My son has just told me of the 3rd fight he’s witnessed this year in his high school gym class, (all classes for both sexes are held in a large open gym area) and for the third time in a row it was two black girls going at it ferociously over some boy. It’s been a different set of combatants every time, but all were black females.
About two years ago I was friends with the head bouncer (a large black man & local martial arts instructor) at a popular nightclub with a mainly Black clientele that got closed down due to excessive violence. In discussing his job he told me point blank that most of the violence he dealt with in the nightclub was either female or female, or if male on male often started as a female on female altercation that involved men when the women went to get some additional horsepower because they felt they had been disrespected.
The impression I get from these (limited) snapshots is that back women are ready to throw down at a moment’s notice. Is this a valid notion or a prejudicial stereotype?
I grew up in a rural town that was just about 50/50 white and black. There was and unspoken (and sometimes spoken) rule that you didn’t screw with larger black females. Some of the throw-downs that we had were out of control. Black female - black-female were the worst but we had every combination including males of all sorts as well as teachers. I did some security stuff for the local grocery store and I was warned to be ready to throw down with any black woman we accused of shoplifting. Watch the fingernails they told me.
There is some truth to it although we are talking about a very specific type of person raised in a certain environment. It doesn’t apply to most areas in the U.S. I just grew up with it and we laughed about but at the same time everybody knew it was the real deal and the resulting fights were effective and educational.
Call me a racist and a bigot if you want. All I am telling is a simple field report from where I grew up. I doubt it is typical of the U.S. as a whole but I can certainly see how such a stereotype would come into being.
Another field report from where I grew up: I was once enrolled in a miserable excuse for a middle school. There were a whole bunch of black girls who considered it their cause to beat up all the 7th-grade girls. They got me alone, three of them, and beat nine ways of hell out of me. I gave back pretty good but there was no way I was winning against three big black girls.
In high school and middle school, when it came to guy fights the black:white ratio was like 1:2. However when it came to the girls it was like 12:1. Some of those black girls were vicious. Some students picked up microbraids that was left behind as some kind of souvenir.
I don’t think black women are inheritly violent. To say that would be racist. However, I believe that many black women are SOCIALIZED to be very assertive. They are taught to assert themselves verbally, and physically, if necessary. To be a “strong black woman” is one of the highest honors in the black community.
Does this cultural mindset go along with the apparent conviction that, short of a fight, the person who hollers the loudest and longest, seemingly without taking a breath, wins the argument?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/23/conyers.barfight.ap/index.html
All kidding aside though, I figure, as with the ‘name’ thread currently going on, that it’s tied to socio-economic status…poorer folks are more likely to resort to fisticuffs, and black people make up a disproportionate share of that population. As for the gender breakdown…perhaps since black women have historically not been fed the line about princesses being aloof, delicate flowers, etc., they are more likely to get physical than their white counterparts.
I came across an analogy some time ago and I think it might perhaps fit here:
If I push you over and sit on you, that’s opporession. If you hit me and call me names while my fat ass is crushing your lungs, that’s not oppression - that’s fighting back.
African American women have two strikes against them from the moment they emerge from the womb. While anecdotes are not data I can’t say I blame anyone for scrapping back, even if the cause is poor.
I’ve known a lot of women, and the worst fighters I’ve seen have been the of the “poor white trash” variety. I wouldn’t scrap with a trailer park queen, no way, no how.