Clearly when we look at the history of our families we get an understanding of why we act the way we do. I know I have the tendency to OVER-administrate because my grandmother, mother and my aunt did this. And I know that I gravitate toward the intellectual and cultural arts because my daddy was an intellectual genius and loved the arts. Family, of course, is just one influencing factor on our thoughts and behaviors. As a (recovering) strong black woman, I realize that I exerted my own strength based on what I saw my foremothers doing, but there were other factors, too. I had a number of teachers, authors, friends, and colleagues and a host of media that bombarded me with shouts to be a strong black woman. And behind these people and media is some history we need to unearth to get a better understanding of why we see what we see.
We say and do what we say and do because of a number of societal forces that I have divided into what I call “The Three Kingdoms.” Get more insight about these as I lay the foundation for the history of the strong black woman in the next series of blog posts. As black abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, if we don’t know our history we are doomed to repeat it. Here’s to helping us know and understand the history of the strong black woman so we aren’t doomed to repeat it.
Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith