Using the Stereotype
One Way To Unnerve a Bully
by©️Leslye Joy Allen
We have all been subjected to certain stereotypes. They roam around in our heads. But there are those times when they can be quite useful.
I’m piggybacking again off of an excellent piece by Zuri Stevens where she wrote about being bullied by white women with whom she worked; and the myriad of white women who feign delicacy when it is they who have done you wrong. Her essay is at the end and I hope you read it.
Now, I only suffered a very brief period of harassment by a white female colleague who had the temperament of a rabid pit bull and who was accustomed to pushing her Black female co-workers around.
By the time she got around to me she received a lesson that she did not expect. I had finished a report that was due on her desk by the end of the day. I finished it before noon. When I went to drop it off at her cubicle, she wasn’t there. So I left it with her assistant who was nearby. This was a period before everyone sent large documents by email.
In a few hours she came storming up to my cubicle demanding the report that had been left hours ago. I calmly told her it was left with her assistant who I soon learned had misplaced it.
“I can print you another copy, if you like.”
She stood there huffing and puffing while I pressed two buttons to print a duplicate of the report.
Under her breath, I heard her mumble, “You people.”
“What people are you talking about?,” I asked.
She caught herself and she caught my look. For the record, I never look afraid no matter how tense or dangerous the situation. I have said this before. My father was the same way. But…
when I am angry I look angry. In fact, one of my former History students noted that when he became a bit flip with me and I told him to close his mouth he said I scared him to death because he said, “You looked menacing.”
Well this white woman was slightly unnerved. But central to a bossy ass white woman’s belief system is that she can do and say anything to a Black woman because, after all, we Black women were nothing more than her personal beasts of burden. I knew that unnecessary incident about a missing report would not completely deter her.
So when I arrived home, I called my friend Sue who was a sharpshooter and asked if she had any of her shooting silhouette targets. “What’s going on?,” Sue asked.
“I will explain it to you when I get to your house,” I said. I told Sue all about this white bully. Sue laughed out loud. Handed me a silhouette with eight bullet holes—four in the head and four in the chest.
Now there’s a stereotype about Black people that ALL white people believe; and if they say they don’t believe it, they are lying. To them Black people have the greatest potential for violence, even though most white people know next to nothing about the majority of us. Nothing.
When my parents were kids in the 1920s, the stereotype was that all Black people carried knives. The new stereotype was that we all had guns.
I took Sue’s target practice silhouette and placed it on my bulletin board in my cubicle. Anyone passing my cubicle would see my bulletin board before they saw me.
When that bitch passed my cubicle, she said, “What is this?!”
“It’s my silhouette from target practice. I’m training to be a sharpshooter. Do you want to see my gun?,” I said.
She jumped and immediately assumed that I had the gun on me. Idiot.
“You don’t think I am stupid enough to bring a gun to the office, do you?”
She caught herself. I looked her dead in the eye and said, “My gun is in the glove compartment of my car. If you would like to see the gun that I train with in sharpshooting you can take a look at it after work.”
She went to our supervisor and told him that I had threatened to shoot her. When our supervisor came by my cubicle to ask me about the alleged threat, he saw the silhouette on my bulletin board with the bullet holes in it. “Damn! You can shoot!”
I told him exactly what I said to her. I said I offered to show her my gun which was in the glove compartment of my car. He shook his head and the matter was dropped.
From that moment on that white barracuda stayed away from me. But the joke was on all of them.
Not only did I not own a gun, I didn’t even know how to load one. It was my friend’s shooter silhouette that hung on my bulletin board. The mere fact that I, someone that they called a “Nigger” in their minds, might be strapped with a gun was enough to worry them. And I let their dumb, racist asses worry.
The moral of this story is this: White bullies who bully Black people are not known for their intellect. In fact, most of them are just plain dumb. And white women who bully Black women are the first ones to yell for Black women’s assistance when these white women get their asses in trouble.
Warning: This is only one scenario. So don’t try this at the office or at home.
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