the colored girls

The Colored Girl showed the privilege and difference race and gender could have. Black women which was almost like a double negative was something that has double opposition made a problem for black women. The colored girl presented the problems black women and girls faced. Colored girls have limited options when it comes to work and livelihood. Even today the financial, social, and sexual struggle are prevalent. Black women having to work under white people and ultimately taking jobs many people would not have want. An example was being a servant in a white household washing their clothes and cleaning their house. Colored girls have had a problem of relying on black women. Black women have become the bottom of the bottom. They have received backlash from white and black men. Black women also have had trouble relying and forming an alliance with white women. Black women today have 70% of their children out of wedlock. This causes them to no be able to rely on black men. Black men were suppose to be providers and protectors and they have failed partly because of capitalism, however black women have failed. Where do black women go for comfort? The answer seems to be nowhere. Black women have not been able to be a southern bell easy black wife. Black women had to work and black men felt they could take their money and still feel like men. Today, this problem still occurs. So again, what break does black women have? I am a colored girl. I want to know. Where do I belong? Who wants me and can support me emotionally and physically?

Anita Hill

This work really irritated me. The fact that the wife is going to tell her to apologize for the husband's advantages. Anita did not want him she did not ask to sleep with him. The husband wanted her. I do not understand the right that the wife thought she had to tell this woman she should apologize. This really pissed me off. She was a strong woman, however personally I would not have been able to handle being told that. Clarence obviously wanted to have sex with a black women. He obivously was aroused, by them how is that her fault. I don't get how some women's husbands or boyfriends can cheat on them and they blame the woman. Yes, women can be provocative, but not all of them are. I think religion plays an enormous role on women blame each other for sexual acts. Women are constantly seen to make men be the victim of their sexual tricks. The reaalitivty that needs to be faces if men have a mind of their own if they cheat it is on them regardless of what the women did. Stop blaming the other woman because most of the time these men are sitting back laughing talking about how dumb these women are. Grow up and the know the difference. They are not victims. The are no resisting.

interview #2

1. What is your name? Maiden and Married
Interviewee: Latoya Tate
2. Where were you born?
Interviewee: July 1st 1988
3. Where did you grow up?
Interviewee: Canton, MS
4. What were you parents names and occupation?
Interviewee: Jerald and Cynthia Tate my father works for the city. My mother is a nurse.
5. Do you have siblings? Yes or No. Names?
Interviewee: No
6. What was you life growing up as a black girl in?
Interviewee: It is hard but not to hard. You can see a difference in respect, however to me most of it come form blacks men and women alike.
7. Did you ever encounter racism? Explain?
Interviewee: I am in Madison County, of course I have. I remember being told when I was given a ticket one time if you were a white girl I would have let you go.
8. What privileges or setbacks do you feel that you experienced growing up a black female in the North/South?
Interviewee: In the south, a black girls options are limited. The only privileges you get is if you a thick redbone that a rich guy would want. If you are not you will be alone for the rest of you life.
9. What, if anything, do you remember your parents telling you about race?
Interviewee: I remember them telling you got two things against you. You are black and a woman. You have to fight to get anything.
10. What did your parents tell you or instill in you regarding being a woman, specifically a black woman?
Interviewee: My parents told me you have to respect yourself more. The first one that will bring you down is your own kind. A black man will leave you with a baby in a second and keep it moving.
11. Did you attend school? Yes or No, why or why not?
Interviewee: Yes, I have my high school diploma. My parents told me if I did not find somewhere else to live.
12. Talk a little bit about those days…
Interviewee: I wanted to be popular and everything, but my parents told me popularity equals poverty. I was odd in school, but because I wanted attention and to be popular. I lost my virginity. I hate I did, but that how the cookie crumbles. I hate myself for have a baby so young. I hate I hurt my parents for a boy that was worth my time. Everyone has a sad story and unless im getting paid for it no point in reliving it.
13. What was it like in school for you as a black female?
Interviewee: refer to the last question
14. Did you graduate and attend college?
Interviewee: I am currently going to a community college.
15. Did you get married? To who? When?
Interviewee: Nope and probably never will men don’t want use they want those dimes the take all their money or a white girl. Black women are going to be alone either way no point in talk about it.
16. Did you have any children? Yes or No? How many? Why? Was this a choice or just happened? If no children, you could ask them why they chose no to or was it medical reasons.
Interviewee: I have one she was not planned but she her and I love her. If I meet the right guy which is unlikely. I will have a more.
17. Where did they work as an adult?
Interviewee: she is 5
18. Ask them about their adult life and what it was like living as a black woman?
Interviewee: Life is hell if you don’t want a dead in job you have to go through hell and back to get there. You have to watch out for those guys that try to leech onto you for a free ride. Black women love life and business is all messed up. We have no shot.
19. Ask them if there are any specific stories that they would like to share regarding their adulthood life and being a black woman?
Interviewee: Personal, I liked this guy did everything to get him to notice me. He told me I don’t like black girls because they ugly and ratchet. Business job interview, they asked me did I have a child I told them I did and they told me figures. You black girls never respect your selves enough to use protection.
20. What were their relationships like with other women?
Interviewee: I personally don’t have any friends they are women. They are backstabbers. I get along with men more often. Plus, they will use their privilege in a minute over you.
21. Would they consider themselves friends with white women? Or do they have friends that are of another race?
Interviewee: I have acquaintances that are, but like I said I am not friends with any women.
22. What type of relationship do you have with black men?
Interviewee: I have a lot of black male friends. I know that black men are the main ones that will call a black girl out her name, but they are who they are. I have found that black men preacher for everyone equal when the not with you, but then you in a relationship it is totally different.
23. What do you think is the role of both black men and women in relationships and inside of the home should be?
Interviewee: I think everything should be fifty/ fifty.
24. What do you think about people dating outside of their race? Black men marrying white women and black women marrying white men?
Interviewee: I hate is personally, especially if the black guy has money. It pissed me off.
25. What issues do you think most affect b lack Americans today?
Interviewee: I think blacks don’t work together enough. That is why we always fail today.

interview #1

1. What is your name? Maiden and Married

Interviewee: My name is Annie B. Wiggins. My maiden name is Annie Body.

2. Where were you born?

Interviewee: Belzoni, MS
3. Where did you grow up?

Interviewee: I grew up in Belzoni, MS

4. What were you parents names and occupation?

Interviewee: My mother’s name is Annie Lee Body, Darrell Body. They were share croppers.

5. Do you have siblings? Yes or No. Names?

Interviewee: I have 15 siblings. Sweet, Muss, Busher, Shane, Mane, Paul, Lu, Queen, Walter, Pumpkin, Johnny lee, Charles, Francine, Terrell, Lucas

6. What was your life like growing up as a black girl in Belzoni?

Interviewee: I know we wasn’t a stranger to work. We were in the cotton fields. The only way a black women left the family was if she married or went to school. Black girls were married off young mostly to younger guy. Black girl had to work in the house cooking and cleaning.

7. Did you ever encounter racism? Explain? 

Interviewee: Yes, I have. I just didn’t know that what it was called. I remember when they lynched my pastor in front of the church. When we went to church he was hanging there.

