The Black Woman and Her Cultural (Mis)Representation

The shortest end of the stick: The Black woman and her cultural (mis)representation 1 “The Black American Woman has had to admit that while nobody knew the troubles she saw, everybody, his brother and his dog, felt qualified to explain her, even to herself” (Harris, 4). Portrayed constantly in American literature, film, politics, and popular culture is a sense of “you and I”. Unfortunately for women, African Americans, and all other minority groups, this “you and I” continues to include mostly white men. Black women are even less recognized in American popular culture because of their double burden of racism and sexism. Being so underrepresented effects the way black women are portrayed in politics, popular culture and every day life. The plurality of the stereotypes confining the identity and progress of the black American woman is what makes her unique today. Black women are represented to the American public almost exclusively through their stereotypes, and because of these limitations, there is almost no Black female representation in the political sphere. The unique brand of racism that challenges the Black woman is very real indeed. One has to look no further than a commercial for State Farm auto insurance to find more than one of these racist stereotypes. This relentlessly racist portrayal of the Black woman is perhaps so frustrating because so many people are completely unaware that their impression of an ignorant Black woman has its roots in slavery and is contributing to the continued prejudice that Black women face in their every day lives. The uneducated American public passes down these racist and sexist tropes of Black women without a second thought and in turn continues to hold back the modern, educated Black woman from her rightful success. In the entertainment business, the current state of the black woman is a little better. Black actresses have won Oscars, but casting for movies and television is a consciously racist process. The concept that it is equally difficult for a black woman to get a role in film as it is for a white woman because she has to combat racism and sexism 2 has been called “double jeopardy”. On reality television, black women are usually portrayed as conniving and dramatic—a stereotype that has its roots in the early civil rights movement. All over popular culture we can find what Black feminists have defined as the four main stereotypes of black women. Those stereotypes are mammy, matriarch, jezebel, and welfare queen. It is my belief that the welfare queen stereotype, while certainly worth mentioning, is present in a much more recognizable way than the other three stereotypes Black women face. Because of this recognizability that the welfare queen holds, I spend less time talking about that particular stereotype in this paper. Dominating the maternal sphere of the African American woman is the mammy stereotype. Noted by many as the first stereotype that Black women have had to confront, the mammy is the lens through which many still view the Black woman. She is firmly ingrained in American popular culture everywhere from pancake syrup to the cast of Grey’s Anatomy. Black women who have made it to the top of the business world face the same objectification in the office. They are often expected to be nurturing to their employees, and yet to “tell it like it is”. This is an emphasis on the personality and looks of the modern day Black woman that is unfair and unrealistic. A mammy is above all, expected to know her place. Coming from the house slaves of white homes in the South, mammies held a certain place in the hearts of the white families they served, but they knew that this trivial place did not mean status. The 2009 novel The Help tells the stories of two mammies and their relationships with the “White ladies” they worked for. A third, white narrator also tells the story. Her actions end up being the heroic ones. The tale is of friendship and camaraderie, but then again a white woman who openly admits to having loved her own Black mammy wrote it. “It is a story that purports to value the maids’ lives while subordinating them to Skeeter and her 3 writing ambitions. And it celebrates noblesse oblige so readily that Skeeter’s act of daring earns her a gift from a local black church congregation” writes Janet Maslin. Reviews of the recent book are largely ambivalent. It does well to bring to life the complicated relationship between Black maids and the white children they work for, but it seems to lack depth as well. The concept that the final heroine of the book is the white female is worrisome. While Minny, the outspoken one who is the first to admit she can’t keep her mouth shut, has plenty of sass and a “Terrible Awful” deed in her past, she unfolds as little more than childish. The “Terrible Awful” turns out to be a prank involving poo and pie. The part that really helps the position and self worth of the maids of Jackson, Mississippi, however is when the one white narrator decides to write a book of memoirs. From the perspective of Black feminism, the book does little to help the position of a Black woman. It appears to be more about author Kathryn Stockett’s own white guilt than anything else. It does, however, bring the plight of the Black mammy into the living rooms of people across the country for discussion. The novelist seems to want to avoid controversy above all, and so the book stays firmly within the boundaries of political correctness. Black feminists have long been working to undo the stereotypes that confine them. Patricia Hill Collins writes, “Portraying African-American women as stereotypical mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients, and hot mommas has been essential for the political economy of domination fostering Black women’s oppression. Challenging these controlling images has long been a core theme in Black feminist thought”(Collins, 346). Black women are uniquely oppressed through these images