Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood: Media, Literature and Theory

By Anthem Press

"Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood" investigates the stereotyping of Black womanhood and the larger sociological impact on Black women’s self-perceptions. It details the historical and contemporary use of stereotypes against Black women and how Black women work to challenge and dispel false perceptions, and highlights the role of racist ideas in the reproduction and promotion of stereotypes of Black femaleness in media, literature, artificial intelligence and the perceptions of the general public. Contributors in this collection identify the racists and sexist ideologies behind the misperceptions of Black womanhood and illuminate twenty-first–century stereotypical treatment of Black women such as Michelle Obama and Serena Williams, and explore topics such as comedic expressions of Black motherhood, representations of Black women in television dramas and literature, and identity reclamation and self-determination.

The five sections of the book provide a brief historical overall of the long-standing use of stereotypes used against Black women; explore the systematic attack on Black motherhood and how Black mothers use self-determination to thrive; investigate treatments of Black womanhood in media, television and literature; examine the political impact of stereotyped frameworks used for deconstructing Black female public figures; and discuss self-affirmation and identity reclamation among Africana women.

"Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood" establishes the criteria with which to examine the role of stereotypes in the lives of Black females and, more specifically, its impact on their social and psychological well-being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Mar 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781783089390

Book preview

Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood

Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood

Media, Literature and Theory

Edited by

Marquita M. Gammage and Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2019

by ANTHEM PRESS

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or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK

and

244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

© 2019 Marquita M. Gammage and Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers editorial matter and selection; individual chapters © individual contributors

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,

no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),

without the prior written permission of both the copyright

owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-937-6 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78308-937-7 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

CONTENTS

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Marquita M. Gammage

Chapter 1.Black Student Mothers: A Culturally Relevant Exploratory Study

Sureshi M. Jayawardene and Serie McDougal III

Chapter 2.Uninhabitable Moments: The Symbol of Serena Williams, Rage and Rackets in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric

Raquel Kennon

Chapter 3.Black Women Are Genius!: The Image of Celebrated Black Motherhood in Stand-Up Comedy?

Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers

Chapter 4.The Virility of the Haitian Womb: The Biggest Threat to the Dominican Right

Daly Guilamo

Chapter 5.Ladyhood in Distress: Neoliberalism and Black Politics in Nicole Sconiers’s Escape from Beckyville: Tales of Race, Hair, and Rage

Jalondra A. Davis

Chapter 6.Sapphires Gone Wild: The Politics of Black Women’s Respectability in the Age of the Ratchet

De Anna J. Reese and Delia C. Gillis

Chapter 7.Representing the Black Woman as Immoral and Abandoning the Black Family: A Cultural Analysis of Twenty-First-Century Television Dramas Starring Black Women

Marquita M. Gammage

Chapter 8.Historical Miseducation on Black Womanhood

Donnetrice C. Allison

Chapter 9.Michelle Obama Laughs: Political Meme Warfare and the Regurgitation of the Mythological Black Woman

Kiedra Taylor

Chapter 10.Kawaida Womanism as an Interpretative Framework for Understanding Africana Womanhood: Analyzing African American Women’s Self-Perceptions

Marquita M. Gammage

List of Contributors

Index

FIGURES

2.1Caroline Wozniacki imitates Serena Williams by placing towels under her tennis shirt and skirt to create an image of larger breasts and buttocks. This exhibition match took place on December 7, 2012, in São Paulo, Brazil, where Wozniacki competed against Maria Sharapova. Credit: YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images

2.2Australian Open 2017 champion Serena Williams poses with her winning trophy. She later revealed she was eight weeks pregnant at this time. Credit: Getty Images

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I applaud the contributors of this book for their devotion and willingness to contribute to this important work. To the Africana/Black women activists, theorists and revolutionaries, thank you for being models of strength, perseverance and excellence. Appreciation must also be granted to the Africana women who have started new movements to address issues impacting their communities and their identities. Black Lives Matter, #blackgirlmagic, Black Girls Rock, #BlackWomenAtWork, #MeToo and many others, we salute you. I want to thank my family, Justin, Jalia and Justin Jr. for their unconditional support and understanding as this volume was being prepared.

Marquita M. Gammage

I would like to give thanks to the strongest energy source in the Universe, Love, for bringing me this far in my understanding and dedication to the Black woman and humanity as a whole. Thank you to the Feminine and Masculine Divine Principles for your encouragement and grace. To my husband, Dwayne Shavers, and my daughter, Nishala, thank you for your love and patience with me. Thank you, Elders and Ancestors, for pushing me to reach my full potential. And to all those who are putting love before pain, keep fighting, keep resisting. I see you and I value you.

Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers

INTRODUCTION

Marquita M. Gammage

Caricatures, memes, myths, stereotypes and flat-out lies have dominated the social perceptions of Black womanhood. Political figures, celebrities, television personalities and everyday average Black women have been victimized by the sociopolitical racist and sexist ideologies that control the discourse entrapping Black females. Black women’s respectability continues to suffer given theses systematic assaults, which has swelled into microaggressions, insults and blatant racism. Not one Black woman has been excluded from these vicious injustices, not even the former first lady of the United States. In 2009, Michelle Obama became the first African American first lady of the United States of America, yet her womanhood was unfailingly contested. Despite her many accolades, Michelle Obama was reduced to a slave-descended baby mama. News media, magazines, social media outlets and political commentators questioned the legitimacy of her serving as first lady from the time her husband, Barack Obama, first announced his candidacy for the presidency. This gross mistreatment of her right to serve as first lady illustrates the profound impact of racism, sexism and racial hatred on Black womanhood. Even still, like the millions of African foremothers that came before her, Michelle Obama proclaimed and affirmed her womanhood in her commitment to motherhood and service to others. Her dedication extended beyond her family, as she launched national campaigns focused on health and wellness. Michelle Obama’s womanhood embodied the core principles of African womanhood as she unapologetically embraced her African American heritage. Similar to Black women across the nation and world, self-definition and determination proved to be pivotal in the survival of Black womanhood amid egregious condemnation of their humanity.

The Mammy, Jezebel and Sapphire stereotypes have long been used to inform the world’s understanding of Black womanhood and continue to guide perceptions of Black women globally (Allison 2016; Gammage 2015). Although created in the nineteenth century, these racialized myths have endured for three centuries and have governed the treatment of Black womanhood in media, literature, theory, law and politics. As they transitioned into media and literature, Black women’s image was bound to these exploitative labels. Yet, despite these falsifications, Black women have continuously fought against racial and gender oppression for themselves and their communities. The need for Black women to define themselves and their realities resulted in the birth of several social and theoretical movements designed to address the pressing issues affecting Black women and their communities. Consider the Black women’s club movement of the late 1800s. This Black women’s social movement, like others that would follow, aimed to excavate the dignity and humanity of Black women while simultaneously working to eradicate civil and social injustices, such as lynchings. These movements sparked a wave of Black women theorists to develop ideologies that were more attuned to their cultural lives.

Over the past decades four leading theories, African womanism, Africana womanism, Black feminism and Kawaida womanism, have been used to provide a critical assessment of Africana womanhood from African/Black women’s perspectives. These theories have been used to deconstruct the long-standing racist and sexist ideologies governing the political, social, educational and economic treatment of African people. African womanism as articulated by Nah Dove (1998) encompasses an Afrocentric framework that is based in the history and culture of African women where their womanhood is central. Clenora Hudson-Weems (2004) defines Africana womanism as a practical theory aligned with the real-life realities of women of African descent for the upliftment of their communities. Africana womanism maps issues impacting the African people as a race first, then seeks to address issues of class, then gender oppression. The Africana womanist is both a self-namer and a self-definer. Drawing from cultural and historical foundations of classical African civilizations, Tiamoyo Karenga and Chimbuko Tembo (2012) ground Kawaida womanism in the highest spiritual, ethical and social principles of African people. Similar to African womanism and Africana womanism, Kawaida womanism prioritizes self-definition as a fundamental aspect of Black women’s existence and theoretical constructs. Finally, Black feminists such as Patricia Hill Collins (1991) and bell hooks (1981) position Black feminism as a departure from feminism and instead recognize the intersectionality of race, class and gender as inextricably linked. This three-pronged system of oppression against Black women was identified by Black feminists as a calculated attack on Black women and therefore necessarily garners a critical response to these interrelated injustices. Black women’s social and political organizations have applied these theories in their movements and used them to restore their womanhood, and in their identity reclamation.

As Black women gained access to media and literary productions, their fabrication of Black womanhood differed dramatically from the previous white male-dominated portrayals of Black women. Black female writers, producers and creative visionaries aimed to recharter the existing dimensions of Black womanhood in the media and society in general. However, mainstream representations of Black womanhood remained beholden to white ownership and continued to reinforce oppressive and marginalized representations of Blacks. In 2019, Black women are major stakeholders in the production of Black women’s images, yet Blacks remain a minority in terms of ownership over production, which severely limits their ability to control the narratives on Black womanhood. This causes us to question whether the images of Black women have changed over time or remained the same, and what role personal narratives and self-definitions play in reshaping our understanding of Africana women.