8.  What privileges or setbacks do you feel that you experienced growing up a black female in the North/South? The set backs were the Jim Crow South.

Interviewee: We did not have as good as school. Our parents were harder on use as disciplinarians. We often had limited options.

9. What, if anything, do you remember your parents telling you about race?

Interviewee:  I remember them telling me im different so I have to be grateful for what I get and work harder to get it.

10. What did your parents tell you or instill in you regarding being a woman, specifically a black woman?

Interviewee: my parents told me the bible say I am suppose to support my husband and stand behind him. My duty is to bear children and have a husband. Taking care of the children.

11. Did you attend school? Yes or No, why or why not?

Interviewee: I did and graduated from high school.

12. Talk a  little bit about those days…

Interviewee:  In those days, people often would not finish school they would drop out in the eight grade to help provide for their families. Family was the most important thing.

13.  What was it like in school for you as a black female?

Interviewee:  It was hard school was hard enough without the boys teasing us. Many boys did not believe that women should get an education. Women were suppose to be in the house.

14. Did you graduate and attend college?

Interviewee:  I married and had no been able to attend college. I was a preacher’s wife.

15. Did you get married? To who? When?

Interviewee: Yeah, Frank Thorton in 1949

16. Did you have any children? Yes or No? How many? Why? Was this a choice or just happened? If no children, you could ask them why they chose no to or was it medical reasons.

Interviewee: Yes, I had one. It just happened. I nearly died having her and  could no longer have anymore.

17. Where did they work as an adult?

Interviewee: She became a a veteran affairs associate.

18. Ask them about their adult life and what it was like living as a black woman?

Interviewee: It is difficult being a black woman of the working class. We have to be faster, smarter, and more intuitive then black women. Black women must be the mothers and so much moiré with men leaving the burden on women.

19. Ask them if there are any specific stories that they would like to share regarding their adulthood life and being a black woman?

Interviewee: Being a black woman meant you had to be strong but gentle. Your grandfather cheated on me and use to beat me. Your grandfather also uses to beat your mother. I had to send you mother to my mother’s so she would be safe. I remember when your grandfather beat me for buy you mother some bubble bath. In those days, women did not have to many options, so what else could I have done. When you grandfather died he left all his money to his mistresses and left me nothing.

20. What were their relationships like with other women?

Interviewee: Many times like today, black women have more enemies than friends. Black women came together yeah. But, you had to worry about the next woman taking you husband. Life was hard for black women and the men would have sex where they could get it. You had to be friendly, but on the look out as well.

21. Would they consider themselves friends with white women? Or do they have friends that are of another race?

Interviewee: I don’t consider white folks to be friends. When times get hard the turn on you all of them are the same. The only reason the act civil now is because they have to. I have no respect for them people.
22. What type of relationship do you have with black men?

Interviewee: I was taught that if you was with a man it better be your man. If it was not your man you were seen as a slut. You did not want to get a bad reputation. Or no one would marry you.

23. What do you think is the role of both black men and women in relationships and inside of the home should be?

Interviewee: Men should tend to outside work and women should be inside. A woman should stand by and take care of her man. A woman should raise the children. Men should provide for the family. Women if needed should also work but help as well. A man is the man of the house regardless. If you don’t give the man the chicken breast he will not stay.

24. What do you think about people dating outside of their race? Black men marrying white women and black women marrying white men?

Interviewee: I cant stand those people who be with other races. This makes me sick. I hate everyone of them they are all traitor. They all are wasting or race. I hate them you would think they would have more respect for themselves.

25. What issues do you think most affect b lack Americans today?

Interviewee: lack of self-esteem is them main issue. Black have not pride in themselves and no one can help or love you if you don’t have pride in yourself.

single professional black women

For as long as there have been movies, music and magazines, there has been the single gal.
Over the years, she has gone from being a punchline to a glamorous, independent icon. Artists like Beyonce Knowles champion "Single Ladies," and movies like "Something New" make the case for successful, single women maintaining high standards.
But in reality, one group of women has found it harder to leverage professional success into the model personal life.
Over the past few decades, black women in America have made historic strides academically and professionally. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, at least 60 percent of black students who get awarded college degrees are women. Black women make up 71 percent of black graduate students.
But the statistics point to another issue: Many of the women are single.
According to a recent Yale study, 42 percent of African-American women have yet to be married, compared to only 23 percent of white women. There's also a gap in numbers. The 2000 U.S. Census counted 1.8 million more African-American women than black men.
But is the successful, single black woman a matter of statistics, or are there other more controversial factors at hand?
"Nightline" tackled the phenomenon in a piece originally reported by ABC News' Linsey Davis in late 2009. The piece sparked an outpouring of praise and criticism. Some viewers praised "Nightline" for covering an overlooked issue, while others found the topic offensive.

Guy D'Alema/ABC News

Sherri Shepherd, left, and Jacque Reid talk about being successful, black and single at the seventh "Nightline: Face-Off."

"It is an issue. I'm sorry," said Sherri Shepherd, co-host of "The View" and author of "Permission Slips." Shepherd headlined a panel of successful and single black men and women to debate the issue in the "Nightline Face-Off": Why Can't a Successful Black Woman Find a Man?
Watch the debate on "Nightline" tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET
"I've had people tweet me and go, 'Here we go again, are we still on this topic,'" said Shepherd. "We will always be on this topic, but I like having it because hopefully, I'll learn something." Shepherd, who is 42, is a single mother who is divorced from a black man. She says she needs a man.
CLICK HERE for behind the scenes photos from the Face-Off

'Nightline Face-Off': Sherri Shepherd on Being Single

"I think for a long time I was like, 'I don't need a man, I'm going to make my own money,'" she said. "Well, I'm trying to raise a boy, and I think he needs a man. ... I would love to have a man in my life to help me raise my son."
Joining Shepherd on the female side was Jacque Reid, star of VH1's "Let's Talk About Pep."
"There are far too many black, wonderful women out there that are single and living alone and have no hope of ever finding a man," said Reid. "And I'd like to give them some hope."
Reid, who keeps her age under lock and key, still hopes that she can find a black man to partner up with.
"I just love how I feel with a black man," she said. "I love black men... I really think that black men and black women need to actually discuss this, and get past all the anger that exists between us."
Both Shepherd and Reid argued that statistics, unfaithful partners, intimidation and stereotypes play a large role in why there are more single black women.
On the other side were two men with an entirely different standpoint.

black women and economics

Black Women: The Unfinished Agenda African American women made great progress in education and entering into previously forbidden occupations—but their gains in earnings mysteriously stopped. Cecilia A. Conrad | September 22, 2008 16Share

We occupy many of the seats on the 5:30 P.M. Metrolink train from downtown Los Angeles to San Bernardino. We are behind the counters at the Department of Motor Vehicles and on both sides of the desks at the Department of Social Services. We push wheelchairs in parks and hospitals and hug children at day-care centers. Black women, who in 2006 constituted 7 percent of the working-age population, represented 14 percent of women workers and 53 percent of black workers, yet we are largely invisible in the policy discourse about both race and gender. Like black men, black women live in neighborhoods far from employment opportunities and with low-performing schools. Like white women, black women experience occupational segregation, a gender wage gap and the challenge of balancing family and work. We are discriminated against because we are black. We are discriminated against because we are women. We are discriminated against because we are both.

