Happy Black Mother’s Day!
I hereto dedicate the third Sunday of May to all Black mothers. This is a retroactive dedication, which includes: Dinknesh (aka Lucy), our Ethiopian ancestor from 3.2 million years ago; and an extra special shout out to The Virgin Mary, who I am convinced was a Palestinian of mixed African and Arab ancestry.
So, Happy Black Mother’s Day 2020! And yes, I must boldly go there. Being a Black Mother is such a unique experience. And to be a Black mother in the United States is the ultimate joint political and spiritual statement. It is literally the feminine expression of Christ consciousness…because even Jesus & God needed Mama Mary. Furthermore, being a Black Mother in the United States is a living testimony of how the mind, body, and soul conspire to declare war against white supremacy, which is no easy feat.
Thankfully, we are still winning this tacit protracted war against white supremacy. Black mothers are constantly thriving, growing, and glowing! But every now and then, this fantastical creature of white supremacy will rear its ugly head. And just like the Boogeymonster, white supremacy seems to have a thirst for our first born, last born, and even unborn children. Sometimes the Boogeymonster is overt in its actions against Black mothers, and other times it is discrete. For example, it may threaten a mother’s life with a physician who scoffs at the idea of trauma informed care in a “First World” country; consequently, yielding negligent treatment to a Black mother in labor. And to add insult to injury, the public will feign perplexity at why Black women are dying from postpartum hemorrhaging — four times the rate of white women…in a “First World” country.
White supremacy — much like the Boogeymonster, has always pursued Black mothers and their children. Many of us could never simply be mothers; just like many of us could never simply be children. You can imagine how this cycle complicates the role of Black Motherhood.
I work as a mental health provider in the San Francisco Bay Area. Subsequently, I share professional spaces with a lot of well-intended white women clinicians, that at times reveal their propensity to play the Boogeymonster. I recall one day, two clinicians were discussing a family for which they were providing treatment. The wife was African-American and the husband was Mexican-American. The couple also had two little girls. The clinicians start venting about how they felt the mom was “so mean”, “aggressive”, and “controlling”, because she would not allow her daughters to run wild through the clinic hallways and “just be kids”. I often greeted this particular family in the waiting room. The mother had a warm demeanor, and her children seemed polite and well mannered; something many Black mothers take pride in. I remember noticing the mother’s elegant long height. She had the physique of a volleyball player, and she towered a good six inches above her husband. Subsequently, her daughters were also very tall, and appeared eight and eleven years of age, as opposed to their true ages of six and nine. I considered all these nuances, as my heart cringed at the bias being circulated against the Black mother. How could this Black mother, whom I perceived as warm and protective, be seen so radically different in the eyes of these two white female clinicians? I imagined the clinical case notes attached to this family. And I wondered if the Black mother was able to perceive the depth of their well-intended racism during the therapy sessions.
Eventually, I interjected, and asked the clinicians if they had any idea how scary it is for a Black mother to raise two Afro-Latinx daughters in a racist country? They looked at me clueless. I informed them that many Black parents choose to opt out of the luxury of allowing their children to run wild and free in certain spaces, because there is always an ENTITY looking to hurt a Black child for “not knowing its place”.
“Entity?” one of them understandably inquired.
I responded, “Yes, an entity…kind of like the Boogeymonster. You don’t know exactly what it may look like, or when it may strike, but you know it’s out there”. From the continuation of their shared clueless stare, I gathered they still didn’t get it.
One of these clinicians had a Black fiancé (she reminded me all the time). The other clinician was half white and Mexican-American. But according to her, she “never felt connected to her Mexican side”, and spoke “zero español”. She was married to a wealthy man who funded her graduate program. He even procured a nanny so their two young children wouldn’t suffer while she gained her clinical hours at our health firm. Her husband was Hindu-American. She also made a point of sharing this detail all the time. I was baffled to see how two well-intended white women clinicians, both married to men of color, still carried intrinsic fears towards Black mothers. More upsetting, was how blind they were to the realities of Black Motherhood, and the subsequent safety factors that require us to mother differently than other cultures.
