Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Observation #5: Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America

In order to better understand what it means to live as a black woman, having to disprove stereotypes and act differently around different groups of people, I started reading Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America, based on the African American Women's Voices Project. So far, this book has been extremely enlightening. It looks at the cases and perspectives of black women from all walks of life and examines some of their common experiences, as well as specifically lays out the different stereotypes and how they work to overcome them.

Ramona introduced me to this book and I regret not starting it earlier in the process of my project. It is based on a project that worked to make the voices of black women heard, which is another way of looking at my project, just on a much larger scale. The title, Shifting refers to the fact that many African American women feel the need to shift into different personalities or personas depending on the people around them or the situation they are in. Kelley talked to me about this when I met with her, and then I observed this when I went to church with her. Depending on the surroundings, African American women can only be a certain percentage of who they really are out of fear of offending or being perceived wrongly.

One new aspect that I had not encountered up to this point is the stereotype that African American women can handle anything that comes their way with strength and perseverance. This sounds like a compliment to me, but when I read more about it, it is a burden and can cause people to treat African American women more harshly because "they can take it." It would be hard to have people assuming that you can handle any situation without help. One woman explained that when a situation arose for her that she needed support on, she had no one to turn to. Even her closest friends did not understand why this was so hard for her to handle and would walk away when she showed emotion. This would be incredibly painful. It makes me wonder how African American women on a predominantly white campus are treated because of this assumption. Are they disregarded? Are their concerns ignored? Are they ignored? Do some of their white friends make ignorant comments around them because they think they can handle it? Are they expected to handle it, even if people know the situation is hurtful? I wonder if they feel they cannot express frustration or feelings of being alone in a predominantly white environment because they fear that no one will take them seriously or listen to their concerns.

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