This Is How Black Sisterhood Is Helping Women Get Through This Moment in History
My entire childhood, my family had one unspoken rule: Do not bother Mom during her Phone Time.
Phone Time had no set dates, no standard length, but my brothers and I knew that when Mom was talking to her Black girlfriends—about their marriages, their careers, their “good old days”—we were to leave her alone.
Recently, when I stayed with her during the pandemic, I noticed Phone Time was still happening. Only now, the calls were even longer, more frequent, more urgent. Mom and her friends needed each other’s support more than ever.
And this time, I got it. I completely did. Because in a country that’s reckoning with its anti-Blackness, relying on my Black sisters who also get it is the only way forward for me too.
In my case, it just took me a while to find them. I spent a lot of my life in white spaces where I was always “too” something. Too Black for my white classmates, too familiar in white environments for some Black classmates. The abuse I received from white middle school teachers and white students combined with rejection from my Black peers spiraled 11-year-old me into a depression. I spent every day learning how to express myself in a place with a narrow view of Blackness.
Once I left my mostly white hometown at 24, I glommed on to any powerful Black woman I came across, like Asia Mock, who now lives in Detroit and owns a multimedia company that uplifts Black people’s work. We met on my first day at a restaurant job—I was a host and she was a manager and server.
We immediately bonded over our loud cackles, love for other people’s drama, and making fun of the doofuses we worked with. We have the same birthday and the same initials. It felt like kismet, and I desperately needed to be recognized as a person, not a free space on someone’s racially diverse bingo card.
The regulars often mistook us for each other and asked if we were biological sisters. Despite that not-so-subtle racism, I took it in stride. Why wouldn’t I want to be confused with someone so amazing?
Neither of us had a traditional Black sisterhood growing up, but I’ve learned more about what a sisterhood actually is from Asia than from anyone else in my life, except Mom. Over the past seven years, through family issues (hers and mine), three breakups, a cross-country move, a shaved head, and plenty of commentary on White Nonsense, Asia became my backbone.
Through our friendship, I learned that sisterhood means going hard for your people and that “sisters” aren’t just a group of Black girlfriends nor are they defined by gender. Instead, they’re humans who make you feel less alone and let you lean on them when you need to. Mine validate my Black identity regardless of how I express myself (or whether I can braid hair, which is stupid-difficult) and remind me to rest, redefine, and risk it all for my fellow Black people.
Living through this past summer has proved to me that racism is not going away without a lot of work. I’m not having anyone in my life who’s not willing to do that. My time and energy is dedicated to people who listen when I speak and don’t question my humanity—these are the people in my sisterhood. That group has expanded from Asia and me to a multitude of beautiful Black people, including one woman I bonded with at my first Fashion Week and another I made eye contact with as a white woman ran fingers through her curls (not joking).
Staying close in 2020 is a little more complex than my mom’s Phone Time. It’s getting everyone to commit to a friend’s Zoom birthday with makeup and dress codes. It’s recapping the new season of Insecure via text. It’s listening to Nicole Byer and Sasheer Zamata’s podcast, Best Friends, to feel less lonely. It’s a long face-to-face conversation with my mom about her relationship to Blackness.
a legendary icon and some trash she found in a corner somewhere
A post shared by amanda “wear a mask” mitchell (@lochnessmanda) on Aug 22, 2018 at 8:00pm PDT
But thanks to my Black sisterhood, I’m finally comfortable sharing my anger and sadness with people who have my best interests at heart. That’s getting me through this phase—and everything that’s yet to come.
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