There are rewards in life for being aggressive. I am always very patient with service workers or strangers and usually it just means just being ignored so they can instead spend their energy and attention placating the people they are afraid of.
I remember reading about how black students have trouble with white teachers because they are too subtle. At home if they do something wrong someone will yell at them, but in school they have this milquetoast teacher who'll gently say "maybe you should do this instead of that..." so then the black student does not understand they did anything wrong until the bad grades come along.
On the flip side, whats with the stereotypical white person's attitude anyway? White people never want to talk to each other or express feelings, instead they just post on internet forums about "how do I tell this person I am upset with them?" (I always feel like saying "morse code, smoke signals, just make sure you don't use words..") It seems like they often act like the world is going to explode or they'll become a complete pariah if they ever bother to stand up for themselves or say what they really think. If someone chides you it's not the end of the world, just get over it. Often times the whole plot of a tv-show or movie revolves around white people who just won't frickin' talk to each other.
Anyway, different people are used to different levels of aggressiveness, ideally one should go for balance of course. Yeah, black women often seem too aggressive, but white women often seem rather pathetic.
In the case of you delivering the pizza late... obviously she snapped at you because the pizza was late. Maybe she felt like it was only late because she's black. She probably felt like if she didn't complain she would be implicity be telling you that it's okay to be late.
09 Jun 2011, 9:40 pm
