It is a national and international music destination that not only draws attendees from all across the United States, but the world. I came there just for that. The handcuffs. I turned to the white male officer who put the handcuffs on me and asked if they could be loosened just a bit.
I told him I had never had handcuffs on before. The pain was excruciating. His response? I tried to ask what was happening and whether I was in trouble and being arrested.
I was not screaming. I was not loud. I was not hysterical. In fact, I tried to do everything I could to remain as calm as possible. You could be. Do you want to fucking be arrested? My partner explained that we were both soon-to-be lawyers and we just wanted to know what was happening. One of the officers scoffed at this possibility and told my partner to get away from the officers. At every turn, I and my partner were treated rudely, disrespectfully and despite all efforts to have a respectful, human conversation, the police were bent on escalation.
Eventually, something happened and they decided to let me go. They escorted me through Grant Park through most of the festival in handcuffs, surrounded by 3 officers and past scores and scores of people at the concert. I was on the verge of tears. My God. How humiliating and embarrassing this was. At the gate, the officers told me to leave and to not come back for any other performances that day. I explained that I had wanted to see a particular act that was performing that evening, but they said that if I re-entered the park I would be arrested on sight.
I asked why that was the case, and was effectively told that it was because they said so. I had done nothing wrong. I am a black woman with dark skin and I wear my hair in locs. Is that all it takes? I now understand over-exertion of police authority as an integral part of what it means to be black in America. I am scared of police now.
And I will certainly never go to that park again. I want to live. This former student acknowledged that no one in her party was killed; she was not raped or beaten. Her story reflects a brief moment in time; approximately 15 minutes of her life that were filled with cuts, stabs, jabs, and slices at her humanity. She recognizes that her story is not unique and that others have faced similar and even greater trauma.
Consider Sandra Bland, who was found dead in a jail cell after talking back to a White police officer. Consider also what might have happened to Professor Michele Goodwin on a cold dark night in Chicago.
Cross-Generational Experiences. The above examples underscore the ubiquitous nature of aggressive encounters. Importantly, these encounters do not begin when Black women reach adulthood.
Thomas attended an exclusive private school in the St. Louis metropolitan area from fifth grade through high school and was one of only five Black girls in her class.
A gorilla was drawn on the whiteboard in a 7th grade room. A few students joked that the picture depicted a black student in the class. A guy told me he liked me and I had a crush on him too. I was over the moon!
How could you date it? Because of Obama being the first black president, his inauguration was live-streamed at [the school]. In this same class students laughed and accused Obama of not being a true citizen, they called him a Muslim as though that were an insult, and said their parents wanted to leave the country. I shared maybe two of these experiences on Facebook and was met with these responses by some:. Spreading Lies so they can sue you! Leah decided to share her story after conservative students at the school publicly asserted that the school had been unwelcoming to Trump supporters, to which the head of the school responded with a letter of apology.
The aggressive encounters discussed in this Part reveal three things. Among other things, Black women are assumed to be thieves, service workers, criminals, drug users, poor, biased, and irrational. For example, the law graduate in Chicago could not possibly be visiting from New York, and could not possibly be a lawyer. Within the minds of those officers, she could only be a drug abuser and up to no good.
Second, these assumptions cause harm. Sometimes the initial cut is small, but festers over time. For example, the woman who is surveilled in a department store or who is assumed to be a worker at her home, instead of the homeowner, may be simply irritated, until the same thing happens repeatedly and the realization sinks in that Black women are at all times assumed to be criminal, economically poor, or subservient.
Indeed, responding to any of the affronts summarized in this Part risks the all too familiar conclusion: there she goes—that Angry Black Woman! Why is she so angry? So bent out of shape? So sen-si-tive? Full of attitude. The problem becomes the Black woman as opposed to the conditions to which she is responding.
In short, the exercise of voice leads to further stereotyping, backlash, and death by a thousand cuts. Indeed, that is the nature of micro-aggressions. This Article also rejects the notion that these so-called minor infractions are no more consequential than an isolated inconvenience. Perceptions formed or more likely revealed in one setting often influence behavior or reflect behavior in other spheres. The businessman Professor Jones encountered on the plane was likely an employer or a supervisor of others.
Does he treat Black females under his supervision the way in which he treated Professor Jones? How does he interact with Black females in other settings e. And what about that man who launched his verbal abuse at Professor Norwood in Home Depot? How does he treat the Black females that Home Depot actually employs? His Black female colleagues at work? The cashier at Starbucks?
