>> We really need to talk about how black women
are portrayed in pop culture.
>> [offscreen] CUT! Great, but let’s get it sassier.
>> Really? >> Perfect!
>> From the sassy black friend to the sexy prostitute
on the wrong side of the tracks
to the overly helpful housecleaner,
black women are so very often stereotyped in pop culture.
But these stereotypes are more than lazy writing,
they have long histories.
So maybe we should just get f—in’ rid of them.
Meet The Jezebel.
She’s sexual, she’s aggressive,
she just wants it all the time!
You know what I mean.
And considering we live in such a hypersexual world,
the Jezebel must be a new thing right?
Not even close.
When Europeans first travelled to Africa in the 17th century,
they were shocked that African dress exposed so much skin,
totally ignoring the fact
that it’s way hotter in Africa than in Europe.
‘Gasp!
Why don’t you have seventeen skirts on?!’
The horny European explorers
then assumed African women were sexually lewd animals
trying to seduce them,
and thus the Jezebel stereotype was born.
And in 19th century America,
the long-running stereotype of African women
with large sexual appetites
was often used by slaveowners to justify rape.
In fact, it was argued
that it wasn’t possible to rape a black woman
because of that fabled sexual appetite.
Cut to the Jim Crow South,
and everyday items like ashtrays, postcards,
and drinking glasses depicted over-sexualized images
of black women and girls,
reinforcing this dangerous stereotype.
And it was dangerous:
during that time, black women were regularly assaulted by white men
and they rarely faced criminal charges.
And while this stereotype has persisted throughout TV and film history,
today you can usually find the Jezebel archetype in music videos
and all over Reality TV.
It also pops up in the policing of black women’s bodies
and sexuality:
just ask Rihanna or Nicki or Beyoncé.
But remember,
too much sexuality can be threatening,
so… Meet The Mammy.
The Mammy is fat, old,
and very dark-skinned.
She was given these physical traits to show that she was undesirable
and prove that white slaveowners didn’t find black women attractive.
The Mammy lived on through Jim Crow
to imply that black women were only fit to be domestic workers.
We began to see the Mammy characters everywhere,
from books and movies to advertising,
like Aunt Jemima.
And if you think this stereotype doesn’t still have power in media,
the first black woman to win an Academy Award
for acting was Hattie McDaniel,
playing a slave-era Mammy
in Gone With the Wind.
Seventy-plus years later,
the incredibly talented Octavia Spencer won an Oscar
for playing a 1950s-style Mammy in The Help.
So black women are either seductresses
or nonsexual happy workers.
So what else is there?
Meet The Headstrong Black Woman.
She’s loud, she’s sassy,
and she doesn’t take anybody’s s—.
Let’s skip straight to the root of this pop culture stereotype:
Amos ’n’ Andy.
In the 1930s, this popular radio show
took the world by storm.
While the two main characters were supposed to be black,
they were actually voiced by white men,
and the entire appeal of the show was the mockery of black behavior
and dialect.
As if that wasn’t offensive enough,
the duo were joined by Kingfish,
their con artist friend,
and his domineering, aggressive,
and emasculating, nagging wife Sapphire,
the prototypical Headstrong Black Woman.
Amos ’n’ Andy later became a TV show,
which was eventually protested by the NAACP,
but the damage was already done.
The show popularized racial caricatures of black people.
Here Americans learned that black people were comical,
not as actors but as a race.
Following the success of Amos ’n’ Andy, sitcoms
in the 60s, 70s, 80s,
and 90s copied this portrayal of black women and wives.
From The Jeffersons to Martin, black women were often shown as naggy
and always having a sassy comeback to any challenge.
Fast forward to the 90s,
The Headstrong Black Woman
becomes The Sassy Black Friend,
with characters like Dionne
in Clueless or Nurse Laverne Roberts in Scrubs
and basically every reality show about black women:
spoiler alert, Reality TV isn’t reality.
Popular media often relegates black women
to the one dimensional sidekick
with lots of sass and endless one-liners
but little personality.
As much as we try to deny it, media plays a major part
in how we view the world around us
and promotes a general sense of self.
When 70% of black women say that they fear that their co-workers
perceiving them as the “Sassy Black Woman”
and then attempt to change their personalities to fit in,
don’t you think it’s time to retire this stereotype?
Sexy, shy, sassy, demure, black women
come with all sorts of personalities,
so it’s time for media to wise up and show us
in all of our complexity instead of the one-note stereotypes
we’ve seen over the years.
So what other racial stereotypes are you tired of seeing on TV?
And have people ever assumed that you’re like any of those?
Tell us in the comments below, and we will see you next week
right here on Decoded.