On Medium, a white man posted the words of his Black wife stating how exasperated she is regarding his continual failure to understand the racism and microaggressions she faces on a daily basis. The picture he posted with the article shows a Black woman looking angry. I asked the author if that was a picture of his wife (I knew it wasn’t). If not, I said, why did you choose to play into the angry Black woman stereotype?

This is what some guy (not the author) said in response to me:

“Whatever you may think of society, stereotypes, by definition, are always based on the past behavior of the vast majority of a certain group of people.

The stereotypes for Black women based on their past behavior, are of being angry, aggressive, foul-mouthed and masculine and YOU know it. All these attributes are well-represented in that stock picture.”

“Masculine”?! MASCULINE?! So as you can see, despite all the gains we’ve made recently, misogynoir and racism are alive and well in society and we can’t let up until we eradicate them.