I was in the airport about a week ago and observed three separate but eerily similar scenes. The first involved a husband and wife at a security checkpoint. The wife loudly scolded her husband over and over about not putting the tickets where she told him to put them. "I guess I have to do EVERYTHING myself," she snarled at him as he followed behind her with an "I'm embarrassed, but she does this all the time so I'm used to it"-look on his face. The next scene involved an middle aged couple who were waiting for their plane to leave. The man attempted to explain something while the woman angrily talked over him repeating, "If you'd just shut up then I'd be ok! Just shut your mouth and I'll be ok." The man's voice faded meekly as he ended his point to avoid the scene. The final incident involved a young man who was being so viciously lambasted by his female companion that I avoided getting any closer to them...
Let me tell you, these three exchanges that I witnessed were brutal. I was so embarrassed for these men that even I almost hung my head from the shame of it all. In fact, if I were subpoenaed to testify in court about what I'd seen I would have told the jury that those women should be charged with grand larceny for stealing those fellas' manhood. Furthermore, law enforcement should probably check into other cases of stolen manhood in the area, as these women might be connected to those crimes as well...
Now, I'm sure that if you listen to news outlets and magazines and such, you've probably already assumed that the Angry Black Woman (apparently it's a proper noun) has struck again. However, these weren't eye rolling, finger waving Angry Black Women, these were eye rolling, finger snapping Angry White Women and they were out for blood (or, more likely, out for testosterone).
As I boarded my plane to the city of Boston I thought about how as a Black woman I am constantly being labeled by some outside entity as lazy, fat, angry, jealous, angry, unattractive, loud, angry, broke, and most of all, ANGRY.
Did I mention angry?
Yes folks, the accusations are almost enough to turn a hardworking, slim, unresentful, attractive, fulfilled, quiet, well-to-do and happy woman into an angry one...
Believe me, I do not deny that there is a such thing as an Angry Black Woman; however, for every Angry Black Woman there is an Angry Latina Woman, an Angry Chinese Woman, an Angry Indian Woman, and (gasp!) Angry White Woman, and so forth and so on. I'm sorry to break it to you CNN, ABC News, Washington Post, Fox News, and random Facebook users, but there is no one race in which the females of that race are collectively angrier than all other females of all other races. You may shine a light on Black women and find a lot of angry, but don't think you're going to shine a light on other ethnic backgrounds and find that it's all sunshine and honeysuckles and butterfly kisses...
Let me explain something to you. Angry is just angry, and angry is everywhere. Angry is poor, angry is rich, angry needs to be understood, angry is raising her children on a minimum wage salary, angry just lost her home, angry is an alcoholic, angry's husband just cheated on her, angry is arrogant, angry is unfulfilled, angry is unloved, angry is sad, angry is trying to change, or sometimes angry just likes being angry.
Angry women are all around us, and they are angry for different reasons, but I can assure you that there is no genetic predisposition to anger laced within the African genome. The whole "Angry Black Woman" thing is nothing more than a stereotype and a hurtful one at that. And please don't think that I'm just saying this because I am a Black woman. I am just as offended by the "White woman are easy" and the "Asian women are obedient" stereotypes that I hear floating around.
Hears the thing, the world loves to put women in boxes because to understand the complexities of who we are and what we feel can be exhausting. So instead of putting forth the effort, society merely compartmentalizes us into little ticky-tacky boxes that all look just the same. Admittedly, it is a clean and effortless way to look at things, but when we focus all of our energy on proving a narrow hypothesis, stereotype, or cluster, we miss out on all the complexities of the variant groups and outliers and that is where the really interesting stuff is found.
So free your mind and open yourself up to something other than these ridiculous stereotypes.
As for this Black woman, know that my default button is not set at angry.
HAPPY living my friends; happy, happy living :-)
Let me tell you, these three exchanges that I witnessed were brutal. I was so embarrassed for these men that even I almost hung my head from the shame of it all. In fact, if I were subpoenaed to testify in court about what I'd seen I would have told the jury that those women should be charged with grand larceny for stealing those fellas' manhood. Furthermore, law enforcement should probably check into other cases of stolen manhood in the area, as these women might be connected to those crimes as well...
