WORKING DRAFT: Please do not cite without permission of the author

Deconstructing the Strong Black Woman

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Chanequa Walker-Barnes
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, NC

on April 25, 1997, at 11:55 pm
while struggling with the reality of being a human
instead of a myth, the strong blk woman passed away,
w/out the slightest bit of hoopla
medical sources say: she died of naturally oppressive causes
but those who knew her & used her / kno that she died from:
bein silent when she shldve been screamin
smiling when she shldve been ragin.
she died from bein sick & not wanting anyone
to know / becuz her pain might inconvenience them.
she died from an overdose of otha people
clingin on to her when she didn’t even have energy for herself.
Laini Mataka1

Throughout much of their history in the United States, African American women’s identities have been popularly portrayed by three negative stereotypes: the mammy (the asexual, deferential caretaker), the jezebel (the manipulative seductress), and the sapphire (the angry, loud, and aggressive matriarch). During the civil rights era, however, African American women began to articulate their own archetype: the strong black woman (SBW). Since then, this identity has firmly grasped the consciousness of African American women and men. Thus, while it has been nearly thirty years since the controversy over Michele Wallace’s assertion that the strength of African American women masks patriarchy within the African American community,2 strong is likely the single most commonly used word to describe black women. Yet, despite the pervasive endorsement of this cultural identity, it has significant disadvantages for the well-being of black women. My aim in this paper, therefore, is to destabilize this archetype, drawing upon cultural criticism and Christian theology to show that the icon of the strong black woman represents a moral evil in which the church actively participates.

Defining the Strong Black Woman

The primary characteristics of the SBW are strength, independence, and caregiving.Myths about black women’s strength date back to slavery, when it was believed that blackwomen, in contrast to black men, possessed an extraordinary capacity to withstand extremelevels of work and stress. Over time, the concept of strength has evolved to mean emotionalresilience in the light of suffering. Black women are expected to be able to tolerate losses,trauma, and oppression without complaint.3 Moreover, they are to be financially andemotionally self-sufficient, capable, and assertive.

The capacity to withstand extreme duress combined with independence has positionedblack women as overidealized caregivers who are capable of sustaining the burdens of theirfamily. And because black families have higher rates of poverty, lower job status, and a higherproportion of single-parent families, black women are more likely to provide caregiving forindividuals outside their immediate nuclear family, heightening role strain. The legacy of theMammy archetype further contributes to the view of black women as possessing infiniteresources for caregiving and coping with adversity. Originating during slavery and becoming thedominant image of black women during reconstruction, Mammy was caricatured as eager to carefor the needs of her owners/employers, sometimes to the neglect of her needs and those of herfamily. Internalization of this image by black women leads to a strong need to be nurturing andsupportive of others, even at the expense of their own needs and health. Many black women, consequently, experience feelings of guilt, selfishness, and low self-worth if they are unable toprovide assistance to others.4

A consequence of this cultural mandate is that suffering has come to be viewed asnormative for black women. Black women have developed an extraordinary capacity for“walking with broken feet,” often unaware that they are in pain. The symptoms of some mentaland physical health disorders have become so widely prevalent among black women that they arenot seen as pathological. Women who recognize their pain are less likely to attribute it to rolestrain than to weakness and insufficiency in meeting the demands that life has placed upon them.After all, the inability to be strong is not simply a personal failure but is a failure to one’s familyand community, as highlighted in the advice given by a prominent North Carolina civil rightsactivist to his daughter as he prepared her to become the first black student at a white highschool: “You’ve got to be a warrior. There are certain things you might have to do, for the sakeof all black people. And no matter what you do as an individual, you’re reflecting your groupand your family. So make sure you’re correct.”5

The combined expectancy of black women’s strength and the ramifications of failure tobe strong create an additional problem for black women: fear of vulnerability. As Sara, aparticipant in Kesho Scott’s ethnography of four middle-aged black woman, states:

I don't believe my husband has ever seen me cry. We have been married thirtytwo years and I know that it has a lot to do with me being a black woman. When I get angry with him, I will raise my voice or walk out, but I will not let him see mecry. I don't think tears get his or anybody's sympathy. I avoid tears because it is important for me to appear to have control over the situation. I don't want the person in power to know that I have lost control. 6

Strong black women must maintain a façade of “having it all together,” that is, being composed,calm, and in control regardless of the intensity of their suffering. Thus, they are unable to showany signs of emotional vulnerability, “any sign that they are not strong, competent, under control,and capable of handling everything.”7 This decreases emotional intimacy and increases the needfor control of one’s emotions. Even normative emotional experiences such as crying are viewedas unacceptable. One psychotherapist has observed that many of her black female clients refer tocrying as “breaking down” or “falling apart.”8 Ironically, because of their extensive involvement in family and social networks, strong black women can seem to be quite relational even as theyfeel very isolated. Moreover, many of these women inadvertently create a vicious cycle inwhich, because they rarely demonstrate signs of vulnerability or need, others are often unsurehow to respond when they do, thus reinforcing the sense that they cannot depend upon anyone.

