“Anger has eaten clefts into my living only when it remained unspoken”: the figure of the ‘angry black woman’ as presented by Candice Brathwaite in I Am Not Your Baby Mother .
In The Promise of Happiness , Sara Ahmed offers a bold critique of the universally accepted notion that to be happy is our ultimate goal as human beings. Happiness is widely viewed as the final reward for following predetermined societal guidelines; it exists as a prize for having completed life as we are expected to, without deviating from the norm, focusing on key objects that become “happy for us if we imagine they will bring happiness to us” (Ahmed, 2010, p. 26). Ahmed questions the functionality of “happy objects” (Ahmed, 2010, p.23), such as the family, when happiness in this sense is impossible due to the political and cultural barriers that block some from this fixed path, or when someone simply opts to pave their own way through life actively avoiding such markers of social success.
Those who question the status quo are viewed as troublemakers (Ahmed, 2010), and by challenging roles such as the “happy housewife” (Ahmed, 2010, p.51), feminists are “read as destroying something that is thought of by others not only as being good, but as the cause of happiness” (Ahmed, 2010, p.65), thus spoiling the satisfaction of achieving such goals for those who accept them as being desirable. These feminist killjoys are not only responsible for ruining their own lives by not following the patriarchal path assigned to them, they are also seen as causing misery to others by passing on their dissatisfaction and undermining the very foundations of societal wellbeing.
Although it can initially be read as a critique of the white fantasy figure of the happy housewife (Ahmed 2010), and its inaccessibility to black women, Candice Brathwaite’s I Am Not Your Baby Mother uses the figure of the feminist killjoy (or more specifically the stereotype of the angry black woman) to offer an insight into the challenging world of modern black British motherhood. However, whilst discussing challenging issues such as black maternal mortality rates, poverty and racism, Brathwaite does not allow any real, tangible anger to emanate from her writing.
Brathwaite is plainly aware of the historical misuse of black women, who were “not even entitled to be proximate to the fantasy, though they may [have been] instrumental in enabling others to take its form” (Ahmed, 2010, p. 51) and refers to the old ‘mammy’ narrative (Brathwaite 2020) whereby black women were used as housemaids and servants in order to preserve the image of “perfectly preened motherhood” (Brathwaite, 2020, p.32), as presented by the 1950s housewife. This notion of black women being forced into a subservient role, existing only to allow their white ‘superiors’ to live an easy life, is one which is clearly abhorrent to both Ahmed and Brathwaite, yet it is this life of outwardly projected perfection which Brathwaite chose to make a career out of. After realising that within the blogging community nobody looked like her (as the glossy images depicting the idyllic mummy life were distinctly white), Brathwaite became a Mummy Blogger, sharing the daily details of her idyllic black family life to build her brand. She simultaneously established herself as a feminist killjoy by highlighting the unjust disparities between the experiences of pregnancy, childhood and motherhood for black women, in comparison to their white counterparts. By joining this hitherto exclusive group, Brathwaite utilised her frustration with the lack of diversity in public motherhood by criticising the “beige landscape of parenting” (Brathwaite 2020), to carve out her own role at the risk of being viewed as an angry black woman who as Ahmed states, “may even kill feminist joy… by pointing out forms of racism within feminist politics” (Ahmed, 2010, p. 67).
By placing herself in the position of an “affect alien” (Ahmed, 2010), Brathwaite initially seems willing to heroically sacrifice herself at the altar of white privilege, “If I have to be used as a tool to uncover the real thinking of women who dominate this space, I will fall on my own sword, time and time again” (Brathwaite, 2020, p.225). This war-like cry of intent is indeed admirable, as is much of her manifesto, but it is disingenuous in its self-proclaimed martyrdom. The centrality around Brathwaite as the sole saviour willing to fight the good fight on our behalf, all the while existing – and indeed financially flourishing – as one of “those women” (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 217) leads us to doubt her motivation. Brathwaite profits from perpetuating the happy housewife idyll whilst all the while claiming to burn in righteous anger, leaving us unsure of whether to join her in her mission or look elsewhere for black, female solidarity. This is in stark comparison to Ahmed, who relishes in her role as one of many troublemakers, bonded by a common goal, often calling to her sisterhood to join her in disturbing the fragile peace of those who live safely within the idealised fantasy of happiness, “I love the idea of a killjoy shoulder, of becoming feminist killjoys as we lean on each other” (Ahmed, 2017, para. 14). Rather than calling on us to join the battle, as Ahmed does, Brathwaite instead prefers to position herself as a solitary soldier fighting for us, peeking over the parapet before retreating to her safe space as a happy housewife behind enemy lines.