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This twin set of vulnerabilities has a big impact on black families and the black community at large because the wages of black women constitute a major component of black family income. Because of the limited economic prospects for black men, black women are likely to be both primary caregivers and primary breadwinners in our families. In nearly 44 percent of black families with children, a woman is the primary breadwinner. This includes both families headed by working single mothers and married-couple families in which the wife works and the husband does not. These female breadwinner families account for over 32 percent of aggregate black family income. In contrast, across all racial and ethnic groups, female breadwinner families represent only 24 percent of all families with children and account for 14 percent of aggregate family income. Hence, the gender wage gap and the lack of labor-market opportunities has a bigger impact on the economic well-being of black families than it does for other groups. Despite a history of strong labor-force attachment and despite gains in educational attainment and occupational status, black women earn less than black men, white women, and white men. In 2005, for the same hours worked, we earned 85 cents for every dollar earned by a white woman, 87 cents for every dollar earned by a black man, and 63 cents for every dollar earned by a white man. In 2006, over 13 percent of black women workers were poor, compared with 5 percent of white women, 7.7 percent of black men, and 4.4 percent of white men. Our unemployment rate is nearly double that of white women and white men.
These statistics are especially depressing because slightly more than three decades ago, black women earned 96 cents for every dollar earned by a white woman. Between 1975 and 2000, the median earnings of white women grew by 32 percent while the median earnings of black women grew by only 22 percent. This recent experience contrasts sharply with the gains realized in the 1960s and 1970s when the income growth among black women outpaced that of other groups thanks to the improvements in black women’s educational attainment and the elimination of the most blatant discriminatory barriers to employment and occupational mobility.
*** What interrupted this upward trajectory? Technological change and global competition increased the premium paid for skilled workers in the United States over the 1980s and 1990s and, although the proportion of black women with college degrees increased, a racial gap in educational attainment persists. In 2007, 19 percent of black women 25 and older had college diplomas compared with over 30 percent of white, non-Hispanic women.
Another factor contributing to a decrease in the black-white earnings ratio for women was the growth in labor-force participation of white women. This growth in white women’s labor-force participation coupled with a weakening labor-force attachment of young black women and black single mothers eroded black women’s work experience advantage. In 1972, the labor-force participation rate of white women was 42.7 percent, and for black women, 51.2 percent. By 2000, the black-white difference in labor-force participation rates had nearly evaporated: 60 percent of white women were in the labor force compared with 65 percent of black women. Among younger women, those aged 16 to 24, and among older women, those 45 and older, labor-force participation rates of white women exceeded those of black women in 2006.
Finally, equal employment opportunity (EEO) legislation and its enforcement contributed to the gains of the 1960s and 1970s, while the more recent retrenchment of those policies affected today’s wider gaps. In the 1960s, EEO allowed black women with high school diplomas to leave domestic service for higher-paying jobs as secretaries, typists, and stenographers. College-educated women moved into managerial jobs, particularly in the public sector. Retrenchment in the 1980s helps explain the lack of upward mobility for black women in clerical work and their continued exclusion from high-paying, managerial positions in the private sector.
Although employer surveys show less reluctance to hire black women than black men, there is evidence of ongoing discrimination in employment. Young black women take a longer time to find their first jobs and experience more spells of unemployment than do young white women. In data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, over the 26 years observed, 29.5 percent of black women with high school diplomas but no college degree experienced 10 or more spells of unemployment compared with only 13.5 percent of white women with the same education.
Employment discrimination has long-term consequences. When a young woman finally gets her first job, she will have accumulated less work experience than her same-aged white counterpart and thus will have an earnings disadvantage that persists over her work life. In addition, discrimination causes stress, and stress contributes to obesity and poor health. Poor health limits labor-force participation especially as women age. Older black women would likely have higher participation rates than white women if they had better health.
*** If black women face a double whammy in the labor market, black single mothers face a triple whammy. Women with children are paid less than are women without children who are otherwise similarly qualified. This difference in pay may be explained by differences in characteristics that employers can observe but researchers can’t—such as tardiness, absenteeism, or get-up-and-go—but it is also possible that employers perceive mothers as unreliable even if they are just as productive as other women.
Added to this disadvantage is the negative stereotype of black single mothers as “welfare queens.” Just as the civil-rights movement opened new employment opportunities for black women, it also helped to end many discriminatory practices of states in their administration of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Before the 1960s, families headed by black single mothers, particularly in the South, were underrepresented among beneficiaries of the program, and, if they received benefits, they received ones less than comparable to what white families received. As the program came under direct federal control in the 1960s, the share of black families among welfare recipients grew, and the public image of the welfare recipient shifted from that of a noble white woman widowed and struggling with housework and child-rearing to that of an unwed black teenager who has babies to collect welfare because she is too lazy to work.
This stereotype was an inaccurate portrayal of the average welfare recipient. Most welfare recipients cycled on and off welfare into low-paying jobs and collected welfare because they were rarely employed long enough to qualify for unemployment insurance. The evidence that welfare induced black women to have babies outside of marriage was never stronger than a few weak correlations. Nevertheless, the image of the black welfare queen was powerful enough to lead to the dismantling of the federal welfare entitlement system, the imposition of work requirements, and a return to state control under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 (reauthorized in February 2006). The stereotype may have also influenced employer attitudes about young black single mothers. A business owner once told me that he would willingly hire an ex-convict but not an ex-welfare recipient because, he explained, “doing crime requires initiative.”
Despite these stereotypes, many welfare recipients were initially able to move into low-wage employment. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program that replaced AFDC imposed work requirements on its beneficiaries, but tight labor markets, the expansion of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the maintenance of work supports facilitated the pathway to employment. Black women have been slower to move off welfare than white women have been and are more likely to return.
Furthermore, African Americans were more likely to be denied benefits due to sanctions than due to earnings and represent a higher proportion of women who are “disconnected” from the welfare system (defined as low-income single mothers with no more than $2,000 in case earnings, no more than $1,000 in public assistance income, and no more than $1,000 in household Supplemental Security Income). A Brookings Institute study estimates that 29 percent of disconnected single mothers in 2005 were black or non-Hispanic. And though the 1996 legislation has moved many single mothers into jobs, poverty rates for single-mother families remain stubbornly high at 42.1 percent for white children and 49.4 percent for black children in families with a female householder, no husband present in 2007.
The centerpiece of the Bush administration’s anti-poverty policy is the Healthy Marriage Initiative. This approach ignores a fundamental reality for black women. Marriage has not historically been the route out of poverty for black women that it has been for white women. The marriage initiative assumes that families headed by single black women are poor because the family head is unmarried. However, the relationship between poverty and single motherhood is not so simple. Single black mothers are not more likely to be poor because they are not married. They are likely to be not married because they, and their likely marriage partners, have poor economic prospects. For black women and black men, a good job may be a prerequisite for a good marriage.
An anti-poverty policy that has reduced poverty among black women is Social Security. Without Social Security, over half of black women over age 65 would have incomes below the poverty threshold. With Social Security, the percentage falls to 27 percent. However, Social Security is even more effective in reducing the poverty rate for white women. Without Social Security, the poverty rate for white women would be over 50 percent; with Social Security, it falls to under 10 percent.
Social Security is less effective in reducing the poverty rate of black women for two reasons. First, benefits received under Social Security are based either on one’s own earnings or on the earnings of one’s spouse. A black woman and white woman with the same earnings history may receive different monthly benefits because the black husband of the black woman earned less than the white husband of the white woman. Secondly, the decline in marriage rates among black women means that as they reach retirement, fewer will be eligible based on a spouse’s earnings. In 2006, 55 percent of black women over 65 were entitled to benefits only as workers, 20 percent were dually entitled, and 25 percent entitled as a wife or widow of a worker. Among white women, 38 percent were entitled as workers only, 31 percent were dually entitled, and 31 percent were entitled as a wife or widow of a worker. Women entitled only as workers receive a lower average benefit because women historically earned less than men. In 2006, the average benefit for a black woman entitled as a worker only is $828 while the average monthly benefit for a black woman who is dually entitled is $919. This gap would be larger if the progressivity of the Social Security benefit did not mitigate the effects of racial and gender discrimination in the labor market. Hence, it is important to black women that this progressivity be maintained or even increased.
*** Neither of the presumptive nominees of the two major parties has indicated an interest in revisiting welfare reform. Neither candidate has proposed a specific plan for Social Security reform. Barack Obama has proposed initiatives to increase the take-home pay of workers and to expand work supports including increasing the federal minimum wage (over 949,000 black women earn a wage at or below the federal minimum), expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, and expanding and making refundable the child-care tax credit. John McCain proposes a sizable refundable tax credit for health insurance. While an expansion of refundable tax credits is likely to benefit families headed by black women, black women must be as concerned with candidates’ expenditure plans as well as with their tax policies. Cutbacks in social services impact black women both as recipients of those services and also as providers. Black women are disproportionately employed in public administration and in the delivery of social services.
Black women confront many of the same issues as white women, as black men, and as working people in general, but these issues are compounded by the intersection of race and gender. In addition, black women suffer from not only the burden of their own employment obstacles but also from the lack of economic security among black men, and this third burden, which, as economist and college president Julianne Malveaux recently observed, is “why African American women cannot separate interests of race and issues of gender in analysis of political candidates, economic realities, or social and cultural realities.” Black women may share policy agendas with black men and with white women, but it is important that the specific impacts of policies on black women not be ignored as we pursue common goals.

