Why should we employ modern science when its advancements would not have happened if black bodies weren’t being exploited? J. Marion Sims, the father of modern gynecology, experimented on enslaved black women without their consent and, in his autobiography, praised three slaves’ endurance to withstand experiments without any anesthesia because their contributions would help all women. Doctors at Johns Hopkins took the cells of Henrietta Lacks and used her genetic material for medical breakthroughs for over six decades without her permission. Benjamin Rush, the father of modern psychiatry and cofounder of the first anti-slavery society in America, believed that all black people, or “negroes,” suffered from negritude, or blackness. Rush argued that blackness was a mild form of leprosy that could only be cured by becoming white. He also asserted that Africans went insane due to slavery. If this is our legacy and we cannot trust the systems in place, where else can we look but up?
We go to God with our problems. Therapy is for white people with money. It is a pastime, a hobby, a luxury. It is for the religiously and spiritually lazy, not for us. How dare I admit my weakness when my people have survived far worse than a sick stepfather? Black women had to take care of everyone: their masters, their husbands, their mistresses, the mistresses’ children. I thought being able to withstand any and everything was not only my responsibility but also a gift from my foremothers. The Strong Black Woman is the backbone of her family, home, and community, and so she is supposed to be a bit aggressive. She is able to withstand any kind of pressure or pain. She doesn’t need to rely on anyone but herself. She does not hurt. On the surface, this ideal is a compliment to black women’s resilience and endurance, but it dehumanizes us by not acknowledging our human weaknesses and needs. The Strong Black Woman does not ask for help not because she does not need it. Her emotions are crushed underneath that totem. She is always willing, always giving, and easily taken advantage of. Because what other option is there? What avenues does she have through which change can be a possibility?
We have reclaimed that resilience and transformed it into self-empowerment and self-love in the form of “Black Girl Magic,” both a phrase and a movement. Black Girl Magic is, according to writer Clover Hope, “a declaration of pride amongst black girls and women.” However, its singular definition is as elusive as the person or company who claims the term.1 The long-held belief is that CaShawn Thompson, a feminist writer, popularized the international phenomenon in order to “counteract the negativity” of the images of black women in our society. It began as a Twitter hashtag and grew into a movement showcasing the accomplishments of black women like Beyoncé; actress Amandla Stenberg; writer, producer, and director Ava DuVernay; Olympic gymnasts Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas; the Williams sisters; and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
But in 2016, Elle.com published a controversial op-ed by Dr. Linda Chavers, a scholar of twentieth-century American and African-American literature with a PhD from Harvard, about Black Girl Magic. When she heard the phrase “Black Girl Magic,” Dr. Chavers interpreted it as synonymous with the Strong Black Woman stereotype. She argued that glorifying black women during their highest moments obscures their suffering, which is another form of dehumanization. In a subsequent interview with For Harriet, she admitted that she did not know much about the movement, but went on to explain that “if we keep perpetuating suggestions of being exceptional, we’re getting into dangerous territory. We’ve done it before. We’ve done it again, whether we originate it or it originates explicitly from white supremacy, to me, it doesn’t matter.” She also reinforced that she loves black women and apologized for not making that explicitly clear in her exploration of the issue.
When Dr. Chavers’s article went live, it was met with immediate backlash from black women, including myself. I was thrown that an academic would not do her research on a movement before writing about it; the move seemed to undermine her training as a writer and scholar. Others could not understand why such a piece was published on a mainstream, predominantly white website, and felt like it was an editorial failure for it to have been green-lit in the first place. In fact, some even suspected that it was a conspiracy on the part of the editors to make a black woman a puppet; her article dismissing an empowering movement would get many hits while she would be left to the wolves. About a day later, a rebuttal by writer and editor Ashley Ford appeared on the same website, arguing that Black Girl Magic is not about being superhuman but rather reclaiming what others refuse to see in us; it was much better received. But as I sat longer with Dr. Chavers’s piece, I felt less spite towards her and more remorse about the way her point of view was almost immediately dismissed throughout social media networks, especially Twitter. Although I agree more with Ford’s argument, I regret that there was not a larger discussion about what it means to be a part of Black Girl Magic. Dr. Chavers said that she did not know much about “Black Girl Magic,” but who can honestly claim that they do? There are many ways to counteract negativity. And what the backlash only scantily acknowledged was that Dr. Chavers is disabled.
Four months after her Black Girl Magic piece, she published another essay on the same website describing her battle with multiple sclerosis. She opens by talking about how her hand suddenly begins to shake uncontrollably while she’s giving a lecture on Albert Camus’s The Plague, and so she worries that her students will think that she’s nervous. About the intersection of her blackness, womanhood, and disability, she writes, “Chronic illness is, if nothing else, an education in how much every single part of your body actually matters. As a black woman, it doesn’t take much to make me hyper-aware of my body.”