The myth of the angry Black woman is, just that, a myth. It is a Jedi mind trick we have been mired in for some time. I’m almost never allowed to be angry outside of my home or inner-circle. I’m a masked Black woman – numb, muted – and that makes me angry – and anger is a legitimate response to the way I must live my life as an educated, professional career woman who runs an office in my rural, red state where I feel increasingly, physically unsafe.

I’m fake, inauthentic, and spend hours searching for the right words, the right tone, the right approach. I’m exhausted, and they (if this is you, it’s you) still feel intimidated, ambushed, attacked, scared and confuse me with another Black woman (1 of 3 on campus, 1 of 2 at the same level, and the only one without an accent).

I have taken all of the bass out of my voice. My face hurts from smiling and my head hurts from nodding. Before November the 8^th, things were yelled at me – once in a parking lot and once in a gas station. After November 8, a car full of white women blew their car horn and gesticulated frantically while my 77 year-old mother (visiting for the holidays) and I were ahead of them in our car.

When am I ever allowed to be angry?

Was I allowed to be angry when

• My father binged drank most weekends and my parents fought in the window on the first landing of our apartment building and the neighbors poured out of their homes to watch?
  • The kids at school would ask me what happened?
  • One night was really bad as my mother cried from their bedroom, my father on top of her and me trying not to make a sound and staring at the phone on the wall in the kitchen wondering if I should call 911.
• Ear infections and stuttering plagued my childhood
• The long-term substitute in fourth grade made us write lines all day and ripped up the lines and trashed them in our faces.
  • Said substitute  was driven away in the back of a squad car after being pulled off a student by the city (not school, we weren’t there yet) police
• I was told to show up to my elementary school hours earlier because that day was my last day there, since I was smart, I’d be going to school 33 blocks away
  • I was put in the lowest track as a new student, sent to the highest track for reading only and learned geniuses didn’t get recess
• My mother’s beloved cousin decided sucking my toes was a thing
• My friends’ stepfather and father each grabbed one of my thighs while in the back seat of their car after my friends stepped out for a candy run
• The cab driver yells and passes me by in downtown Chicago
• I was not promoted wholly, but expected to have a more prominent role in front of historically underrepresented groups (HUG) and a lesser role with more “traditionally American” groups
• My colleague tells a young lady making phone calls for our office to say that her name is Mary, because Mananya would be too difficult for some.
  • Same colleague became convinced an incoming student at our small, under the radar school was a part of 9/11. (OK, so this doesn’t technically belong on the list because I told my boss she could do two things. One, she could get this lunatic, or, two, I could. She went with one.)
• I was chided in my graduate school program for being unabashed about demanding that a discussion about salary expectations for the $80K, 15-month program was appropriate. I had just paid back nearly $100K from college and borrowed the $80K, plus living expenses. Why is it only crass when poor folks talk about money? I need to ask, so I can break the cycle of poverty.
• The Black woman therapist I had been talking to hadn’t diagnosed me with depression, anxiety and PTSD, but this was all clear to the doctors I saw in grad school. I had asked for, and sought help and allowed to simply keep going, struggling.
• The stuttering chair of the history department allowed our traveling students to get drunk and engage in vandalism while abroad. I stuttered. I don’t mock that, I just doubt a Black man with an equally violent stutter would be given such a role at a private school in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, nor would that same Black man be protected after such a misstep.
  • It was the first time I was brought in to both replace and do the job of an old white woman allowed to retire at work, while doing my job and easing her fears and concerns about her worth and value.
• In my first role as the boss
  • My young, Black male employee asked me to go home because he was tired – with a straight face
  • The older Black woman I hired altered her separation contract so as to reflect poorly on me, the one who hired her, a single mother with an ailing child
  • The pain in my head and my fatigued led to a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes since all my time was spent on the climb, the grind and none of my time was spent on me
• In my second role as boss
  • It was the second time to replace and do the job of a not-so-old white man who had managed to alienate the rest of the staff, while doing my job and literally keeping two office factions separate.
    • Employers really need to clean house in a timely fashion.
  • My employee mocked another office’s mistakes one morning and made the same mistake that afternoon, for which she was let go and for which she retaliated by logging in from her home computer to sabotage the system.
• The old, white guy at the next gig at our retreat where we’ve decided to bond by cooking together says dinner was supposed to be ready, after they all left to shop and play and I was left to cook by myself. Again, despite significant career accomplishments, I don’t think an old Black man who fell asleep in meetings would be allowed to keep his post and aura of reverence.
• Traveling halfway across the country from the next gig, I arrived too late and saw my father sleeping, I thought, in the living room of his home. But when I touched his hands, he was cold. I tried to make a meeting on that Friday, March 13, but I missed it because I was home by then, but too late for a man I adored, my anchor. Employer wrote in my review that ‘it was like I wasn’t there,’ during our big event that April. They were right. I wasn’t. I’m still not there, here or anywhere and I won’t ever be again.
• At the next gig, I heard a white man, a Director, with no degree, refer to a Black colleague as a ‘hood rat’ and rail against women calling in sick during their cycles. He just assumed they were on their cycles, but this was nothing compared to the Dean talk about pis–ng to mark his territory.
• At the current gig, the third time I was asked to replace and do the job of someone allowed to retire at work – a second, old white woman who had failed in each of her 12 years, and started a campaign to get me fired, ensuring the all white female office gave me a welcome fit for Sojourner Truth’s lifetime.

Nope, no time for anger, gotta achieve, go far, win for the family, the neighborhood, the people….

Gotta go to work, pay bills for me and others and pay no attention to what I feel, how I sleep, the quality of my thoughts and my life. Life on autopilot. Until now!

The following is my ode to Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy from Saturday Night Live. It’s a series of tangents that have, until now swirled in my head. Now, they belong to all of us. You’re welcome…

One

We are not our grandparents. You may have seen this on a T-shirt on Facebook. However, the notion that we are somehow better, or their sacrifice wasn’t enough – is false and divisive. It is another Jedi-mind trick. We, like them, will give our all. We get to cry, resist, vote, because of our grandparents. Don’t sleep on their sacrifice. Don’t sleep on that strange fruit, on burning crosses, white sheets, water hoses, dogs, signs, chains, whips. You don’t know what you would have done. Our ancestors line the bottom of the ocean and are buried in the land other ancestor cleared and upon which still more ancestors built a nation. Stay as respectful and you stay woke.

That said, we and our ancestors have done nothing but watch and learn from you. It’s tense now, but if you don’t start none, it won’t be none. You are dying out. This is that final burst of energy before leaving this world. This is survivor and we’re the reigning champs. We outplay, we outwit, we outlast. You will go before me (3 Chains of Gold, Prince). They won’t go when I go (George Michael).

Two

You. I don’t know what identity politics is. I don’t care who dude’s voters are or aren’t. This Monday morning quarterbacking ain’t good for football or politics. Here, on this blog, you is you. I am me. We are we. Us is us. They are they and them are them.

Three

For the record, I didn’t like waking up one day and discovering I was African-American. I’m Black. We Black. When have you ever told anybody to kiss your African-American _? Not ever, that’s when. It’s another attempt to divide. We are bound to each other all over the world.