that confine them. Just as any other group, Black women cannot be defined by a list of forty adjectives that explain every aspect of their personality (Parkhurst). No single person can be described in a list 4 of forty adjectives, yet Black women as an entire demographic are expected by society to fit into such a list. The characterization of feminists and particularly Black feminists as militant women who are overly aggressive and concerned with starting fights has met its proliferation in American culture as well. The flip side of the mammy is the matriarch, or the “bad black mother”. She can also be seen everywhere in media. She leaves her children alone, always argues, and does a terrible job with her children. This type of aggressive black woman can be seen portrayed all over reality television. She is Omerosa from “The Apprentice” who in the end was issued the famous words “you’re fired” by Donald Trump because her attitude wasn’t right. Collins states, “Spending too much time away from home, these working mothers ostensibly cannot properly supervise their children and are a major contributing factor to their children’s school failure. As overly aggressive, unfeminine women, Black matriarchs allegedly emasculate their lovers and husbands. These men, understandably, either desert their partners or refuse to marry the mothers of their children” (Collins, 350). Somewhere in between here and the later mentioned “jezebel” we find the root of the “baby mamma”. Woodard and Mastin argue that Claire Huxtable of the Cosby Show is a prime example of a Black matriarch. With an all business attitude, she is easily the least likable character on the show. Bill Cosby, as well as the children on the show are seemingly free to get into trouble before Mrs. Huxtable has to come back and reign them in. she repeatedly emasculates her husband, fitting her perfectly into the matriarch stereotype. Within the comfortable confinement of the matriarch stereotype, moviegoers can feel good about watching something not so comfortable on the silver screen. 2009’s “Precious” starring an unknown black actress named Gaburey Sidibe is a perfect example of this type of portrayal. Her own mother can only be described as awful, and Precious 5 has been made a mother of two children sired by her sexually abusive father. Reviewer Armond White called the film a “Sociological horror show”. Peter Keough wrote about the film in the Boston Phoenix, claiming that it was well acted, directed and cast— making it a good film—as well as being racist in its content. “You have to admit it is a little strange that such a debased portrait of black family life has been so warmly embraced at the same time that the first black president has taken office. So it could be a great film, but it could also be symptomatic of something disturbing and ugly in the national subconscious.” A film like “Precious” can truly be seen for its “Othering” of those portrayed in the movie. In the very casting that was so acclaimed, the casting agency found a group of almost entirely unknowns to play nobodies on screen. Very few Americans can relate to the story of Precious. She is not only poor, she is Black, and she is the victim of sexual abuse and all of the hardship that goes with it. Keough calls the movie “poverty porn for white Americans” Through the dualistic nature of these maternal stereotypes that black women face, one wonders where the young black woman who is not a mother at all is portrayed. If she is not being a mother (good or bad), you can count on a Black woman to be what Collins names a “Jezebel”. The overtly sexual Black woman is often portrayed as deviant, and thus is blamed for any trouble her sexuality might bring upon the men who continue to oppress her. “Because Black women were such sexual animals, the White men could not help but get carried away. And because she was characterized as something other than human, the assault did not matter… It is an image the media love” (Woodard, 272). The Jezebel or “Sexual Siren” portrayal of Black women is perhaps best seen in hip hop music videos, but makes it much further into mainstream White culture. The popular HBO series True Blood features a whole host of supernatural characters. In fact 6 one of the only characters that does not have super powers of her own is main character Sookie Stackhouse’s best friend Tara. A typical example of the Jezebel stereotype, she ends up sleeping with most of the white males on the show. Tara is even portrayed as the victim of rape by a sadistic white vampire on the most recent season of the show. The Jezebel stereotype has become such a part of mainstream American culture that the television series that is set in a world with evil vampires, shape shifters, and telepaths still includes racist portrayals of the Black woman. The root of some of Tara’s sexual deviance comes from the fact that her mother is one of the better examples of a welfare queen. She drinks all day and does not work, repeatedly causing uncomfortable situations for her adult daughter. In popular culture today, particularly the media of television and film, Black women are continually portrayed as overly emotional. “The allegedly emotional, passionate nature of Black women has long been used to justify Black women’s sexual exploitation” (Collins, 348). The world of Hollywood casting is a much rougher, dirtier place than we who happily go to the movies and wish to be entertained would like to believe. Even in films that were acclaimed and heralded for their supposedly fantastic portrayal of Black women, the final product is often a watered down version of real life. The 2007 blockbuster “Dreamgirls” was so acclaimed for its portrayal of both the strength and oppression of Black women during the 1960s and 1970s, but instead it fell short, showing a lackluster, stage-y movie-musical in which nobody does a good job acting. In the Boston Globe, reviewer Wesley Morris shrewdly points out “As the camera passes over a blighted Detroit, or