As I completed the “Street Calculus Cartoon” and the “Inside/Outside Identity Chart” exercises, I couldn’t help but think about how most times people view me when we are first meeting compared to the person I actually am and why. When you first meet an African American woman she is usually expected to be what society considers “ghetto”
or she is considered “stuck up” if she is the complete opposite.
When I first meet someone I am always told that I am very quiet and am an introvert which is the complete opposite of the person I actually am. I am a talkative person and not an introvert but I am more observant and shy when first meeting some. This is usually looked at as “stuck up” but I’ve also been told that I am “ghetto” because of the accent that I have or the slang that I occasionally use. In most cases, with first glance people usually gather a perception in their head of the person they think you are rather it be true or false without ever speaking to you and getting to know you. It has been said that for most African American children, by the age of 12 years old society has already determined rather they believe that you will be successful or not. They have already created this bias perception on rather you will be successful before you’ve experienced what life has to offer. I believe this comes from years of how we have been looked at in America. The African American woman, especially the darker tone has always had to prove herself and this goes back to slavery. We have always been looked at as more aggressive and less feminine or assertive because during those times darker skin toned women were put through much more. During slavery times and even a little while after there was something called the “paper bag test” where women of African American descent were compared to a brown paper bag. If you were equivalent to the color or lighter than you were looked at as better than or superior to those of weren’t and you received better treatment such as working in the house, whereas the darker-toned woman had to work outside and was usually beaten more. This created the stereotypes that you see today and that black women face every day and Today’s media doesn’t make it any better. When you turn on the TV Yes, you see successful black women but the numbers are few and to what extremes. Love and Hip Hop, Bad Girls Club, and Basketball Wives are all tv shows where African American women are portrayed to be ghetto, or weak by showing them being mistreated in relationships, fighting one another, etc. You see few women being portrayed as educated or well-mannered. I believe that in order to change the dynamics it starts within the African American community, we have to instead of feeding into these stereotypes uplift one another instead of belittling each other and appeal to how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us instead of how America paints us to be we have to paint our own picture.
Keeping up with Aja 