Why are so many black women scared of cats?
June 28, 2016 8:09 AM Subscribe
Apologies for a potentially racist question but my husband insists this the only demographic he's observed this behavior in. We're wondering if this is a known thing in the Southern US black community (versus just a weird local superstition) and ideally would prefer answers from black people instead of speculation from whites as there is already plenty of the latter on Google.
Backstory: My husband is the second-generation owner-operator of a tire shop and auto repair garage in the rural South. He worked there as a teenager and then inherited the family business five years ago when his father died.
For most of the ~25 years they've been in business, there has been a rotating cast of cats living in or around the shop. I don't know how it originally got started, but at some point the townsfolk started dumping their unwanted strays there because they knew my husband's family would take care of them.
Shortly after my husband took over the business, he noticed that many of his black female customers seemed disproportionately fearful of cats.
Before all y'all say "confirmation bias," that was my husband's initial thought too, so he started consciously keeping track of all his customers' noticeable reactions to the cats. While there were customers of all races and genders who would complain about allergies, say they didn't like cats, or tell their kids not to touch the cats, he says that it was only the (mostly older) black women who seemed to be actually terrified: e.g., screaming when a cat jumped onto the counter, leaving the building if they saw a cat, refusing to get out of their cars if there was a cat nearby until someone shooed it off, etc.
Obviously my husband isn't going to corner these women and grill them about the origin of their phobia. Also, while there may still be some ferals lurking around, we currently have no cats living inside the shop since the most recent generation of cats all died off or adopted out over the past couple of years.
But the subject came up again when the local shelter started sending out urgent Facebook messages about being full. I asked my husband if we could take some of the cats scheduled to be euthanized to live at the shop instead, but he said he's decided against having any more shop cats because he doesn't want to make such a large proportion of his customer base uncomfortable (I think roughly a third of his customers are black).
So now we're left wondering: Could this possibly just be a weird local superstition that might eventually fade away, or is it a widespread known thing in the Southern US black community?
Please advise, thanks!
Backstory: My husband is the second-generation owner-operator of a tire shop and auto repair garage in the rural South. He worked there as a teenager and then inherited the family business five years ago when his father died.
For most of the ~25 years they've been in business, there has been a rotating cast of cats living in or around the shop. I don't know how it originally got started, but at some point the townsfolk started dumping their unwanted strays there because they knew my husband's family would take care of them.
Shortly after my husband took over the business, he noticed that many of his black female customers seemed disproportionately fearful of cats.
Before all y'all say "confirmation bias," that was my husband's initial thought too, so he started consciously keeping track of all his customers' noticeable reactions to the cats. While there were customers of all races and genders who would complain about allergies, say they didn't like cats, or tell their kids not to touch the cats, he says that it was only the (mostly older) black women who seemed to be actually terrified: e.g., screaming when a cat jumped onto the counter, leaving the building if they saw a cat, refusing to get out of their cars if there was a cat nearby until someone shooed it off, etc.
Obviously my husband isn't going to corner these women and grill them about the origin of their phobia. Also, while there may still be some ferals lurking around, we currently have no cats living inside the shop since the most recent generation of cats all died off or adopted out over the past couple of years.
But the subject came up again when the local shelter started sending out urgent Facebook messages about being full. I asked my husband if we could take some of the cats scheduled to be euthanized to live at the shop instead, but he said he's decided against having any more shop cats because he doesn't want to make such a large proportion of his customer base uncomfortable (I think roughly a third of his customers are black).
So now we're left wondering: Could this possibly just be a weird local superstition that might eventually fade away, or is it a widespread known thing in the Southern US black community?
Please advise, thanks!
This post was deleted for the following reason: Sorry, this is really not going to work here. -- LobsterMitten
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