When white ladies like me get angry it's often dismissively blamed on our monthly menstrual
cycles. But imagine just how infuriating it would be if all of your negative emotions
were blamed on your year round skin tone. 'I want to pick up on something that Jane
said about the "angry black woman". Who are the black women you see on the local news
at night, in, in cities all over the uh, all over the country? They're usually angry about
something. [Crumpling paper].
The stereotype of the "angry black woman" is a prime example of how these categorizations
function as social control mechanisms. You see, slavery, racism and pop culture have
cooked up and perpetuated three primary type casts for African American women: The mammy,
the sapphire and the jezebel. On one end of this racist spectrum is the mammy, who emerged
as a desexualized often overweight caregiver to white slave-owning families, a role mis-perceived
as compassionate compensation for the lack of her own personal and familial autonomy.
'Bout time one of you lugheads said it'. On the other end is the hyper-sexualized and
often lighter skinned jezebel portrayed as an irresistible temptress in order to justify
the systematic rape and impregnation of enslaved women. Then smack dab in the middle is the
sapphire, AKA the angry black woman stereotype. A slightly newer invention than the mammy
and the jezebel, the Sapphire functions to simultaneously marginalize black woman's intelligence
and respectability while also channeling through her racialized fear and disdain of black men.
Ever since her stage debut in early 19th century menstrual shows where she was performed by
white duded in black face the Sapphire has been played up for laughs as a less civilized
contrast to proper white ladies. Sapphire's namesake emerged quite a bit later on America's
favorite radio show 'Amos 'n' Andy' which aired from 1928 to 1960. And the show's delightful
comedic premise that white audiences loved to tune into? Mocking the hi jinks and dialect
of it's black characters including Sapphire, the hot-tempered and constantly berating wife
of the bumbling George 'Kingfish' Stephens. Even though the NAACP and Civil Rights activists
were instrumental in getting the televised version of 'Amos 'n' Andy' finally pulled
from syndication in 1966, Sapphire has been alive and not so well on screen ever since,
with the brunt of her almost surrealist aggression usually targeted to black male characters.
There's Aunt Ester in 'Sanford and Sons'--"You just keep sucking on that sucker, sucker"--,Wilona
Woods in 'Good Times', housekeeper Florist Johnson in 'The Jeffersons'--"Mercy me, I
done made you mad!'--Pam on 'Martin', Rochelle in 'Everybody Hates Chris', Teri in 'Barbershop',
Rasputia in 'Norbit', Angela in 'Why Did I Get Married?', not to mention pretty much
all of Tyler Perry's Madea empire. Entire reality shows sometimes revolve around this
trope, such as 'Real Housewives of Atlanta', 'Love and Hip Hop', and the 'Bad Girls Club'.
Laverne Cox told Buzzfeed that when she was a long time ago contestant on 'I Want to Work
for P. Diddy' she had to actively resist producers' pressures for her to play up being an angry
black woman on-screen. 'You and me are going to make a great team. Oh you looking for a
sassy black friend?' [Tearing sounds]. Now of course this long-standing and infuriating
stereotype doesn't just live on-screen. A 2015 'Essence' survey found that 70% of the
African-American women they talked to said that they feared their co-workers perceiving
them as angry black women and instead try to mold their personality to come across as
acculturated girls next door. But this stereotype can't just be out-achieved. Case in point,
New York Times television critic Alexandra Stanley collapsing Shonda Rhimes as well as
her complex characters of 'Grey's Anatomy''s Dr. Miranda Bailey, 'How to Get Away With
Murder''s Analise Keating and 'Scandal''s Olivia Pope into angry black women largely
based on them being black women. Even being First Lady doesn't stop it. 'As potentially
the first African-American First Lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions
and speculations. Conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of
others. Was I too loud or too angry or too emasculating?' And simply replacing angry
with strong isn't helping matters either. 'Child please you speak the truth.' Which
is something that professor and MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry describes as a 'derogatory
ideal' that props up this myth of the strong black woman who simply doesn't need any resources
or support because she can manage on her own hence no need for us to fix anything. And
just in case it wasn't clear enough that the angry black woman is a racist pop-cultural
concoction there's even empirical data to mythbust it. A 2009 study found that not only
did African-American women report significantly less frequent angry reactions in the face
of perceived disrespect, negative evaluations and criticism, younger women in particular
were far likelier to suppress rather than express intense angry. Anger. Intense anger.
So when it comes to what we should do about this angry black woman stereotype, I think
Angela Basset's got the right idea. Oh [Bleep].