Don’t Judge a Book…: Black Women & Stereotypes
By now, you’ve probably heard of the incident on Delta Airlines in which a young black female doctor volunteered her services to help an ailing passenger, only to have the flight attendant to repeatedly question her credentials as a medical professional. The woman, Dr. Tamika Cross, posted the incident to her Facebook page writing “I’m sure many of my fellow, young, corporate America working women of color can all understand my frustration when I say I’m sick of being disrespected.” Yes, Dr. Cross, yes I can.
Interestingly enough, reading about Dr. Cross’ experience on that flight took me back not to my time in Corporate America, but rather my to high school days when I attended an elite all-girls private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Although this experience was in many ways a different world from what I was used to, I found myself fitting in relatively well with my classmates and friends; yes, we were for the most part from different backgrounds, but the racial and socio-economic diversity which existed back then (less so, now) and the overall openness of the students gave me a sense of belonging. So, when I visited one of my good friends at her nearby apartment and the doorman asked me whether I was the cleaning lady, this was a record scratch, to say the least.
I was 15 and this doorman couldn’t imagine that I would be anything but a cleaning lady, even though he had to have known that the family I asked for had 2 teenage girls (my friend and her younger sister). To this day, it still irks me when I think about that moment. When I told my friend that what had happened, she was horrified; her father wrote very apologetic note to me and my family and assured us that it would not happen again. And yet in many ways, I don’t think I was ever the same after that day. The product of afro-centric parents who were highly invested in my education, I already had a hyper-awareness of my blackness and of being a representative of the race. That incident only deepened my resolve to never be seen as the ‘cleaning lady’ and to make it clear that I was different — intelligent, enterprising, studious — the proverbial credit to my race.
But as Dr. Cross’ experience shows us, that burden wasn’t mine to assume. There is no amount of diligence, studiousness or perfection that would have convinced that skeptical and wayward flight attendant that Dr. Cross was, in fact, a doctor — just as, there was nothing that I could have done to change that doorman’s perception of me. If the rise of Trump has shown us nothing else, it’s that the roots of racism and intolerance run as deep as ever and that the nation is as divided as it has ever been. How do we bridge the racial divide in a country with a population of 300 million people — a population size that affords us the unfortunate luxury of being able to associate only with people who are similar to us and enables us to live in a bubble secluded from those who are different?
In all honestly, I’ve struggled to come up with the answer to that question — and I still don’t have a clear answer in my mind. Martin had a dream for his children; my dream for my children is for them to live a truly post-racial world: where their differences can be acknowledged and appreciated without subjecting them to pre-conceived notions or stereotypes. I hope and pray that see that dream come to fruition in my lifetime.
HBW Out.
Hangry Black Woman here (aka, the Notorious R.U.E.) Check out our discussion of the rise of ethnic nationalism, the keys to parenting and Black female stereotypes Episode 10 of the Honey & Rue Podcast.