The sales clerk in a convenience store? In short, aggressive acts are unlikely to be limited to one encounter or to one woman. To the extent that these acts are driven by stereotypes and biases about Black women in general, they are likely to occur repeatedly in different settings.
These differing histories, shaped by the intersection of race and gender, inform the biases and stereotypes to which Black women are subject. Consider below, some common stereotypes of White women, Black men, and Black Women.
The above lists are not merely the theoretical musings of two law professors. Consider the following:. Leslie Jones, a comedian on Saturday Night Live and an actor in the remake of Ghostbusters, was called an ape and other names on Twitter. A DC police officer manhandled a Black female school teacher after assuming she was a prostitute.
A Black woman, incarcerated for failure to complete classes following a traffic violation, was left in jail for multiple days without needed feminine products, toothpaste, deodorant or the ability to shower, and was paraded into court before a judge, seemingly without pants.
Some expressed outrage that she was selected by Sports Illustrated as its Person of the Year over a horse. Williams to the horse in question. Black female teenagers have been dragged with ropes around their necks, thrown to the floor by safety officers in schools, or treated like garbage and tossed around parking lots like rag dolls by security personnel.
Society at large, including employers, school districts, and even Black men, rejects Black women, particularly those with dark skin and natural hair. The above charts and examples are not offered to suggest that these stereotypes are accurate, despite their prevalence. Nor does this Article seek to reify societal constructs of White women, Black Men, and Black women, 98 or to dismiss the oppression of Black men and White women.
Rather, these lists are set forth to show that in aggressive encounters, aggressors are not responding to Black women as women, or as Black—but rather as Black women. As previous scholars and persons have noted, Black women are raced and gendered beings who at times are viewed differently from White men, Black men, and White women.
Importantly, the fact that society has juxtaposed Black women and these other groups means that the aggressors in aggressive encounters are not only White men, but also Black men as well as White women. The salience of this trope comes from the combination of blackness and non-conforming femininity.
How many times has the reader heard of the Angry White woman? The Angry Asian Woman? The Angry Latina Woman? The above lists are set forth for an additional purpose. Earlier this Article referenced the decisional moment in aggressive encounters—that split second in which Black women must decide whether to remain silent or to speak.
This moment is fraught because Black women know that to push back—to exercise voice—inevitably means that any positive stereotypes to which they may be subject however slim they may be will immediately elide into the negative.
This elision underscores the fragility of the line between the positive and the negative and how easily that line can be crossed. Indeed, this Article argues that this line is so easily traversed because with marginalized groups including White women and Black men , negative stereotypes are the default norm against which group members are always pushing. Anyone who does not fit the norm is viewed as an exception. This exceptional status, however, can be tenuous, and it does not fundamentally change underlying views about the group.
Thus, one or two noncomplying group members do not change the default norm. But, negative action by one or two individuals seems to confirm or reinforce negative stereotypes about the group. Thus, when Micah Johnson murdered five police offers in Dallas, Texas, his horrific act reinforced negative stereotypes about all Black men. One roll of the eye. One hand on the hip. Thus far, this Article has focused on the ways in which conscious or unconscious stereotypes and biases lead to aggressive encounters.
It has yet to offer a theory for why the exercise of voice or any form of pushback may cause aggressors to blame these encounters on the very women they are attacking. To augment understanding of this blame shifting, this Part examines White transparency, White fragility, and psychological projection. On November 4, , the night Barack Obama was first elected President, some people proclaimed that the United States was post-racial. That is, many Whites deny, or are oblivious to, their own racial bias and privilege.
This denial and oblivion are likely affected by what Barbara Flagg has termed White transparency, or the tendency of Whites to be unaware of their whiteness. To be sure, with increasing economic inequality and changing racial demographics, a form of White-identity politics seems to have emerged in recent years.
However, the goal of those who are most alarmed in this moment appears to be to get back to a state where whiteness is again hegemonic. Not only does racial transparency exist, but so too does gender transparency. When White racial hegemony is challenged, as it is by the changing demographics of the United States and movements like SayHerName and BlackLivesMatter, backlash often results.
This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress. Both White fragility and White transparency likely play a role in aggressive encounters. White male aggressors enter these encounters with conscious or unconscious notions of White male superiority and accompanying notions of Black female inferiority.