Effie’s dashikis, you realize the movie is out of step with the times. The would-be Motown songs (they’re just show tunes with little Afros) are all wrong. The film needs the sharp ghetto pain of Curtis Mayfield, not more cardboard ballads. Any director hoping to capture racism, catfights, and urban decay with 7 music this square, and filmmaking this haphazard, is a fool. Ain’t no mountain low enough”(Morris). But what do the portrayals of the women in the movie “Dreamgirls” mean? The Supremes, the actual group that the movie’s group, “The Dreams” is based upon, represented a new opportunity for the Black woman in America. But new is not necessarily better. The story appropriately tells of the difficulties Black women had being taken seriously during the ‘60s and ‘70s. But the film is careful not to make anything look too bad, it wants to tell but fails to show what it was like to be a Black female musician at the time. Beyonce’s character in “Dreamgirls” can certainly be seen through the lens of the Jezebel stereotype. She replaces her rival as lead singer of the group because of her anything goes attitude and the fact that it was complimented by lighter skin. With the role of lead singer comes role of girlfriend of the group’s manager. Any Black woman who trades her sexuality for success will soon be seen as a Jezebel. The media of photography is another means through which Black women are objectified. Writing about the “National Geographic aesthetic” through which Black women are shown as exotic, “The subjects become objects who are little more than female creatures and curiosities, denied womanhood and rendered distinctly Other”(Shaw, 2). This “tribal” portrayal of Black women is seen all over photography and Shaw argues that it is not only dewomanizing, but also dehumanizing to the subjects of these photographs. A woman portrayed in an impersonal “National Geographic” way is little more than an exhibit that can be gawked at by all passers by. Decidedly one of the most sexist and racist industries, the fashion industry makes its money by categorizing people by their aesthetic. Ashley Mears argues that, “[models] are now so under representative of the everyday woman that they are offensive”. Having studied the yearly, month long, multi-city event known as “Fashion Week” Mears states 8 that, “Bookers and clients face intense uncertainty as they look for the right models in the high-end segment of the fashion market, where the stakes of impressing elite consumer tastes are high. Under pressures of uncertainty, producers defer to conventions, they rely on racial stereotypes, and in the end, they reproduce distorted representations of women” (Mears, 22). The same imperialistic attitude toward Black women identified in Shaw’s article is echoed in Ashley Mears’ article called “Size zero high-end ethnic”. “An imperial gaze has been fixed long ago on non-white women’s bodies. Sexual stereotypes are instrumental in marking racial differences; they construct ‘pure white womanhood’ as something to be protected (Stoler, 1989) and they legitimate the subordination of minorities. Content analyses of fashion media consistently show that darker skinned women have and continue to be posed and styled in exotic juxtaposition to the normatively white female body” (Mears, 24). Disheartening as it may be, this colonial attitude toward the body of the Black woman that has its roots in so much history does not seem to be going anywhere. While Ashley Mears explores the under representation of Black women in the world of the editorial fashion magazine, Jennifer Bailey Woodard and Teresa Mastin explore the ways in which Black women are portrayed in Essence, a magazine “For and about black women”. Through the codification of eighty randomly selected articles chosen out of a strategically selected pool, Woodard and Mastin found that for the most part Essence works to dispel the stereotypes that Black women confront most frequently. However it is also important to note that with Essence as well as all other media outlets, someone is out to make money. The owners of Essence magazine are black men, and they do make money by appealing to an otherwise untapped market. “it promotes selfesteem and tells individual Black women how to cope with work, their men, and so forth 9 without prompting activism. It plays into the American dream of individualism while ignoring the Black cultural ideology that values community” (Woodard, 278). Black women’s involvement in the political arena has been equally hindered by such stereotypes. “black women identify as strongly on the basis of their gender as their race, and that these gender and racial identities are mutually reinforcing” (Gay and Tate, 170). Gay and Tate argue in their article “Doubly Bound” that Black women are more politically liberal than their male and white counterparts because of this double entrapment, which might also make them more politically active. Indeed, it is my own self- identification as a liberal and a feminist that drove me to research the topic of Black women and how they are represented and misrepresented in American culture. If the American government is supposed to be a microcosm of its constituents in any way, Black women definitely get the shortest end of the stick. In fact researching the American Black woman and her political involvement was somewhat of a dead end experiment. When setting out to research the candidacy of Black American women, it seemed that the stereotypes that Black women face in so many arenas of their lives are at work most efficiently here. Almost nobody writes about female Black politicians because there are so few. During the beginning of her husband’s presidency, Michelle Obama made clear to the American public that she was going to be the “first mom” before she got into any public policy. As a Harvard lawyer herself, Michelle couldn’t have felt good about this decision. It was probably the only thing she could have done, however. If Michelle Obama had gone directly to work on her public policy agenda, she would have been seen negatively by conservatives as a Black matriarch, and undoubtedly would have been criticized for leaving her children alone. 