Tag Archives: Woman

My Testimony

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As I look back over my life
And I think things over I can truly say that I’ve been blessed
I’ve got a testimony–I’ve Got a Testimony by the Rev. Clay Evans

On Monday and Wednesday I gave you the introduction to my strong black woman testimony. Over the last year and a half you have gotten glimpses into aspects of this story, but next Monday takes you to the beginning of my breaking point. Tune in to see how my struggle to hold on to being a strong black woman almost broke me. I look forward to your feedback.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

Day 2: Strong Black Women Rubbish

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Since the time of black American slavery (some even dare say before, on the continent of Africa), black women have been considered the center of the black family. Matriarchy, the argument goes, has been necessary because black women have been in the position to support the family without being a threat, as the black man is, to the white power structure. Black women’s leadership, regardless of the reason, has led to us being what writer Zora Neale Hurston called the “mules of society.”

Our hard work has also generated many stereotypes, including the domestic and domineering Aunt Jemima and mammy, and the sassy Sapphire. As a result of these stereotypes, many see black women as overbearing. Some of us don’t consider ourselves domineering; we choose to call ourselves strong black women (SBW). Like some blacks who have reclaimed the word nigger as a term of endearment, black women have embraced the label strong black woman without fully recognizing its detrimental effects. This is the reason I have written this book: To tell us that it is no longer time for us to believe our strength is in sitting on the term strong black women.

I believe that the SBW that emerged from negative stereotypes is a myth that black women have welcomed to their detriment. I am not the only one who argues this; Scholar/writer/activist/feminists Angela Y. Davis and bell hooks, and others–including most recently Sheri Parks in Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture–advocate controlling, perhaps destroying, the mythical SBW. They say believing this myth has led to black women, indeed, being the “mules of society” and have left them mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally unhealthy. Some suggest a humanist approach to self-healing and creating healthy families, including lesbian homes. But I know the only way healing and healthy families come about is by following God’s design for family and the woman, without giving priority to race.

Black Christian women have embraced the SBW, a label that even leading feminists are rejecting. Buying into this myth has caused many black Christian women to become deluded to the point that we compete with each other, have been deceived by each other, are haughty, and lack submission. Unfortunately, we have taught our daughters how to be SBW, and the satanical cycle will continue if we don’t recognize the source of contention in our homes.

This book exposes how the SBW myth is still being peddled in the media and is wrecking havoc in black Christian women’s lives—personally, with each other, with our boyfriends and spouses, and with our daughters. Black Christian women need to continue to rid ourselves of pride, covetousness, envy, and competition, which I believe largely stem from the notion of what it means to be a strong black woman. Destroying the Myth of the Strong Black Woman gives clear direction in how to shed the myth and embrace what God labels a strong woman.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

Loving Kim

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Yesterday educator and civil rights icon Dorothy I. Height died. She was there with Martin Luther King. She was there before him fighting for racial and gender equality. She was on the frontlines. Among several involvements, Height was a member and past president of the National Council of Negro Women, a member and past national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. and a presidential adviser. Height was 98. With her death and the recent death of former NAACP leader Benjamin Hooks, someone asked the question, “Who will lead us?” And I thought of my girl Kim, one of my oldest, closest and dearest friends.

Me and Kim at the airport on her way to South Africa-February 1996

Kimberly Ann Trent is a civil rights icon in her own right. Currently a director for Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, she’s worked for two members of US Congress, been a journalist, is extremely active with the Democratic Party and Delta Sigma Theta’s political action committee, organized the campaign to keep affirmative action as the law in Michigan and sits on too many boards to name. She is a true Renaissance woman who does what she does not to be seen and heard but so others can be seen and heard. Though she comes from a highly educated middle class family and has studied abroad in Finland and South Africa, she has a heart for the oppressed, whatever the oppression is. She’s been this way for as long as I’ve known her and that’s been since we were 14, but we didn’t get close until college.

While at Wayne State University in Detroit we dreamed of a better world and what our role would be in it. We were young, certainly not dumb but we wanted to be deeper than we were. A voracious reader, Kim mostly decided what we would read and intellectual bell hooks was at the top of our list. Some Saturdays (depending on what we did Friday night) we would sit and read and then discuss what we read. I remember taking Sisters of the Yam on our trip to Jamaica and between sightseeing and beach parties, we actually read on our hotel balcony and while chilling on the beach.

