Hooks - Sisters of the yam: black women and self-recovery

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other. But we can practice being gende with each other by being gentie with that piece of ourselves that is hardest to hold, by giving more to the brave bruised girlchild within each of us, by expecting a little less from her gargantuan efforts to excel. We can love her in the light as well as in the darkness, quiet her frenzy toward perfection and encourage her attentions toward fulfillmentAs we arm ourselves with ourselves and each other, we can stand toe to toe inside that rigorous loving and begin to speak the impossibleor what has always seemed like the impossibleto one another. The first step toward genuine change. Eventually, if we speak the truth to each other, it will become unavoidable to ourselves.

Audre Lorde, Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger, Sister Outsider

Healing takes place within us as we speak the truth of our lives. In M. Scott Pecks popular discussion of a new healing psychology in The Road Less Traveled ., he emphasizes the link between dedication to truth and our capacity to be well. He stresses that: One of the roots of mental illness is invariably an interlocking system of lies we have been told and lies we have told ourselves. Commitment to truth-telling is thus the first step in any process of self-recovery. A culture of domination is necessarily a culture where lying is an acceptable social norm. It, in fact, is required. White folks knew that they were lying about African slaves who labored from sun-up to sundown when they then told the world that those same slaves were lazy. White supremacy has always relied upon a structure of deceit to perpetuate degrading racial stereotypes, myths that black people were inferior, more animalistic. Within the colonizing process, black people were socialized to believe that survival was possible only if they learned how to deceive. And indeed, this was often the case.

Slaves often told lies to white oppressors to keep from being brutally punished or murdered. They learned that the art of hiding behind a false appearance could be useful when dealing with the white master and mistress. Skillful lying could protect ones safety, could help one gain access to greater resources, or make resistance possible. Slave narratives testify that the ability to deceive was a requirement for survival. One collection of slave narratives edited by Gilbert Osofsky is even tided Puttin On Ole Massa. In her slave narrative Incidents in the Ufe of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs expresses motherly pride that her children learn at an early age that they must keep the secret of her hiding place from oppressive white people as well as untrustworthy black folks. A Jamaican proverb that was often quoted among slaves urged folks to play fool, to catch wise. This was seen as essential for black survival, even if it required lying and deceit.

Any reader of slave narratives knows that religious black folks expressed anger and rage that they were forced by oppressive social circumstances to commit the sin of lying. Slaves expressed righteous indignation that oppressive white people created a dehumanizing social structure where truth-telling could be valued but not practiced and where black people were judged inferior because of their inability to be truthful. Caught in a double-bind, on one hand believing in the importance of honesty, but on the other hand knowing that it was not prudent to always speak truthfully to ones oppressors, slaves judiciously withheld information and lied when necessary. Even free black people knew that white supremacist power could so easily be asserted in an oppressive way, that they too practiced the art of hiding behind a false appearance in the interest of survival. In The Narrative of Tunsford Earn, published in 1848, Lane stated that even after freedom:

I had endeavored to conduct myself as not to become obnoxious to the white inhabitants, knowing as I did their power, and their hostility to the colored peopleFirst, I had made no display of the little property or money I possessed, but in every way I wore as much as possible the aspect of slavery. Second, I had never appeared to be even so intelligent as I really was. This all colored in the south, free and slaves, find it particularly necessary for their own comfort and safety to observe.

The realities of daily life in white-supremacist America conveyed to black people in the long years after slavery had ended that it was still not in their interest to forsake this practice of dissimulation. Continued racial oppression, especially when it took the form of lynching and outright murder of black people, made it clear to all black folks that one had to be careful about speaking the truth to whites.

Paul Laurence Dunbars much quoted poem gives eloquent witness to how conscious black folks were of the way that they had to practice falsehood in daily life:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,
This debt we pay to human guile,
With tom and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise ,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

The justification for wearing a mask is obvious when we consider the circumstances of living in conditions of legal racial apartheid, where black folks had so little recourse with which to address wTrongs perpetrated against them by whites. Yet the time has come when we must examine to what extent the practice of dissimulation, of being deceitful, carried over into our social norms with one another. Encouraged to wear the mask to ensure survival in relation to the white world, black folks found themselves using strategies of dissimulation and withholding truth in interpersonal relationships within black communities. This was especially true for gender relations.

Patriarchal politics not only gave black men a bit of an edge over black women, it affirmed that males did not have to answer to females. Hence, it was socially acceptable for all men in patriarchal society (black men were no exception) to lie and deceive to maintain power over women. Just as the slaves had learned from their white masters the art of dissimulation, women learned that they could subvert male power over them by also withholding truth. The many southern black women who learned to keep a bit of money stashed away somewhere that he dont know about were responding to the reality of domestic cruelty and violence and the need to have means to escape. However, the negative impact of these strategies was that truth-telling, honest and open communication, was less and less seen as necessary to the building of positive love relationships.

Even though most black children raised in traditional southern homes are taught the importance of honesty, the lesson is undermined when parents are not honest. Growing up, many of us saw that grown folks did not always practice the same honesty they told us was so important. Or, many times, we would tell the truth only to be punished for such talk. And again, since racism was still the crucial factor shaping power relations between black and white people, there was still an emphasis on practicing dissimulationone that persists in most black peoples lives.

Many of the survival strategies that were once useful to black people, like dissimulation, are no longer appropriate to the lives we are living and therefore do us grave harm. Imagine, for example, this scenario: A black woman professor who has never completed her Ph.D. finds that in her daily life most folks she interacts with simply assume that she has this degree. She finds it easier not to explain. And indeed finds that she receives greater respect and recognition when folks see her as doctor so-and-so. Yet, there is a price she must pay for this deceptioninner stress, fear of being found out, fear of losing the status she has falsely acquired. Now, one healthy response she could have had when she found that people accorded her greater respect when they assumed she had the degree would have been to use this information as a catalyst inspiring her to complete unfinished graduate work. We could all give countless examples related to jobs where black folks feel that the decks are stacked against us to begin with because of racism and therefore feel it is okay to lie about skills, experience, etc. Unfortunately such strategies may help one get jobs but the burden of maintaining deception may be so great that it renders individuals psychologically unable to withstand the pressure. Lies hurt. While they may give the teller greater advantage in one arena, they may undermine her well-being in another.