(ThyBlackMan.com) She’s standing at the corner, gold chain on her neck, hoop earrings in both ears, and neck swivelling – 360 degree circles at 360 miles per hour. Mmmmhmm – Shaniqua is angry. She wants you to know about it. You WILL know about it. Shaniqua’s angry because – her baby father left her, he ain’t paying child support, plus the guy who lives in the apartment above her keeps playing that new track at 3 in the morning, and then you walked past her and ‘looked at her funny’ – why are you looking at her funny? Huh?
Gabrielle is also angry. She’s writing frantically in her blog at two in the morning because there are no good black men in the corporate world, and all of the good ones marry white women, and the one’s who don’t are on the down low, and anyway, the other ‘good’ ones are weak, and who wants a weak man? 
Plus, climbing up the corporate ladder is hard enough as a woman, but she’s a woman AND she’s black, so she sees everyone getting a raise apart from her. Not to mention the fact that her boss told her that her afro was ‘unprofessional’ and maybe she should wear a hairstyle that would be more likely to promote ‘workplace cohesiveness’ Yup, she’s angry.
So these scenarios are a bit tongue in cheek, slightly exaggerated – sound familiar though? Probably because the prevailing trend at the moment is to paint black women as angry. Never satisfied. Always whining and complaining and railing and swivelling the proverbial neck at somebody, somewhere, for something. I for one am tired. Tired at black women being portrayed as angry you ask? No, but thanks for asking. In actual fact, I’m tired of everybody having a right to be angry except for us.
It seems every other group of people that experience some sort of oppression have a right to be angry. White women are allowed to be angry – it’s called feminism. Jewish people are allowed to be angry too. So are homosexuals. Unfortunately, any time a black woman voices an opinion that seems to suggest she’s frustrated at her situation, she’s castigated for being ‘angry’. We’re supposed to be the mules of this world, bearing burdens, silently, trudging along without as much as a peep.
So let me tell you why I have (as Aaron McGruder so eloquently put it), ‘ a right to be hostile.’ 50% of black children in my home country the UK, grow up in a single parent home compared with only 22% of white children. That makes me angry. Black women get portrayed as sexual objects at every available media opportunity, and black male hip hop artists contribute to that. That makes me angry. The rate of diagnosis for AIDS is 23 times that of white women. That makes me angry. Despite me being equally qualified for a job, I’m far less likely to get that job than my white counterparts. That makes me angry.
Now let’s not get confused. Angry doesn’t necessarily mean rude. Angry doesn’t necessarily mean violent. It doesn’t mean screaming at random passers by who ‘look at you funny’. What I’m trying to get at, is that there are very real reasons, that black women have to be angry. They are in situations they never envisaged themselves in. They are struggling to bring up little black boys without father figures. They are trying to work twice as hard as everyone else to get half as far. Anger at systems of injustice, anger at mechanisms that hurt and demean others, is a powerful force that can be channelled to clean up a neighbourhood, inspire a child, or change a nation. So I’ll be angry all I want.
Staff Writer; Shade Henry
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