journaling questions 
1.Reflecting on your African ancestry, how do your forebears’ stories, struggles, and triumphs contribute to your understanding of self and your place in the world?
2.How does gaining knowledge of Black women’s pivotal roles throughout history influence your sense of pride, worth, and capability in today’s society?
3.How do the diverse cultures, traditions, and values from African societies shape your worldview and personal identity? Are there specific cultural practices or traditions that resonate deeply with you?
4.Think of a mentor or role model from the Black community who has significantly impacted your life. How have their guidance and wisdom shaped your personal and professional journey?
5.How can you actively contribute to ensuring the younger generation in the Black community receives the mentorship, encouragement, and nurturing they need to thrive? What roles can you play in fostering such environments?
6.How does embracing your African ancestry and the rich history of Black women empower you to face challenges and navigate spaces where your identity might be marginalized or misunderstood?
7.How does understanding and celebrating your Black heritage contribute to your mental health, emotional well-being, and overall sense of purpose?
8.Why do you think it’s essential for the younger generation in the Black community to be well-versed in their history and culture? How can you contribute to this education and cultural transmission?
9.How can connecting deeply with your African roots and the shared history of Black women create a stronger sense of unity and solidarity within the community?
10.As you reflect on your journey and the importance of African ancestry in forming a positive identity, what legacy do you wish to leave for the younger generation? How do you envision them carrying the torch forward, understanding their roots, and shaping the future?
affirmations 
1.I am deeply rooted in the rich tapestry of African history; its stories of strength and resilience shape my identity and drive my purpose.
2.My African ancestry empowers me, reminding me daily of the strength, wisdom, and resilience that flows through my veins.
3.I am a continuation of a powerful legacy of Black women leaders, thinkers, and creators; I honor their struggles by thriving and uplifting others.
4.Through the mentorship of the trailblazing Black women before me, I find guidance, wisdom, and inspiration to navigate my path.
5.I am committed to nurturing, guiding, and mentoring the younger generation, ensuring they recognize the greatness within them and the potential they possess.
6.By immersing myself in Black history and culture, I fortify my spirit, boost my confidence, and find a wellspring of wisdom to draw from.
7.In embracing my true self and celebrating my African roots, I find an unmatched strength, confidence, and a deep sense of belonging.
8.Every day I affirm that my identity, grounded in my African ancestry, is a source of pride, strength, and unwavering resilience.
9.I am a beacon of hope and strength for my community, reminding them of our shared history, our potential, and the bright future we can create together.
10.Understanding and celebrating my Black heritage nourishes my soul, fortifies my mental well-being, and fills me with a purposeful joy.
135.Henry, Carma. 2016. “Dillard High School continues to make history!” The Westside Gazette, June 23, 2016. thewestsidegazette.com/dillard-high-school-continues-to-make-history/.
136.“Search for Public Schools—DILLARD 6–12 (120018000169).” 2022. NCES. nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&DistrictID=1200180&SchoolPageNum=8&ID=120018000169.
137.Keister, Linda W. n.d. “Amina.” The Black Names Project. Accessed July 3, 2023. www.blacknamesproject.com/node/163.
138.Sun Sentinel. 1992. “WHITE UNIVERSITIES FAILING TO SATISFY BLACK STUDENTS.” November 29, 1992. www.sun-sentinel.com/1992/11/29/white-universities-failing-to-satisfy-black-students/.
139.“Ronald Foreman Obituary (2014)—Gainesville, FL—Gainesville Sun.” 2014. Legacy.com. www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/gainesville/name/ronald-foreman-obituary?id=16636358.
chapter 9
the African
sacred feminine
and historical
stereotyping
“I think any black woman is a queen. It’s just, do you know it? Do you see it in yourself?”
—Ava DuVernay
In the heart of Africa, where the dawn of civilization and culture is as vast as the sun-scorched savannahs, lies the ethos of the African Sacred Feminine. A lineage of strength, resilience, and infinite wisdom, this powerful archetype stands in stark contrast to the often one-dimensional narrative projected upon Black women today. In this realm of ancestral memories, the Black woman was revered, not just as a nurturer but as a force of creation, leadership, and transformation.
The African Sacred Feminine is not just an archaic ideal. For the modern Black woman, it represents a deep reservoir of empowerment and identity, a vivid counter-narrative to prevalent stereotypes. Today, she is often caught in the crossfire of societal perceptions, which box her into restrictive roles—the sassy friend, the Angry Black Woman, the oversexualized object. Such stereotypes do not merely remain on the screens; they permeate real lives, limiting opportunities and dictating interactions.
But why should the modern Black woman, sophisticated and urbane, turn her gaze back to a mythic past? Simply put, because within the Sacred Feminine lies a truth so profound that it transcends time and place. By embracing these ideals, Black women tap into an empowering narrative that has been obscured but never obliterated. This Sacred Feminine is the matriarch that led communities, the queen that ruled empires, the priestess that connected the earthly with the divine. This narrative tells the Black woman that she is not just a caricature born of modern prejudices, but the heiress of a rich legacy, pulsating with the rhythms of Africa.
