Angel Manson, May 6, 2024
Captions/Subtitles Included!
The Sassy Black Woman trope is a stereotype has
unfortunately become a staple of American television, especially cartoons. And
back in the early 2000s, it was inescapable. What is this trope? Where did it
start? Why exactly is it so harmful? And will we ever escape it? Y'ALL...this
is Infodump!
[...]
TIMECODES
0:00 - Intro
2:01 - Origins (cw: blackface & racist imagery)
6:27 - The Trope Today
12:07 - Why Is It So Harmful?
16:55 - Actresses & Legacies
19:42 - What Now?
21:50 - Good Takes
-snip-
Here's a definition for the word "trope":
From https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearning/comments/tpzwh9/what_exactly_is_a_trope/
"What exactly is a trope?"
life-is-a-loop, 2021
"Hey! I'm not a fluent [English language] speaker but let me give it a try. A
trope is a narrative device that the audience will recognize across several
stories. It's like a concept, or idea, or pattern that is used in different
stories to convey some sort of meaning. Sometimes it may be seen as a cliché or
stereotype, but it isn't inherently bad. In fact it's (almost?) impossible to
tell a story without tropes. The shy and introverted woman who is noticed by
the rich guy (Example: Me Before You.) The hero who gets his ass kicked only to
get angry and find his true power (Example: Rocky Balboa.) The classic hero's
journey (Example: Star Wars.) There are many. There are tropes about narrative,
about characters, about topics, etc. It's hard to explain such an abstract idea
lol but I hope it helps!"
****
Edited by Azizi Powell
Latest revision- May 23, 2026
This pancocojams post showcases a YouTube video essay about the Sassy Black woman trope.
This post also include some comments from this video's discussion thread that pertain to that subject and to certain closely related subjects.
The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural, historical, and educational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Angel Manson for this video and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
****
SELECTED COMMENTS FROM THIS VIDEO'S DISCUSSION THREAD
All of the comments in this video's discussion thread-including these selected comments-were published between January 2025 to May 2025.
These comments are given in relative chronological order based on their publishing date.
Numbers are added for referencing purposes only.
1. @ThePaganSun
"Uhhhh...why is "sass" such a bad thing to be for
either white or black women???? Seriously, like is everything "bad"
nowadays??? There's are stereotypes for every race and every sex. The most
annoying and harmful problem I see with any of this is how people get
frustrated when they expect their ethnic/gender representation to fit them
personally to a T and then get offended when it doesn't. There ARE sassy Black
women too. 🙄"
**
Reply
2. @GEO_theprotogen
"@ThePaganSun it's the pervasive portrayal of blk women. If
there were more varied character representation them there'd be no issue.
There's movies with white women as demure, soft, but also kick ass, bad ass,
strong leads. Mothers, married and single. Complex. Childless. Living like
bachelor's. Straight, lgbtq. Warriors, queens, warrior-queens. Strong
historical figures. Villains. Anti heros. The list goes on. And they are more
prevalent and more seen. That's the problem. Nobody wants to be the stereotypical
side kick offering witty quips and advice in a sassy or angry tone. Yet it's
more common than isn't. If you pay attention to how woc ate portrayed, esp
black and latina, esp dark skinned, you'd see it. She always has the attitude,
probably popping gum, probably hoop earrings, probably with an accent. Imagine
now if most of the portrayals of white women being quiet, demure, frazzled with
with 4.5 kids. And imagine we got all the main roles and white women were just
goofy sidekicks. That's roles reversed. Imagine studios telling actors yes but
more white and more womanly, and more suburban. If you're OK with that idea you
1. In denial 2. Think flat characters make for good stories."
**
Reply
3. @cniknik9863
"Exactly! I love sassy, strong, independent characters in
general, so seeing them in black girls and women makes me happy. However, I
also know it is also seen as negative and a standard stereotype which limits
us."
**
4. @Thisrat-g9x
"It’s insane the examples you see irl too. I’m still in
school, and there’s this one black girl, I’m not close friends with her but
she’s in a couple of my classes so I see her from time to time and she’s super
nice, and people somehow got mad at her for her getting angry that a white
person in our class said the n-word. She had every right to be angry because
that’s really really shi--ty,* but people got mad. And I constantly see my poc
friends, not even js the black ones, getting met with disgust for them being
angry at something that they SHOULD be angry at. They’re VERY nice people and
aren’t mad often. Just the other day, one of my poc friends was pissed because
the sub teacher was being an asshole to her and was only calling on the white
male students to answer questions. And the white male students were talking
when they weren’t supposed to, throwing crap, being assholes, and the teacher
did not care. But as soon as one of the poc or girls did the tiniest thing, he
got mad. So my friend was rightfully pissed and ranting to me about it, and
she was met with everyone just telling
her to calm down. It’s insane how much this sh-t* affects pocs to day lives."
