What I've Learned From Mean Black Girls

So the obvious thing I’ve learned from mean black girls is, to not be one!

You know when you make a post (or comment on one) and somebody has something ugly to say back? That’s them folks I don’t like! Why do we have to be so rude to each other? Black folks in general as far as that goes. Why is it just the norm to go at each others throats in these comment sections? Or better yet, in real life!

This hate applies across many races and ethnicities but I want to address my own people today. I want to talk about how as black women, we are always worried about who said sum'. A long standing offense amongst us is “she think she cute!” But why can’t she? And why can’t you think the same simultaneously.

As a black woman, how sincere are you when you comment “yaaaassssss,” “okay queen” or “I see you sis” on another black woman’s post or say it in real life? Do you really mean it? Or is it just a surface level thing that we do with each other? Are you apart of the “performative sisterhood” as sports journalist Jemele Hill calls it. Deep inside, are you a mean black girl who’s grown into a mean black woman?

I’ve spent a good majority of my life, smiling more than most probably do because of the instant threat black women feel towards one another. To ease the tension that just exists amongst us when we see a woman on her shit by whatever means her shit is poppin’ and sadly, even smiling is sometimes perceived as intimidation. I say this with love but I mean it at the same time, I’m tired of going above and beyond for your sensitivity now! And your lack of recognition for your own downfalls, shortcomings, and the improper lessons that sit in your mind about other black women.

Any accomplishment I’ve made in life have always been attributed to everything but my intelligence, resourcefulness, hardwork, resilience, ability to persevere and most importantly, my without a shadow of a doubt, faith in God. It’s always been, “she must’ve slept with somebody,” she probably got sugar daddy,” “her man takes care of her,” “she kissed somebody’s ass” or just because they think I’m cute.

I love this Red Table Talk (<<< click to watch, it’s good) on this exact subject, because we hear a very candid conversation from the ladies and their guests, sports journalists Jemele Hill and Cari Champion, about why women are so mean to each other. One “tweet-able moment” (as Oprah calls it), Jada says it’s a “survival over sisterhood” mentality. We spew black girl magic all day but it’s really every women for herself in these melanin streets. Stats from the Twisted Sisterhood show that “60% of women say they are distrustful of other women because of past experiences.”

In an article by Arah Iloabugichukwu she states the same sentiment by saying “before we’re taught sisterhood, we’re taught survival. Which is ironic considering we’d probably need to know a lot less about survival if we collectively understood a little more about sisterhood.” She goes on to say how our weight, skin color, height, curves, backside, hair and make-up are what we are programmed to idolize in how to categorize and prioritize black women and how “we’ll continue to subscribe to whatever narrative earns us our “fair share,” which, unfortunately in our case, is the one that pits us against each other.”

I believe black women are the backbone of black culture. We can not be at war with one another and expect our race to survive as a whole in a world where we are already fighting multiple systems designed to eradicate our blackness from this earth. How can we want so much respect from our oppressors and not be able to give it to ourselves? And that’s blackness as a whole as well. Throw the entire system we’ve been taught away!

“As black women, we can be so hard and cruel to one another.” Where does it come from? A catalyst to this mean girl syndrome is believed to be spawned from our upbringings. Jemele said these “lessons of mistrust are bread in our own home” and we pass it on to other women. It’s built on watching our mothers gossip about their “friends” to other “friends.”

We watch and hear the backstabbing as children and it’s just instilled in us from generation to generation to be this way. I myself can’t stand to hear gossip as a full grown woman today. My grandmother, God knows I loved her and thank her for her sacrifice to raise me when my parents could not, but we called her the “mouth of the south” because she gossiped about any and everybody on the telephone EVERY. DAY.

And rather than falling into it as I got older like most women do, it did something to me and I wanted to dismantle it. I never wanted to pass that much judgment on people and if I wanted to ask about someone to that extent, I would talk to them directly.

Cari said that “childhood lasts forever” and the things that are instilled in us usually have to be unlearned at some point to be better versions of ourselves as adults. As women, we learn many of our habits, good and bad, from our mothers. Our first real moment of female bonding. Some of us are taught the right way to love and celebrate other black women but many of us are not. A lot of us don’t have great relationships with our mothers which forms the ideas of hate towards other women early. I surely don’t and my grandmother did the best she could but she was too busy bringing home the bacon and cooking it too to show me “the way”.

Jada asks “if we don’t have great relationships with our mothers, how do we learn to relate to others?” It’s a real struggle to recreate relationships we’ve never experienced. We were taught to be hard, strong, independent and never to be vulnerable. We were taught to compete against one another, especially professionally. We are judged by everything we do as a black woman. “We get judged on how we look, we get judged on our hair, we can’t even love who we want to love,” Cari says. “We are always wrong.”

We need to be more vulnerable and human towards one another and go hard together against those who want to see us fall. We have to give each other the grace others don’t. We go through enough as it is. I feel the resentment that creeps up in me when other black women win, again, it’s instilled in us. But I fight it, HARD! I make sure I don’t give women their flowers in vain.

I consciously give all queens their props knowing God still has blessings for me too and that my time is my time. I want them to be happy for me when my day comes. One thing we do, we remember who celebrated our wins with us when they were down and who didn’t. I want genuine love when I make it. Not a bunch of fakeness and women talking about me behind my back.

I’m not afraid to stand up for myself whether in person or on social when folks act up but at the same time, I have a level of anxiety that haunts me from when I was. When the mean girls used to go in on me and I didn’t know how to verbally fight back. I try to avoid drama at all costs. When I’m on social, I usually don’t comment on controversial posts because I know somebody is going to have something to say. When I do, I prepare my mind for what may be said but always try to respond with grace and a sense of understanding that the ugliness has been brainwashed in us and it’s going to take more people who have unlearned this behavior to do the work and change the narrative for others.

People get real bold behind these screens but why can't we just accept others opinions, have healthy debate, and not tear each other down? I’ve gotten to the point where I tell people who start that nonsense in the comments with me, “I’m not going to argue with you over a difference of opinion because we as black people are fighting enough evils in this world as it is.” We can correct each other without dragging one another for filth.

Rather than basking in the destruction of one another, it’s time to push for true sisterhood. We must learn to love the very things about ourselves that don’t measure up according to what we are taught and appreciate it for what God gave it to us for; our own uniqueness in hair, body type and skin color then use our individual weapons of warfare to show that our blackness is enough (“on Jesus and Jollof” - you gotta be a Luvvie Ajayi and Yvonne Orji fan to catch that lol). Not just to each other but to the world!

We are in a time where todays generations are learning how to unlearn the traumas of our ancestors before us more and more and I love to see it! Let’s denounce our mean girl ways. It’s time to put an end to the oppressed becoming the oppressor. Even if you have to call a thing a thing like Gabriel Union did on her come to Jesus Red Table Talk moment here. She admitted it, she was “a hater, a troll and the worst part of the comment section on social media.” She had to come to grips with her mean girl ways and she is not the only one that needs to do it! Let’s be real y’all. Go ahead and look in that mirror and make sure it’s not you too.

We also need to learn how to be the girlfriend who pulls our friends coat tail in a loving way without squashing them in order to tell them, they are the mean girl. If you attack they won’t hear you. And if you are on the receiving end of the convesation, be ready to hear it and accept it. The community is the only one who can truly check the community. We have started the conversation. Let’s keep it going.

Thanks for reading,

~xoxo,

Candace Blair