She got heated often, yelled, raged, her emotions were belittled.

She was called Sapphire and used to weaponize how black women express anger.

Thankfully she stayed mad and her rage was her greatest teacher of what it means to protest.

This is Two in Black History, what you didn't learn in school. Sapphire is the stereotype created to police black women's rage.

Portrayed as sassy and emasculating, Sapphire was the original angry black woman.

This trope was popularized in the 1950s television show Amos and Andy,

but anti-blackness has been vilifying black women's rage since the 1800s.

Unfortunately, black women are constantly being told to calm down.

In her keynote speech to the National Women's Study Association in 1981, poet and feminist

Audrey Lord declared my response to racism is anger.

She continued, Black women are expected to use our anger only in the service of other people's salvation or learning, but that time is over.

Where do black women get to safely express rage?

Rage is a valid emotion and a powerful teacher.

The Buddhist teacher Lamanarad Owens writes,

If we don't wrestle with anger, we will never get to the heartbreak. And if we don't get

to the heartbreak, we don't get to the healing. Anti-Blackness is a heart-breakingly violent system that we as black people and especially black women have been forced to protest for our very survival.

It has destroyed dreams, families, and livelihoods.

Black women don't need permission or approval to be mad.

So why should black women calm down when our future depends on the ability to process rage into action?

The answer is simple. They should not.

Sapphire's rage is there for our liberation.

In order to move towards the future, you've got to look to the past.

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