-snip-
*This word is fully spelled out in this comment.
poc = People of Color
**
5. @ashleighberryman9280
"Trope was the bane of my existence. I went to a
predominantly mixed school with all kinds of people. And of course every
non-black student AND TEACHER expected black high school girls or women to act
like that.
I was one of the few introverted black girls that didn’t want attention. I can not tell you the number of times a teacher THOUGHT I was involved in something because I happened to be one of the 3, 4 or 5 black girls in class.
I remember this stereotype got me pulled into the principles office because they thought I was involved in an incident and of course the 3 other (black) girls who were actually involved kept bringing it up that they “don’t know why she’s here” “we’re not her friend” “she was not involved” “we don’t talk to each other in class”. I mean they were just so convinced that if one black girl caused a scene in class it must have been all of us.
Literally groups of black girls getting “counseled” about happenings around the and the counselors looking like idiots when we asked why do they get EVERY BLACK GIRL instead of the ones that actually do stuff. Even the stereo-typical black girls were questioning why they kept pulling us ALL in to talk to us and not the people that actually get in trouble. It was ridiculous."
**
6. @AKA253
"as a white kid growing up with a lot of these cartoons, they TOTALLY messed with my earliest perceptions of black folks. obviously it was pretty easy to grow out of, mostly from being around REAL people, but i still remember one of my friends in high school, she was super quiet and stuck to herself a lot but was repeatedly told she had an "attitude" bc she chose to stick up for herself. the way she explained it to me was that it didn't matter if black girls in tv or movies had a "deeper character" outside of their stereotype- they were still the stereotype. the fact that any of that character is DEEPER than the "loud black woman" means it doesn't matter as much as her being a loud black woman."
**
7. @VidWatcher01
"One of the most annoying scenes in cinemas history is in Mean Girls when the camera is panning through the lunch room to all the different troupe tables & when you get to the table with all the black students they were labeled, "The unfriendly black hotties" & it has bugged me for the last 20 years & worst I had seen black teenagers play into it all through junior high & high school I really hate that label. The funny thing was the 2 black individuals they show apart from the crowd weren't stereotypical on their own, especially the one with the cute vintage skirt Regina George had the very nerve to call ugly"
**
8. @LilacLosersOfficial
"It's very harmful, I had a white boy break up with me freshman year of highschool, and flinched when he did it and I was very confused as violence wasn't something associated with me, and he just said I thought you would hit me and I told him " why would I hit you for having feelings? " Mind you this boy had apparently only seen black folks on TV until his middle school year so it has to be the media he was consuming that involved black women. It was hurtful bc it illustrated he hadn't ever seen me as a person, just an experiment of stereotypes. It also showed that the time we spent together, he wasn't seeing past my color and actively denied knowing me in favor of believing stereotypes"
**
9. @debeebo
"one time in high school a friend asked me why i “speak
white.” i told him i don’t “speak white,” i just speak properly. as if my
blackness came with an entire pre-set
voice box 🙄"
**
Reply
10. @CrazyManwich
"The only time in my experiences that bin have heard a black
person being asked, “why are you talking white?” Was from another black
person. I always found that to be very
odd."
**
Reply
11. @alyssad.2877
"Literally! So sad how speaking properly is
associated with speaking "White" 😔"
**
12. @Ciem90
"Loved this video! As a Black woman, I have
something of a nuanced love/hate relationship with this trope. The hate?
Everything pointed out—how it flattens Black women into one-note characters,
essentially making us nothing more than the butts of a joke or entertainment
for others. But the love? Growing up as a nerdy, introverted Black girl in an
inner-city environment, I was bullied for being ‘weird’ (I was and still am
this mixture of tomboyish & nerdy) and too quiet to stand up for myself.
