How The Images Came To Be

The Mammy

When was the image created?: "The mammy image can be traced back to the 1800s when slave traders attempted to hide the cruel reality of slavery by presenting it as a paternalistic system in which slaves and slaveowners loved and took care of each other".

(This image serves as a means to justify how Black women would, or could, only serve within the homes of Whites; raising their children, taking care of their homes, and “enjoying” themselves as she tended to the family and her domestic duties. The reality is that slavery exploited Black women & the mammy image merely reimagined the cruelty that Black women were forced to endure and experience while “working” within these environments. Black women were expected to not want anything more for themselves and should be grateful for the very little she was given by the White family (that’s assuming that she received anything at all)).

Why was the image created?: "Created to justify the economic exploitation of house slaves & sustained to explain Black women's long-standing restriction to domestic service..." (80).

(The image was created to enforce the ideology of Black women being faithful and obedient towards their domestic duties within the White households they worked in. The mammy is the Black slave woman that was still exploited for economic gain. The difference is that instead of working the acres of the plantation, she works within the confines of the White household ).

How it serves the dominant group: "Employing Black women in mammified occupations supports the racial superiority of White employers, encouraging middle-class White women, in particular, to identify more closely with the racial and class privilege afforded by their fathers, husbands, and sons" (80).

(For the dominant group, White people, it not only expresses their racial superiority over Black people, but it also works in favor of White employers keeping Black women stagnated in domestic jobs rather than allowing them to go after opportunities that promote economic and possibly, social growth.)

Vivien Leigh & Hattie McDaniel in “Gone With The Wind”.

How it oppresses Black women: "The mammy image serves as a symbolic function in maintaining oppressions of gender and sexuality" (81). "Juxtaposed against the mammy image as the Other symbolizes the oppositional difference of mind/body and culture/nature thought to distinguish Black women from everyone else" (81).

(The symbolism within the image is that the mammy exists for the singular purpose of taking care of “her White family”.The oppression of her both her gender and her sexuality is enforced through her “desire” to serve her White family; she should not want for anything more other than what she already has: “her White family”.)

How it oppresses the Black community: "Removing Black women's labor from African-American families and exploiting it denies Black extended family units the benefits of both decent wages and Black women's emotional labor in their homes" (81).

(Because Black women spend so much time working, she is then, too exhausted to spend time with her family & because her wages don’t reflect the amount of responsibilities she has as part of her job, maintaining the home is that much more difficult.)

The Matriarch

When was the image created?: "...in the 1940s and 1950s, Sapphire Stevens was a well-known character from the Amos and Andy radio and television shows; The sapphire image perpetuates a belief that African American women are aggressive, domineering, and masculine."

(The belief that Black women are “aggressive, domineering, and masculine” stems not only from the absence of the Black male figure within the household but, also from the treatment of Black women during slavery. The Black women during slavery worked the same jobs as the men; there was no differential treatment due to gender.)

Why was the image created?: "...fulfills similar functions in explaining Black women's placement in intersecting oppressions" (82).

(The matriarch image acts as an intersection for various oppressions that affect Black women such as racism, sexism, cultural ignorance, social, and historical ignorance, etc.)

How it serves the dominant group: "...the matriarch represented a failed mammy, a negative stigma to be applied to African-American women who dared reject the image of the submissive, hard-working servant" (83).

(The representation of the “failed mammy” supplants the idea that Black women are incapable of keeping a husband or a male figure within her life as well as her home.)

Film: “The Pocketbook”

How it oppresses Black women: "While the mammy typifies the Black mother figure in White homes, the matriarch symbolizes the mother figure in Black homes. Just as the mammy represents the 'good' Black mother, the matriarch symbolizes the 'bad' Black mother" (83).

(The matriarch provokes the image of a Black woman who, like the mammy, is unable to take care of her own children due to exhaustion from work, but is, again, unable to keep a man at home, due to her aggressiveness as a result of taking on the responsibilities of both parents within the home).

How it oppresses the Black community: "Many Black women are the sole support of their families, and labeling these women 'matriarchs' erodes their self-confidence & ability to confront oppression. In essence, African- American women who must work encounter pressures to be submissive mammies in one setting, then are stigmatized again as matriarchs for being strong figures in their own homes" (85-86).

(The Black women that take on this position, usually do so because there is no other choice. The Black community blames the Black woman for taking on the responsibility of being a matriarch but, does not penalize the Black men for having contributed to the creation of the situation and circumstance.)

The Welfare Mother

When was the image created?: "In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan crowned the welfare queen controlling image when he described the African American woman who had successfully received a significant amount of money from the government by “playing” the welfare system".

(The image promotes the idea that Black women, and therefore the Black community at large, manipulate the welfare system in order to receive financial help that they don’t actually need.)

Why was the image created?: "...constitutes a class-specific, controlling image developed for poor, working-class Black women who make use of social welfare benefits to which they are entitled to by law" (86).

(Designed to perpetuate that Black women are unwilling to go out and work; that they would rather choose to manipulate the system than work for a living.)

How it serves the dominant group: "Controlling Black women's fertility in this political and economic context became important to elite groups. This image of the welfare mother fulfills this function by labeling as unnecessary and even dangerous to the values of the country the fertility of women who are not White and middle-class" (87).