Central to Brathwaite’s mission to “humanise the black British motherhood experience” (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 226), is her justified anger at how regularly black mothers are stigmatised for merely existing and taking up space. The issue of how to best express or channel this anger is one which has remained central to feminist politics ever since Sojourner Truth gave voice to the plight of black slave women during the women’s rights movement in 1852, “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mudpuddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?” (Truth. S, 1852 as cited in Jones, T. & Norwood, K. J. 2017), demanding that black female slaves be recognised as women, as humans, worthy of rights equal to those which white women were demanding. The white women present were outraged at her temerity, demanding that she not be allowed to speak and Ahmed would suggest that little has changed in the willingness of white feminists to listen to black women voicing their frustrations or anger as a result of their own internal fear, or denial, of racism, stating, “The woman of colour must let go of her anger for the white woman to move on” (Ahmed, 2020, p.68). Therefore, black women are all too familiar with the moment of hesitation in which we consider the repercussions that will inevitably be faced if we outwardly react to racial injustices; this pause is unfortunately necessary, as rather than the act of racism being seen as incendiary, black “anger is what threatens the social bond” (Ahmed, 2020, p.68). Jones and Norwood further explain that this hesitation “is about the complexity of that fleeting moment when Black women must decide whether and how to challenge another’s assumptions about Black women’s status and ‘place’” (Jones & Norwood, 2021, p. 2021). This ‘fleeting moment’ holds the weight of all racism endured prior to this vacuum in time. There is a limited opportunity to stand up for what you know to be right, to give voice to the damage caused by what has come before, and to challenge the status quo; yet far too often fear or uncertainty cause the black woman to hold her tongue, thus becoming complicit with the racism in action.
Arguably, Brathwaite spends much of her “part memoir, part manifesto” (Brathwaite, 2020, p.5), trapped in this state of inertia, revealing the causes of the justified anger she feels without ever wholly unleashing it despite her claim that I Am Not Your Baby Mother will be a “tell-all” (Brathwaite, 2020, p.6), intended to help her sisterhood navigate the treacherous world of black motherhood in a racist, patriarchal society. A key incident which serves to highlight the frustration for Brathwaite in not feeling able to express her anger is during the initial visit to her GP where she is questioned on the whereabouts of her partner, “’And the father?’” (Brathwaite, 2020, p.38), presumably voicing his preconceived assumptions of her being a ‘Baby Mother’, in the derogatory sense of her being a young, single, black woman reliant on state benefits to raise her illegitimate child. In response to this shaming experience, Brathwaite describes her fury, “The anger rose up in me like the flames on an open fire. I wanted so badly to give him a verbal tongue-lashing for asking me a question that I knew he wouldn’t dare ask a white patient” (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 38). But she doesn’t. She does not speak her anger or even query the motivation behind his question; rather, she remains silent, burying her outrage at the inequality of this treatment. So, Brathwaite chooses not to “blast [herself] out of complacency” (Ahmed, 2017, para. 29), and instead renders herself complicit in this racist stereotyping. At this early point in the text, it is disappointing that Brathwaite is unable to speak out, yet it is understandable that she is silenced by a white male authority figure in an exchange where she clearly feels powerless… or voiceless.
