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Prof Jones says some have compared the referee's calls to speeding tickets: many people speed and sometimes a few are caught. But that analogy, she says, misses the point that African Americans are disproportionately pulled aside.

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In the case of Williams, she was first dinged on a coaching violation that happens often but is rarely called out as the player's fault. The "angry black woman" trope has its roots in 19th Century America, when minstrel shows, which involved comic skits and variety acts, mocking African Americans became popular.

Blair Kelley, associate professor of history at North Carolina State University, says black women were often played by overweight white men who painted their faces black and donned fat suits "to make them look less than human, unfeminine, ugly". The s programme Amos 'n Andy was one of the first modern media portrayals to cement this stereotype through the character of Mrs Sapphire Stevens. As segregation laws known as Jim Crow laws saw black Americans assaulted, jailed and killed, popular culture pushed ideas of "sassy mammies" and "Sapphires" - an archetype depicting black women with iron-fists, yelling at everyone from children to white men.

This trope of the "angry black woman" has endured, and has been pervasive in modern media even without more overtly racist portrayals, says Brandi Collins, senior campaign director at the racial justice organisation Color of Change. On screen, it is easy to push sass for laughs.

But black women in America see these depictions translate differently in real life. For Ms Collins, the picture of the "hyperemotional" black woman has become more commonplace as Americans grapple with issues of polarised politics and civility.

Black women, she says, are often faced with people responding to their emotions "from a place of perceived fear". A feeling that you have to go above and beyond to make people feel comfortable around you. But then you sort of think, well, this isn't about me," she said of being labelled as an "angry black woman".

We are so afraid of each other, you know? Robin Boylorn, an intercultural communications professor at the University of Alabama told the BBC it seems impossible to be a black woman and not be angry, after "generations of oppression, discrimination and erasure". White women are allowed to be angry as a clarion call. So black women should be encouraged to express their anger as well, particularly in the face of injustice.

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For Serena Williams, Prof Boylorn says the issue is compounded by the fact that "she cannot separate her blackness from her womanhood, from her class or social status". But it's the double standard with men in particular that has come up in the ongoing debate of Williams' US Open performance. In a cartoon that went viral after the final, Williams is drawn as a petulant, mannish figure while the referee tells her opponent, "Can you just let her win?

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