stolen my history, raped my body, and denied me my dignity. Why shouldn’t I be angry? All the female scholars I never knew existed. All the Haitian heritage hidden by deception. All the theology of a knowing God I do not know. All the lifetimes of learning that taught me lies. So, yes, I am angry! Why shouldn’t I be?
Tatum (2017) explained that unlike our White peers, BIPOC spend more time thinking about our identity. This is largely because we are constantly having to confront society’s narratives of us. As an ethnically Haitian, culturally American, racially Black woman, that exploration can sometimes feel like navigating three worlds and never fully fitting into either of them. I am never Haitian enough, or American enough, or Black enough. (Sidebar: Being from a Black nation, we didn’t think in terms of race. Therefore, Black, as I learned it, was an American phenomenon.) The point is, I blamed myself for the aspects of my identity that I was ignorant of, never realizing that they were intentionally hidden from me as a form of oppression. The very world that was wounding and grieving me, giving me reasons to be angry, was then criticizing my reaction, all in a brilliant plot to have me serve master of my own slavery.
Now, nearing 41 years on this planet, I understand the source of the pain and anger I have suppressed all these years. I have made peace with my rage. Now, I can say it with all the rage it so rightfully deserves, I can whisper it with all the peace I am claiming as my own: I am an angry Black woman.
Originally published August 9, 2020 Dannemart Pierre (danneunscripted). This post is part of a series for a course on Diversity and Social Justice in Higher Education.
