It was the summer of 2015; I decided I was going to move back to the United States and finish my undergraduate degree in English. I was 23, moving into my new apartment. At the time of my move, I did not have help because my cousin was at work, my friends didn’t arrive back to Huntsville as yet, and my father lived in Birmingham- an hour and a half away. My original thought was to wait until after 6 pm when my cousin got off from work, but I decided against it for two reasons, one because I was extremely excited to organize my apartment and two it would have been getting dark if I waited till 6 pm. I thought the more I boxes I can move upstairs and unpack, the less my cousin and I would have to do later. So I got myself situated and started moving boxes, suitcases, and containers from the truck to my apartment. I had finally moved all the small containers and bags into the apartment. Now it was time to bring in the bed frame. It was heavy, but I was able to manage. After finding a comfortable place on my shoulder for the box, I heard a voice from a man approach me. I directed my attention to him; he asked if I needed help. I proceeded, politely saying no. I directed my attention back to the box and getting it up the stairs into my apartment. But what I was unaware of, was the what type of repressed dismay I had unleashed from him. I was ready to continue with the task at hand, but I noticed that he was still standing there. He caught my attention and ultimately caused me to put down the box- the object that may have started something between this stranger and me. I gave him my full attention anticipating what was about to transpire. There was this suffocating aura; most times I wouldn’t entertain it, but this day I did. I was curious. With a condescending tone, he declaimed, “What is wrong with you black women?” At that moment, I was warring with myself, puzzled and frankly disturbed. I wanted to protect my vulnerability and put up walls to stop myself from feeling, to distract myself from this unexplainable concern, frankly, a concern that I didn’t know how to handle. I was taken back because he wasn’t an African American man- not saying it would be right if he had been black, but what gave him the right to talk to me in such manner? What did he know about blackness? What did he know about being a woman, especially, a black woman? If I needed his help, regardless of what he thought about my race and gender, I would have accepted his offer to carry my box to my apartment, but I didn’t need his assistance. It was hard for me to respond without lashing out, without fitting into the stereotype that society fits black women in, without fitting into the box that this man had already set up for me in the span of approximately 10-minutes.
My mother has always taught me how to do for myself and is still teaching me to this day. There is always someone who will tell me that I am not good enough, or I can’t accomplish everything I put my mind to. If I attempt to accomplish what I put my mind to, there will always be that one person who will think that I can’t do it on for myself. She taught me this so I can be armed for a battle that society was preparing for me. For instance, at the age of 8, I had to make up my bed, brush my teeth, bathe, complete chores, and eat. By the age of 13, I was ironing my own school clothes, as well as doing my own hair. By high school, I was working a part-time job at a theme park as a barista at the park’s coffee shop. So when it was time for me to leave the nest, I was able to stand on my own- not wanting for anything. At the age of 22, I had a full-time job, paying my own rent and taking care of myself. My mother taught me the difference between wanting and needing. She would always say I could always need something but not want for anything. If I was to be in need of anything, I could ask, but if I did not I would be fine. There was a hidden principle behind it, and that was to never be emotionally or physically dependent on another person unless it was necessary. I can do anything I set my mind towards. Whether it is completing my degree or moving 1000 miles away to a whole new country on my own. I can be whomever I set out to be and do anything I set my mind to. Whether in the workplace, in the home, or at school, I can prove to myself, and whoever was watching that I am just as good as the next male or female.
That day, when the man questioned my intentions, and what I should expect and accept from others became the moment I realized how the multiple layers of consciousness permeating many black women’s lives were ignored as they are subjected to racist and feminist abuse. In order to fully understand the term of triple consciousness and how the layers can affect a person, a deeper look at the term double consciousness, the veil and its effect in America needs to be observed.
