Uniting Black Women

SISTAS HATE -- Girl Fight
by Taigi Smith

Sisterhood? HA! Sometimes it feels like we are all out to beat each other down. Here is how to get back to the love.
Presented by Honey Magazine.

You are walking down the street with your man, feeling all sexy and good. Maybe you are rockin` your new Jimmy Choos or sportin` the hell out of that new suit. Your hand is in his, and you are remembering what real love feels like, and for a brief moment, no one has the power to steal your shine. For sure, your glow is blinding and everyone can see that you`ve landed yourself a coveted spot on cloud nine.

And then you see her.

She`s giving you the screw face—a look that screams, "You ain`t shit." Immediately, you toss back a glare that answers back, "*@%! you, too!" Within seconds, you`ve gained yourself a new enemy…without even saying a word. As she sizes you up, stares you down and throws all kind of hate your way, the words to Jill Scott’s “Exclusively” start running through your head: She’s “cute...but not as fine as me." Then, as suddenly as the silent battle began, it is over. You grab your man`s hand just a little bit tighter and dust off your ego. You feel shaken, a bit bewildered—but you know exactly what just happened. It is not like it was the first time.

Black women act up. It`s that simple. More times than we need to be, we’re just downright nasty to each other- and any black woman who says she`s never thrown shade at another sista is probably lying. And while we’ve all gone through enough Waiting to Exhale –style bonding to make the world believe nothing can tear our friendships asunder, black women are more likely to twist our lips to one side of our face and flip the bird rather than extend a sincere “How you doin’, sis” when we find ourselves seeing each other on the street, in the grocery store, on campus, at the mall, in the club and yes ladies even at church. The reason? Psychology experts and everyday women agree that the hate stems from a bruising mix of defensive attitudes, self-doubt, and sistergirl envy—all issues that manifest themselves in ugly ways, for real.

Anatomy of an Attitude

Psychologist Phyllis Chesler, who has studied female social behavior extensively, believes our nastiness toward each other is rooted in our insecurity with ourselves. “We are flawed, we’re imperfect, but we’re not allowed to admit that,” says Chesler, author of Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman (Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books). “Privately, each woman believes she’s a failure…. [However] we have [a] double standard for other women. We have ways of cutting another woman down to size that other people don’t get.”

Washington, D.C.–based radio talk show host and psychologist Audrey B. Chapman stresses that the daily slings and arrows we deal to one another should not be dismissed as cattiness—it is much deeper than that. “As a whole, black women feel more underserviced, unnoticed, unnurtured than any other group of women in the world,” says Chapman, author of Seven Attitude Adjustments for Finding a Loving Man (Pocket Books). “We’re angry and resentful about it, and that’s what gets projected. It’s not cattiness—it’s emotional, psychological, it’s social.”

It cuts like a knife—leaving deep emotional scars that tend to fester when black women come into contact with each other. This is a fact that LaTisha*, a 30-year-old New York City–based publicist, was reminded of on a recent shopping excursion. LaTisha was feeling great. The sun was shining, and she felt like buying herself something nice. But she was not bargaining for what she got instead: a healthy dose of attitude from the black saleswoman. LaTisha’s offense? Asking the woman for the price of a shirt. First, the saleswoman ignored her question, taking her time with another customer. When the woman finally scanned the tag on the shirt and gave her the price, she behaved as if she were granting LaTisha an enormous favor instead of doing her job. “It was, like, a real attitude,” LaTisha says. “She never even looked at me when she told me the price.” Do not assume that the saleswoman was just having a bad day—the other customer, who happened to be Latina, got a hearty “Thank you, have a nice day,” LaTisha recalls.

Sad as this experience was, it was hardly anything new for LaTisha. “I’m the kind of person that can be in line and make a joke about something and a sista may not even respond,” she laments, adding that other black women usually meet her outgoing personality with suspicion. Yet no matter how many times it happens, LaTisha is still shocked when her friendly demeanor is met with negative vibes. “I’ve actually smiled at another sisters and [she has] not smiled back,” she says, noting that on many occasions, she was simply admiring the woman’s outfit or was half-tempted to tell her that she looked nice. “It could be on the train or on the bus. Either they look away or they will not react at all. Sometimes it makes me feel like I should not be so friendly. It makes me feel like saying ‘[Forget] you, too.’ It makes me feel bad.”

That behavior, says Chapman, is so common it has its own clinical name: “projection.” That is when we find things about ourselves that we do not like and project those insecurities onto others. For instance, you may think your hair looks awful and so you take out your frustration on another woman by saying to yourself, “That girl thinks she’s cute.” On the other hand, your hate for your gig may turn into bad customer service. Chapman has gone through this herself: “I`ve walked into a department store to get some stockings. You walk over and say, ‘Excuse me, please,’ and she says ‘Yes,’ as if you`re bothering her. You`re almost intimidated to ask for what you need. You ask her for your size and then she`s really steaming because you have the audacity to ask her for something. She feels like she services people all freakin’ day and all freakin’ night and nobody ever asks her what she needs. The last person she wants to service is another black woman.” She projects her own insecurity issues onto other black women, believing they are unworthy of good service.