However, if I Am Not Your Baby Mother is to be read as a manifesto, (a form which has been utilised in the fight for black rights in the UK since the Black People’s Manifesto of 1979), then surely we can expect Brathwaite to actually act on her anger at such moments, to say or do something to make a difference. As Ahmed declares, “Affect aliens can do things with alien affects, and do things we must” (Ahmed, 2010, p. 158), making clear through her imperative demand that there is no choice in the matter; if we are going to be cast as troublemakers then we may as well make trouble for the greater good. So, for many black feminists, whilst they see and acknowledge the stereotype of the angry black woman as derogatory and socially damaging, they also choose to harness their anger as a starting point for resolute rebellion, with Lorde explaining, “Anger is loaded with information and energy” (Lorde, 1984/2019, p. 121). If directed with a sense of purpose, then this energy can be used to resist the state of a racially biased society, empowering others to create much-needed change; anger in this sense becomes powerful, almost kinetic in its potential to transform. Yet with Brathwaite’s continuous quelling of her own anger, she embodies the “fantasy figure that produces its own effects” (Ahmed, 2010, p. 68). Brathwaite knows that the cause of her anger is justified, revealing that she “had not been cared for, let alone listened to” (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 123), throughout the traumatic birth of her daughter, which led to a life-threatening situation but is all too aware that in expressing it she will be dismissed as another angry black woman, thus creating more resentment and fury. To not give voice to her feelings though is to add to the layers of resentment, creating a well of suffering described by Lorde as a “pool of deep acid inside me” (Lorde, 1984/2019, p. 146); this self-harm as a result of denying true feelings functions to corrode from the inside, leading to more resentment building due to the unfairness of the situation and an erosion of self-worth having not spoken up in the first place.
Whilst it is understandable in some sense that Brathwaite actively turns her back on the figure of the angry black woman, we can’t help but conclude that she often does so for her own self-interest. The fact that she is more than willing to embrace this role at other points, particularly when promoting her book, demonstrates that she is a fair-weather black feminist. A key exchange which highlights Brathwaite’s struggle with her duality in the role of black feminist occurs when she goes to buy the ultimate Yummy Mummy accessory, a Bugaboo pram. This chapter severs Brathwaite from the vast majority of those whom she claims to represent, as its sole focus is her desperate pursuit of this status symbol, “the Lamborghini of baby vehicles” (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 71). The encounter with the white mother who lives in an affluent area is full of awkward silences, elisions and omissions:
Opening [the door] ever so slightly, a blonde woman appeared. We could just about see a toddler balanced on her hip. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, getting ready to close the door. ‘I don’t have the time to sign up to any charity’. ‘Err, I’m here for the pushchair?’ I said… ‘Oh! Oh! I wasn’t expecting … you so soon,’ she said, fixing a smile on her face but still not removing the chain from the lock. My sister sighed. For fuck’s sake, I thought to myself. (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 81)
This incredibly uneasy passage is full of racist assumptions about the sisters, with the white homeowner presuming that the only possible reason the two young black women would show up in her neighbourhood would be to collect for charity, whilst her unease is apparent through her decision to conduct the conversation from behind the safety of her chained door, quite literally maintaining a barrier to her privileged world. Yet even at this point, as the woman attempts to mask her prejudices, Brathwaite internalises her anger, later becoming overly polite as she attempts to adapt to her surroundings by blending in to put the woman at ease so that she can buy the pram. Undoubtedly, this is rooted in her repeated experiences of such scenarios. The ambiguity around what causes the white woman’s reticence and Brathwaite’s reaction to it, can be linked to Ahmed’s explanation of racism creating “reasonable paranoia” (Ahmed 2010, p.84), whereby the woman of colour can never be fully sure if a negative situation occurs as a direct result of racism, leading to the omnipresent possibility of racism. Therefore, due to white people denying racism, it becomes internalised as the paranoia of black people leading to this state of uncertainty, as Ahmed suggests, “Our feelings become its truth. And when we scream the truth, we are the sore points” (Ahmed, 2010, p. 84). Brathwaite seeks to actively avoid becoming the sore point by reframing the exchange with the pram seller, “Why had I lied? … I was overthinking it all, I told myself” (Brathwaite, 2020, p.84), therein blaming any negativity on her own paranoia.