Dubois observed that people who are subjected to racial discrimination are black people because they are black and in America. The condition of being Black and American is termed as double consciousness. It is regarded as an obstacle to black people, which denies them of opportunities and subjects them to be racially discriminated against. Being black and living in America and seeing oneself through the eyes of others with a conflict of having one’s own identity (Du Bios 689) is a plight of black people in America. Double consciousness is a term that Du Bois explores in his publication The Souls of Black Folk. In the “Forethought” area of the content, Du Bois presents the picture of the Veil. The Veil provides a link to the essays that make up The Souls of Black Folk, but more specifically to “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” The veil in the text is that “the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second sight in this American world, – a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. “They half approach me in a half- hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then asking indirectly how does it feel to be a problem?” (Du Bois 7). The Veil is a metaphor for the color line, in which African Americans would live with forever, and the separation and invisibility of black life in America. The veil highlights the humanity of blacks, which has ramifications to the sorts of relations that are created for blacks and whites. It can also be translated as a gathering of generalizations instead of a real, distinctive individual. Coupled with Du Bois Theory of the veil Ellison, the author of The Invisible Man states, “They see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination- indeed, everything except me.” In essence, in a world that yields no true self-consciousness to black people, Du Bois points out in his essay “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” that African American’s can suffer from a damaged self-image shaped by the perceptions and treatment of white people. Black life, in turn, can easily become shaped by stereotypes perpetuated by mainstream culture. In addition to the racial discrimination of black people as a whole, black women have been subjected to gender inequality, both by white people and black men. Without underplaying the significance of race, I will introduce gender and sexuality with emphasis on these identities through the revelation of my personal experience.
Black women’s experience in America is about reconciling one’s multiple identities in a world that is constantly questioning their sense of belonging if not humanity. My triple consciousness can impact my activism by responding to and shaping social constructs within my community. One ever feels her three-ness, an American, black, and a woman; three depths, three beliefs, three resolved strivings; three warring paradigms in one dark body, whose strength keeps it from being destroyed. The theory of triple consciousness is defined as being born black, in America and a woman. Its also about looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tap of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. The Souls of Black Folks characterizes a socio-psychological disposition of Black America, where Black people’s sense of self has been shaped by a society that has oppressed and devalued them. Cooper and Jacques- Garvey are two individuals among many women who points to the inconsistence in the assumption that the world is a gender-neutral non-racial community. Jones argues that black women experience “super exploitation,’ whereas Karl Marx a political theorist and sociologist thought black women would simply be integrated into the democratic masses. But what Marx’s didn’t realise and what Jones brought to light is that the United States target was to keep the black community contained (Lynn). The theory of triple consciousness recognizes the intersectionaility of gender, race, and class.
My mother showed me through her actions, that, there is no choice but to open up because my personal is political. I spent my adult years believing that I had assumed a prominent role in the culture of North America and abroad. When the gentleman queried about who I was on that long ago day, he wanted me to feel this deep sense of dissatisfaction, to feel a sense of pain that I am not all that as I like to be. He wanted me to acknowledge that my life is still widely governed by a set of old oppressive myths, circulating in dominated worlds like America. So, I took a moment, looked at him, and without being combative, I asked him why he said that. His response was, “ You have a man standing right here willing and able to help you,” I wanted to interject, but I allowed him to continue “but you all feel like you don’t need any help. If we treated you like men you couldn’t handle it.” I didn’t know how to respond. Without getting angry, I forced a smile on my face, picked up my box, and carried on to my new home. He thought at that moment that he took that box and created walls around me, but what he didn’t know that at that moment he created this movement in me of not allowing people to build boxes around me. Shockingly enough at that moment, I felt a sense pride, that I, Carmel, caught the attention of the “people” that my mother speaks about. At that moment, I felt a sense of relief that I, Carmel, could have possible diminished any thought he had of me, or any women as I picked back up the box and proceeded to my new apartment.
If I am strong, I cannot be beautiful, black and female. If I get myself a job to put myself through school, I will fail at one or both. I am a black woman. I have morals. I am intelligent. I am love and I am valuable, but I am also strong. But the man’s question of concern implied that I couldn’t do or be both. Like Sojourner Truth I have ripped arms with diligent work ethics; “ain’t I a woman… If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!”
