Battle Cries. Hillary Potter
domination on a regular basis. Many of the women believed, as is obvious in Medea’s explanation, that White women do not have to call up their strength to the extent that Black women do because White women are pampered and socialized as such, and because, though they face sexism, they are not confronted by the range of discriminatory and dominating acts that is imposed on Black women.
Further, Medea’s comments offered insight into how many of the other women viewed strength in their experiences with intimate partner abuse. The women equated strength with the ability to endure and survive an abusive relationship. In part, this resiliency aided in raising the women’s ability to empower themselves to be active in contending with the violence. Nevertheless, viewing the endurance of and retaliation against abuse as only a positive attribute may cause the women to ignore the emotional damage the abuse produced. In all of the life situations where strength is expected to be and often is actually used by Black women, we must take into account the intricacies associated with the concept of the Strong Black Woman and its connection to Black women who have been in abusive relationships.
Complexities of the “Strong Black Woman” Maxim
References to the Strong Black Woman can be found in academic or intellectual reports, fiction writings, poetry, self-help resources, the popular print media, and the entertainment domain, such as television programs.6 In particular, there are references to the Strong Black Woman phenomenon in research on intimate partner abuse against Black women.7 Commentary on Black women taking on the characteristics of the Strong Black Woman is presented from both positive and negative viewpoints. That is, scholars consider how appropriating this image can both help and harm the individual Black woman. Angie identified some of the positive and negative characteristics of the Strong Black Woman. She recognized that many Black women are able to singlehandedly manage a multitude of duties in their lives (the positive aspect) but that taking on these countless responsibilities leads the women to ignore or undervalue their need for emotional, financial, and other forms of assistance (the negative aspect):
I think that Black women are strong women and they take a lot. I’m including myself.… I think they’re most likely to be head of the households and they have to run the family, keep things together, hold things together. Sometimes they gotta put theirselves on the back burner and take care of what needs to be taken care of and put theirselves second.
The Black woman as the Strong Black Woman is simultaneously a stereotype and a reality. Although Black women may possess strength, they are at the same time “devoid of power.”8 Black women’s tendency to focus on being strong, which includes taking care of others by providing mothering and financial security, does not allow them to be seen or to see themselves as being in need of emotional support or as “victims” of others’ misdeeds.9 In Michele Wallace’s controversial 1979 book, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, she provides a detailed and conflicting description of the image of the Strong Black Woman, based on both an historical and a contemporary analysis. Although parts of the description are not supported by present-day research, such as her comparison of Black women’s level of wealth and professional employment to those of Black men,10 the characterization is still useful. The description is extensive but provides a portrayal of the Strong Black Woman for my analysis:
Sapphire. Mammy. Tragic mulatto wench. Workhorse, can swing an ax, lift a load, pick cotton with any man. A wonderful housekeeper. Excellent with children. Very clean. Very religious. A terrific mother. A great little singer and dancer and a devoted teacher and social worker. She’s always had more opportunities than the Black man because she was no threat to the White man so he made it easy for her. But curiously enough, she frequently ends up on welfare. Nevertheless, she is more educated and makes more money than the Black man. She is more likely to be employed and more likely to be a professional than the Black man. And subsequently she provides the main support for the family. Not beautiful, rather hard looking unless she has White blood, but then very beautiful. The Black ones are exotic though, great in bed, tigers. And very fertile. If she is middle class she tends to be uptight about sex, prudish. She is hard on and unsupportive of Black men, domineering, castrating. She tends to wear the pants around her house. Very strong. Sorrow rolls right off her brow like so much rain. Tough, un-feminine. Opposed to women’s rights movements, considers herself already liberated. Nevertheless, unworldly. Definitely not a dreamer, rigid, inflexible, uncompassionate, lacking in goals any more imaginative than a basket of fried chicken and a good fuck.11
When the women in my study spoke of the Strong Black Woman, they used this term or similar descriptions of Black women without leading questions posed by me. Sometimes they spoke on this issue while answering other indirectly related questions, and other times it was in response to the question “What do you think are the differences between Black women and White women?” While some of the women did not specifically describe themselves or certain other Black women as strong, they still viewed their actions in the context of strength. Such women were seen by those who spoke in this manner as failed Black women because they did not exhibit the Black woman’s assumed characteristic of strength. Although other researchers had mentioned the connection between the internalization of the Strong Black Woman character and intimate partner abuse, in the spirit of the ethnographic approach of research, where propositions are developed as the researcher is immersed in data collection and analysis,12 this was an area where I did not expect to make any significant discoveries. But, as the interviews progressed (beginning with the first interview with Paula), I became aware of the overpowering importance of the image of the Strong Black Woman and its association with managing intimate partner abuse through the women’s numerous references to the attribute.
Most of the women’s initiation into the idea of the Strong Black Woman undeniably began with their observing their mothers and othermothers as they were growing up.13 The Black criminologist Laura Fishman has described the lessons she learned from her “female black elders” about being a Black woman, rooted in her elders’ personal experiences and the messages they received from misreported media images and folktales about the Black experience, crime, and violence:
The implications of these messages were clear. We young black girls had to learn to protect ourselves against physical hurt, to figure things out in order to maximize our safety within both private and public space. To cushion ourselves against physical mistreatment meant learning to fight to defend ourselves and to win. To cushion ourselves therefore meant that we could not expect any protection from black men or, especially, from the police. I was able to be on my own as a strong, independent black woman who could handle anything life threw at me.14
In my study, the observation of their mothers as Strong Black Women was particularly important for most of the women who witnessed their mothers being abused by male mates. The women who witnessed their mothers’ victimization and whose mothers fit the Strong Black Woman characterization formed the idea that Strong Black Women are confronted not only with racism, sexism, classism, and the responsibility of running a household and raising children but also with abuse. Violence inflicted on their mothers became yet another form of strain in the Strong Black Woman’s life.
The majority of the women provided descriptions of their mothers and othermothers that fit within the qualities of the Strong Black Woman. Even women who did not have healthy relationships with their mothers described their mothers as strong because of their lifelong and recurring struggles to maintain the family emotionally and economically, while coping with sociostructural stressors. Angie addressed this when she spoke of her grandmother’s life as a basis for observing the Strong Black Woman: “Looking at my grandmother being the single parent of nine kids and doing what you can to keep food and roof over your family’s head. Just strong to me.” Fifty-one-year-old Shahida, who was raised in the lower class but became a college-educated professional of middle-class status in adulthood, described her mother as “an Angela Davis-type radical.” Wendy also spoke of her reverence for her mother’s strength:
She was wonderful. Sweetest little lady you ever want to meet. Very sweet, very gentle. She talked to you, she was very forward. She never beat around the bush about anything; she’d just come out let you know how she felt, what was going on. She taught you how to take care of business. You always want to know how to take