Problematizing the Strong Black Woman

Most attempts to problematize the SBW have drawn upon psychodynamic theory, whichviews human behavior as a dynamic interplay between “past and present; unconscious andconscious mind; internal and external world; true, or authentic, self and false, or defended, self;and symptoms and personality structure.”9 A psychodynamic theorization of the SBW views thearchetype principally as a psychological defense. That is, the SBW is not an authentic identitybut rather is a shadow of a self, a suit of armor designed to protect the black woman from a centuries-old system of oppression that devalues her personhood, objectifies and brutalizes herbody, and drives a wedge of separation between her and her family. The SBW has been the suitof armor that enables survival, allowing black women to repress grief, sadness, and anger,covering emotional distress with an outer façade of imperturbability, independence, andcaregiving. The problem with this defense, however is that over time it has become abstractedfrom its causes and posited as an ideal. That is, the armor has become welded onto the bodies,minds, and souls of the women who wear it. Thus, imperturbability gives way to fear ofvulnerability, decreased capacity for emotional intimacy and help seeking, and an excessive needfor control, not only of one’s own behavior and emotions but also control of other people andsituations. Further, wearing this armor requires the expense of considerable psychic energy toconstantly monitor and restrict their behavior, which may be linked to the higher rates of stress,poor dietary habits and physical exercise, and lifestyle-related health care problems among blackwomen. Given the psychiatric standard for clinically significant distress as impairment infunctioning, it seems clear that “strong black woman” should be an official psychiatric diagnosis.Yet the problem with the archetype of the SBW is not simply that it is an overutilizeddefense. Rather, it is that the identity itself is fundamentally flawed. There is a crack in thearmor, so to speak. For the SBW is the result of the intertwining of two equally problematicconstructions of identity: ontological blackness and true womanhood.10

Ontological blackness is a philosophy of racial consciousness developed in response tothe negative depictions of blacks by white racial ideology. That is, it is a counter-discourseaimed at disproving white racist notions of black identity. Anderson notes that this counterdiscoursehad four features. First, it rejected categorical racism and its negative depictions of blacks. Second, it argued that the moral failures associated with blacks should and could beexplained historically rather than categorically. Third, it regarded black racial identity ascommensurate with civic republican humanism. Finally, it called for racial uplift as evidence ofblack cultural genius and civilization. What this counter-discourse did not do, however, wasattack the species logic that undergird European racial ideology. Rather, it appropriated it.Consequently, categorical racism gave rise to a black racial apologetics that was designed tonullify the negative definition of black racial identity posited by white racial discourse and toreplace it with a positive definition. The cult of European genius was mirrored by a discourse ofblack genius, in which black identity was defined as heroic, creative, morally masculine,revolutionary, and self-determined. Black theology, in turn, centered upon “an alienated beingwhose mode of existency is determined by crisis, struggle, resistance, and survival – not thriving,flourishing, or fulfillment.”11

Whereas the cult of black genius is the guiding identity for black men, the cult of truewomanhood is the standard for white women.12 Crystallizing in the nineteenth century, the cultof true womanhood is characterized by four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, submissiveness, anddomesticity. That is, true women were expected to be religious, chaste, patient, persevering, andnurturing. Moreover, whereas men were to be active, creative agents, women were to be passive,submissive responders, accepting of whatever fate dealt them. Popular women’s literatureduring this period often contained admonitions such as “To suffer and to be silent under suffering seems the great command [woman] has to obey.”13 While societal forces in the nineteenth century– including social reform, westward migration, industrialism, the Civil War,Christian missionary activity, and utopian communities – forced an evolution in this identity, thestereotype still holds powerful sway in the collective conscience of American women and men.When ontological blackness becomes intertwined with the cult of true womanhood, theresult is the formation of an identity - the SBW - in which the central features are struggle, crisis,caregiving, and silence. As blacks, black women are to be heroic, revolutionary, and committedto racial uplift. As women, they are to silent be self-sacrificers.

