A lot to be mad about: Advocating for the legitimacy of a black woman's anger Owethu Makhatini ‘Youre one of those feminist-types. I can tell. Tell me, what are you guys so angry about all the time? LOL, you guys just want to emas- culate men, here pay the bill then, since you want to be the man.’ Thave heard that statement and iterations of it in several lan- guages, on many occasions, at different locations, said by people I know, love, and/or respect. I’ve rolled my eyes so far back I can almost see constellations and feel connected to the Oneness that is Black Women Who Have Had Enough™. I haven't trade- marked that yet; I probably should. Sometimes the statement pours out of the mouth of a twenty- _ something-year-old between burps of Black Label, sometimes it tumbles out of an academic at a seminar. Sometimes it comes from your own father, The location or topic of conversation is inconse- quential. The resentment and entitlement sting all the same. _ Nothing equates to the heartbreak of hearing it come from a black woman, but I will circle back to that later. | Lused to get offended and jump into a lengthy explanation 185that chronologically and logically explained the frustrations caused by the kyriarchy. T would launch into a well-thought-out argu- ment, being sure to check myself when I heard my voice sharpen- ing in anger and frustration. Once done, I would exhale with satisfaction, knowing that I'd educated at least one person on the intricacies of the violence we face. Each one, teach one, and so on — and double points to me if it was a black male. These are the men I experience deliberately, the men with whom I want to build a life and live out #BlackLoveGoals. ‘The years pass and the more I hear this statement, the more the grain of truth remains. Maybe it is true. Maybe I am (too) angry? Shouldn't I be? None of this is right. No one is showing up for black women. In fact, it seems the world is actively invest- ed in ensuring that we have reasons to be driven to self-doubt and insanity. \ Black radical feminism has provided legitimacy.|My anger has provided a different kind of solidarity. I am normal, I am respond- ing to the sickness. Rightfully so — I should be mad. Sister Sol- ange” says I have a lot to be mad about — we all do. Why aren't we angrier? I fought long and hard not be the angry black woman, and yet here I am. I am livid. I have denied my anger. I have been ashamed of my anger. I have felt like a monster and scrambled to find ways to disguise my fangs. I have held my anger deep in the pit of my stomach and let it eat me up. I have had furrowed brows 60 Kyriarchy is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. 61 Knowles, S. 2016. 4 Seat at the Table. Saint Records/ Columbia Records. 186d tears of pure, animalistic anger well up my eyes and burn my eks. ooking back, I don't remember a time I have not been angry. eight-year-old anger for being told to cut my untidy dread- , a twelve-year-old anger for boarding school, a fifteen-year- anger for loneliness, a nineteen-year-old anger for heartbreak, enty-three-year-old anger for workplace discrimination. A g, bubbling, ‘swart gevaar’® anger at this farce of freedom. ger at our men. An anger that touches everyone and everything life. n lieu of a justifiable rampage, I have tried to repackage the into passion, and slay. I have tried to transform so that my er does not define me. I have swallowed the bile and softened e and offered myself at the feet of my oppressor and his tools. angry because I care)I am angry because I want to be and free. I care about how the world is invested in breaking my and me. I want to fuck it all up. Set everything on fire and over. like I am on a frequency that is unreliable and untethered. me can hear. When the world does tune into our frequency, ely to siphon off our light in a weak attempt to sell it sssion that faces a black woman in post-apartheid South erally ‘Black danger’, propaganda term coined under apartheid to suggest that black people posed a threat to whites. 187Africa. I knew that it didn’t feel right, and now I had a name for it all. Feminism. I rolled the word around my mouth. Feminism, I liked how it felt. I am a feminist. Fe-mi-nist. That will do, | thought to myself. My journey towards womanism Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough. There was still a hunger to find a theory that closely explained the specific violence perpe- trated on a black femme body. What was that, and where could] find it? As a person who believes in enacting one’s politics and adopting an attitude of constant critique and investigation of my own beliefs, it became necessary to identify with a theory that best articulated my beliefs and life circumstances. For some of us, mainstream feminism by itself is not enough. ‘The beginning of my journey into womanism is summed up by Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem segment: ‘for coloured girls who considered womanism when feminism wasn't enuf" Black women have it hard. Black women who are poor, trans, disabled, or do not subscribe to conventional standards of beauty or sexuality have it even harder. Black women who are feminists have it hard. Black women who identify as a womanist have it the hardest) When I make a statement like that, it is always followed by someone asking ‘Don’t you mean ALL women have it bad?’ No,1 don't. Let me elaborate. Rhodes Scholar and EWN contributor Danielle Bowler states: 63. Shange, N. 1980. for coloured girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is not enuf.for brown and black people the world over, the experience of being is always singular and constricting because blackness col- ours every interaction with the world and racism is a daily, ines- capable experience. hen people think of feminism, they assume there exists a soli- arity and inclusive sisterhood. This may not in fact be real. Try- g to honour the full of range of one’s character as a woman in a ciety where women are degraded and considered sub-standard men becomes significantly more difficult to do whilst black. Sexism is reinforced by society through a variety of ways — from tively discouraging girls to pursue hard sciences at school level the gendered wage gap® in business. In the workplace, more an a decade after the passage of the Employment Equity Act, ite men still dominate senior management and company boards both the public and private sectors. South Africa has one of the iggest wage gaps in the world.* Women’s home lives are affected, too. For a significant number f South African women, traditional attitudes have not changed. ¢ levels of domestic and sexual violence against South African omen are shocking. Women are not free at play, either. The patriarchal attitudes Bowler., D 27 August 2014. ‘Defined by your blackness.’ EWN online. hetp:// ewn.co.za/2014/08/27/OPINION-Danielle-Bowler-Defined-by-blackness, Last accessed 21 September 2017, ‘The practice of paying women less than men for the same work. Bronkhorst, Q. 30 May 2014. ‘South Africas Massive Wage Gap.’ Business Teh http://businesstech.co.za/news/general/591 73/south-africas-massive-wage-gap/. Last accessed 21 September 2017. 189prevalent towards women are cause for concern. ‘The sense of entitlement men feel where women’s bodies are concerned is problematic. Feeling that a man is owed sex for buying a woman a drink is a norm in our society, and any negative consequences that follow this tacit agreement are considered solely the fault of the woman. Women are blamed for the violence they experience, and told to adjust their behaviour. Black women face the double whammy of racism and sexism on a daily basis. This makes it necessary to question traditionally white feminism as a default, and to define what blackness and womanhood mean outside of this. [ Understanding and actively adopting womanism as a lived prac- tice means a constant, almost daily unlearning of haa misogyny, racism, sexism, and respectability politics, It means ea ag a ne renee ede eigen my adoption of womanism as a lived politics, I do recognise the amount of privilege attached to the process. I am a middle-class, able-bodied person who has had access to tertiary education. 1 recognise my privilege in having access to tools that could im- prove my standard of living. I would never argue that women who live as womanists but have not identified as such have any less validity than the womanists who build their identity based on 4 combination of literature and their experiences. This is not about labels; it is about life. Being a black woman is challenging, and the challenges that arise out of both descriptors cannot be looked at in isolation to one other. Bowler expresses this wef: Fundamentally, we have to understand that we are not battling simple, unconnected incidents, 190