SURVEILLING THE ANGRY BLACK WOMAN: THE IMPACT OF FORENSIC SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY ON PRE-EXISTING STEREOTYPES
Larrisha Birdie McDonnough, Ashraf Mozayani · International Journal of Education and Social Science Research · 2025
On July 10, 2015, a Texas state trooper pulled over Sandra Bland, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman. What began as a routine traffic stop quickly escalated into a confrontation. Ultimately, the trooper arrested Bland, and three days later, she was found dead in her jail cell. Dash camera footage, alongside bystander cell phone recordings, captured Bland’s interaction with law enforcement. Many of those watching quickly cast Bland’s demeanor through the lens of the "Angry Black Woman" (ABW) stereotype—a deeply ingrained cultural narrative that portrays Black women as hostile, overly aggressive, and defiant. This review paper aims to uncover the role of contemporary surveillance technologies in reinforcing or challenging the "Angry Black Woman" (ABW) stereotype within policing and the criminal justice system. The study involved a comprehensive review of 41 scholarly sources published from 2019 to 2023, of which 10 met the inclusion criteria focusing on the intersections of race, gender, and surveillance technology in policing. Our findings reveal that the ABW stereotype continues to shape the treatment of Black women during their interactions with law enforcement and the criminal justice system.