The measure of every word
As a Black woman, I must choose every word carefully as well as the ‘tone’ in which it is delivered. An email the other day with a tone that I myself could never get away with made this delicate dance more alive for me. The ways in which I must contort myself in order to be heard and understood and not be painted as angry and prideful is at times exhausting. I will also admit that I do it less so with every day as I get older and more fully embodied in this vessel that I cherish. It is a calculated move.
However at other times, by being perceived as angry or traumatized, there is now an increased, perceptually at least, willingness to listen. It signals an interest and maybe even a validation of my expertise, experience and insight as a Black woman. It also reinforces the idea of a singular Black experience, but that is for another time.
You will not meet a Black woman who has not had a conversation about her tone. It starts at home and at some point a well-meaning person asks us to “tone it down”. And if you are tall, dark skinned and have naturally curly hair, well — they see us coming a mile away and have decided things about us before we even open our mouths. Have I said exhausting already?
So those first words and how they are delivered can either affirm or discombobulate. It is more than code switching — which is its own thing — it is a type of drag; one that no Black woman has ever voluntarily sashayed into.
*This blog post was started on February 20th while walking and finished February 28th while looking out the window in the upstairs living room. It is a beautiful late Winter day.
About The Author:
Jara Dean-Coffey (jdc) is Founder and Director of the Equitable Evaluation Initiative and the Founder of Luminare Group. For the past twenty-five years, she has partnered with clients and colleagues to elevate their collective understanding of the relationship between values, context, strategy and evaluation and shifting our practices so that they are more fully in service of equity. For more about musings + machinations click here.