(This image allows the dominant group, White people, to openly penalize Black women for having children & asking the government for financial help.)

Depiction of a welfare queen. Source: Google Images

How it oppresses Black women: "Creating the controlling image of the welfare mother & stigmatizing her as the cause of her own poverty & that of African-American communities shifts the angle of vision away from structural sources of poverty & blames the victims themselves" (87).

(Victim-blaming, plain and simple; the government that is responsible for creating the circumstances that don’t allow for financial growth within the Black community, blames the Black women for asking the government for financial help, rather than taking responsibility for creating the circumstances for why Black women and Black families have to be subjugated to welfare in order to maintain their families & homes.)

How it oppresses the Black community: "The image of the welfare mother thus provides justification for the dominant group's interest in limiting the fertility of Black mothers who are seen as producing too many economically unproductive children" (87-88).

(The dominant group, White people, feel justified in suppressing a Black woman’s ability and right to have a child (as well as her choice as to how many children she can have) by limiting her access to financial resources, provided by the government, that they know she should have the right to access.)

The Black Lady

When was the image created?: Sometime between the “1980s and 1990s” (89).

(This image was created during a time when there was a shift in the political climate where Black women were becoming more educated and, thusly taking ownership of their lives .)

Why was the image created?: "...refers to the middle-class professional Black women who represent a modern version of the politics of respectability..." (88).

(The “politics of respectability” in this frame refers to the same kind of social understanding of where and how Black women are placed within American society (i.e.: the mammy, the matriarch); it just has a different name and place of employment).

How it serves the dominant group: "The image of the Black lady resembles aspects of the matriarchy thesis- Black ladies have jobs that are all-consuming that they have no time for men or have forgotten how to treat them. Because they so routinely compete with men and are successful at it, they become less feminine. Highly educated Black ladies are deemed too assertive- that's why they cannot get men to marry them" (89).

(The Black lady image is the representation of how Black women strive to elevate themselves professionally but are chastised for, somehow, losing their femininity in the process. In the midst of this criticism, Black women are also having to deal with the fact that men are intimidated by them and, therefore, refuse to marry them because of Black women being “assertive”).

Source: Black Women's Business & Professional Collective

How it oppresses Black women: "...this image seems to be yet another version of the modern-day mammy, namely, the hard-working Black woman professional who works twice as hard as everyone else" (89).

(The image of the Black lady is the Mammy of a different sort, reimagined for the present time: she works hard, giving all of herself to her job, only to be exhausted to the point where when she gets home, she has no energy to spend on her family. Her pay is lesser than that of the dominant group, despite doing twice (or even three times) the amount of work than that of her counterparts. The only real difference is that the Black lady works in clerical positions rather than that of domestic occupations).

How it oppresses the Black community: "...many Black men erroneously believe that Black ladies are taking jobs reserved for them. In their eyes, being Black, female, and seemingly less threatening to Whites advantages Black ladies" (89). ["Whether by virtue of not achieving and thus passing on bad culture as welfare mothers, or by virtue of managing to achieve middle-class status...black women are responsible for the disadvantaged status of African Americans"] (89).

(Black women carry (almost the entirety) of the weight of responsibility that comes with maintaining a community; it is due to this that Black women are blamed for every plight that plagues the Black community, including the attitude and position of Black men within the greater society).

The Jezebel

When was the image created?: "The image of Jezebel originated under slavery when Black women were portrayed as being ‘sexually aggressive wet nurses’” (89).

Why was the image created?: "...the nexus of controlling images of Black womanhood...Black women's sexuality lies at the heart of Black women's oppression, historical jezebels and contemporary 'hoochies' represent a deviant Black female sexuality" (89).

(Of all the controlling images, this image, in particular, is at the center, and serves as the basis, for all of them).

How it serves the dominant group: "The jezebel's function was to relegate all Black women to the category of sexually aggressive women, thus providing a powerful rationale for the widespread sexual assaults by White men typically reported by Black slave women" (89).

(This image of Black women being “sexually aggressive” promotes the idea (to other races) that Black women are hypersexual; that every encounter with the opposite sex will result in some kind of sexually-driven outcome).

Source: Filmdaze.net

How it oppresses Black women: "If Black slave women could be portrayed as having excessive sexual appetites, then increased fertility should be the expected outcome" (89-90).

(This quote highlights how Black women were used as ‘breeders’; slavemasters would forcibly have sex with slave women in order to impregnate them so that they would have a constant labor force to work the acres of their plantations. The “hypersexualization” of Black women was used as reasoning to justify the slavemasters taking sexual advantage of the Black slave women they owned.)

How it oppresses the Black community: "In a context where feminine women are those who remain submissive yet appropriately flirtatious toward men, women whose sexual aggression resembles that of men become stigmatized" (91).

(Within the Black community, it is acceptable for a man to be “flirty” towards a woman, regardless of her race, and not too many people would be against it. The double standard here is if a woman is “flirty” towards a man, not only is she chastised for being too sexually aggressive, that opinion (mostly shared amongst Black men) is even more emphasized if a woman is being flirtatious toward a man outside of her race.)

.

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