Societal perceptions are not just limiting; they are damaging. When Black women are continuously shown as aggressive or hypersexual, it is not merely an image issue—it lays the groundwork for systemic discrimination. These perceptions affect opportunities for employment, interactions with law enforcement, and even access to healthcare. By anchoring herself in the strength of the African Sacred Feminine, the Black woman can counteract the weight of these stereotypes, challenging them with a history and spirituality that speaks of her true essence.
However, this isn’t a journey of mere rediscovery; it is a continuous process of decolonizing the mind. Centuries of colonial and post-colonial narratives have shaped perceptions of Black womanhood. Unraveling these threads is not the work of a day or a year. It is a lifelong commitment to challenge, question, and redefine. Every Black woman, whether she’s in the bustling streets of Lagos or the sprawling avenues of New York, carries within her the echoes of the Sacred Feminine. Listening to these echoes, allowing them to shape her identity and worldview, is the process of decolonization.
This journey is poetic, for it involves a dance with the past, a song of self-affirmation, and a continuous crafting of one’s narrative. It is analytical, as it involves the critical examination of accepted norms and the deconstruction of harmful stereotypes. In the Sacred Feminine, the modern Black woman finds not just a symbol, but a beacon—guiding her toward a future where she is defined not by societal prejudices, but by the strength, wisdom, and grace that have always been her heritage.
Although contemporary US society is full of stereotypical images that marginalize and degrade Black women’s bodies,140 many precolonial, spiritually-based cultures of North and West Africa141 developed indigenous concepts of the African Sacred Feminine. It’s a term Arisika Razak, Professor Emerita and former chair of the Women’s Spirituality Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, uses to describe African representations of the feminine aspects of nature and divinity, as well as the innate human and spiritual powers embodied by women.
Many Black women in the United States still find themselves oppressed by Eurocentric beauty standards, patriarchal gender norms, and racist depictions of Black female sexuality that identify Black women as “sexual deviants.”142 Prominent Black authors like bell hooks and Toni Morrison have explored the degrading stereotypes of Black women that arose in the aftermath of the transatlantic slave trade. They dissect how caricatures of self-effacing mammies, lascivious breeders, and tragic mulattoes were crafted and proliferated, extending their influence into the Jim Crow era and beyond. These negative social constructs have been repackaged for modern consumption in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Now, they surface in forms like the oversexualized depictions of Black women in media, or the stereotype of the “Angry Black Woman,” which are used to police, critique, and marginalize Black women today. In contrast to this historical linking of Black physiognomy with negative, genetically inherited human (or subhuman) traits,143 the approach of the African Sacred Feminine is to espouse, uplift, and amplify images of African women developed by a variety of historic African cultures, several of which existed millennia before the transatlantic slave trade and the development of modern racism.144
In the fifteenth century, a layman, Hans Vintler, began a campaign to taint the positive image of Black female royalty by claiming that “King Solomon had lost his mind because of a Black temptress.” His text was accompanied by an illustration, Die Blumend der Tugend, showing Solomon worshiping an idol. A Black woman with flowing hair and a deviant glare is positioned in front of him to indicate that she, not he, is guilty of luring Solomon to such “ungodly” worship.
Vintler’s accusatory contribution was a disaster for the heritage of African womanhood in the West. Afterwards, negative symbolism became increasingly attached to women of African heritage. By the late fifteenth century, vicious racist stereotypes had taken hold—stigmas of hypersexuality, savagery, and intellectual inferiority, among others. These stereotypes persist in various forms even today, influencing social attitudes, systemic bias, and the lived experiences of Black people.145
According to Meisenhelder, sixteenth-century writings still stressed how different, culturally and sometimes even physically, Africans were from Europeans. Africans (e.g., the Hottentots) were often believed to be the most primitive of all human beings. The African other was constituted as possessing a human body, mind, and soul, but its body was less evolved, with a skin that was black, a mind that was primitive, and a soul darkened by sin.
Distorted perceptions cast Africans as brutes, supposedly ruled by bodily passion, in stark contrast to the observers’ ideal of Christian discipline—a gross misrepresentation revealing more about their own bias than the reality of African culture. Europeans came to perceive Africans through a skewed lens, labeling them as primitive and attributing a range of misrepresented practices to them, from polygamy and heightened sexuality to human sacrifice and cannibalism, casting their spiritual traditions as “paganism.” Detailed descriptions of Africans’ physical attributes, often laden with racial bias and misinterpretation, played a crucial role in this process of social construction. Exaggerated features and misrepresented characteristics were seized upon, fostering stereotypes and forming the bedrock of long-lasting racial prejudices. Regardless of the array of ways Africans might be perceived, there was an undue emphasis on their skin color, with their Blackness often being the first characteristic noted and, unfortunately, judged upon. Africans were misperceived as being more “natural” and somehow less intellectual, an inaccurate stereotype that presented a stark dichotomy: they could be great and beautiful warriors, but they were also regarded as having simple and primitive minds.146
The objectification of Black women’s bodies in particular abounds in tragic examples, such as the short life of Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak-show attraction in nineteenth-century Europe under the name “Hottentot Venus,” a name that was later attributed to at least one other woman similarly exhibited. The women were exhibited for their “steatopygia” body type, defined by an accumulation of a large amount of fat on the buttocks. This was uncommon in Western Europe and was not only perceived as a curiosity at that time, but also became the subject of scientific interest as well as erotic projection.
