What does ABW mean in Unclassified?

Angry black woman

The angry black woman stereotype is a trope in American society that portrays African-American women as sassy, ill-mannered, and ill-tempered by nature. Related concepts are the "sapphire" or "sassy black woman". Scholars Dionne Bennett and Marcyliena Morgan suggest that the stereotype is less studied than the mammy and Jezebel archetypes because researchers accept it as true.Carolyn West defines the Angry Black Woman as one variety of a Sapphire stereotype (another category listed is "Sistas with Attitude"). West defines the pervasive "Sapphire/ABW image" as "a template for portraying almost all Black women" and as serving several purposes. West sees it as "passion and righteous indignation... often misread as irrational anger... used to silence and shame Black women who dare to challenge social inequalities, complain about their circumstances, or demand fair treatment (Harris-Perry, 2011).Defined by Pilgrim (2015), "it is a social control mechanism that is employed to punish black women who violate the societal norms that encourage them to be passive, servile, nonthreatening, and unseen" (p. 121). It has been characterized as leading to a form of double bind.

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