This edited collection investigates and challenges the misrepresentations of Black womanhood and focuses on Black women’s use of self-determination to achieve redefinition. The text details the historical and contemporary use of racialized ideologies against Black women and how Black women work to contest and dispel false perceptions. It highlights the role of mythological ideas in the reproduction and promotion of stereotypes of Black femaleness in media, literature, artificial intelligence and the perceptions of the general public. In this text, contributors identify the racist and sexist principles behind the misperceptions of Black womanhood and illuminate the twenty-first-century caricatures and ill-treatment of Black women such as Michelle Obama and Serena Williams. Topics such as comedic expressions of Black motherhood, representations of Black women in television dramas and literature, identity reclamation and self-determination are explored. The significance of this edited volume is to establish criteria by which we can begin to examine the role of racist assumptions, microaggressions, results of racist inheritance, backlashes to self-confident Black womanist lifestyles, perversions and myths in the lives of Black females. More importantly, this text explores the visible and symbolic use of self-determination among Black women to secure and enrich their social and psychological well-being.

Chapter Outline

Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood is composed of ten essays that work collectively to demonstrate the power of self-definition and prioritizes agency, communalism and self-determination as the primary attributes of Black womanhood. The first chapter explores the systematic attack on Black motherhood and how Black mothers use self-determination to defy odds and succeed in college. Black Student Mothers: A Culturally Relevant Exploratory Study considers self-perceptions among Black women who are student parents on college campuses that can aid in debunking negative racial stereotypes associated with Black mothers. To date, little scholarly attention has been paid to Black single mothers who are pursuing higher education while raising children. Based on data collected using a questionnaire about Black women student parents currently enrolled at select US colleges and universities, the researchers assess Black women’s self-perceptions and mechanisms of self-determination. A more comprehensive view of the experiences of Black women student parents is issued to help highlight strategies that are effective in challenging existing views of Black womanhood and motherhood. Finally, a look at the experiences of Black women student parents is recommended for designing programs and services suited to support Black female students’ success in college.

Exhibiting how words enact social protest, the next chapter "Uninhabitable Moments: The Symbol of Serena Williams, Rage and Rackets in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric exposes how Rankine’s stirring poetic ruminations on racism, antiblackness, citizenship, racial violence and microaggressions in the twenty-first-century United States alludes to a long tradition of civil disobedience and pacifist political opposition. In this chapter, the representation of Black women in Rankine’s genre-bending poetry, focusing specifically on three untitled prose poems that highlight the contemporary use of stereotypes against Black women, is explored. These range from misidentification, to subtle slights, to microaggressions, to blatant discrimination, to racism. Attending to the you" of Rankine’s second-person narrative style, reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, and drawing on the theories of Hortense Spillers, Clenora Hudson-Weems, bell hooks and Melissa Harris-Perry, this chapter investigates how racism and misogynoir foment in professional settings, the world of elite athletics, the misrecognition and confusion of two Black women, the international critique and ridicule of Serena Williams’s body, and the casually hurled epithet nappy headed. In the realism of Rankine’s quotidian recollections, social commentary and stirring analysis, the reader is reminded that for Black women, reading and writing poetry of everyday life is sometimes the strongest opposition to the stereotypes that attempt to ensnare them.

Examining the impact of mythological frameworks used for deconstructing Black mothers by public figures, ‘Black Women Are Genius!’: The Image of Celebrated Black Motherhood in Stand-Up Comedy? dissects the comedic expressions of Black womanhood in stand-up comedy routines by famous African American male comedians. This chapter aims to critically analyze such phenomena from a nuanced perspective that validates the experiences of Black men with their mothers by contextualizing such realities with historical and current factors that can contribute to how Black mothers rear their children. Second, the exploration of this topic demonstrates the insidious consequences of celebrating mothering practices associated with Black women without evaluating the subsequent consequences for Black children, particularly Black boys. Last, the author makes a case that as we laugh to keep from crying under the conditions we are forced to endure, we should not rely on negative stereotypes of Black womanhood to achieve our goal of economic success.

