Happy Black History Month! This is a time for celebration, remembrance, and honestly, retributions don’t sound too bad either. For today’s Black History Month article, we will be reflecting on society’s negligence of the mental health of black women.
There is a quote from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God that has resonated with me since I read the book in high school. She says, “So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.” I absolutely adore this quote. This book is full of symbolism and truth but this stood out the most because it encapsulates the load put on black women. This load is a bundle of duties, stressors, and discriminations that black women have to face and push through everyday without fail.
What Zora Neale Hurston states outlines a chain of power. At the top, with the majority of the power, is the white man, and next is the white woman who has more power than the black man. At the bottom of this power structure is the black woman, who is left with basically no power at all. Loads of discrimination, double standards, stereotypes, disregard, barriers, and hatred are thrown down onto black women by those who are more powerful. This weight that black women carry is constant and ridiculously heavy.
Nobody should have to carry that weight, but because it’s forced onto us it causes a lot of mental health issues in our community. “Women are at least twice as likely to experience an episode of major depression as men, Richards reports.” (hopkinsmedicine.org). Unfortunately, even though we struggle with more mental health issues, we don’t get treated as much as we should. “…only one in three Black adults who need mental health care receive it” (nami.org).
These statistics show that nothing is done about our mental health. There are a lot of reasons why so little care is given to the health of black women, and I would argue that it is all due to society’s discrimination and negligence for our wellbeing.
When asked why black women don’t get help in regards to their mental health, a lot of people’s first thoughts are directed toward black women. One might think that they’re trying to be strong and push through whatever they’re going through on their own. Although that may be true, let’s divert the blame from black women to the real culprit. The reason black women have to stay strong and push through their struggles is because of the way we are treated by society. Because we are left with so little power and seen with so little worth, we have to work harder and be stronger to get to where we want to be in life.
There are a number of narratives that are pushed on black women to demean us and prevent us from getting the care that we need. One of these narratives is that of the ‘aggressive black woman’ when we express our feelings. I have been told many times by my peers and fellow black women that when they try to express themselves their feelings are disregarded because they are labeled as being aggressive or too intense for the people around them. How are black women supposed to get the mental health care we need if, when we reach out, our feelings are labeled as anger or aggressiveness?
Those were only a few of the ways society neglects the mental health of black women. There are many more, like systemic racism, that stop black women from getting what we need. Zora Neale Hurston was exactly right when she said that black women are the mules of the earth. We are discriminated against, neglected, and pushed to the side. After reading this article I hope you understand the privilege you have if you are not a black woman, and I hope that you plan on uplifting black voices in the future. Black women have been oppressed and abused for far too long. Our oppression didn’t end when slavery was abolished, it barely diminished. We, as a society, can no longer ignore black voices, black history month, or the struggle of being black in America. It’s time for society to listen and change, and the topic of how black women are treated in regards to mental health is a great start.
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