Our reading together, trips together, working together (summers at The Detroit News), and ‘all the time’ talks together created a deep bond that some just couldn’t understand, especially our sorors (I am a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.). We would say we were going to be national president of our organizations and seek to implement joint national programs. And to get each other’s attention across campus we would mix our sorority calls (Skee-oop, I would say. Ooo-skee, she would say). This was the late ’80s and ’90s. In this last decade we haven’t hung as much because our lives leave little time for leisure. But Kim in all her busyness never forgets her friends. She never forgets me. She always celebrates my birthday and has helped to host my baby showers. We talk at least once a month and even hung out for a few hours last Friday without a big rush and without our children. It was then that I felt we were young again, and I remembered my poetic tribute to her. I share this with you now to celebrate one of my best friends, civil rights icon Kimberly Ann Trent:

SISTER LOVE
For Kimmie

A stash of my sashes, those tools to prop me up,
are in medicine cabinets and books, the bible to be exact.
But there’s one place I find comfort, where books don’t compete
or taking drugs, when I’m fiend, leaves me feeling incomplete
I need to push a button, the one marked primary
at the top of my telephone
to send an alert to my friend, the one who keeps me moving,
strolling, yes, staying strong.
Always on the case, my saving grace,
she perfects the race to be young, gifted and black.
She got my back from way back,
that’s how I know she’s beautiful.

And I told her, her statuesque body
taking command as she stands and I delight
in her insight and share her thoughts with others.
And no joke, this is not for the rhyme but my brother
said one time, “What doesn’t Kim say?”
I blushed and agreed because I did repeat
a lot of what she said
like with a childhood crush
or results of a sugar rush to the head
I was and still am impelled by Kim.

Sounds like a love story, that’s right, it is.
Sister love is the theme and Kimberly Ann Trent has laid out the scene
Even when she’s moody and doubtful, I remember the laughter, same wave lengths, talking all night, all of the trappings of great friendship.
She is solid, solid as a rock, my rock and she better know it.
She is good medicine. And I’m glad I have her to help save my life.

By Rhonda Anderson
February 17, 1996

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

Activate Healing

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Forgiving others can be hard, but the act is necessary. Notice that I said act because forgiving is not words we say but actions we perform. But before speaking to or doing for another, we must acknowledge that we have an issue with that person. Doing this can be hard for everyone, including traditional strong black women who tend to ignore pains inflicted on us; our lives are so full of activities that we may think we don’t have time to stop to deal with someone who has offended us. Or maybe we don’t want to admit that someone hurt our feelings because doing so makes us look weak. And perhaps we think being vulnerable is not a position we can afford to be in.

Well, we must risk missing a deadline and being vulnerable so that we make amends. This is for our health and the health of others. In keeping with my observance of National Poetry Month, I posted the poem The Making of Unforgiveness on Friday. On Saturday I ministered at a women’s retreat on the topic of forgiveness. In one exercise I had the women rewrite this poem to reflect someone who they hadn’t forgiven. I had them title their poem My Making of Unforgiveness. The women began to unearth things, many they had buried years ago. By their own admission, through this exercise many women began to heal. I challenge you to rewrite the poem to fit your situation and let me know the effect the process has on you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

Nikki G. Gets Me

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Don’t you feel good when you meet someone who gets it? I mean they get the times we live in, understand systems and what needs to be done to make change. They can talk about issues and when they say what they say you say, “Yes, that’s exactly how I feel” or “That’s what I would have said.” And sometimes these people get you. They know your foibles inside and out but don’t cast you out from their presence. You feel that they are that necessary person in your life. They offer you a type of life. They offer you hope. Poetically, Nikki Giovanni is that person for me. I’m not saying she 100 percent gets it with what she says, but she almost 100 percent gets me with how she says what she says. I don’t remember the introduction, whether in high school or college, but when I met Giovanni through her poems I knew she got me. I no longer saw my poems as having a different mixture of meters that wowed some “classically” trained university poets who heard my work; when I read her lines, I heard my lines, and thanked God for an elder with a similar voice.

American poet Nikki Giovanni

Beliefs aside, she got me with “Ego Tripping”. She got me with the poems in “My House.” She got with me with her Tupac Shakur love poem “All Eyez on U”:

as I tossed and turned unable to achieve sleep unable to control
anxiety unable to comprehend why

2Pac is not with us

if those who lived by the sword died by the sword there would be no
white men on earth
if those who lived on hatred died on hatred there would be no KKK
if those who lived by lies died by lies there would be nobody on wall
street in executive suites in academic offices instructing the young
don’t tell me he got what he deserved he deserved a chariot and
the accolades of a grateful people

he deserved his life*

She says what she says with feeling. She doesn’t hold back in fear. I never get a sense that she is speaking with caution only speaking what she thinks she ought without the politics of acceptance shaping her words. She did this in her Tupac poem and she made me think. Not a Tupac fan or a real lover of rap, Giovanni’s poetic picture helped me to see another perspective of the saga surrounding the rapper’s life and death. Her rhythm makes me move when I read her work. Her words, whether slow and contemplative or spit fiery fast, flow through me, giving me pause about the subject and always affirming the poetic voice in me. That’s why I love her, without a doubt my favorite poet.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

*From Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York: 1997