In an interview with journalist Bernard Magnier (I write as I live, 2010), the writer Dany Laferrière dwells on sexual relations in terms of racial confrontation with a smirk: the white man at the very top of the ladder, then the white woman, then the black, and finally the black woman, this invisible character. He uses the n-word to illustrate his point, even if Dany is wokein the sense of being aware of discrimination.
Beyond sexual relations, the black woman is a shadow that no one notices socially, except when she steps out of line, whether she is called Rosa Parks, Christiane Taubira or Michelle Obama. Only there, we see it, as an anomaly, a case, a bravado, a “black” sheep.
Michelle Obama recounts in her latest book, This light in us, that a guidance counselor in high school provided him with a tremendous springboard. In ten minutes, this woman swept away her university ambitions at Princeton by telling him that she did not have the adequate “profile”: “She had looked at me, gauged me and had not seen any light in me”, writes the former first lady of the United States, who graduated with honors in sociology from Princeton cum laude (with distinction) before going to law school at Harvard.
“The hurtful remark of this guidance counselor was finally a driving force for me. I was more determined than ever. I wanted to show him what I was capable of. My life has become a form of response to his judgment: Your limits are not mine. »
When a woman says NO you have to stop, when a “BLACK” says “I’m choking” you have to stop too.
Your limits are your inability to see that everything is due to you, that doors magically open in front of you instead of closing. Your limits are those of a meritocracy that you take for granted because you were born in the “right” neighborhood, the “right” country, with the “right” parents and the “right” sex. Your limits are band aid flesh-colored on ebony skin.
Black sirens don’t exist
Michelle Obama points out in her bookempowerment that, in a recent study of monuments in the United States, “a large majority of them are dedicated to white men, half of whom were slavers and 40% from wealthy backgrounds. Blacks and Native Americans represent 10% of those commemorated, women 6%. And there are eleven times more statues of mermaids than female members of Congress. At the risk of repeating myself, it is difficult to aspire to something that is not visible”.
Mysoginoire is everywhere, even in the prestige mineral.
This is perhaps the most striking in the new documentary The myth of the black womanby the director and actress Ayana O’Shun: to what extent these women have always been invisible, relegated to reassuring figures or very specific caricatures. “It’s what they think they know about you that’s unbearable,” says Abisara Machold, founder of InHAIRhitance, which does sociology of frizzy hair.
By dint of playing the prostitute, street gang member or “mistress of”, Ayana O’Shun wanted to show that the figures of black women come from well-established stereotypes that have been studied for a long time: Jezebel, the gendered woman; Aunt Jemima, the nanny, the comforter; the aggressive black woman, well-represented as a comedic trigger on TV. The director took ten years to complete her film, to find an antenna, an ear. No major broadcaster agreed to put their name on it (necessary for financing), except Natyf TV, a French-language web channel that promotes Canadian diversity. On the other hand, you will see all the networks promoting Black History Month in February…
We are the nannies and we are the grannies. And we would like us to be just that. That is the problem.
The film gives voice to 21 women from all walks of life: anthropologist (my colleague Emilie Nicolas), philosopher, activist, entrepreneur, singer, curator, host, psychologist. The philosopher Agnès Berthelot-Raffard underlines: “When a black woman has power, we will consider that she is there for positive discrimination. So, we are going to ask her to accept a certain number of compromises because she has been granted a position of power that she normally does not have in society. »
black thoughts
I cried watching Ayana’s movie. My young Latina roommate I showed it to cried too. I couldn’t hold back my tears while interviewing the director, discouraged by the unanimity of the testimonies, all of them intelligent and sensitive. “95% of the women in my film admitted to me in passing that they had gone through depression. I hadn’t realized it before,” Ayana tells me.
According to Statistics Canada, 11% of men and 16% of women suffer from major depression (there are no minor ones, a shrink explained to me) during their lifetime.
Ayana O’Shun, who owns a Rosa Park t-shirt — her absolute idol — hopes to spark discussion, solidarity, tolerance between peoples and raise awareness about stereotypes. “It’s not a victims’ film, it’sempowering . »
As is the musical Matilda(Netflix), where Lashana Lynch excels as a multi-abused black schoolteacher who saves little Matilda from neglectful and cruel parents. And Matilda will return the favor. I saw the film twice, and with the same feeling of triumphing over adversity embodied in particular by a completely crazy Emma Thompson in the role of the sadistic school principal. It is to be seen, in the entertainment chapter.
As for the rest, the Black Lives Matter movement that shook mentalities in 2020 will at least have helped give black women a voice. “We were waiting for this moment,” Ayana whispers to me. For how many centuries now?
For a question of skin and colorism, these invisible, but too conspicuous women, must rise. “What does it mean to rise, exactly? I feel like I could spend years answering that question,” writes Michelle Obama.
But one sentence will suffice:When they go low, we go high. »
And this phrase elevates us all.