When I saw ‘sassy Black women’ on TV, I didn’t see a stereotype—I saw strength,
confidence, and resilience, things I desperately wanted to have and honestly
seeing these characters helped me find my own sense of confidence &
strength through wittiness and a seemingly never-ending supply of observational
sarcasm. My family is full of these women, and their ‘sass’ wasn’t just
attitude, it was survival, wit, and wisdom. It’s not that "sassiness"
is an inherently bad thing. Being confident, outspoken, and independent are all
admirable traits in anyone. It’s that there this icky combo of it often being
the only trait Black women are given & it's also these clearly admirable
traits are suddenly seen as not when it's applied onto a Black woman. Instead
of erasing it, we need more well-rounded Black female characters that show the
full spectrum of who we are."
**
13. @joeychavarria-pc4qp
"i may not be black, but as a gay man who does
theater, i have been told countless times to "use more sass" or
"scream it out more" or "wiggle my neck/finger/etc." i
can't imagine how much black women/people deal with this kind of treatment"
**
14. @Elizahassnapped
"Ever since I was a little girl i was always told i
acted angry/looked angry and needed to "chill out" even when I was
expressing joy or simply existing, I never understood why people said that and
just assumed everyone hated me and I needed to put up a front of just agreeing
with what everyone said and keeping a smile on my face, even though it went
against who I was as a person. It also didn't help that i was a young Muslim
girl and apparently expected (by people i didn't know) to always act "polite"
or "quiet" "
**
Reply
15. @squid-123
"it’s so weird seeing stereotypes for muslim women
because i grew up in islam and was surrounded with so many muslim people that
were all so different. being a muslim woman doesn’t automatically mean that
you’re a goody-two shoes and incapable of doing wrong/sin or showing any strong
emotions and i really think more people need to know that."
**
16. @consberg1990
"I’m from a country that’s very homogeneously white
(Denmark), so it’s pretty rare to have more than two people of colour in your
classes, basically because there just isn’t that large of a population. I
have always been a very loud person, so if I’m quiet it’s because I’m focused
on something. On retrospect, I can easily identify the hypocrisy that when I
went quiet people asked me “hey, are you okay?” Or “what are you working on?”.
When my classmate, a black girl, was quiet people were asking her “hey, are you
mad?”… My classmate was a soft spoken, gentle and creative person, so it’s
“odd” how people (and kids) would default to thinking she was angry.
It’s insane how pervasive this stereotype is, even in a
small country like ours, where these stereotypes aren’t even native to our
culture. My thought is that people have adopted this stereotype because
American-produced media has been so dominant around the world. Which is why
video essays and the people affected by them (in this case black women) telling
us about their experiences is so important. Thank you."
**
17. @ch4ngethechannel
"15:21 - 15:34 Im a black teenager (who is afab, btw 😭)
in school, who’s been loud and outspoken my whole life, and this part almost
made me cry. I’ve been told by COUNTLESS of white teachers (im not even
joking, none of my bipoc teachers tell me to be quiet.), to calm down, lower my
voice, and what not.
And just hearing that all the time, you kinda teach yourself how to hate yourself. I hated my voice and how I talk because every time someone tells me to quiet down, or asks me , “Why do you have to be so loud.” It’s quiet embarrassing, to stumble over your words trying to give them an answer.
I’ve even had a black person say that I sound white, and I
don’t say the N-word properly??? dawg, ur so serious????
anyways, enough of my rambling, y’all be safe ❤️
-snip-
“afab-“assigned female at birth
Commonly abbreviated as AFAB (assigned
female at birth) or AMAB (assigned male at birth). Bigender (adjective) –
Describes a person whose gender identity combines two genders.” Source: https://www.uwmedicine.org/practitioner-resources/lgbtq/lgbtq-inclusion-glossary
**
Reply
18. @angelmansonart
"I'm glad it resonated with you!! Please
be unapologetically yourself even if others give you a hard time for it ❤️"
**
19. @Rochelle94
"I was called "white girl" because i liked rock n
roll, i didnt just listen to hip hop music but all types of music, im not loud
and i pronounce my words "properly". Thank you for speaking on this
subject. Hopefully the negative narrative thats been bestowed upon black girls
will change soon."
**
20. @sabir1208
"As a sassy bw, its annoying because I know a lot of
bw who are NOT. And i remember when I would not be feeling well or just feeling
quiet some days and then people would still bother me when I already said Im
fine. I remember in high school several people telling me I thought I was
better than everyone else at first. We cant be loud or quiet, everything qe do
is scrutinized by everyone else AND WHY??????"
-snip-
bw= Black woman
****
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