10 Make no mistakes, before her husband made it to the White House, Michelle Obama was not a stay at home mom. Like many Black mothers, she did not fit in with mammy or matriarch stereotypes. Michelle Obama is a smart woman who has contributed a great deal to the legal profession. The way she changed her own feelings to fit into an American political image makes her a full-fledged politician and not just the president’s wife. She so feared hat she would turn into a Black matriarch that she is making herself into something that she is not. “As First Lady, I will continue these conversations with working women and military spouses, and I’ll take their stories back to Washington to make sure that the people who run our country know how their policies touch their constituents’ lives” (Obama). Playing the role of wife and mother above all else, Michelle Obama does cleverly avoid Black female stereotypes. It is undeniable however, that if the four main stereotypes that confine Black women didn’t exist, she would probably be doing more to enhance the image of Black women as a whole from a policy standpoint. Coming from a completely different place in American politics is Condaleeza Rice. A hardcore conservative who made it to the highest levels of academia and government despite her being a Black woman, the question is did she improve the image of the Black woman while she was in power? You wont get the answer from Rice, as she is quoted as saying, “I don’t find it all that useful to spend a lot of time analyzing myself.” it should be noted however, that while many of the failings of Rice’s policy agenda fell on her shoulders, Rumsfeld and Cheney were often responsible for cutting her out of the loop. (Drezner). Condoleezza Rice does not fit into any of the stereotypes through which Black women are portrayed, which one might argue is good for the Black female image. Her reputation as a bad policy maker (that comes from both the left and right politically) is 11 unfortunate for the reputation of Black women. Having been called the most powerful woman in the world at one point, Condoleezza Rice certainly did not take the opportunity to celebrate with other Black women. Her own failings in her position as most powerful woman in the world do reflect poorly on Black women as a whole, where they should not. If Rice did not want to be associated with the Black feminist movement, Black feminists should not have to be associated with Rice. Unfortunately it does not work that way. Skin color is immediately apparent upon first looking at anyone. Therefore when anyone sees Condoleezza Rice, they will immediately recognize her as a Black woman. They will not see that she has a PhD, and they will also not see that she is almost unanimously criticized for her place in the Bush White House because she did a bad job. The place for Condoleezza Rice in American politics was not among progressives, it was not among Black feminists. Rice took her seat among Bush- era neoconservatives, and that is how she should be evaluated. Black women are confined by our society possibly more regularly and systematically than any other group. Each of the stereotypes that Black women face can trace its roots back to slavery, and certainly cause us to beg the question “how far have we come?” America has certainly made significant progress on racial and gender related fronts, and it is important to recognize that we are in an era where women and minorities have more representation in government and culture than ever before. Female minorities fall prey to the stereotypes that have been defining them for hundreds of years. The only way to combat these stereotypes is to fight them straight on, which happens sometimes but hardly ever in the mainstream public of American media. Magazines such as Essence deal with Black feminism almost consistently, but not on a grand scale. Black feminism is continually dealt with only in the context of Black feminists. While everyone is aware 12 of the proliferation of the stereotypes, very few are aware of how they can be catalogued and seen across the American cultural construct. Black women are afforded possibly the shortest end of the stick in terms of American popular culture. These women are marginalized so systematically through the four main stereotypes that it is almost difficult to quantify just how deep the misrepresentations go. The mammy stereotype is responsible for the expectation that all Black women will simultaneously know their place and speak the truth. From television to business, a Black woman faces the pressure to be nurturing to everyone she encounters. If she does not play the role of perfect mother, she can be seen as the matriarch. A Black matriarch is a kind of career-obsessed bitch who is too busy working to really care about her family. She emasculates her husband—that is if she’s lucky enough to have a husband. Many women who are portrayed as matriarchs can’t keep a man either. She ignores her children, causing them to do badly in school—and therefore can be blamed for the failure of the next generation. If she is poor and doesn’t work, a black woman will be seen as a “Welfare queen”. The only sexualized role that society allows Black women to play is that of the hyper sexualized Jezebel. This woman gets herself into all sorts of trouble by pushing herself on men so overtly that they cannot stand to say no. The white hegemonic culture has designed itself to get everything it wants out of the Black woman. She can raise them, and they can get their sexual thrills from her, but never at the same time. If a Black woman has to work to support her family, that is her fault. If she is poor, that is her fault also. By confining the Black American woman to these stereotypes, the white hegemonic culture has absolved itself of all blame. 13