Society’s stubborn myths can do tremendous damage to me. Was I able to be the person I want to be without a man leading me because it is a “man’s world.” Those kinds of statements seep into black women’s inner psyches and become permanently internalized, battering them from within even if they were able, for a time, to wiggle free and live the truth. The stereotype based on race and social class make it hard to trust oneself and to trust others who look or behave like me, but when the idea of gender is thrown into the mix, it makes it twice the load to carry. Society sets confusing limitations on which I think I am and what I believe I should or can become. It dictates what I should expect, what may be real and what seems possible.
Being in the 21st century, I automatically have two strikes against myself: Being black in a largely white society and being a woman in a patriarchal system of oppression. Did my mother come to this country to be questioned on her abilities to succeed? Was I born into this world for my sexuality to be questioned? Below is an excerpt by Corliss Heath, a health scientist, who explains diverse methods for considering the Black women’s qualities, strengths, and battles:
A womanist research agenda is needed to contribute to the process of understanding the liberating function of spirituality in Black women’s lives….
Moreover, we need new theories; theories that will tear down the walls of demarcation between disciplines; theories that will enable researchers and health care providers to counter negative images and formulations of Black women; theories that will attend to the diverse life and cultural experiences of Black women; theories that recognize there are different ways of seeing reality as it pertains to Black women’s strengths, resilience, and struggles; and theories that will allow Black women to communicate their personal experiences of oppression with the hopes of developing interventions that are consistent with Black women’s ways of knowing. (Heath)
Above all, triple consciousness is not a simple weight for black women since they have been instructed to disregard the widespread sexist, dangerous thought design that exist in their groups and to simply focus on issues of race, and religious conventions that have been keeping them down for an era. Abolitionist Sojourner Truth tended to the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, on the subject of women’s rights where she reacted to male conflict that women’s delicacy and requirement for platforms soothed them of any bothersome requirement for rights, Truth shouted so anyone might hear where her platform was. Having furrowed fields and persevered whippings and the offer of her kids, over a century Truth’s question still echoes: “Ain’t I a woman?” (Gilbert, Truth, Titus) It was the early seeds of her faith and spiritual practices planted by her mother Mau-mau Bett that gave her insight on whom superiority belongs to- God. Because of the hardships and exploitation that she encountered, Truth appealed to God, her mother taught her that she could appeal to Him “when you are beaten, or cruelly treated or fall into any trouble.” Truth was able to reflect a strong, self-determined woman whose conscience was dictated by God rather than man (Washington 58).
I have learned to find humour in heartache and to see beauty in the midst of desperation and horror. The key to self-assertion is the Black women’s self-understanding of her meaning and role in life and struggle. This requires a reorientation of both the black freedom struggle and feminism and an understanding that revolutionary change can begin at home. (Romero). Women like my mother have been caregivers and breadwinners, showing incredible strength and resilience, unflinching loyalty, boundless love, and affection. She has risen above centuries of oppression so that today I didn’t have to experience societies racist and sexist misconceptions with its brutal hostilities and unthinkable mistreatment. I want to be known and appreciated for the work I have done on my own. For the things I have accomplished because of my hard work and because of my likeness. Because my mother has paved the way for me I want to remain unbroken and continue to chip away at all the stereotypes that have been given to me, such the color of my skin and the gender I was born into. I am strong, not angry. I am inquisitive and not overly opinionated. Women like my mother, and my mother’s mother have held the black home for generations under untold adversity. What I yearn for is Stiwanism- social transformation, where I am not fighting against my male counterparts, where I am not considered as inferior or superior, better or worse, weaker or strong, but as complements; equals. (Ogundipe-Leslie 1994:547). What I have learned through research is that “A stream cannot run higher than its source” meaning, with its source being the persons, female and male that composes it; race in black people cannot be removed until the black woman is lifted up. Only she says when she enters into her womanhood, without prejudice, violence, or sexist behaviour. Cooper says it’s not until then that the whole black race wins. The progress upwards must be the black woman (Lynn). Black Women are the embodiment of beauty in the struggle amongst their three-ness.