The Cost of Resilience
Resilient.
It is how they describe us. The African woman.
Because even bearing the weight of the world on her back, still she will rise.
Absorbing the tread marks of rape and slavery, still she will rise.
Choked by the hands of patriarchy, yet she will rise.
The bodies of African women are the most weaponized human resource in the world. Yet, we conform with a plasticity that demands that we persevere through it all. That plasticity, that applauded “resilience of the African woman,” however, comes at a cost.
That cost is reflected in the brevity of our lives.
It is laced into the hollowness of our eyes.
It is muted by an eroding sadness that will dare not be spoken.
And so, you see, that resilience, is not to be celebrated.
Rather, it is to be exhumed so that the underlying powers which accommodate its presence are dismantled. Those of us who have been given a platform must demand an end to the forces that require resilience from our women in a way that God’s justice never intended. We must begin the sacred task of dismantling the subjugation that is written into our laws, into our religions and customs and into our tolerance.
But we cannot stop at speaking truth to power. We must also speak truth to the seemingly powerless; to the African woman whose voice has been intentionally muted into silence but whose heart still holds the hope of tomorrow. We must remind her of who she is: power, strength, and then empower her to do what she does best: triumph.
Then and only then can we embrace resilience.