They may also enter these encounters with a degree of racial anxiety and hostility based upon their perceived loss of social power. When Black women exercise voice by asserting their humanity and challenging assumptions about their second-class status, they disrupt the racial and gender comfort in which these aggressors exist and upset embedded notions of racial and gender superiority. As Dr.
DiAngelo points out, this exercise of voice can provoke a range of emotions in White men, including anger and argumentation as Professor Norwood witnessed in Home Depot. Displaced blame draws upon psychological projection, which psychologists define as:.
The tendency for people to see in others characteristics that they are motivated to deny in themselves. For example, a woman tempted to cheat on a test might accuse others of dishonesty, a man with unwanted sexual fantasies and desires might become obsessed with the immorality of his neighbors, and another with an urge to commit violence against someone might come to believe that the other person is the potential aggressor.
Importantly, research shows that projection operates as a defense mechanism. For example, in his work on racism and projection, Kenneth Reeves notes:.
African Americans are sometimes seen as lazy. All human beings have some laziness, but when White people see African Americans as lazy, White people can then deny their own laziness.
This projection of laziness contributes to racism, because seeing African Americans as lazy and therefore less deserving justifies denying them access to societal benefits. Thus, projection operates in at least two ways. First, an individual who fears having certain traits may attempt to suppress thoughts about that trait.
Second, because some individuals desire to avoid the consequences of their own bad acts, projection may also increase the likelihood of deflecting blame. In many aggressive encounters, aggressors display anger, irritation, and a sense of entitlement or superiority either when initiating the encounter or after a Black woman responds.
Yet, instead of the aggressors taking ownership for their actions and emotions, they label the Black woman the wrongdoer. Out of control. Displaced blame through defensive projection is neither new nor unique to Black women. It also occurs when society, through the criminal justice system, perpetuates violence against Black men through unlawful detentions, disproportionate arrests, disparate sentences, disproportionate killings of unarmed black men, etc.
Instead of examining this state-sponsored violence, society characterizes Black men as gangsters and thugs.
In this projection, Black men become the primary focus of attention and are blamed for the violence to which they are subject while the state apparatus escapes serious critique and transformation. Displaced blame may also occur without the projection of traits the aggressor seeks to deny in himself. Sometimes the aggressor will merely blame the harmed individual. For example, displaced blame occurred in the United States when White communities killed or maimed African Americans who were in geographical areas that Whites deemed off limits.
Instead of examining the racism and the racial exclusion at the heart of sundowner laws, Black people were blamed for the unspeakable horrors perpetuated against them.
The Decisional Moment and Consequences. Even without advanced training in psychology, Black women are aware of the racial bias and stereotyping sometimes nuanced, sometimes in your face that occur in aggressive encounters. They also know that if they were to push back against these stereotypes, then they risk backlash from the aggressor and possibly others and that they may ultimately be blamed for the encounter.
In other words, not speaking may cause a Black woman to feel as if she is complicit in her own oppression. Thus, Black women are constantly faced with decisional moments, those fleeting instants in which they must decide whether to speak or to be silent. As discussed below, there are longer-term costs as well. Aggressive encounters play mind games on Black women. Black women are constantly kept wondering: Should I check myself? Am I coming on too strongly?
Am I out of line? This of course begs the question of who drew the lines. Indeed, numerous studies have established that discrimination can lead to emotional distress, depression, anxiety, nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Speaking back can also adversely affect opportunities for romantic relationships. Data show exogamy rates are stronger among Black men than Black women.
Again the reader should recall Sandra Bland and the treatment of countless other Black women who were incarcerated or died when they dared to speak back to law enforcement. Deeply-rooted problems defy fast and simple solutions. Sometimes the best that can be done is to continue using existing means to whittle away at entrenched barriers. This Part considers three mechanisms to reduce the incidence and ameliorate the harm of aggressive encounters: 1 coalition building; 2 legal interventions; and 3 individual action.
Coalition Building in the New Millennium. As they have done in the past with varying degrees of success , Black women, White women, and Black men must continue to support each other and to forge coalitions. Yet, as this section underscores, this task will not be easy. It also chided those who, it said, were only now waking up to racism because of the election. It seems that both the South Carolina minister and the New Jersey woman were expressing a willingness to engage in coalition building only if they could do it on their terms—i.
What the above interactions reveal is that some, though certainly not all, White women are missing a key insight of intersectionality theory. Race is always mediated by class and gender.
And gender is always mediated by race and class. One cannot overcome sexism without simultaneously addressing racism and classism.
