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Rhonda Swan: ABW — angry black woman — has become the new B-Word

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12:52 PM Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Sticks and stones may break our bones, and names can definitely hurt us.

So why no peep from the National Organization for Women or Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., about New York’s other senator, Democrat Charles Schumer, calling a flight attendant a “bitch” for having the audacity to ask him to turn off his cell phone?

Granted, he didn’t say it to her face. According to the earwitness, a Republican congressional aide on the flight between Washington, D.C., and New York who dished to Politico.com, Sen. Schumer said it under his breath to his seat mate, Sen. Gillibrand.

He called the flight attendant and apologized after the incident made headlines. Were he not a U.S. senator, this wouldn’t be a blip on the media radar. I don’t know anyone, including myself, who hasn’t used the B-word.

What I find more interesting is that the conversation regarding Sen. Schumer’s Freudian slip has been more about his arrogance and so-called elitism than sexism.

Like the N-word, whether or not the B-word is deemed offensive depends on who utters it and in what context. Many blacks have embraced the racial epithet, using it as a term of endearment, yet consider it a fighting word when whites use it. Many women have embraced the B-word using it as a term of endearment, but consider it a fighting word when men use it.

Whether or not this phenomenon is hypocritical is a column of its own. I think most people would agree, however, that Sen. Schumer’s intent was anything but endearing.

His use of the B-word intended the same meaning and effect as when misogynistic gangsta rappers such as Snoop Dogg and Eminem use the word in their lyrics. It perpetuates the sexist notions that women should be subservient to men and those who are not — women who are assertive or authoritative — need to learn their place.

In rap “songs,” that place for women is usually on their backs or in some other position that allows men to have their way sexually.

For the flight attendant guilty of enforcing Federal Aviation Administration rules, her place — as Sen. Schumer saw it — should have been serving coffee and acquiescing to his request to finish his call.

FAA rules be damned.

I doubt that Sen. Schumer would have called a male flight attendant the B-word, though men do use it to emasculate other men, the same way they use the B-word and its cousins to castrate women they perceive as having imaginary testicles.

What cousins? Most of them I can’t cite in a family newspaper. But one used against me recently — and against first lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and many others — is angry black woman.

ABW, as it’s called, is the new B-word.

Like the bitch stereotype, the angry black woman stereotype is used to paint certain women as shrews in need of taming. It’s easy, in the minds of some men, to dismiss such women.

When conservative columnist Cal Thomas slapped the angry black woman label on Ms. Obama last year it was to marginalize her. To make her irrelevant.

That also was the intent of the man who called me an angry black woman — aka “bitch” — for refusing to concede a point that he hadn’t rightfully earned during a trivia game at the house of a mutual friend. He’d known me all of 10 minutes.

This man couldn’t see past the stereotype to recognize that he was the angry one. Nor could he see the irony in insulting me for the sin of being as competitive as himself.

Similarly, Sen. Schumer failed to see that he was the one with the attitude problem on that plane. He insulted the flight attendant behind her back for having — in that situation — as much authority as him. And using it.

Words breathe life. As we head into the second decade of the 21st century, our words are keeping sexism alive and well. And rappers aren’t the only ones guilty. We all are.

Rhonda Swan is an editorial writer for The Palm Beach

(Fla.)

Post. E-mail:

rhonda

swan

pbpost.com.

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1. NOW(National Organization for Women) is a useless organization that justs supports liberal women and doesn't care if conservative women are abuse so I consider it the National Organization of Whoredom
2.Chuck Shumer is an elitist and how dare some "commoner" critize him. Shumer is the ultimate "plantation" owner who declares he for the little people, the only thing Shumer is for is keeping them on the "plantation".

HowRad
10:22 AM, 12/24/2009

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Rhonda - GROW the H*** up...!
...Sheesh !!...Infantile tripe from this twit!! ASBW.... three guesses what the S stands for !!

Black Swan
10:16 PM, 12/23/2009

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