Although it is easy to empathise with Brathwaite’s position, it is difficult to be roused into a state of outrage as there is an underlying sense that she is willing to ignore injustice if it benefits her to do so. When purchasing the pram, Brathwaite describes her pride at finally acquiring the ultimate status symbol as a “tiny stab of joy [feeling like she has] passed the first test” (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 84.). By deliberately ignoring the racist behaviour to acquire the material possession she so desires, Brathwaite leaves her ‘blackness’ behind enabling her to move into the hallowed (white) world of the Mummy Bloggers; this it would seem is her initiation. By resisting the need to ‘scream the truth’ whilst aspiring to the bourgeoisie lifestyle she claims to be against, Brathwaite appears as hypocritical and not at all representative of those whom she provides a positive role model for. This incident serves to highlight the difficulty in determining Brathwaite’s overall purpose: is she baring all to help others or is she guilty of exploiting her position as a black female activist to her own advantage? This underhand practice is introduced by bell hooks who is scathing in her criticism of those who are disingenuous in their intentions by “superficially exploring feminist themes to advance their own careers” (Hooks, 1982, p. 189). Certainly, Brathwaite alienates those readers who value sincere sisterhood over performative politics.
Perhaps the most potent description of Brathwaite’s anger occurs when a white girl has refused to play with her daughter because of the colour of her skin, “the slow fire that began to burn in my chest now engulfed my entire body” (Brathwaite, 2020, p.179) and “I already had visons of me running into school like a black Miss Trunchbull” (Brathwaite, 2020, p.183). By invoking the familiar image of this much-feared, childhood villain, Brathwaite expresses her wish to punish those who have hurt her child. It seems like the flames of anger that she has suppressed up until now will not be quenched unless she avenges her five-year-old child. This is potentially her snap (Ahmed 2017); the exact moment where she finally reaches breaking point and the slow fire at last erupts, as Ahmed explains, “a snap is one moment of a longer history of being affected by what you come up against” (Ahmed, S, 2017, para. 11). However, frustratingly, Brathwaite seeks comfort from her husband to soothe her fury, and whilst it is true that as Griffin affirms, black women are always aware of what may result from them expressing their feelings having “learned hard lessons around the consequences of speaking our truths to power” (Griffin, 2012, p. 144), we are rooting for Brathwaite to finally, effectively, use the voice that she claims to have.
Instead, Brathwaite chooses to visibly embody her fury when she goes to collect her daughter from school:
I barged my way through the gaggle of parents waiting outside Esme’s class. A staggered silence began to fall around me. I was being purposefully aggressive. I wanted someone to try me, anyone. But no one said a word. (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 185)
Here, Brathwaite uses her physicality to assert herself - deliberately adopting the image of the angry black woman - and takes up space by imposing herself into the homogenous group of white parents. Her purposeful aggression establishes her as the aggrieved mother of a victim of racism, and yet this performative public display of maternal rage seems wasteful. She does not subvert the norm by directly speaking to her silent audience in a rare moment where she has established power and dominance, so this feels like a missed opportunity from one who purports to speak for the voiceless. As Audre Lord said, “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood” (Lorde, 2019, p. 29). Surely, there is no greater motivation for an advocate for the empowerment of black mothers than to speak out on behalf of your stigmatised child.
Although Brathwaite does later meet with the Headteacher, she allows her husband to take the lead and ends the meeting with “a silent understanding that we were not best pleased and had no true intention of trying to dismantle the racism that was allowed to fester within the walls of the school” (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 198). Here, Brathwaite completely loses her voice and agency, deciding to leave the school rather than fighting the injustices within it. This lack of true intention to challenge the racist system echoes throughout the book from the point where she justifies everything, from not immediately tackling the skewed NHS system which almost led to her death, to placing her children in private school in a bid to protect them from further racist encounters; there is a pervading sense of Brathwaite distancing herself from the very causes which she claims to champion, allowing the ‘brick wall’ of racism (Ahmed, 2010) to remain very much in place.
