The Strong, Black, Woman Trope is Racist.
Before I started psychotherapy training, every Black therapist I spoke to warned me about the racism I would face. I just didn’t expect it to come so quickly, so openly, and with punishment attached.
My racial distress and tears were on display for everyone to see. My heart was broken. What I didn’t expect was the cold shoulder, dirty looks, and complaints about “missed learning” because of my reaction to racial discrimination.
Yes, I spoke up. But I was in floods of tears. Still, I was handed the medal of “Strong, Black Woman”. Weeks later, the same person who had iced me out apologised, explaining that she had been going through a lot. As a Black woman, I am always expected to extend grace, to understand, to be fine. Why does everyone always assume we are fine? Because I can assure you, my year has been anything but.
While navigating the investigation into that lecturer, people repeatedly told me they could not believe how strong I was. This, despite me explicitly saying that the situation, compounded by external pressures, was taking a real toll on my mental health. It led to me being signed off work for a month. Still, the narrative stuck: you’re strong.
It clicked one day in the gym, mid-hip thrust, listening to GloRilla. The lyrics hit: “When they treat you like the strongest, it makes you the weakest.” Of course. “You’re so strong” really means, “You can deal with this alone. You’ve got this. Bye.”
Yes, I’m strong. But I’m also soft, fragile, sensitive and literally just a girl. People panic when they see a Black woman cry, because it doesn’t fit the “angry” stereotype they carry in their heads. It confuses them. When we ask, “Can you carry this load with us?” the load is handed back, along with their explanations of why we should in fact carry their burdens too.
I don’t need to turn my life into a sob story to deserve compassion. Yet even when I’ve tried, it has not landed. A friend once reminded me, “Some people have depression, you know, Shania!” This was just a week after I had confided that I wanted to come off my antidepressants but instead had to increase them.
A colleague once told me, “It made me so anxious, I couldn’t sleep last night because you asked for this conversation.” This was after I raised something inappropriate they had done. Meanwhile, I had also been up all night, tossing and turning at the thought of calling out a white person on race. How much contortion is required for Black people to simply be seen as human?
I have been in therapy since I was 14. Over 11 years, I have learned how not to live in constant crisis. This required work! Healing for me has meant letting joy in, holding onto my softness. But this seems to confuse people. They cannot fathom how you survive the worst and still light up a room. They marvel at how I can articulate myself in moments of high anxiety, but miss the truth: that ability was built in the fire of countless anxious moments. Because nuance is hard to grasp, and does not match the image they hold of a Black woman, they put me in a box labelled “Strong Black Woman”.
But that box is suffocating. It is cramped, its edges sharp, forcing us to contort just to breathe. That breath depends on whether someone opens the lid a crack. The box is placed on display, admired as though it is art. We cry for help, but people stop only long enough to praise our resilience before walking on.
This is racism. And it is one reason why Black women in the UK face significant disparities in mental health. We have higher rates of mental illness, lower access to treatment, and too often, we do not even realise the extent of it ourselves.
So let Black women be soft. When we cry, see it as humanity, not weakness. Many of us had to be strong, it was either that or die. But why must we continue living in survival mode, alone? We deserve peace.
About the author
Shania (She/Her) is the founder of The Dunbar Project CIC. She is also an adoptee and a trainee integrative psychotherapist.