BuzzFeed: Things Our Black Moms Would Say
- Shanicia Boswell
- Dec 8, 2015
- 2 min read
So I was skeptical watching this video. Sometimes BuzzFeed can completely miss the mark with this series (anyone seen Problems Only Southern People Understand) but I actually laughed at this one. It was funny to me because when I think about the stereotypical "Black mom" this is what comes to mind but in reality, my mom was nothing like this. My mom was more of a stereotypical "White mom". She was soft. Never yelled at us. Did not threaten us. We had the house all of our friends would come to. Everyone called her Mom. She was the opposite of strict. I actually never heard most of these things said in the video from her growing up but they sound so familiar because this is the social perception of Black Moms.
Do not be offended if your mom was like this. I am not saying anything is wrong with it. I am just speaking from my personal experience.
All in all, it made me think about stereotypes. What exactly defines a "Black" mother? The video starts off describing them as fiery, intense, quick tongued, fiesty, sarcastic, serious and ends the segment with "adorable and sweet". When you take the comedic factor away from the video and just look at the words, none of these are really positive. The only positive words were the last two- adorable and sweet. As a Black woman, I can look at this and I know exactly what each of the actors mean when they are talking about their mothers. Underneath that facade of strength and wittiness, I am positive their mothers were some of the most loving women in the world. But when you just look at the words, they are negative. Those words feed into the constant perception of how we view black women: angry, quick tempered, and snappy. You get so lost in the humor of the video, you almost miss the subconsicous inception of the words.
I am not trying to be overly deep on a video that is supposed to be and is funny. But in actuality, this video is very deep. It rung the familiarity bell not from my own experience but from how society sees Black mothers. It is real life Inception. For a split second, I thought these were my experiences- my own memories from my childhood. But they are not. I am owning that. My mother was feminine. Graceful. She was open. She would give her last for us. Not because she was some hardcore independent black woman but because she just loved her kids and wanted to see us happy.
The things my Black mom would say are- "I love you". "I am proud of you". "You are intelligent". Yea, it may not be funny, but it definitely is true.
With love,
-Shanicia
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