We Need to Talk About Emotional Manipulation in Black Families
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By: Jamila Gomez
There’s a difference between love and control—but in many Black families, that line has been blurred for so long, we’ve been taught to see them as the same thing.
Emotional manipulation isn’t always loud or aggressive. Most of the time, it shows up quiet and familiar, wrapped in phrases we’ve heard all our lives:
“After all I’ve done for you.”
“That’s just how I was raised.”
“You think you better than us now?”
It’s the guilt trip when you try to set boundaries. The silent treatment when you say no. The expectation that you’ll show up, pay up, and never speak up. And if you dare to name what’s happening, you’re suddenly the disrespectful one—the ungrateful child, the outsider, the problem.
In Black families, there’s often an unspoken belief that elders are above accountability, that “family business” should stay quiet, and that loyalty means silence—even in the face of harm. It’s a survival response rooted in real history. Our families have spent generations trying to hold it together under systemic pressure, economic struggle, and racial trauma. Control, shame, and fear became tools to protect and preserve. But those same tools are now damaging us from the inside.
When love is measured by obedience, and respect is weaponized to silence you, it’s not protection—it’s manipulation. And what gets dismissed as “just how they are” ends up becoming our emotional blueprint. It teaches us to ignore our own needs, overextend ourselves, and mistake guilt for connection. We carry that into our friendships, romantic relationships, and even into parenting, where the cycle threatens to continue.
This isn’t about blame—it’s about awareness. Because healing starts with naming what hurt us, not pretending it didn’t. And some of the things we normalized growing up were never okay. The problem is, if you try to break the pattern, you risk being labeled difficult, distant, or “not family-oriented.” But what they don’t understand is that choosing your peace isn’t abandonment—it’s protection, too.
Black families deserve better than cycles of emotional silence and manipulation dressed up as tradition. We deserve relationships built on mutual respect, real communication, and space to grow. But we won’t get there if we keep pretending that guilt is love and silence is strength.
We’re allowed to want more. We’re allowed to choose differently. And we don’t owe anyone our emotional freedom just to keep the peace.
The truth is that the only way to truly honor our families is to do the work they weren’t allowed—or willing—to do. That starts by being honest about what’s been passed down… and deciding which parts end with us.
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