The Strong Black Woman As Moral Evil

Whether viewed from the lens of psychodynamic theory or cultural criticism, as anessentialized identity the icon of the SBW poses two problems that are fundamentallytheological: the sin of idolatry and the failure to love one’s neighbor. First, the SBW constitutesa model of identity in which other human beings, not God, become the criteria upon whichidentity is grounded. Culture, specifically racism and patriarchy, replaces the imago dei as thefoundation of identity. Thus, the idealization of the SBW is a violation of the first commandmentof the Decalogue, “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself anidol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, orthat is in the water under the earth.”14 The SBW, then, is a figurative idol.Second, the valorization of this archetype by black men and whites is a violation ofChrist’s commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself.15 As an idealized identity, the imageof the SBW provides an important function for white privilege and male privilege, namely, itrenders the suffering of black women normative and unproblematic.16 As Frances Wood states, “The legendary strong Black woman has become the personification of the permissible victim.”17Black women’s strength becomes an excuse to ignore their suffering or, even worse, tocontribute to it. When the experiences of black women are acknowledged, “their suffering isoften idealized, romanticized, and elevated to the status of martyrdom.”18 That black women arecontinuously praised for their strength only serves to reinforce the cultural prescription of silentself-sacrifice.

Ultimately, then, the idealization of this identity represents a form of moral evil inmodern society. That is, it represents a system that devalues the personhood of black women forthe benefit of others, particularly black men and white men and women. This devaluation standsin stark contrast to the fundamental Christian concept that all human beings are created in theimage of God and are called to be in communion with each other and with God.19The church has not been innocent in this sin but has been an active contributor in at leastthree ways. First, the church has contributed to the suffering of black women through itsconsistent failure to challenge secular notions of identity and to posit a theologically coherentmodel of Christian identity. From the beginning of this nation, the church has been complicit inthe moral sin of racism and slavery, pretending to live the Gospel while turning a blind eye toslavery or, worse, exhorting slaves to obey their masters and urging masters to discourageobedience through discipline. The church has failed to question the “natural” identities of raceand gender and has allowed these identities to transcend baptism, such that membership in thebody of Christ has not subverted secular notions of identity but has reinscribed them.

Second, the church has participated in the oppression of black women by explaining theirsuffering in ways that serve not to challenge it but to validate it. The church has romanticizedsuffering, failing to distinguish between suffering meant to temper the spirit and suffering meantto break the spirit,20 or between suffering inflicted by those outside the church as a result of one'sfaith and suffering inflicted by those within the body of Christ. The church, thus, has explainedand furthermore dismissed the plight of black women by appealing to the church fathers’ notionsof suffering as punishment for sin (particularly for women as a result of Eve's disobedience), asevidence of one's special standing in the sight of God, and as character-building.21 Thus, blackwomen are taught such platitudes as: “God won’t give you more than you can bear” and “If hebrought you to it, he’ll bring you through it.” The black church is particularly complicit in thesuffering of black women. Instead of challenging the suffering endured by black women, thecommunity silences, ignores, and dismisses women's experiences of oppression, ostensibly in aneffort to maintain racial solidarity.22

Finally, the church, particularly the black church, has actively contributed to the sufferingof black women by simultaneously depending upon women's labor and denying them equality ofmembership in the church. Women’s labor is particularly critical in supporting the congregationand infrastructure of the church and the church could not survive without the voluntary labor ofwomen in their roles as “soloists, ushers, nurses, church mothers, Sunday school teachers,missionaries, pastor's aides, deaconesses, stewardesses, or prayer warriors.”23 Yet, the churchhas refused to allow women the pastoral office, access to ordination, and the exercise of thepreaching ministry. Moreover, the non-clergy roles granted to women that carry decision-making authority also tend to carry expectations of caregiver-based service that are neitherexpected nor required of men. Indeed, such service is often the source of women’s power in thechurch.24

Taken together, these policies and practices operate to preserve “a lethal sociological andecclesiastical status quo”25 of gender and racial inequality for black women, reinforcing thenotion that black women’s identities are defined by service, submission, suffering, and silence.Ultimately, then, the archetype of the SBW represents a central problem not just for the lives ofthe women who emulate it but for the life of the church. Not only must black women reject thisidentity for the sake of their own well-being and survival, but the church must move beyond theboundaries of race and gender to articulate a model of Christian discipleship that embodies theclaim that “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to thepromise.”26

Notes