Essence.com: Battling the ABW Stereotype

Earlier this week, I stumbled across another thought-provoking article on Clutch that made me go “hmmm.” In "Sorry to Disappoint You, But I’m Not an Angry Black Woman," Shayla Pierce wrote about the ways she’s been unduly stereotyped as being, you know, angry. She detailed an experience at a restaurant where she was dissatisfied with her food, pointed out the issue and politely asked for a new item.
 
“I expected the waiter to blush with embarrassment, or to apologize or even to send for the manager so he can comp my meal,” Pierce wrote. “Instead, when I looked back at the waiter, his eyes were wide with fear, like a deer’s seconds before a car collides into it.”
 
I know that feeling. You probably do too. You’re being normal — over-polite, even — because you’re going out of your way not to be a stereotype come true. And yet whomever you’re addressing is suddenly flustered, defensive and on edge, as if you’ve done something scary.
 
Situations like these, in which we come face to face with the Fear of the Angry Black Woman, are the equivalent of that ever-circulating story about an old white woman holding a bucket of quarters when she gets in a Vegas elevator with two imposing Black men. One man tells the other to “hit the floor”; the lady thinks he’s talking to her and that she’s about to be robbed, so she throws her bucket of quarters into the air and hits the carpet. According to urban legend (and the story has been debunked), it was Michael Jordan asking Eddie Murphy to press the elevator button. Some others — not all — expect Black men to rob them; they expect Black women to “go off.”
 
This isn’t some new post-reality TV phenomenon. Years ago at the beginning of my very first job, I was called into the office of my boss’ boss unexpectedly. I arrived to find my supervisor in a chair, holding the edits of an annual report I’d recently submitted. I took my seat, and she began to go over the relatively minor changes in front of the higher-up. I didn’t get it. Edits are a standard part of the job, and her concerns weren’t global or an indication that I couldn’t perform the work. I just needed feedback. I asked her if there was a reason she hadn’t come to me first, before moving up the chain of command. She looked at me and stuttered, “I... I just didn’t know how you would react. I just wanted someone else around.”
 
Huh?

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