African-American Women Series 3

Anger and vengeance are usually two things that coincide. A person is often vengeful because they’re angry. These are harsh things to call a person, but it seems to be another shameful way African American women are betrayed throughout media. I never played close attention to it until my sister pointed it out to me while we were watching a movie. She said to me, “black women always have to be so angry.” And once she said that to me I started to realize that it’s true. Black females are usually the ones to play the extremely angry, vengeful, and bitter characters.

            One of my favorite movies is Deliver Us From Eva. Eva is beautiful, but a bitter black woman who treats men like absolute crap. She doesn’t trust them at all, and when she finally starts to fall in love with this her love interest, she thinks he’s messing around and automatically cuts him off. This character is played by the oh-so beautiful Gabrielle Union, who usually plays these bitter, mean roles.

            First of all, the character, Eva, is gorgeous, she’s absolute perfection. But she’s mean, bitter, and vengeful. This is saying that black females can’t be pretty and nice at the same time. The reason I am able to make this statement is because this isn’t the first time I seen Gabrielle Union play roles similar to this one. She plays roles like this so well and so often that I believe that she can act like this naturally with no problem; pretty, but hurtful. And for a while as a young girl, I actually used to believe this because this is what I saw on television and in my environment. I do understand that white females play pretty mean girls also. However, more often than not I see black females play highly negative and vengeful roles. Usually these black females are vengeful and full of hatred because of a man.  

            This is what I have noticed as a child growing up, and continue to observe in my environment and through media in shows like The Haves and the Have-Nots and Being Mary Jane. But African-American women fulfilling angry, bitter, and vengeful roles are taking a turn around finally. I am happy to see them start taking more positive and inspiring roles, such as Viola Davis has. Now my niece and other young black girls can grow up seeing positivity pertaining to us girls of color.