black hair

I mean Black men are the only race on this planet who berate Black women for their hair textures, the way Black women wear their hair, what weaves they wear or don't wear, and make an issue of Black women's hair being fake or real, perm or natural. Yet I'd never seen any White, Asian or any other race of men who make such issues about their race of women's hair like Black men do. We all know and I hope Black men know this too all races of women wear wigs. All races of women have issues with their hair. The difference is Black men go overboard with their excuses for not being with Black women, and hair is one of the reasons, Chris Rock's "Good Hair".

Black men go out of their way and to the extreme about Black women's hair because she wears a wig, weave, extensions, nappy, perm, locs, twist, etc and would even do a documentary about Black women and their hair. These Black men seem so educated about Black women and their hair yet totally ignorant about White and other races of women and their hair. Correct me if I am wrong but have you ever seen any documentary done by White or even Asian men about their women's hair? Are Black men that shallow and are ashamed to admit they are jealous of Black women and their hair or are they ashame to admit to hating Black women just because of their hair textures? What are your views and opinions? I would like to know.

Peace.

qquicksand

Quicksand

Nella Larsen's first novel tells the story of Helga Crane, a fictional character loosely based on Larsen's own early life. Crane is the lovely and refined daughter of a Danish mother and a West Indian black father who abandons Helga and her mother soon after Helga is born. Unable to feel comfortable with any of her white-skinned relatives, Helga lives in various places in America and visits Denmark in search of people among whom she feels at home.
Her travels bring her in contact with many of the communities which Larsen knew. The reader meets Helga, a first-year teacher in "Naxos," a Southern Negro boarding school based on Tuskegee University, where she finds herself dissatisfied with the complacent philosophy of those around her. She criticizes a sermon by a white preacher who advocates that blacks ought to sensibly segregate themselves into black schools, that striving for social equality would lead blacks to become avaricious. Helga abruptly quits her teaching and moves to Chicago, where her white uncle, now married to a bigoted woman, shuns her. Then she goes to Harlem, where she finds a refined but often hypocritical black middle class obsessed with the "race problem."
Taking her uncle's legacy and advice, she visits her aunt in Copenhagen, where she is treated as a highly desirable racial exotic. Realizing that she deeply misses seeing Negro people, she returns to New York City. Experiencing a near mental breakdown, Helga happens onto a store-front revival and a charismatic religious experience. After seducing and marrying the preacher who converts her, she moves with him to the poor Deep South. There she is disillusioned by the people's blind adherence to religion. In each of her moves, Helga Crane fails to find fulfillment. She is looking for much more than simply how to synthesize her own mixed ancestry—she expresses complex feelings about what she and her friends see as genetic differences between races.
The novel also tells the tale of Helga's search for a marriage partner: as it opens, she has become engaged to marry for social benefits a prestigious Southern Negro man she does not really love; in Denmark she turns down the proposal of a famous white Danish artist for similar reasons; by the final chapters she has seduced and married a stereotypical black Southern preacher. The novel's close is deeply pessimistic, as Helga Crane sees what she hoped would be sexual fulfillment and success of her altruistic ideas of "uplifting" the poor southern blacks she lives among, turn into an endless chain of pregnancies and suffering. Helga becomes disillusioned with religion, her husband, and her life, and fantasizes about leaving her husband, but she is never able to.