The Envy Factor

Sometimes another black woman will give you a lip curl because whether she realizes it or not, she is jealous. “We like to think that as sisters we [look] all put together,” says Chapman, “but some of [the attitude] has to do with competition.” In other words, we`re pissed off that she has a fine man, the high-powered job, a house by the beach, the shoulder-length hair or whatever. Larissa Clark* has been on the receiving end of that feeling, for sure. The light-skinned 24-year-old says that from childhood on she has suffered attacks from darker-hued peers who target her because of her complexion. On several occasions, the harassment has been particularly brutal—especially when she was a waitress at a popular celebrity-owned restaurant in New York City. “The black women there gave me attitude for a long time,” she recalls. “We were watching a Chico DeBarge video and one girl had the nerve to say, ‘I`m so glad Chico DeBarge doesn`t put any light-skinned bitches in his videos.’” The venom did not stop there: Another woman, she says, insisted on calling her “piss-colored.” “She thought it was funny and I didn`t,” says Larissa.

The comments from her fellow waitresses burned, Larissa adds, because they reminded her of painful childhood memories of darker girls calling her “high-yellow heifer and red-headed heifer”: “Girls would say, ‘She thinks she’s cute because she’s light-skinned and has long hair.” Even today, almost 20 years later, Larissa still finds herself being blasted on a daily basis. “It’s just a constant nagging and picking. It never fails. I walk down the street and another black woman looks at me like I`m crazy. People automatically assume that just because I`m light-skinned, I`m getting these special privileges. It`s just not true.”

What is worse is that Larissa’s past experiences with sistas have damaged her desire to get close to black women. “I`ve built this cocoon around myself,” she admits. “I`m probably guilty of not being open with other black women and not trusting other black women. I`m so used to getting these negative looks and it causes paranoia. I`m trying to decipher if this person has a negative or positive vibe towards me.”

On the other side of the coin are black women who reluctantly admit to dishing it out. Tonya, a 32-year-old self-employed MBA, says she was definitely guilty of beauty-based discrimination when she outright dismissed a fellow classmate without knowing so much as her name. Her problem with the woman was that she was drop-dead gorgeous. “She was the kind of pretty where people would walk up and tell her how pretty she was,” she says. “I kind of had it in my head that she had an attitude because she was so beautiful.” In retrospect, says Tonya, her catty behavior was really a symptom of her own unchecked insecurity. “There are some issues that we do struggle with—longer hair versus shorter hair [for example], she says. “There are women who are jealous who might say, ‘That`s not her real hair anyway.’ What`s really going on is, ‘Maybe she`s more desirable than I am.’ In retrospect, I can`t believe I would totally dismiss someone because she was so pretty. It seems so shallow.”

Was Tonya`s behavior shallow? Probably so. However, according to Chapman, while the waters of sistergirl envy run deep, we may be working ourselves up over nothing. “You`re envious that someone else`s life looks better from the outside…. You believe that she`s got it all together [because] she`s got her man,” says Chapman. “But looks are deceiving. Just because we see it, doesn`t make it so. She may have her man, but she may be giving up a lot to have him.”

Hate Control

Whatever side of the sista-hate story you have been on (and it has probably been both), the time has come to stop the madness. Prolonged hostility can lead to depression and anxiety, says Chapman. And the more you hate on other black women, the more you may actually block your own blessings. “It’s sad when you alienate your sisters, because when the going gets rough, the sisters are the ones that are there for you.”

The first step towards eliminating sister-to-sister drama in your life is accepting responsibility for your actions. ’Fess up to your role in snide attitude slinging and then cut it out! “I think all of us are responsible for what we get out of life,” Chapman says. “If you put the responsibility on other people, then you disempower yourself. [I believe] that we attract who we are. So if you`re constantly getting [shade], sit down and do a self-appraisal. We generally get back what we put out.”

Avoid trying to change the other person’s behavior—you cannot control it. Instead, check yourself and ignore the nastiness. If it gets too hectic, walk away. “You say to the person, ‘I don’t think I can deal with this for a minute,’” Chapman suggests. “Let the person know that you’re coming back.”

And remember: Real sisterhood does exist; it is not just a fantasy from a Terry McMillan. In truth, there is no stronger bond forged than that between black women. Just ask Imani, a 29-year-old marketing associate. She recalls fondly the memory of her and her girls, crashing in her Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment after a long night of party hopping. One by one, as they woke up the next morning, the laughter was contagious and the conversation flowed naturally, each woman rushing to complete another’s thought. Those kinds of memories are priceless. That morning made Imani realize that underneath all that attitude exists a communication that is not only fundamental to her well-being, but to the well-being of the women who surround her. “I love us—I really do,” Imani says. “Each one of my sister-friends is a beautiful thing. There`s a commonality that we`re sisters. Let`s link. Let`s talk. It`s an idealistic notion on my part. But it`s a beautiful thing when that happens.”

*Names of have been changed.