Now, I'm sure that if you listen to news outlets and magazines and such, you've probably already assumed that the Angry Black Woman (apparently it's a proper noun) has struck again. However, these weren't eye rolling, finger waving Angry Black Women, these were eye rolling, finger snapping Angry White Women and they were out for blood (or, more likely, out for testosterone).
As I boarded my plane to the city of Boston I thought about how as a Black woman I am constantly being labeled by some outside entity as lazy, fat, angry, jealous, angry, unattractive, loud, angry, broke, and most of all, ANGRY.
Did I mention angry?
Yes folks, the accusations are almost enough to turn a hardworking, slim, unresentful, attractive, fulfilled, quiet, well-to-do and happy woman into an angry one...
Believe me, I do not deny that there is a such thing as an Angry Black Woman; however, for every Angry Black Woman there is an Angry Latina Woman, an Angry Chinese Woman, an Angry Indian Woman, and (gasp!) Angry White Woman, and so forth and so on. I'm sorry to break it to you CNN, ABC News, Washington Post, Fox News, and random Facebook users, but there is no one race in which the females of that race are collectively angrier than all other females of all other races. You may shine a light on Black women and find a lot of angry, but don't think you're going to shine a light on other ethnic backgrounds and find that it's all sunshine and honeysuckles and butterfly kisses...
Let me explain something to you. Angry is just angry, and angry is everywhere. Angry is poor, angry is rich, angry needs to be understood, angry is raising her children on a minimum wage salary, angry just lost her home, angry is an alcoholic, angry's husband just cheated on her, angry is arrogant, angry is unfulfilled, angry is unloved, angry is sad, angry is trying to change, or sometimes angry just likes being angry.
Angry women are all around us, and they are angry for different reasons, but I can assure you that there is no genetic predisposition to anger laced within the African genome. The whole "Angry Black Woman" thing is nothing more than a stereotype and a hurtful one at that. And please don't think that I'm just saying this because I am a Black woman. I am just as offended by the "White woman are easy" and the "Asian women are obedient" stereotypes that I hear floating around.
Hears the thing, the world loves to put women in boxes because to understand the complexities of who we are and what we feel can be exhausting. So instead of putting forth the effort, society merely compartmentalizes us into little ticky-tacky boxes that all look just the same. Admittedly, it is a clean and effortless way to look at things, but when we focus all of our energy on proving a narrow hypothesis, stereotype, or cluster, we miss out on all the complexities of the variant groups and outliers and that is where the really interesting stuff is found.
So free your mind and open yourself up to something other than these ridiculous stereotypes.
As for this Black woman, know that my default button is not set at angry.
HAPPY living my friends; happy, happy living :-)
I found out something startling back in college. I tend to hang out with whoever is around me, and the guys on my floor were all White guys. Some were from the NYC-metro area, some were from the mid-west, some from the south, my roommate from a small Pennsylvania steel town. But the startling thing I found out was that they were all afraid of Black women. Most had minimal interactions with Black women, but they had enough to know that Sisters were not going to let themselves get walked over. But that wasn't healthy respect... it was fear.
ReplyDeleteBut now, more an more, White men are going after Black women. Pop culture marketed them so much that they not only became acceptable to White men, they became desirable... they always were before, but now White men can freely admit it. The number of births for minority children topped White children for the first time last year, but White folks are still having babies... they just aren't having them with other White folks as much. Unless the media can scare White men away from Black woman, the US will become a whole different kind of melting pot.
So yes, you're right. Stereotyping is more of a creating reality than reflecting reality thing. And while there are way too many angry Black women, they do not define the majority of Black women. And unlike my college buddies, I think there is no anger like the rage of a pissed off White woman. I'm just sayin'...
I agree that race based stereotypes onl serve to bolster the self esteem of those who use them. I have seen similar scenes in my life, and as much as there is the perception of angry or menacing black men, I have also seen white men who have berated their wives/significant others in public and on one occasion, I observed a white man tell his wife in the grocery store to shut her mouth before he shut it for her. Robert Deniro's character in "This Boy's Life" was a menacing misogynist, but the archetype, sadly, remains "Mister" from the Color Purple and as much as I love that movie and book, far too many people (read whites) were all too willing to assume that Mister was the norm in our communities. Overall, Im sorry you had to see what you saw...
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