stereotypes

Black Women Stereotypes

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Michelle Huxtable

Recently I was asked a question in light of the new year, “What can Black women do to be more womanly in 2010?” I thought for a second because truthfully the question sounded kind of strange. I’m not a fashion expert nor do I dabble in makeup artistry so my advice wasn’t going to dwell on those points. Then it hit me like a Mac truck. (Get it? Mac? No? Okay.) The one thing Black women can do in 2010 to be better in general is to be themselves. Now hold on. This isn’t going to be corny, I swear. As many people have already complained, everyone wants to be a barbie now. With the newly found fame of Nicki Minaj, young Black women seem to have found a new leader and model for success. Because of her nicknames of Nicki Minaj and Nicki the Harajuku Barbie, there has been a massive surge of name changes across the world. No, the DMV[1] hasn’t been ambushed, I’m talking about on social networking sites. Those with Facebooks, MySpaces, or Twitters can attest to this. How many Jane Minaj’s do you know? How many people do you follow with the word ‘Barbie’ in their name? That’s not to say that men aren’t being equally as insane with the Joseph WakaFlaka Smiths’ out there. But this is focused on the women. I say all that to say, my answer to that question was be yourself because we can’t be feeding into the gross stereotypes of the past. What stereotypes are those you ask?
Patricia Hill-Collins wrote about the four main stereotypes or controlling images for Black women. These stereotypes are the Mammy, the Matriarch, the Welfare Mother, and finally the Jezebel or the Whore. According to Hill-Collins, these are images that were used to oppress black women. According to Hazel Carby, these images are used “not to reflect or represent a reality but to function as a disguise, or mystification, of objective social relations.” In other words, they don’t reflect the true nature of Black women and simply classify them, it instead makes it appear as though these are the only types of Black women out there. Hill-Collins goes on to say, “The dominant ideology of the slave era fostered the creation of four interrelated, socially constructed controlling images of Black womanhood, each reflecting the dominant group’s interest in maintaining Black women’s subordination.” So these images are meant to keep Black women down. They weren’t meant to empower in any way and still to this day do not empower. While there are four images, I will describe all four but focus on two for the sake of succinctness and relevance to the “be true to yourself” answer I gave.
Mammy
Traditionally, the mammy was the Black mother figure in white homes. “The faithful, obedient domestic servant… represents the normative yardstick used to evaluate all Black women’s behavior.  By loving, nurturing, and caring for her white children and ‘family’ better than her own, the mammy symbolizes the dominant group’s perceptions of the ideal Black female relationship to elite white male power. Even though she may be well loved and may wield considerable authority in her white ‘family,’ the mammy still knows her ‘place’ as obedient servant.  She has accepted her subordination.”
While this doesn’t address the wannabe Barbies out there, this is still true for older women. We’re told to take care of others before ourselves.
Matriarch
“The Black mother figure in Black homes… the “bad” Black mother… fail their traditional “womanly” duties. 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 partner or refuse to marry the mothers of their children. Elite white men see her as the failed mammy. The source of the matriarch’s failure is her inability to model appropriate gender behavior.”
The Matriarch is also doomed to failure (in the eyes of society) because she is solely responsible for her children’s success and when they fail, she fails. This is a problem because if Black women are told they must choose between these four images this is the one most people are going to opt for. Black women have to face a lot of obstacles and because of this, some have developed a tough shell. The problem with that is she then comes off as a strong, insensitive b-word that rhymes with witch, if I may. She is then scorned for not being cordial and political in corporate America even though she is behaving like everyone else. And she is even judged by Black men because the Matriarch often times refuses to let others help her and has that “pull yourself up by your bootstrap” mentality that many claim the poor should have but when it is actually instilled it is a turn off. She won’t let a man help her which emasculates him and makes him have no value in that relationship.
Welfare Mother
“African-Americans can be racially stereotyped as being lazy by blaming Black welfare mothers for failing to pass on the work ethic.  Moreover, the welfare mother has no male authority figure to assist her. Typically portrayed as an unwed mother…”
The image of the unwed Black women who is lazy and sucks up welfare is not uncommon in film, TV, and other media.
The Jezebel
“Whore, sexually aggressive woman… central in this nexus of elite white male images of Black womanhood because efforts to control Black women’s sexuality lie at the heart of Black women’s oppression… Provides a rationale for the widespread sexual assaults by white men typically reported by Black slave women.”
The image of the sexually aggressive woman was one that was started to justify rape and the ownership of slave children as property. After all, what emotional worth is one slave baby if a Black woman loves sex anyway and is just going to pop out more? This image strikes home to me the most because so often in the days of Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj and other sexually explicit[2] female rappers women have chosen to take on this persona as, “I’m going to be as forthcoming and outright as men are when it comes to discussing sex.” While they are fighting to be equal and overcome the sexual double standard, they instead reinforce an age-old stereotype and inadvertently oppress themselves. Nobody takes them seriously in the workplace nor in a relationship.
I guess the long version of my answer is not only to be yourself, but also to know who you are, and know what others expect of you as well. Now that we all know these controlling images that we can so often feed into, we can fight the stereotype. Do you think these stereotypes still exist? Are they a driving force in many movies, TV shows, and other media? If you had to answer the question of what can Black women do to be more womanly in 2010 what would you have said?
P.S. If you type in “black women” into Google the second entry is “Jezebel Stereotype”. Interesting.

sapphire

The Sapphire stereotype is one of the main ways white Americans look at black women. It is why so many of them think black women are hard to get along with.
Sapphire, named after a character in “Amos ‘n’ Andy”, always seems to have her hands on her hips while she is running her mouth – putting down her man, making everything into a fight, never taking anything lying down. She is an overbearing, hard and undesirable woman who drives men away. Think of Tichina Arnold’s character Pam in “Martin”. Michelle Obama comes dangerously close to being read this way.
A study done in 1993 of white American university students showed that nearly all of them saw black women as Sapphires to some degree. It seems to be common among black men too. I am guilty of it myself, which is why I write this.
Many black women seem to feel they have to be strong. You do not hear that so much from white women. That gives some black women a hard edge. They often come off seeming hard and overbearing even when they do not mean to. That gives the stereotype an element of truth.
But just because there is some truth to it does not mean it is completely true.
Some of it is just pure stereotype. For example, where white women are said to be “independent”, black women are said to be “emasculating”, robbing their men of their sense of manhood. Where white women are said to be standing up for themselves, black women are seen as wanting a fight. And so on. The same actions are read differently.
This makes it harder for black women to become leaders. Think if Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama were both running for president. They would not be judged the same way. Think then of what must go on inside businesses where women are trying to move up.
The Sapphire stereotype also hurts their chances of getting married. What man would knowingly marry a woman like this? Black men sometimes use it as an excuse to go after white women. For many white men it is one of the main things (but not the only thing) that keeps them away from seriously dating black women.
In my own experience the Sapphire stereotype seems to be the most true to life. A little too true. I wish it were just all a sick lie.
Yet, even so, the Sapphire stereotype seems to be cut from the same cloth as the Jezebel one: Just as Jezebels are blamed for their rape by white men, so Sapphires are blamed for the weak position of their men in society – instead of blaming the very same white men!
In the Moynihan Report in the 1960s the government wanted to know why blacks were so poor. Part of the blame went to a form of the Sapphire stereotype: the Matriarch.

jezebel

Jezebel Stereotype

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Perhaps she remembers her great-great grandmother who wanted to protest but only rolled her eyes and willed herself not to scream when the white man mounted her from behind.   --Andrea Williams¹

