How Do These Controlling Images Describe Black Women?

Description of the Mammy:

“The mammy is typically portrayed as overweight, dark, and with characteristically African features-in brief, as an unsuitable sexual partner for White men” (92). “The mammy represents the clearest example of the split between sexuality and motherhood present in Eurocentric masculinist thought” (92). “She is asexual and therefore is free to become a surrogate mother to the children she acquired not through her own sexuality” (92). (The mammy is not the embodiment of the Eurocentric ideal of a feminine and desirable woman. Rather than being fair-skinned and thin, with blue eyes and blond hair, she is plump and dark-skinned, with brown eyes and kinky hair; features that do not make her sexually desirable to men, which allows for the dominant group to designate that she is perfect to take care of her now “inherited” White family.)

Description of the Matriarch:

“The matriarch represents the sexually aggressive woman, one who emasculates Black men because she will not permit them to assume roles as Black patriarchs” (92). (She, the matriarch, is the Black woman that is seen as someone who will not allow a Black man to be a man; she strips him of his masculinity, and thusly, as a result, he is not present within the household, nor is he allowed to express his masculinity).

Description of the Welfare Mother:

“...a woman of low morals and uncontrolled sexuality, factors identified as the cause of her impoverished state” (92). (It is because of her ‘low morals’ and ‘uncontrolled sexuality’ that the Black community has suffered so much; she is the reason for the existence of such a label, not the government that created and implemented the conditions that leave Black women with no choice but to turn to the government for financial assistance).

Description of the Black Lady:

“Despite the fact that the middle-class Black lady is the woman deemed best suited to have children, in actuality, she remains the least likely to do so. She is told that she can reproduce, but no one except her is especially disturbed if she does not” (92-93). “Like the mammy, her hard-earned, middle-class respectability is grounded in her seeming asexuality” (92). “These are the women who stayed in school, worked hard, and have achieved much” (88). (While the Black lady is viewed as another version of previous controlling images (mammy, matriarch), her desire to embark on a path of personal and professional growth, separates her from the previous images. However, like the mammy and the matriarch images, she is also viewed as less sexually desirable because of how aggressive she is. And because of that, the stigma attached to this image is that she may be less likely to have children due to her asexuality and professional pursuits.)

Description of the Jezebel:

(The Jezebel is described as a Black woman who is sexually aggressive. She, the jezebel, is viewed as a Black woman whose sexuality is exploited by the dominant group, Whites, that seek to gain from the propaganda geared toward that exploitation.) “Because jezebel [or the hoochie] is constructed as a woman whose sexual appetites are at best inappropriate and, at worst, insatiable, it becomes a short step to imagine her as a ‘freak’. And if she is a freak, her sexual partners become similarly stigmatized” (91).

Source: Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2002.