Stereotypes: 2
Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 28 of this newsletter! Today we continue the conversation on Stereotypes more specifically, we will talk about stereotypes of the Black community. From portrayals in pop culture to depictions in newspapers, the way in which Black Americans are portrayed affects the way in which society at large views them. Let’s break down depictions originating during slavery, talk through some of the first portrayals of Black folks in pop culture and culminate with the ways Black people are described and represented in the news in connection to crime. There’s a lot to unpack here, and a lot more to learn outside of this newsletter. Let’s get into it!
Let’s Get Into It
Many of the Black characters we see in movies, books and TV shows are derived from old stereotypes founded during slavery and exaggerated through minstrel shows, where white men wore blackface and created caricatures of Black human beings. Let’s talk about some of these stereotypes, and as you read about them, think about how familiar some of these are. They’re often seen in pop culture today, and continue to reaffirm to society that they are accurate and realistic representations of Black people. Let’s unpack some of these concepts.
Archetypes Derived From Chattel Slavery
The Mammy figure represents Black women as mothers, caregivers, selfless servants and trustworthy nurturers. This figure depicted house slaves as overweight, dark-skinned and middle-aged. The Mammy was the right hand to the white mistress and loved by all. Historians believe this idea was created to discredit the very real narrative that most house slaves were young and lightskin and the frequent victims of rape by their masters. Mammy was created to desexualize Black women in the home. The Mammy caricature implied that Black women were only fit to be domestic workers; thus, the stereotype became a rationalization for economic discrimination. During slavery only the very wealthy could afford to purchase Black women and use them as house servants, but during Jim Crow even middle class white women could hire Black domestic workers. With this fictionalized women portrayed in pop culture and talked about for generations, white folks sought to create her in their homes. But unlike Aunt Jemima or Aunt Chloe, these were real Black women, denied opportunities for economic freedom, bearing slavery by another name.
The Uncle Tom stereotype derives from the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was a pop culture depiction of an already established caricature of the time. Uncle Tom represents a Black man who is simple-minded and compliant but most essentially interested in the welfare of whites over that of other Blacks. Uncle Tom is often old, physically weak, psychologically dependent on whites for approval. White folks in the antebellum south upheld this figure as a loyal, religious, subservient character who, like The Mammy, was happy as slave and loved his master. During Black Lives Matter rallies, Black protestors called Black police officers Uncle Tom over riot shields and batons.
The Brute portrays Black men as innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal -- deserving punishment, maybe death. Black Brutes are depicted as predators who target helpless victims, especially white women. Historically, proponents of slavery created and promoted images of Black folks that justified slavery and soothed white consciences, depicting Black people as docile, childlike, groveling, ignorant or harmless. More importantly, slaves were rarely depicted as Brutes because that portrayal might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy and slave owners wanted everyone to stay as calm and small as possible. During the Radical Reconstruction period (1867-1877), many white writers argued that without slavery -- which supposedly suppressed their animalistic tendencies -- Blacks were reverting to criminal savagery, and this is where the Brute stereotype begins. At the beginning of the twentieth century, much of the virulent, anti-black propaganda that found its way into scientific journals, local newspapers, and best-selling novels focused on the stereotype of the Black rapist. The claim that Black Brutes were, in epidemic numbers, raping white women became the public rationalization for the lynching of Black men.
The Angry Black Women or Sapphire with masculine features and dark skin, the hypersexual light-skinned Jezebel with Eurocentric features, the disrespectful and dimwitted Coon and childlike and ignorant Sambo, are all violent attacks on Black character, intelligence and virtue. I encourage you to explore these depictions more deeply, but for today’s newsletter, I want to dive deeper into how some of the archetypes above have translated to pop culture today.
Depictions in Pop Culture
Through this research I have been overwhelmed by the massive amount of stereotypes we see in modern pop culture. We see the crack head, pimp, drug dealer and prostitute, largely fueled by unfair media coverage and the emergence of reality shows like Cops, which disproportionately highlighted and televised Black and Brown criminals, though they make up a smaller percentage of the population and a smaller percentage of crimes than white people. We see the Welfare Queen who is a lazy Black women living off of the government, even though 43% of those on welfare are white, with 18% being Black. This trope is fueled by Linda Taylor, a mixed race women who became an infamous criminal for fraud as she was targeted by Ronald Reagan and more. We see Black people depicted as superhuman athletes more closely related to animals than humans, dominating sports because of breeding. Though the real reason why 75% of NBA players and 65% of NFL players are Black has more to do with societal expectations and the fact that many Black role models are rappers or athletes, while founding fathers, scientists, doctors and astronauts shown in school textbooks are almost exclusively white. There are too many tropes to unpack, but here are a few. What others have you learned?
The Black Brute stereotype was depicted for the world to see in The Birth of a Nation, a landmark of film history, as the first 12-reel film ever made and, at three hours, also the longest up to that point. A white man in blackface portrays a violent and dangerous rapist who terrorizes a white women. Just to be clear, in the most historic movie in cinematic technology, the first of its kind, we see a white man in blackface specifically and intentionally represent Black men as violent rapists. I want to continue unpacking the Brute stereotype as we ask about news coverage and portrayal.
Racial Bias in News Coverage
Have you ever heard the term Superpredator? John DiIulio, a professor at Princeton, coined the term in 1995. He predicted a coming wave of “superpredators”: “radically impulsive, brutally remorseless” “elementary school youngsters who pack guns instead of lunches” and “have absolutely no respect for human life.” As DiIulio and Fox themselves later admitted, the prediction of a juvenile superpredator epidemic turned out to be wrong. But after seeing Black men—since the first film ever created—being portrayed as violent criminals, it was easy for America to point to Black boys and label them as not just predators, but Superpredators. This rhetoric not only frightened white Americans, but made Black folks afraid of their Black neighbors.
In the 1970’s “The War on Drugs” was another war on young Black men. Nixon’s policy chief said, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”
In today’s media, the news portrays that 72% of assaults are perpetrated by Black people, while in reality it is closer to 49%. On New York’s local news, 80% of theft discussed on the news is committed by Black people, while theft by Black folks accounts for approximately 55% of the NYPD’s arrests.
Black men comprise about 13% of the male population, but about 35% of those incarcerated. 1 in 3 black men born today can expect to be incarcerated in his lifetime, compared to 1 in 6 Latino men and 1 in 17 white men. Black women are similarly impacted: 1 in 18 Black women born in 2001 is likely to be incarcerated sometime in her life, compared to 1 in 111 white women.
Do you remember the Black Brute? Dangerous. Frightening. Criminal. Does this seem familiar?
There are so many more stereotypes perpetuated by the news, by societal expectations, by pop culture and within our own biases. This week’s newsletter is just a starting point. What do you think of when you think of a Black man or Black women or Black child or Black person? What stereotypes are you believing and perpetuating? Do you see the thread that connects the desires of white supremacy to the depictions of Black human beings? Take a moment and think about what you just read and how you can use it to fuel some new interactions and perceptions in your day to day life.
Next week, we dive into stereotypes around the Latinx community. See ya there.