The portrayal of Black women as lascivious by nature is an enduring stereotype. The descriptive words associated with this stereotype are singular in their focus: seductive, alluring, worldly, beguiling, tempting, and lewd. Historically, White women, as a category, were portrayed as models of self-respect, self-control, and modesty – even sexual purity, but Black women were often portrayed as innately promiscuous, even predatory. This depiction of Black women is signified by the name Jezebel.²
K. Sue Jewell, a contemporary sociologist, conceptualized the Jezebel as a tragic mulatto – "thin lips, long straight hair, slender nose, thin figure and fair complexion."³ This conceptualization is too narrow. It is true that the "tragic mulatto" and "Jezebel" share the reputation of being sexually seductive, and both are antithetical to the desexualized "Mammy" caricature; nevertheless, it is a mistake to assume that only, or even mainly, fair-complexioned Black women were sexually objectified by the larger American society. From the early 1630s to the present, Black American women of all shades have been portrayed as hypersexual "bad-black-girls."⁴
Jewell's conceptualization is based on a kernel of historical truth. Many of the slavery-era Blacks sold into prostitution were mulattoes. Also, freeborn light-skinned Black women sometimes became the willing concubines of wealthy White southerners. This system, called placage, involved a formal arrangement for the White suitor/customer to financially support the Black woman and her children in exchange for her long-term sexual services. The White men often met the Black women at "Quadroon Balls," a genteel sex market.
The belief that Blacks are sexually lewd predates the institution of slavery in America. European travelers to Africa found scantily clad natives. This semi nudity was misinterpreted as lewdness. White Europeans, locked into the racial ethnocentrism of the 17th century, saw African polygamy and tribal dances as proof of the African's uncontrolled sexual lust. Europeans were fascinated by African sexuality. William Bosman described the Black women on the coast of Guinea as "fiery" and "warm" and "so much hotter than the men."⁵ William Smith described African women as "hot constitution'd Ladies" who "are continually contriving stratagems how to gain a lover."⁶ The genesis of anti-Black sexual arch types emerged from the writings of these and other Europeans: the Black male as brute and potential rapist; the Black woman, as Jezebel whore.
The English colonists accepted the Elizabethan image of "the lusty Moor," and used this and similar stereotypes to justify enslaving Blacks. In part, this was accomplished by arguing that Blacks were subhumans: intellectually inferior, culturally stunted, morally underdeveloped, and animal-like sexually. Whites used racist and sexist ideologies to argue that they alone were civilized and rational, whereas Blacks, and other people of color, were barbaric and deserved to be subjugated.⁷
The Jezebel stereotype was used during slavery as a rationalization for sexual relations between White men and Black women, especially sexual unions involving slavers and slaves. The Jezebel was depicted as a Black woman with an insatiable appetite for sex. She was not satisfied with Black men. The slavery-era Jezebel, it was claimed, desired sexual relations with White men; therefore, White men did not have to rape Black women. James Redpath, an abolitionist no less, wrote that slave women were "gratified by the criminal advances of Saxons."⁸ This view is contradicted by Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and former slave, who claimed that the "slave woman is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or brothers of her master."⁹ Douglass's account is consistent with the accounts of other former slaves. Henry Bibb's master forced a young slave to be his son's concubine; later, Bibb and his wife were sold to a Kentucky trader who forced Bibb's wife into prostitution.¹⁰
Slave women were property; therefore, legally they could not be raped. Often slavers would offer gifts or promises of reduced labor if the slave women would consent to sexual relations, and there were instances where the slaver and slave shared sexual attraction; however, "the rape of a female slave was probably the most common form of interracial sex."¹¹ A slave woman explained, "When he make me follow him into de bush, what use me to tell him no? He have strength to make me."¹² At the same time, Black men convicted of raping White women were usually castrated, hanged, or both.¹³
People make decisions based on the options they have and the options that they perceive. The objective realities of slavery and the slaves' subjective interpretations of the institution both led female slaves to engage "voluntarily" in sexual unions with Whites, especially slavers, their sons, and their overseers. A slave who refused the sexual advances of her slaver risked being sold, beaten, raped, and having her "husband" or children sold. Many slave women conceded to sexual relations with Whites, thereby reinforcing the belief that Black women were lustful and available.
The idea that Black women were naturally and inevitably sexually promiscuous was reinforced by several features of the slavery institution. Slaves, whether on the auction block or offered privately for sale, were often stripped naked and physically examined. In theory, this was done to insure that they were healthy, able to reproduce, and, equally important, to look for whipping scars – the presence of which implied that the slave was rebellious. In practice, the stripping and touching of slaves had a sexually exploitative,¹⁴ sometimes sadistic function. Nakedness, especially among women in the 18th and 19th centuries, implied lack of civility, morality, and sexual restraint even when the nakedness was forced. Slaves, of both sexes and all ages, often wore few clothes or clothes so ragged that their legs, thighs, and chests were exposed. Conversely, Whites, especially women, wore clothing over most of their bodies. The contrast between the clothing reinforced the beliefs that White women were civilized, modest, and sexually pure, whereas Black women were uncivilized, immodest, and sexually aberrant.
Black slave women were also frequently pregnant. The institution of slavery depended on Black women to supply future slaves. By every method imaginable, slave women were "encouraged" to reproduce. Some slavers, for example, offered a new pig for each child born to a slave family, a new dress to the slave woman for each surviving infant, or no work on Saturdays to Black women who produced six children.¹⁵ Young Black girls were encouraged to have sex as "anticipatory socialization" for their later status as "breeders." When they did reproduce, their fecundity was seen, as proof of their insatiable sexual appetites. Deborah Gray White, a contemporary historian, wrote:

Major periodicals carried articles detailing optimal conditions under which bonded women were known to reproduce, and the merits of a particular "breeder" were often the topic of parlor or dinner table conversations. The fact that something so personal and private became a matter of public discussion prompted one ex-slave to declare that "women wasn't nothing but cattle." Once reproduction became a topic of public conversation, so did the slave woman's sexual activities.¹⁶

The Jezebel stereotype is contradicted by several historical facts. Although Black women, especially those with brown or tan skin and "European features," were sometimes forced into prostitution for White men, "slaves had no prostitution and very little venereal disease within their communities."¹⁷ Slaves rarely chose spouses from among their blood relatives. Slavers often encouraged, and sometimes mandated, sexual promiscuity among their slaves; nevertheless, most slaves sought long-term, monogamous relationships. Slaves "married" when allowed, and adultery was frowned upon in most Black "communities." During Reconstruction "slaves eagerly legitimated their unions, holding mass-marriage ceremonies and individual weddings."¹⁸
Unfortunately for Black women, Emancipation and Reconstruction did not stop their sexual victimization. From the end of the Civil War to the mid-1960s, no Southern White male was convicted of raping or attempting to rape a Black woman; yet, the crime was common.¹⁹ Black women, especially in the South or border states, had little legal recourse when raped by White men, and many Black women were reluctant to report their sexual victimization by Black men for fear that the Black men would be lynched.²⁰

Jezebel in the 20th Century

The portrayal of Black women as Jezebel whores began in slavery, extended through the Jim Crow period, and continues today. Although the Mammy caricature was the dominant popular cultural image of Black women from slavery to the 1950s, the depiction of Black women as Jezebels was common in American material culture. Everyday items – such as ashtrays, postcards, sheet music, fishing lures, drinking glasses, and so forth – depicted naked or scantily dressed Black women, lacking modesty and sexual restraint. For example, a metal nutcracker (circa 1930s) depicts a topless Black woman. The nut is placed under her skirt, in her crotch, and crushed.²¹ Items like this one reflected and shaped White attitudes toward Black female sexuality. An analysis of the Jezebel images in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia reveals several patterns. Many of the Jezebel objects caricature and mock African women. For example, in the 1950s "ZULU LULU" was a popular set of swizzle sticks used for stirring drinks. There were several versions of this product but all show silhouettes of naked African women of various ages. One version read: "Nifty at 15, spiffy at 20, sizzling at 25, perky at 30, declining at 35, droopy at 40." There were versions that included depictions of African women at fifty and sixty years of age. ZULU LULU was billed as a party gag as illustrated by this advertisement on the product:

Don't pity Lulu – you're not getting younger yourself…laugh with your guests when they find these hilarious swizzle sticks in their drinks. ZULU-LULU will be the most popular girl at your party.

