I am a Black woman, and I am tired of thinking too much: Black women and the inequities of cognitive labor!
According to psychologists, in a 24-hour day, the average person will typically have more than 6,000 thoughts. That’s a lot of thinking. Well, as a Black woman, I know I average three times more thoughts than your typical cisgender, heterosexual, white male, and I am exhausted. Thoroughly. Welcome to my life, where I go from innocuous decisions like what color should my dog’s bandanna be to virtually life or death decisions, if I venture into a new neighborhood for my daily walk, could I be shot and killed?
Cognitive function refers to a person’s mental capacity for acquiring new information, thinking, reasoning, problem solving, remembering and decision making, and we utilize our cognitive capabilities frequently, from making a cup of coffee, digesting social media content, making decisions at work, and even deciding what to make for dinner.
It was until the Black Lives Matter reached its peak visibility in 2020 due to the publicized murder of George Floyd, where psychologists started to articulate the impact of system racism on cognitive health. Black women who frequently experienced daily racism — including racial slurs, or stereotyping — had 2.75 times the risk of poor subjective cognitive functioning than women who experienced lower levels of racism. Experiences of racism have been linked with conditions that increase risk for impaired cognition, including depression and poor sleep. So, we’re being oppressed, and we’re experiencing depression and poor sleep because of it. No wonder why, I wake up tired.
W.E.B. Du Bois got it right when he described the Black experience, as a feeling of two-ness, “a double consciousness.” “This sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others.” I start to realize that my decisions are never authentically my own, but simply how I want others to see or perceive me in a way that is always more favorable. The constant cognitive shifting between making myself appear diplomatic, deferential, calm, and subdued, while internally masking feelings of anger, rage, and insanity is indeed all consuming.
I acknowledge my class, sexual and gender privilege daily, and there are many incidences of daily discrimination that I avoid as a middle class, cisgender and heterosexual person — however, — I still have to navigate the duality of two marginalized identities — Black and female. From the moment, I wake up, I experience cognitive overload — not only am I negotiating the daily tasks of making breakfast, taking care of my dog, and getting dressed — but these decisions are complicated by my social identities.
I have to make decisions around opting for the most nutritious food as I know the prevalence and risk of diabetes and hypertension in Black communities; I make sure I don’t wear clothes that accentuate my figure or curves to avoid public hyper sexualization, and I always take walks close to my home and avoid mistakenly walking on a neighbors lawn because I have become all too familiar with the repercussions of Black people occupying white folk’s property. The amount of crisscross, double-dutch mental olympics I have to do before I even start work is debilitating, leaving me feeling extremely empty and depleted by the time I actually get to work.
Simple everyday tasks like grocery shopping become a dreaded chore. I have to not only manage to get all the items I need among a sea of other people with the same goal(Cue: Hunger Games) — I also am hyperaware of how much space I take up in public arenas — always opting to take up as a little space as possible in an aisle because the last thing I want people to think is Black women are too entitled or take up too much space. I am constantly saying, “excuse me” or giving a misplaced apology when aggressive shoppers dart out in front of me — as if it was somehow might fault that they forgot they’re in public. At work, not only am I negotiating daily managerial decisions, but I am always changing my dialogue or hitting that backspace bar on emails to ensure folks don’t interpret my words as “angry” or “challenging.”
Women do more “thought work” when it comes to home, and careers. If you are a mother, you’re constantly thinking through all of the childcare decisions you have to make, and likely thinking about these decisions while managing domestic labor in the household at the same time. If you’re a white woman and this resonates, imagine being a Black woman having to constantly have these decisions influenced by both your race and gender. Black motherhood has always been a public and a political issue, and Black mothers have always been the source of public contempt and historically have had their maternal decisions stripped away from them. Black mothers must think through decisions around childcare before their children are even born — Black women are more likely to experience discrimination in the health care system, more likely to experience birth complications, more likely to have their pain invalidated, and more likely to be judged harsher for being unmarried. Can you imagine all the parental decisions you have to make and evaluate when the system has oppressed and continues to oppress you?
I hate the fact that I think so much. I hate the fact that I think more about how my actions, reactions, and body will impact the lives of others in a world that shows it cares less about me and my livelihood everyday. We need more attention paid not only to the impact of racism on cognitive functioning, but also to the cognitive overload and demand, experienced by Black women, daily. This space is exhausting and lonely.
Anyone relate?
