One of the few black female critics to write about Girlhood—and positively at that—for a mainstream American publication was Alexis Okeowo, a staff writer at The New Yorker. The other reviews and essays that I discovered were mainly favorable ones written by white (mostly male) critics—Mark Kermode in the Guardian, A. O. Scott in the New York Times, Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post, Ty Burr in the Boston Globe, Jesse Hassenger for the A.V. Club.
There were also reviews of the film by nonblack women of color for significant, but more alternative, online sites such as Fariha Róisín on The Hairpin, Durga Chew-Bose on BuzzFeed, and Anupa Mistry for Jezebel. I did wonder if any black female writers had pitched those sites to review the film, but at the same time, I enjoyed these commentaries. Cultural criticism, particularly film reviews, is overwhelmingly white and male. I love seeing women of color getting more work in the industry, and I loved that editors had allowed some of these reviews to have titles such as “Finally, a Film about Black Girls Strengthening Each Other” or “On Brown-Girl Exclusivity and Writing Our Own Narrative.” But when a nonblack woman of color writes about black women in a way that conflates them with other minorities, particularly under the umbrella of “brown,” this label seems diluting. Anti-blackness is pervasive, even among minorities who are also burdened by historical and present-day oppression. It’s true that nonblack women of color cannot inflict violence upon black women to the degree that white women can, and have. Women of color do not have that kind of systematic power, and they also suffer in our dominant white patriarchal society. But just because their power isn’t systematic does not mean that it does not stigmatize black women and their experiences. Fanta Sylla, a black French writer, confronted this in regards to the film on her personal blog: “Why was the spectatorship of nonblack women of color centered instead of that of black women? . . . It is easier to point the finger at white appropriators like the ones cited above than to call out brown cultural writers . . . because what they do is always wrapped in good intentions, always hidden behind faux-semblants of unity and solidarity.”
Initially, I was staunchly against Sylla’s argument. She seemed to write as though she personally knew the aforementioned writers and believed they had an unhealthy obsession with black art. Not to mention, I do personally know one of them and she always seems quite aware of cultural parasitism. I loved all of the nonblack women of color’s work, and I thought it was better to have minority women’s voices than none at all. After all, they are oppressed by the same white society as I.
It took me over two years of mental fermentation to fully process what Sylla had to say. The influences of race and gender affect all women of color, but these influences function in multitudinous ways. There are times to speak about solidarity between women of color, and times to eliminate the majority of women of color in order to address the issues of one group in particular, that being black girls and women. It’s an evergreen demand and conversation across social media channels about only black women writing about black women, and there have been moments when editors responded. For Lemonade, Doreen St. Félix wrote about the special for MTV, Brittany Spanos for Rolling Stone, Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry for Elle. According to Sylla, “the systematic use of this word [‘brown’] is how their subconscious desire to erase blackness expresses itself within their language.” What need is there to describe us as “brown” other than the deep-seated fear that if our blackness is not diluted through language then somehow we are too distant from everyone else? For a long time I advocated for women of color to use whichever labels made them feel most comfortable, but this was a tactic to avoid conflict. Like Sylla, I eschew the label “brown.” I am black, not literally, but racially and politically. “What does this brown identity mean to a Black woman?” Sylla asks. “Brown is a euphemism . . . It feels more like a trap than an identity to me but, I can see why Black people might find this identity desirable. It temporarily relieves you from the burden of blackness.”
Black women’s experiences are unique among women of color’s experiences. Asian women’s experiences are unique among women of color’s experiences. The list can go on and on. But when we are specifically talking about black women’s experiences, the magnifying glass need not move to any other melanin-rich subject. Black women are special. It is we who were captured and transported by the millions to the New World. It is we who needed a divergent branch of feminism to get our issues acknowledged and scrutinized. I use the term “we” because there is very little psychological disassociation between the past and the present when we talk about slavery. What happened during that period directly affects our present. The sexual exploitation during the transatlantic slave trade and the consequential epigenetics that demonstrates that trauma in our DNA is firmly rooted in black people and black female oppression.
When black women are at the center, they are subjected to critique just like anyone else. This criticism feels and reads more bitterly coming from a nonblack female writer, but even if a writer is a black woman and the subject she’s critiquing is popular, she might be met with disdain, too. Even if we are in the room by ourselves and writing for ourselves in order to be critiqued by ourselves, if one black woman has an unpopular opinion, which reinforces that we’re not a monolith and there is no universal opinion in our group, how do we simultaneously protect the preciousness of our stories and challenge their creators when necessary?
My own response to Lemonade was powerful and positive, but it was not met with universal acclaim within the black community. Arguably more so than any other black star, Beyoncé is a divisive figure. A few days after Lemonade was released, bell hooks declared in an essay titled “Moving Beyond Pain” that Beyoncé’s “construction of feminism cannot be trusted . . . In the world of fantasy feminism, there are no class, sex, and race hierarchies that break down simplified categories of women and men, no call to challenge and change systems of domination, no emphasis on intersectionality. In such a simplified worldview, women gaining the freedom to be like men can be seen as powerful. But it is a false construction of power.” This was not the first time bell hooks had criticized Beyoncé. In 2014, during a New School discussion called “Are You Still a Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body,” hooks called Beyoncé a terrorist for appearing on the cover of Time magazine in scanty attire. hooks was hardly the only critic. Rapper Azealia Banks believed that Lemonade peddled the “heartbroken black female narrative” that was the antithesis of feminism, labeling its theme “stupidity,” not strength. Ashleigh Shackelford of Wear Your Voice Mag argued that Lemonade is not for fat black women or femmes because there were none in the special. At the end of her essay, bell hooks concludes that Lemonade does not resolve anything, and that healthy self-love can only emerge if black women resist patriarchal romanticization of domination in relationships and refuse to be victims. Once I finished the last line, I felt like a deflated whoopee cushion. Victim? Victim? Is what I’d just watched for a full hour, a portrait of a victim? Lemonade was the first time I had seen Beyoncé in an incredibly vulnerable state, and I know her vulnerability was real because I felt it. She is not a fighter against patriarchal domination, but this does not mean she is a victim. She is a feeling black woman, and I realized simply from the criticism of Lemonade that as a black woman, if you are not always fighting for something larger than yourself, then you are somehow the enemy, not performing the “correct” form of black womanhood in contemporary America. We should not have to choose between being black, being a woman, and being human in our own story.