Much to my chagrin, even gluten-free, preferred-gender-pronoun practicing feminist clinicians have the ability to play the Boogeymonster when it comes to actualizing white supremacy against the Black Mother and child. With a simple stroke of their pen, they can render a caring Black mother as questionable or unfit.
I routinely provide trainings on the importance of trauma informed care. I also teach another phenomenon I have coined triumph informed care. Ultimately, I teach about the dichotomies of trauma and triumph informed care, because I believe in its capacity to protect Black mothers and children from the pervasive Boogeymonster of white supremacy that exists in all of us.
I love to teach my training participants a song my revolutionary Chicana teachers (Ms. Fuentes / Ms. Jubbs / Ms. Guerra) taught me and my fellow classmates at Thousand Oaks Elementary School.
Duerme duerme negrito, que tu mamá está en el campo
Duerme duerme negrito, que tu mamá está en el campo, negritooooo…
Pero si el negrito no se duerme, viene el diablo blanco, ¡y ya se come las patitas! Shaka-boomba shaka-boomba shaka-boomba!
Translation:
Sleep sleep little black child, because your mom is in the field
Sleep sleep little black child, because your mom is in the field, little black childddd…
But if the little black child doesn’t sleep, the white devil will come, and ya, he eats his little feet! Shaka-boomba shaka-boomba shaka-boomba!
My teachers explained to our young minds, that during slavery throughout the Americas, Black mothers had to work in the fields without anyone to watch their children and babies. Hence, Black mothers came up with this ingenious nursery rhyme to instill fear of the white human-traffickers. The mothers knew if their children left the quarters in search of them, they would be physically abused, stolen, or sold.
Our entire class would sing this lullaby during circle time, calmly swaying from side to side. A room full of black, brown, and white children, singing about the hungry white devil looking for the unattended black baby’s foot to eat. Our favorite part of the lullaby was the ending, “Shaka-boomba shaka-boomba”! We would all exclaim this phrase at the top of our lungs and start laughing in crescendo, feeling relieved our mothers were not forced to leave us at night for work in the fields.
It was not until I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, majoring in Public Health, that I realized how revolutionary my Chicana elementary school teachers were. I was taking a maternal and infant health course, and learned how song was used in rural African communities to shift injurious behaviors for better health outcomes. I instantly remembered the nursery song I was taught, and the meaning of the words hit me like a ton of bricks. This lullaby was a public health tool used to curve infant mortality rates among enslaved African Diasporic communities.
Clearly, the most natural instinct of a child is to be near its mother, and the most natural instinct for many mothers is to nurse and protect their offspring. But in the context of life under the siege of white supremacy, these two evolutionary instincts could cost the life of both the mother and child. Hence, the instincts remained, but they could not exist loudly. We could not boast about the strength, wit, or beauty of our children…for fear they would be noticed and sold. And we definitely could not allow our children to run wild and free in unsafe communities.
I frequently think of this Black mother who was judged for not allowing her Afro-Latinx daughters to run free in the hallways. And I think of my own mother, who sent twin girls to UC Berkeley as a single mom. I think of my beloved auntie, who recently lost her only daughter to a stray bullet. I think of Serena Williams, who almost lost her life while giving birth in a health system so fraught with racism, that not even her astronomical wealth, nor moderately wealthy white husband could protect her. And I think of so many other Black mothers, with and without children, who have collectively mothered civilizations without an iota of appreciation. Beautiful Black mothers…too numerous to mention here. And I offer this simple refrain: I understand the nature of your love, and the gentle firmness of its grip. The nature of your love has outsmarted centuries of the Boogeymonster…so keep on loving us the way you do. We can’t survive without you. Happy Black Mother’s Day 2020.
