The (black) woman is silent because she is oppressed. To be oppressed is to be stifled. Her history of being believed to be incompetent and ignorant makes her doubt the importance of what she has to say. She judges herself before she is judged – using the standards of her oppressors. By the time she is ready to say something, or when she is expected to, she has already imagined what could be wrong with her statement and is thus more hesitant to say it out loud.

What she has to say comes out as uncertain and flimsy, and the oppressors become reaffirmed in their original belief that she is in fact incompetent and ignorant. She has nothing of importance to add to the discussion, so she just sits there timidly quiet, and when she does open her mouth; something incoherent and flimsy comes out. “How is anyone supposed to pay attention to what she has to say, or take her seriously?” the oppressors wonder.

She takes longer gathering her thoughts when she has to speak in the presence of her oppressors because of her fear of saying something that would further make them see her as incompetent and ignorant. But in taking so long, she is also aware that they will believe even more in her inherent and general incompetence at anything outside her realm of speciality – all things menial, all things domestic.

The (black) woman maintains her silence because she can tell that her contribution is not appreciated. One gets to know these things. Besides, she has enough prior experience to build a solid belief that in the future, she is bound to experience the problem of not being paid attention nor having her point of view taken into consideration by her legions of oppressors.

If not silent, she becomes outspoken and makes her oppressors uncomfortable. This is all because the oppressors having assumed her incompetent and ignorant have never entertained the idea of the (black) woman having ideas that rival theirs or are better than them. Her ideas are a heresy because they threaten the longstanding teachings of the oppressors’ forefathers.

This realisation makes the oppressors more uncomfortable and on guard. They will either A: Marginalise the outspoken (black) woman with heretical ideas from their sphere of influence because she complicates it by making them aware of what is wrong with it, Or B: they carry on as they have in the past, making: her decisions for her through physical oppression.

The resultant damage of the (black) woman’s dilemma (apart from the silence) is anger and frustration at the oppressors for denying her the time and space to speak independently of their rigid beliefs in her limited agency. This anger and frustration if allowed to fester will result in the (black) woman exploding violently at some point. The explosion will make the oppressors afraid and force them to realise once more what they have done and continue to do. This will in turn make them either C: make an effort to understand and see the (black) woman’s point of view, or D: it will only convince them more of the irrationally unpredictable and childlike ways of her nature.

What is most striking is that most oppressors seem to push to the back of their minds, the possibility that the freedom to say whatever comes to their minds about anything – including the (black) woman, at any given time – is a manmade privilege and not a natural right. A privilege that given the right cause and effect could belong to the (black) woman. It could very well become a black woman-made privilege. Her silence is not a reflection of her incompetence and ignorance of almost everything around her. Rather, it is a statement about the things she is not given the chance to express.

© Lerato Malimabe, 2003

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