Admittedly, it could be argued that by hunkering down in her leafy suburb with her picture perfect black nuclear family, Brathwaite has actually achieved her very own promise of happiness (Ahmed, 2010), but at what cost? If we accept that it has been necessary for her to reject the damaging stereotype of the angry black woman as one who is “out of control, disagreeable, overly aggressive, physically threatening, loud… to be feared” (Jones, T. & Norwood, K. J., 2017, p. 2049), to enable her to raise awareness of the very real and dangerous statistics around black British women’s increased risks during pregnancy and childbirth with them still being “three times more likely to die than white women” during childbirth (University of Oxford, 2024, para.2), then of course, Brathwaite’s work within this book is invaluable. However, her unwillingness to embrace her anger is unnerving to say the least, particularly while she exploits her role as an outraged black feminist to great commercial effect; Brathwaite is now known as a best-selling author, TV presenter, podcaster, public speaker and social media influencer.
Fortuitously for her, Braithwaite discovered that there was a gap in the market for a voice on black motherhood whilst working as a marketing assistant in a publishing company, “there was a black-woman shaped hole with my name on it” (Brathwaite, 2020, p.210), yet she was told that in order to plug that gap she would first need a sizable social media following, hence the launch of her blogging career. It was therefore commercially viable for her to infiltrate the world of happy housewives (Ahmed 2010), whilst positioning herself as a social warrior. So, having seemingly achieved freedom from race and class constraints, is Brathwaite altruistically using her capital to cultivate her voice as a killjoy, or is she merely standing on the shoulders of her black feminist predecessors to achieve happiness on her own terms, for her own benefit? hooks speaks of “a feminist ideology that mouths radical rhetoric about resistance and revolution while actively seeking to establish itself within the capitalist patriarchal system” (hooks, 1982), and it would seem that having come to the conclusion that there is no real way to overturn racism, Brathwaite intends to transcend it by becoming that which she has often criticised, “Was it unfair of me to want that same kind of control over my own time and the financial liberation it brought me?” (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 211).
Undoubtedly, Brathwaite could be congratulated for having the tenacity to break through barriers, thus demonstrating that there is a way in which black women can take a place at the predominantly white table of lucrative motherhood, but we are left with an uneasy sense that this isn’t about black sisterhood at all. By toeing the line – as demarcated by a white patriarchal society – Brathwaite has created a brand of her own, gradually shrugging her Mummy Blogger status to become a fashion influencer and with over 300, 000 Instagram followers, she proudly acknowledges the lucrative nature of her fame, “You need this amount of eyeballs so that Nike will pay you two grand. That’s a necessity and it’s part of the business model” (Brathwaite as cited in Mwansa. N, 2021). The other necessity is to occupy a convincing persona, and Brathwaite’s is the social media star who occasionally speaks of racial injustice in hushed tones whilst simultaneously boasting of her intentions to allow her own children to benefit from “black nepotism” (Brathwaite, speaking to Hope. V, 2022), making it patently clear that she will pass on the spoils of her success directly to her offspring, rather than concerning herself with the plight of those in the community she has left behind and seemingly forgotten about. Compared to the rallying call to arms from Ahmed to go out and make change happen, to “deviate from the paths of happiness [and] live in the gaps between its lines” (Ahmed, 2010, p. 223), Brathwaite merely concludes I Am Not Your Baby Mother by asking “What will you do when nobody is watching?” (Brathwaite, 2020, p. 227), hence passing the responsibility for revolution neatly on to her readers. Yet problematically, we are no wiser with regards to what she actively does to fight the cause beyond the public gaze, or as to who she really is. By branching out to become a celebrity, complete with brand deals, TV appearances and regular titles on the bestseller lists, perhaps Brathwaite has finally achieved her version of happiness. Therefore, the pre-scripted, performative anger presented by Brathwaite appears to serve herself over others and is a far cry from the urge to embrace black feminists as troublemakers and much-needed killers of joy (Ahmed, 2010), leaving us uninspired and unnerved at the ease with which she both uses and misuses black female unrest as a means to self-promotion and profit.
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