Similarly, one cannot overcome racism without simultaneously addressing sexism and classism. Black women are keenly aware of these facts as they advocate for the abolishment of gender barriers only to see White women benefit in greater percentages without apparent concern for the fact that Black and poor women do not fare as well—or advocate for racial justice only to experience continuing violence at the hands of Black men.
The above tensions, however, may reflect more than a lack of understanding of the multiplicity of identities. They may also point to another phenomenon identified by Professors Trina Grillo and Stephanie Wildman in their work on analogies. Because whiteness is the norm, it is easy to forget that it is not the only perspective.
Thus, members of dominant groups assume that their perceptions are the pertinent perceptions, that their problems are the problems that need to be addressed, and that in discourse they should be the speaker rather than the listener. Part of being a member of a privileged group is being the center and the subject of all inquiry in which people of color or other non-privileged groups are the objects. What seems to happen in discussions of sexism is that White women implicitly believe that their concerns should be center stage.
When challenged on this belief, well-meaning White women feel offended. And Black women feel frustrated. There are no easy ways to bridge this divide. And many will certainly argue that in the Trump era, progressive women should focus on what unites them rather than what divides them. Yet, even in times of crisis and unsettling upheaval, taking the long-view is preferable. Thus, White women must be willing to listen more and to learn.
They must understand that in so many ways, from trying to survive with a criminal record, to the gender pay gap, to even rising in corporate America, the differences, experiences, and outcomes between Black and White women are profound. The writing is juvenile and somewhat predictable. While I respect people who narrate books, I could barely get through listening to it. The narrator's "accents" were terrible. Just listening to it was hard enough. I don't know how many times I rolled my eyes at this novel.
The twist wasn't that great either. I'm surprised by how many stars this book actually has. I returned this book. Definitely would not recommend. This book was absolutely fantastic. The author and narrator are extremely talented. I loved the unexpected twists and turns. This story has so much going for it I will definitely look for more by this author and narrator.
Without giving away spoilers, I never saw the ending coming. The story flowed so well and kept me intrigued. This is one of those books that carries you on a roller coaster ride of emotions and you willingly go! I can't tell if I am more heartbroken over the fact that the book is over or the actual ending. I was so caught up in the characters lives I think I need a drink.
Psycho drama and loads of twists and turns!! I actually reread the book within a week of my first read through, so many points popped out the 2nd time! Highly recommend this book! This story had me so engaged. I loved the point of view. I thought about this story long after listening to it. One of the worst books ever! Reader should never attempt a male voice.
Pitiful plot. I enjoyed the story very much, the punch , I wasn't prepared for! It was an ugly experience but I hope that sharing it opens some eyes and maybe even changes some hearts. Thank you for reading, and don't forget that everyone you see is a person, like you. This post originally appeared on Sparkle All Day. Republished with permission.
Want to see your work here? Email us. Since it's not stated in the post, Allston is a neighborhood of Boston, MA. This was tough for me to read. But when someone knew walks into his life, he is left with nothing but loses as he is forced to come to terms with the fact that he was not the winner at the table.
And this takes place between season one and two. London was always a drag. Full of business, bullets, and boring meetings. Though he tried to do things legally, not everyone complied to his demands and often things had to be taken by force, blood on his hands. In her cherry red dress and golden heels, she was a siren to the crowd. Pulling them in and stealing their souls with the voice that floated threw the air, tickling their ears.
Like the masses, Tommy found himself pulled in, dazzled by the woman that stood before him on the large stage, a swing band made of golden instruments creating a backdrop behind her. But none of the performers grabbed his attention like she did.
Heat raised to his cheeks, making them burn and his heart ceased to beat, breath caught in his throat. His brother blinked, the space that had been filled by a goddess moments ago was empty. There was nothing left but the band and a microphone.
Reaching for his drink, straight whiskey, the man knew nothing better, Tommy sighed as his heart once again beat against his rib cage. There was the love for his family, one he believed he was born with. The love he held for Greta… the one that made his heart skip a beat. Then there was the intoxicating love that was Grace Burgess. Even the simple thought of her, a whiff of what smelled like her perfume, had him spiralling all day off a momentary high.
The world around him was lost, devoured by a dense fog that had surrounded him. They bounced back into form with each stroke, glistening under the heavy lights. Staring at her own reflection, she ran her tongue across the top of her lips. The woman that stared back at her was mighty and tall, what she imagined a modern amazonian would be depicted as.
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