When You Call Me “Articulate”…
As a biracial Black woman writer, I am often met with a familiar and strikingly uncomfortable phrase from almost exclusively white people:
“I mean, you’re smart, you’re articulate…”
In my experience, white people very rarely refer to other white people as articulate. When you call me articulate, I hear that you only listen because I speak like you, and that you otherwise wouldn’t expect me to. When you call me articulate, you say it as if it is an honor and a surprise, that for someone who looks like me to be able to enunciate like you, to use the words you do, to moderate my cadence and remain calm and unbothered by your questioning of my validity, and to reply emotionlessly (save for my willingness to see you as a human being), I am somehow more deserving of being listened to.
I remember during my childhood my mother was often praised for her and her daughters’ abilities to be polite. White people remarked at our quietness and our ability to be “behaved” in public spaces. This was not by accident. My mother knew how to curb her emotions and walk on eggshells in the face of the silent scrutiny of white eyes. She taught us from her own experiences moving from an all-Black community to a small white town where hers was one of two Black families. She had found a way to overcome being bullied and singled out, later gaining praise and…
