I had a classmate who transferred to my middle school when I was in the seventh grade. Her name escapes me, but her laugh is a core memory.
She would open her mouth wide and stick out her tongue, and a joyous, raucous sound would erupt from the back of her throat with the rhythm of a car ignition that wouldn’t start. It was contagious. Soon after she started laughing, my friend group of Black tween girls would join her.
But even in middle school, the laughter of Black girls was something that people in charge wanted to silence. My friends and I would shush one another, desperate to snap out of our communal display of delight, before a teacher would yell at us for being too loud.
The same thing is playing out on the national stage with the Democratic nominee for U.S. president.
People who spend a decent amount of time online have become familiar with Vice President Kamala Harris’ laugh since footage of her phone call to then-President-elect Joe Biden hit social media shortly after Election Day 2020.
In the whirlwind few weeks since Biden announced he would drop out of this year’s race and endorse Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee, memes more ubiquitous than campaign ads have left the sound of Harris’ laughter etched into my brain. I could play “Name That Tune” with these clips: Is it the soundbite from her cutting up in an interview with her sister, Maya? Or is it the chuckle after her rendition of “Wheels on the Bus”? Or is it the definitive Harris laugh from her coconut tree speech?
But as often is the case with a Black woman who has the nerve to enjoy herself too much, Harris’ opponents have found a problem with her penchant for a good guffaw. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, called her “Laughing Kamala” during a recent rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“You ever watch her laugh? She’s crazy,” Trump said to the audience. “You know, you can tell a lot by a laugh. No, she’s crazy, she’s nuts.”
Our country’s ire toward Black women’s laughter is a case study in misogynoir, a very American blend of anti-Black racism and sexism. As women, society expects us to yield to men who interrupt us in work meetings or twist our ideas into their own. As Black people, white people admonish us when we speak up about racism or generational trauma because it makes them feel guilty about the foundations of our nation.
Being a Black woman in America means being ever vigilant of how we take up physical and aural space. We live in a country that simultaneously wants to ignore us and study us for imitation. We create the culture but are never mentioned in the works cited. Yet, we are the ones responsible for navigating the cognitive dissonance white people project onto us. That means that we have to learn how to receive enough attention to get something close to equitable treatment, but not too much to make those in power uncomfortable. It’s white people like Trump who classify a Black woman’s loud laugh as a problem. It draws attention to us and reminds them that, despite everything they’ve done, we’re still here.
I learned how to attract the right type of attention from white people in elementary school. I was a smart kid who skipped a grade, so my classmates and teachers interacted with me based on my reputation as a good student. I raised my hand before I spoke. I paid attention to my teachers so I could take thorough notes. And I was the kid who tried to get my classmates to calm down with an index finger to my lips when the teacher was trying to speak over a ruckus. School officials lifted me up as an example of academic excellence and guided me toward college before I even lost all my baby teeth.
Yet I watched some of my Black classmates receive the wrong type of attention from our teachers: the type that got them held back a grade, reprimanded for disturbing lessons or generally dismissed as unteachable. Too often, it was the loudest kids — the ones laughing at the substitutes and clowning each other in the back of the class — who the grown-ups passed through the school system to be spat out on the other end for the world to consume.
Eventually, I grew up and left the bubble of school, and I learned that being quiet would not keep me safe in the world. It didn’t save Sandra Bland. It didn’t save Breonna Taylor. It didn’t save Sonya Massey. It didn’t save all of the other women whose names we repeat over and over again, so our communities never forget the cost of being a Black woman in America.
My middle school friend’s laugh was the first time I felt free enough to let myself go. Since then, I’ve grown to understand a saying I’ve heard elders repeat throughout my life: “You have to laugh to keep from crying.”
When I laugh, it is a choice to submit my body to joy. The humor melds with all of the big feelings I spend each day trying to make smaller. The tangle of emotions explodes from my body in waves, and the laughter is a vehicle for the micro-exorcisms my mind requires.
When I laugh, I am beyond control. I am free.
I see that same freedom in Harris. Each of her laughs feels like a celebration. They demand to be noticed, and that’s a problem for her opponents. Her laughter lives in antithesis to the long-held beliefs of people who refuse to believe the struggles of Black women in America but are enraged when we have the nerve to enjoy our lives — and the boldness to succeed in fields they historically dominate.
You can’t bind a Black woman who is free. And when the laughter spreads, it becomes a seismic rebuke to everything that exists to put us in our place.