The next chapter in this volume, The Virility of the Haitian Womb: The Biggest Threat to the Dominican Right, functions as a case study illustrating how people of the African diaspora, on the island of Hispaniola, specifically, who share borders use white supremacist ideals to vilify each other and, in effect, reinforce their distinct national identities and boundaries. This chapter chronicles the conservative Dominican nationalists’ ideology of Haitian immigrants as the ultimate threat to preserving the culture and sovereignty of the Dominican Republic, which vilifies fertile Haitian woman for being the vessel that physically contributes to the growth of the Haitian population. Here the author considers the anti-Haitian stereotypes centered on Haitian fertility as the source of the fear conservative Dominican nationalists have of Haiti further impoverishing and blackening the Dominican Republic. Through the use of social media, legal debates, surveys and news articles, among other sources, this chapter demonstrates the ways in which conservative Dominican nationalist thinkers have targeted Haitian women through the use of stereotypes to the extent that it influences every day Dominicans’ perceptions of Haitians.

The following chapters in this volume investigates treatments of Black womanhood in media, television and literature. Contributors apply cultural frameworks to assess the accuracy of the public’s articulation of Black womanhood. "Ladyhood in Distress: Neoliberalism and Black Politics in Nicole Sconiers’s Escape from Beckyville: Tales of Race, Hair, and Rage" analyzes how Nicole Sconiers’s short story collection, Escape from Beckyville: Tales of Race, Hair, and Rage, uses fantastic intrusions of Black female bodies to critique the project of ladyhood, a feminine practice of African American representative politics. This chapter argues that in addition to critiquing external racism, Escape from Beckyville highlights the inadequacies of the project of Black ladyhood, a strategy of resistance that can be traced to the Black women’s club movement of the post-Reconstruction and uplift eras. This chapter demonstrates how ladyhood, which has often been taken for granted in Black intraracial politics as a preferable alternative to pathological stereotypes of Black womanhood, is essentially a disciplinary discourse that highlights the inadequacies of individualist liberalism in a neoliberal society. The author ultimately argues that Sconiers uses strategies of science fiction and horror to dramatize the frustration of Black women’s attempts to perform respectable Black femininity.

Sapphires Gone Wild: The Politics of Black Women’s Respectability in the Age of the Ratchet deconstructs the problematic depiction of African American women as mean girls, antisocial antagonists, in reality television and how their portrayals disaffirm the long history and struggle Black women have had with creating positive, historically accurate images of themselves in public. By examining how race and class inform mean girls on reality television, this chapter explores how Omarosa Manigault, Kenya Moore and others borrow from and reinforce existing stereotypes about Black women, how mean girl behavior stands in opposition to the historical models of respectability developed by Black women leaders and how this behavior continues to undermine and damage relationships between Black women. A critique of the controlling images of Black women as Sapphires, which depicts them as loud, overbearing, rude and emasculating mean girls, and the popularity of these reality television personalities, demonstrates how powerful bad behavior can be when coupled with existing stereotypes of Black women. In either case, mean Black women are a stark contradiction to the respectable models of womanhood promoted by Black middle-class women of earlier generations. Countering this dominant narrative, this chapter identifies the engagement of historical figures such as Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell in what was known as uplift politics, promoting Black women’s respectability in response to racist attacks upon their womanhood.

Representing the Black Woman as Immoral and Abandoning the Black Family: A Cultural Analysis of Twenty-First-Century Television Dramas Starring Black Women utilizes an Afrocentric Africana womanist framework, where three African family structures are modeled to identify and evaluate the presence of Afrocentric family values in media representations of Black womanhood. First, this chapter provides a brief description of moral characteristics defined by classical and indigenous African cultures. Second, it evaluates the literature from leading Black family scholars on the African American family and its values. Then it applies this cultural and historical framework to assess the media’s portrayal of Black womanhood in Scandal (ABC 2012–18); How to Get Away with Murder (ABC, 2014–); and Being Mary Jane (BET, 2013–).

The next chapter provides a brief historical overview of the long-standing use of mythological assumptions against Black women. The Historical Miseducation on Black Womanhood serves as a snapshot of the Black women’s experiences as targets of negative stereotypes. The author argues that villainizing Black women was convenient to the narrative that the enslavement of people of African descent was justified, because Black men were barbaric and Black women were immoral and sexually promiscuous. This chapter documents the use of this persistent mythology of Black womanhood from the abolitionist movement, where white women grounded their argument on a similar supposition, to the introduction of film and television, where Black women were first portrayed as large, unattractive, asexual beings—mammies and Aunt Jemimas—to, later, portrayals of Black women as loud, angry and sexually irresponsible. This chapter unpacks the roots of these long-standing stereotypes of Black women and the impact on their perceptions of self and the perceptions of others.

