3. Análisis del mercado
3.4 Análisis de la competencia
Patricia Hill Collins updated some of the stereotypes discussed above in her 2005 book Black Sex-‐ ual Politics. My focus here is on Collins’s discussion of the distinctive ways that representations of Black women in the current climate of post-‐racism and post-‐sexism are classed. Collins argues that these new images functioned to explain the success and failure of Black women in the post-‐civil rights context where everyone is presumed equal. On the one hand, the representations of poor working-‐class Black women show that they “allegedly lack the values of hard work, marriage, school performance, religiosi-‐ ty, and clean living attributed to middle-‐class White Americans” (Collins, 2005, p. 177). On the other hand, representations of middle-‐class Black women “describe the space of respectability for newly ac-‐ cepted Black people. These Black people are different from middle-‐class Whites, but the representations of middle-‐class Black people are not a threat to power relations” (p. 178). The success or failure of Black women is framed by these representations “in terms of the unwillingness of poor and/or working-‐class Black people to shed their Blackness and the willingness of middle-‐class Black people to assimilate” (p. 178).
2.4.1 Stereotypes of Working-‐class Black Women
Collins (2005) identifies and explains two controlling images of Black women specific to poor and working-‐class identities: the “bitch” and the “bad Black mother.” The image of the bitch “depicts Black women as aggressive, loud, rude, and pushy” (p. 123). Using the term “bitch” in reference to women is
intended to put them in their place, and it also works to “defeminize and demonize them,” (p. 123). Ac-‐ cording to Collins, “the term bitch becomes a way of stigmatizing poor and working-‐class Black women who lack middle-‐class passivity and submissiveness” and works to rationalize racial and sexist discrimi-‐ nation encountered by African American women (p. 138). Examples of this stereotype include Pam Grier’s characters in the films Sheba, Baby and Foxy Brown, the main character in Sister Souljah’s book
The Coldest Winter Ever, and rapper Lil’ Kim (Collins, 2005, pp. 124-‐127). Working-‐class and poor Black women are also stereotyped as bad Black Mothers (Collins, 2005, p. 130). According to Collins, “bad Black mothers (BBM) are those who are abusive and/or who neglect their children either in utero or af-‐ terward” (p. 130). BBMs are usually young, unmarried, extremely poor, and are the recipients of gov-‐ ernment assistance (p. 130). A version of the historical matriarch stereotype discussed in the previous section, BBMs include crack mothers, welfare mothers, and welfare queens (pp. 131-‐132). An example of this typecast is Halle Berry’s crack addicted character in Losing Isaiah (p. 131). According to Collins (2005), the image of the Black bitch and the bad Black mother “functions as ideology to justify new so-‐ cial relations of hyper-‐ghettoization, unfinished racial desegregation, and efforts to shrink the social wel-‐ fare state” (p. 137). In other words, these new stereotypes of poor and working-‐class Black women work to support neoliberal ideology and its social outcomes for Black women. These negative images of poor and working-‐class Black women are normalized in popular culture as “an authentic Black culture” and positioned as an example for Black women and society of what not to do in order to join the middle class: “African American women must reject this gender-‐specific version of authenticity in favor of a pol-‐ itics of respectability” (pp. 138-‐139). This version of respectable Black womanhood is articulated
through stereotypes of middle-‐class Black women.
2.4.2 Stereotypes of Middle-‐class Black Women
Collins (2005) identifies three representations of middle-‐class Black women in U.S. culture: the “Black lady,” the “modern mammy,” and the “educated Black bitch.” Controlling images of middle-‐class
Black women are an attempt to demonstrate how African American women should act in order to es-‐ cape the working-‐class. African American women who aspire to middle-‐class status have to reject the “gender-‐specific version of authenticity” in which working-‐class Black women are defined as bitches and bad Black mothers (Collins, 2005, p. 139). They also have to reject “the unbridled ‘freaky’ sexuality now attributed primarily to working-‐class Black women” (p. 139). In addition, “because middle-‐class Black women typically need to work in order to remain middle-‐class, they cannot achieve the status of the lady by withdrawing from the workforce” (p. 139).
The Black lady image is designed to be a rejoinder to the sexualized image of Black women propagated by the Jezebel. According to Collins (2005), achieving middle-‐class status means that Black women have rejected the unbridled ‘freaky’ sexuality now attributed to working-‐class Black women” (p. 139). The prototype for the Black lady image is the character of Claire Huxtable, the mother on the Cos-‐ by Show (p. 139). The Huxtables were an upper-‐middle class Black family who lived in a very nice house, and whose lives were apparently not touched by common societal problems like drugs or teenage preg-‐ nancy (p. 139). Collins (2005) explained that Clair Huxtable was “beautiful, smart, and sensuous,” and she was a successful lawyer who earned partner despite the fact that she was rarely shown outside the home (p. 139). In order to represent the kind of Black women able to join the middle class, the modern mammy image was put forward. According to Collins (2005), the modern mammy is required to negoti-‐ ate “a delicate balance between being appropriately subordinate to white and/or male authority, yet maintaining a level of ambition and aggressiveness needed for achievement in middle-‐class occupa-‐ tions” (p. 140). The modern mammy has to be aggressive, but only in the service of others and never for herself (p. 140). Oftentimes, this stereotype is combined with the “Black lady” stereotype in television programs like Law and Order, a television show that cast S. Epatha Merkerson, a black woman, as a lieu-‐ tenant in the New York City police department (Collins, 2005, p. 140). The educated Black bitch “has money, power, and a good job,” she is beautiful and sexy, and she is in charge of her body and her sexu-‐
ality (p. 145). Educated Black women can become educated Black bitches if they are perceived as un-‐ trustworthy, if they do not properly support Black men, or “if they have character traits that make them unappealing to middle-‐class Black men” (p. 146). Examples of educated Black women in popular films include the character of Jacqueline (Robin Givens) in Boomerang and Lysterine (Vivica Fox) in Booty Call (p. 144).
In the next section, I look more closely at the way these and other controlling images of Black women are have been played out on television programs in the U.S.