The Jezebel images which defame African women may be viewed in two broad categories: pathetic others and exotic others. Pathetic others include those depictions of African women as physically unattractive, unintelligent, and uncivilized. These images suggest that African women in particular and Black women in general possess aberrant physical, social, and cultural traits. The African woman's features are distorted – her lips are exaggerated, her breasts sag, she is often inebriated. The pathetic other, like the Mammy caricature before her, is drawn to refute the claim that White men find Black women sexually appealing. Yet, this depiction of the African woman has an obvious sexual component: she is often placed in a sexual setting, naked or near naked, inebriated or holding a drink, her eyes suggesting a sexual longing. She is a sexual being, but not one that White men would consider.
An example of the pathetic other is a banner (circa 1930s) showing a drunken African woman with the caption, "Martini Anyone?"²² The message is clear: this pathetic other is too ugly, too stupid, and too different to elicit sexual attraction from reasonable men; instead, she is a source of pity, laughter, and derision.
The material objects which depict African and Black women as exotic others do not portray them as physically unattractive, although they are sometimes portrayed as being socially and culturally deficient. During the first half of the twentieth century images of topless or completely nude African women were often placed in magazines and on souvenir items, planters, drinking glasses, figurines, ashtrays, and novelty items.

It must be emphasized that the items that depict African and African American women as one-dimensional sexual beings are often everyday items – found in the homes, garages, automobiles, and offices of "mainstream" Americans. These items are functional – in addition to promoting anti-Black stereotypes, they also have practical utility. For example, a topless bust of a Black woman with a fishing hook attached functions as an object of racial stereotyping and as a fishing lure. One such object was the "Virgin Fishing Lucky Lure (circa 1950s)." It has become a highly sought after collectible nationwide.
An analysis of Jezebel images also reveals that Black female children are sexually objectified. Black girls, with the faces of pre-teenagers, are drawn with adult sized buttocks, which are exposed. They are naked, scantily clad, or hiding seductively behind towels, blankets, trees, or other objects. A 1949 postcard shows a naked Black girl hiding her genitals with a paper fan. Although she has the appearance of a small child she has noticeable breasts. The accompanying caption reads: "Honey, I'se Waitin' Fo' You Down South."²³ The sexual innuendo is obvious.
Another postcard (circa 1950s) shows a Black girl, approximately eight years old, standing in a watermelon patch. She has a protruding stomach. The caption reads: "Oh-I is Not!...It Must Be Sumthin' I Et!!" Her exposed right shoulder and the churlish grin suggest that the protruding stomach resulted from a sexual experience, not overeating. The portrayal of this prepubescent girl as pregnant suggests that Black females are sexually active and sexually irresponsible even as small children.
The belief that Black women are sexually promiscuous is propagated by innumerable images of pregnant Black women and Black women with large numbers of children. A 1947 greeting card depicting a Black Mammy bears the caption: "Ah keeps right on sendin' em!" Inside is a young Black woman with eight small children. The inside caption reads: "As long as you keeps on havin' em."

In the 1964 presidential election between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, Johnson used the political slogan, "All the way with LBJ." A mid-1960s license plate shows a caricatured Black woman, pregnant, with these words, "Ah went all de way wib LBJ." Johnson received overwhelming support from Black voters. The image on the license plate, which also appeared on posters and smaller prints, insults Blacks generally, Black Democrats, and Black women.

Black Jezebels in American Cinema

In the 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation, Lydia Brown is a mulatto character. She is the mistress of the White character Senator Stoneman. Lydia is savage, corrupt, and lascivious. She is portrayed as overtly sexual, and she uses her "feminine wiles" to deceive the formerly good White man. Lydia's characterization was rare in early American cinema. There was a splattering of Black "loose women" and "fallen women" on the big screen, but it would be another half century before the depiction of cinematic Black women as sexually promiscuous would become commonplace. By the 1970s Black moviegoers had tired of cinematic portrayals of Blacks as Mammies, Toms, Tragic Mulattoes, and Picaninnies. In the 1970s Blacks willingly, though unwittingly, exchanged the old negative caricatures for new ones: Brutes, Bucks, and Jezebels. These new caricatures were popularized by the two hundred mostly B-grade films now labeled blaxploitation movies.
These movies supposedly depicted realistic Black experiences; however, many were produced and directed by Whites. Daniel J. Leab, the movie historian, noted, "Whites packaged, financed, and sold these films, and they received the bulk of the big money."²⁴ The world depicted in blaxploitation movies included corrupt police and politicians, pimps, drug dealers, violent criminals, prostitutes, and whores. In the main, these movies were low-budget, formulaic interpretations of Black life by White producers, directors, and distributors. Black actors and actresses, many unable to find work in mainstream movies, found work in blaxploitation movies. Black patrons supported these movies because they showed Blacks fighting the "White establishment," resisting police corruption, acting assertively, and having sex lives.
The film which ushered in the blaxploitation period was Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971), written, directed, produced, and starred in by Melvin Van Peebles. The story centers on Sweet, an amoral and hedonistic hustler and pimp, who kills two White cops who were attacking a young Black radical. He spends the rest of the movie on the lam, running from racist cops and to pimps, gangsters, bikers, and whores. Sweet's "revolutionary consciousness" is heightened because of his first hand experience with police corruption, and by the movie's end he has become a heroic, almost mythical, Black revolutionary. The film ended with the message: "A BAADASSSSS NIGGER IS COMING BACK TO COLLECT SOME DUES."
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was originally rated X. After decades of asexual and desexualized Black Tom characters, Black audiences were ready for a sexually assertive Black male movie character. Sweet was reared in a brothel. In one flashback scene, a ten-year-old Sweet (played by Van Peeples' real life son, Mario) is graphically taught how to make love by an older prostitute. Sweetback is slang for "large penis" and "great lovemaking ability." Much of the movie centers on Sweet's lovemaking abilities, and this movie helped promote the "Black sex machine" characterization of Black men common in later movies. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song also gave impetus to cinematic portrayals of Black women as Jezebel whores. According to Donald Bogle, a film historian:

With the glamorization of the ghetto, however, came also the elevation of the Pimp/outlaw/rebel as folk hero. Van Peeples played up this new sensibility, and his film was the first to glorify the pimp. It failed, however, to explain the social conditions that made the pimp such an important figure. At the same time, the movie debased the black woman, depicting her as little more than a whore.²⁵

The commercial success of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song inspired many imitators. A formula for these "Black action" movies emerged: a justifiably angry Black male seeks revenge on corrupt White police officers, politicians, or drug dealers. In the process of extracting revenge his political consciousness is raised and he has numerous sexual exploits. Although this formula was aided by Van Peeples, a Black man, it served as the template for the Whites who wrote, directed, and produced blaxploitation movies.
The movies that followed Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song increasingly limited Black actresses to Jezebel type roles. Lynn Hamilton, a Black actress, auditioned for the role of a "strong Angela Davis type." At the beginning of the audition she was asked if she would play nude scenes. She said of the role and character: "Here is this woman who holds all kinds of academic degrees and has a high position opening the door totally nude to admit her boyfriend, a policeman. The first thing he says is, 'Fix me some breakfast."²⁶ She fries bacon, grease splattering, while her boyfriend fondles her breasts and buttocks.
Many Black women in these blaxploitation movies functioned as "sexual fodder," legitimizing the street credentials of the Black male superhero. Even when Black women were the central characters of the movies, they were still portrayed as sexually aggressive, often deviants. Black actresses such as Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson built their acting careers starring in blaxploitation movies. Their characters resembled those of the male superheroes: they were physically attractive and aggressive rebels, willing and able to gain revenge against corrupt officials, drug dealers, and violent criminals. According to Donald Bogle:

Like the old-style mammies, they ran not simply a household but a universe unto itself. Often they were out to clean up the ghetto of drug pushers, protecting the black hearth and home from corrupt infiltrators. Dobson and Grier represented Woman as Protector, Nurturer, Communal Mother Surrogate. Yet, these women also had the look and manner of old-style mulattoes. They were often perceived as being exotic sex objects (Grier's raw sexuality was always exploited) – yet with a twist. Although men manhandle them, Grier and Dobson also took liberties with men, at times using them as playful, comic toys.²⁷

The portrayal of Black women as sexually lascivious became commonplace in American movies. Grier, for example, in Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974) goes undercover as a "whore" to get revenge on Whites who have victimized her loved ones. In The Big Bird Cage (1972), Carol Speed plays a spunky Black hooker inmate. The 1973 movie Black Hooker is a movie about a "White" boy whose mother is an uncaring Black whore. In the made-for-television movie, Dummy (1979), Irma Riley plays a Black prostitute. Lisa Bonet, one of the daughters on the Cosby show, plays a voodoo priestess in Angel Heart (1987). Her character, Epiphany Proudfoot, has a sexual episode with Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) that was so graphic that the movie almost received an X rating. In Harlem Nights (1989), Sunshine (played by Lela Rochon) is a prostitute so skilled that a White lover calls his wife on the telephone to tell her that he is never returning home.
The obligatory "Black whore" is added to urban-themed movies, apparently to give "real life" authenticity. In the classic movie Taxi Driver (1976), a Black hooker (Copper Cunningham) has sex with a White businessman in the backseat of the taxi driven by Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro). The sex act is offered as evidence of the moral decline and decadence of America. Bickle washes his taxi after the sex act. Hazelle Goodman plays Cookie, a hooker in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry (1997). When Cookie is asked if she knows what a black hole is, she replies, "what I make my living with." In the credits listed for In Dangerous Ground (1997), Temsie Times is listed as "Black Hooker." Cathy Tyson, the niece of actress Cicely Tyson, got her first major role as a sophisticated call girl in Mona Lisa (2001). The racial and sexual stereotypes depicted in these and similar movies find their fuller, clearer expression in low-budget pornographic movies.
The pornography industry remains a bastion of explicit anti-Black stereotyping – raw, obscene, and increasing mainstreamed. Many of the heterosexual themed movies in the American pornographic market have White actresses; however, there are hundreds of pornographic movies that also depict Black women as "sexual things" – and as "sexual animals." Internet "stores" sell videos with titles like Black Chicks in Heat, Black Bitches, Hoochie Mamas, Video Sto' Ho, Black and Nasty, South Central Hookers, and Git Yo' Ass On Da Bus! In the privacy of their homes or hotel rooms, Americans can watch Black actresses – Purple Passion, Jamaica, Toy, Chocolate Tye, Juicy, Jazz, Spontaneeus Xtasy, and others – "validate" the belief that Black women are whores. Most of the Black actresses in mainstream movies who play Jezebel roles – especially those with interracial sex scenes – are light skinned or brown skinned women; however, most of the Black women in pornographic movies are brown skinned and dark skinned women.
Halle Berry won an academy award for the role of Leticia Musgrove in Monster's Ball (2001), a complex and haunting drama. Leticia had a sexual relationship with Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton), a racist jailer who supervised the execution of her husband. The link between Leticia's Black husband's execution and her White lover was not revealed to her until the movie's end, by then she and Hank were bonded together – self-loathers, angry, defeated, drunk, grieving the loss of relatives, trying frantically to find redemption, and failing that, someone to share the emotional pain. Their initial sexual encounter followed a drunken lamentation of their failures as parents. She lost her husband, and then her son was killed. His son committed suicide, in his presence. Writhing in emotional pain, she begged, "Make me feel better." There followed one of the rawest, most intense sexual scenes in American cinematic history. Later, he gave her a truck. He named his new business venture, a service station, Leticia. He readied a room in his home, moved his racist father to a convalescent home, and after Leticia was evicted from her home he moved her into his house.
The relationship between Hank and Leticia was an updated version of the placage arrangements common in the 1800s. The first night after she moved into his home they lie in bed. He said, "I'm gonna take care of you." Leticia replied, "Good, 'cause I really need to be taken care of." In a tender moment, he went to a store to get ice cream. While he was gone she found evidence that he was involved in her husband's execution. She cried, wailed, gripped with gut-wrenching pain. He returned. She had a dazed look. He told her, "You look real pretty. Let's go out on the steps, if you want to." She followed him. Outside, she accepted a spoon, stared at his son's tombstone, and then accepted ice cream from his spoon. His last words were, "I think we gonna be alright." Angela Bassett, nominated for an academy award in 1993 (Tina Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It), rejected the role of Leticia. In an interview with Newsweek, she said: "It's about character, darling. I wasn't going to be a prostitute on film. I couldn't do that because it's such a stereotype about black women and sexuality."²⁸ Bassett's assessment was harsh and probably overstated. Leticia was portrayed as a "loose woman:" drinking from a bottle, slouched, legs open, later initiating sex with a man she barely knew. She ended the movie as a "kept woman," not a prostitute – her status is a function of the harsh realities of being a poor, Black woman in a society that devalues the poor, the Black, and women. Bassett insisted that she was not criticizing Berry so much as she was criticizing the Hollywood system for continuing to typecast black women in demeaning roles. This was a reasonable criticism. Only a handful of Black actresses and actors have won academy awards, and most won because they brought depth and complexity to otherwise one-dimensional stereotypical roles: Hattie McDaniel played a Mammy in Gone With the Wind (1939); Sidney Poitier played a Tom, albeit a dignified one, in Lilies of the Field (1964), and Denzell Washington was a rogue cop, a variant of the Brute in Training Day (2000).

Conclusion

The Jezebel has replaced the Mammy as the dominant image of Black women in American popular culture. The Black woman as prostitute, for example, is a staple in mainstream movies, especially those with urban settings. The Black prostitute and the Black pimp supposedly give these movies cutting edge realism. Small budget pornographic movies reinforce vile sexual stereotypes of Black women. These women are willing, sometimes predatory, sexual deviants who will fulfill any and all sexual fantasies. Their sexual performances tap into centuries-old images of Black women as uninhibited whores. Televised music videos, especially those by gangsta rap performers, portray scantily clad, nubile Black women who thrust their hips to lyrics which often depict them as ‘hos, skeezers, and bitches. A half century after the American civil rights movement, it is increasingly easy to find Black women, especially young ones, depicted as Jezebels whose only value is as sexual commodities.