{Originally Published on The Black Snob}

Are you angry? Would we not like you when you’re angry?

I got into a discussion with a friend about male/female relationships while I was in Washington, D.C. and we were discussing the Obamas. He saw Michelle Obama, the First Lady, as the dominating figure in the relationship due to the fact that the president sometimes defers to her in his speeches or references her, saying he discussed things with her or so on. After listening to him for a bit, I pointed out that often the Obamas are more of a marital Rorschach test that says more about us than them, that no one can actually know another person’s marriage but the two people in it and that often we are taking our own experiences, wants, desires and fears and projecting them upon the First Family. But while he said he “liked” Michelle, he did see her as the quintessential “Angry Black Woman.”

Oh. That heifer again.

All my life I’ve heard many things about this woman. The finger snapping, neck cracking, fussin’ feuding and fighting, pissed off, scary as all get out, crazy, angry black woman. And while I’ve known a few black women who may qualify as angry or may have a chip on their shoulder a lot of this is much more complicated than a simple “she’s a crazy ABW.”

When you’ve been robbed of your femininity (which is sometimes the case with black women) due to a society that historically didn’t view you as a woman or, let’s say, a woman worth being chivalrous to (see Truth, Sojourner) you get a real limited amount of things you can do to get attention. I’ve known countless black women and men who grew up in households were parents and other adults honestly could have cared less if you had a bad day and frowned upon any crying, fussing, moaning or complaining. Suck it up, is practically the national pastime. But the one emotion that is almost always acceptable is anger. Your parents get mad. Your friends get mad. You get mad. Everyone is allowed to get mad. For some people crying is perceived as a weakness, but if you’re one “not to take no shit off of nobody” well, that will get you accolades and props and pats on the back. We reward strength in our community, in our society. Often anger is confused with strength.