Brown Girl Tears
A Canadian Point of View
Kassandra Churcher is the Former Executive Director at the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and the current Assistant Director at The School Board of Nunavik, Kativik llisarniliriniq. She is an advocate for education and human rights. She lives in Montreal, Canada. This piece was published on Canada Day.
All around me there is exhaustion. Black, brown and Indigenous women of colour finally feel heard and seen for the first time, but it is completely overwhelming. I see it and hear it; but I am confident that if you are not a Black, Indigenous, or woman of colour, you have no idea what I am talking about. That’s because as much as we talk about the weaponized power of white girl tears, it is rare to talk about tears when they are streaming down brown cheeks.
In recent weeks, we have seen our fair share of brown girl tears. But these tears are different because they are shed over the bodies of women and men killed while going about their normal lives. These tears pour out hot from years of frustration and anger. We do not even get a chance to breathe before we are shedding them again for another human being disappeared from the world, for just being.
Have you ever seen media reports where a woman of colour is crying? Often a hand will come up the Black or brown face and pause there, because on some days, even the act of wiping away our tears is just too much to bear.
Do you think that Chantal Moore, an Indigenous woman from British Columbia who was shot a few weeks ago while she found herself across the country in New Brunswick, had tears on her face as she took her last breath? I wondered that night whether the officer who was tasked to serve and protect her while on a wellness check shed any tears too. And if it was the case, were their tears for the life they took or were they over the fear of repercussions they might face over their murderous act?
If I close my eyes I can see tears on the Indigenous-Black cheeks of Regis Korchinski-Paquet as she fell from her balcony in Toronto. I see her mother’s tears that night as she grieved thinking about how her daughter, the baby she bore into this world be suddenly gone, simply because local police were called in for a wellness check.
Why do brown girl tears end in death and white girl tears end in sympathy?
Many years ago, there was a moment of reckoning for women of colour within the feminist movement. The common experience of moving through a world built for men was entirely different if you were the woman a man loved, or the woman who cleaned and cooked for him. For years, white male privilege, along with the appreciation for the women in their lives, helped build systems that would protect the value of white women. This privilege seeped into the tears of white women so that when they were hurt, someone had to be held accountable. Black and Indigenous women shared an experience of male oppression too, but that’s where the commonality with white women ended.
White women’s tears are especially potent… because they are attached to a symbol of feminity. These tears are pouring out from the eyes of the one chosen to be the prototype of womanhood. The one who gets the most protection in a world that does a shitty job overall of cherishing women.
-Luvvie Ajayi
Unlike white women, our Black and Indigenous grandmothers learned not to cry when a child was sold away or taken to residential school. Because at those moments, their tears could cost them their lives, even if without their child their lives didn’t feel worth living anymore.
Brown girl tears are shed in private, alone or in the company of other women of colour. Before I drew my first breath in this world my humanity had already been translated into utility. The result? Like the women before us, we learned to continue smiling as the lump forms in the back of our throats threatening to break us open in front of people or in spaces where we are not safe being vulnerable.
Don’t get me wrong. White women cry when they need to cry. This world is far from being equitable for any of us and I can see that when you struggle for financial safety, contemplate escaping an abusive partner, feel unheard or unseen; those tears need to flow. But you cannot use your tears at the expense of people of colour. Once upon a time, weaponized white girl tears put Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy, in an early grave.
White women tears, when shed in the wrong place, at the wrong time and for the wrong reason can literally hurt us more than we actually feel hurt.
I edit, transform and reinvent myself ruthlessly. No seeking of permission or giving of apologies. I am who I am, exactly when and how I’d like to be her.
-Rachel Elizabeth Cargle
Women of colour, it is time for us to show who we are. We have the right to be cared for, protected, valued. It is OK to admit a need for tenderness, compassion, love. Our tears do not need to be held until there is a good enough reason to release them. We should not have to wait until, yet another Indigenous woman disappears or another person of colour is killed by police to allow ourselves to weep under the weight of anger, sadness and fear for our own lives. We need to use our vulnerabilities to be whole in our humanity so that the tears we let fall wash the eyes of those around us, and so that we can finally be truly seen.
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Sources:
- Mercer, G., Fiddler, W., & Walsh, M. (2020, June 05). N.B. police shooting of Indigenous woman sparks outrage across Canada, The Globe and Mail.
- Nassar, S. (2020, June 11). Release evidence in Regis Korchinski-Paquet death or turn it over to outside agency, family lawyer says, CBC News.
- Ray, M. (2020, January 10). Emmett Till, Encyclopeadia Britannica.
