Black Women Can Be Mean

I have been a Black woman for over six decades, so yes, I have the receipts to say this: Black women can be mean, and I don’t say this with pride but profound sadness.

The YouTube Shay-Shay Amanda Seales video was enlightening, entertaining, and sad but also uplifting.

I have always admired Amanda for unapologetically speaking her truth even when it makes us uncomfortable. She describes a scene in Hollywood where she was summarily thrown out of a “Black Emmy” awards party and damn-near assaulted by one of our own. After weeks of continued discourse seeking a logical explanation for such an illogical experience, what is the final response and justification? “Amanda, I don’t like you.”

Amanda is an outlier, and so am I. In my early years as a teen, I tried to please people based on my insecurities of feeling like an outsider. My beloved mother had schizophrenia, and her sisters raised me. Later in life, I would appreciate the sacrifices my aunts made to ensure that I did not end up in the “system” (AKA foster care).

I, like Amanda, am an alumnus of Columbia University, a magical place that taught me how to rise above adversity and fly. However, there was something about me, and to this day, I have no logical explanation, that made some Black women uncomfortable when they were around me.

Later in life, I learned (with great relief) that I am an outlier like Amanda. I see life through a different lens unapologetically. I do not “code-switch” well. I cuss (although I try to minimize that type of language because there ARE better ways of expressing one’s thoughts), and I have a low tolerance for pretentiousness.

Amanda’s candid discussion in the video discusses all the things about Black women that we need to put in check. Colorism. Envy. Bullying.

Perhaps we need a refresher course on history to remind us that we are the descendants whose ancestors endured and survived The Middle Passage, the period of enslavement, and the architects of the Civil Rights Movement. We must eliminate the “plantation mentality.”

The Law of Scarcity is a lie. Like the air we breathe, abundance surrounds us if we eliminate our limited thinking. Fear is our greatest enemy, and love — our greatest asset.

Thank you, Amanda Seales, for being vulnerable because you have identified places where Black women need so desperately to heal,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

My beloved sisters, PLEASE turn on that light so that we can finally heal.