The chapter entitled Michelle Obama Laughs: Political Meme Warfare and the Regurgitation of the Mythological Black Woman provides an in-depth analysis of memes of Michelle Obama found on Google Images to observe ways in which Black woman stereotypes: Mammy, Jezebel and Sapphire (angry Black woman) have been used to misappropriate her image in order to communicate racist ideology. This chapter explores the appropriated images of the former first lady and its association with the stereotypes in order to make the argument that the categorization leads to a monsterization of Michelle Obama that closely resembles Medusa myth in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Here the placement of Michelle Obama as the Medusa stereotype as a means to grapple with the question of what the destructive nature of the Medusa stereotype against Black women and Black communities is explored.

The final chapter considers a theoretical approach to self-affirmation and identity reclamation among Africana women. Kawaida Womanism as an Interpretative Framework for Understanding Africana Womanhood: Analyzing African American Women’s Self-Perceptions applies the Kawaida womanism theory to evaluate the self-definitions of African American women. In this research, Kawaida womanism operates as a critical interpretative framework for Africana womanhood, whereby the cultural grounding for what it means to be an African woman in the diaspora is analyzed. Understanding and respecting Africana women’s ability to define themselves in their own cultural terms is essential in the process of Africana women’s identity reclamation. Assessing the self-perceptions of African American women, the research illuminates the guiding principles of Africana womanhood as practiced among African American women so that we may have deeper insights into their humanity.

References

Allison, Donnetrice. 2016. Black Women’s Portrayals on Reality Television: The New Sapphire. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Collins, Patricia Hill. 1991. Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge.

Dove, Nah. 1998. African Womanism: An Afrocentric Theory. Journal of Black Studies 28, no. 5: 515–39.

Gammage, Marquita M. 2015. Representations of Black Women in the Media: The Damnation of Black Womanhood. New York: Routledge.

hooks, bell. 1981. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press.

Hudson-Weems, Clenora. 2004. Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves. Troy: Bedford Publishers.

Karenga, Tiamoyo, and Chimbuko Tembo. 2012. Kawaida Womanism: African Ways of Being Woman in the World. Western Journal of Black Studies 36, no. 1: 33–47.

Chapter 1

BLACK STUDENT MOTHERS: A CULTURALLY RELEVANT EXPLORATORY STUDY

Sureshi M. Jayawardene and Serie McDougal III

Introduction

The Status of Black Women in the United States reported in 2017 that Black women are disproportionately likely to be mothers while pursuing a college education (DuMonthier et al. 2017). A briefing paper issued by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) indicates that two in five (i.e. 37 percent) of all Black women undergraduate students are raising dependent children (2017). Contrary to common perceptions, according to a Journal of Blacks in Higher Education publication from 2005, many Black single mothers are educated beyond high school, and others are seeking education toward better conditions for themselves and their families. Nevertheless, one of the most prevalent racial stereotypes about Black single mothers is that of inadequacy, particularly that they are uneducated. Single mothers in college are challenged with balancing a range of responsibilities including school, parenthood and often also employment. For Black single mothers, the added burden of racial stereotypes and myths presents further challenges to succeeding as both students and parents.

To date, little scholarly attention has been paid to Black mothers, in general, who are pursuing higher education while raising children. Based on data collected using a questionnaire about Black student mothers currently or formerly enrolled at US colleges and universities, we assess self-perceptions and mechanisms of self-determination. A more comprehensive view of the experiences of Black student mothers can help highlight strategies that are effective in challenging existing distortions about Black womanhood and motherhood as well as debunking negative racial stereotypes associated with Black mothers. We posit that a look at the agency and lived experiences of Black women student parents can help in designing university and college programs and services better suited to support these students’ overall success in higher education.

The present exploratory study aims to identify patterns, ideas or hypotheses to gain insights into the topic of Black student mothers’ college/university experience that has, thus far, been understudied. This essay is organized as follows. First, a literature review provides a view of the major discursive positions regarding issues Black women experience at the intersection of motherhood and college attendance. Next, the methodology section outlines the conceptual framework, data collection and sample. Third, in the findings section, we discuss the major themes that emerged in our analyses of the data. Finally, in the conclusion, we consider both the implications and the limitations of these findings and how they inform the next steps required on this topic. We emphasize the importance of culturally relevant research about Black student mothers and highlight how our findings can begin the process of informing institutions of higher learning on how better to address the needs and interests of this student group.

Literature Review

Since our study deals with Black mothers who are college/university students, there are two major bodies of research engaged in the present study. On