Stereotypes
A brief history of the "nappy headed ho", brought to us by BlackProf.com
Image found at Jim Crow Museum
of Racist Memoribilia :
Jezebel Stereotype
The power of slaveholders to exploit, expose, and control the sexuality of black women was overwhelming. Slaveholders could keep black women and their children in a state of near-nakedness while asserting that modesty and civility required full clothing. They could and did encourage frequent slave pregnancies through a variety of punishments and rewards. They then interpreted black women’s evident fertility as evidence of their uncontrolled sexuality.
The insatiable, sexual black woman did important work for Southern society. The myth of Jezebel created space for white moral superiority. Because she was a seductress, Jezebel justified the sexual brutality of Southern white men. Jezebel not only protected white men’s morality, so assured the purity of white women by offering a sexual alternative to white prostitution.
The point here is that Jezebel is more than a demeaning and false stereotype of black women [...] Jezebel is a deliberate characterization that does a specific service in the context American politics and society.
Blackness | Exploitation | Mysogyny | Myths | Prostitution | Racism | sexuality | slavery | Stereotypes
Firing Stephen Foster, Promoting Uncle Ben
What follows is completely true and yet unreal.
Stephen Foster met Uncle Ben in my radio reverie this morning. For real, or so it seemed. (Y'all know I hear odd connections in that place between asleep and awake.)
Two southern stories that seem literally black and white, but turn out to be anything but.
Radio news reported that the Southland's good old-fashioned composer is on his way out; our conservative and affable new governor actually refuses to have our state song played in his presence! (yet in the same breath he says "whatever the people want satisfies me" and that sure sounds unreal to me.)
Nobody said anything unmannerly or politically correct about unpopular language, although that's likely the truth. One legislator did mention the word "darkies" but to hear them tell it, it's not that, just the times they are a'changin' . . .hey, now THAT would make a great state song!
Meanwhile good old-fashioned Uncle Ben got a promotion to Chairman of the Board. He isn't the kindly kitchen rice-cooker anymore, now he's the Donald Trump of Rice, with his own fancy penthouse office, jet-setting schedule and authoritative rice-education curriculum. (You can poke around his empty office, open his travel journal, it feels almost like corporate espionage, with him hanging on the wall watching your every move!)
change | Cooking | Culture | Dress Codes | Makeovers | Movies | Radio | State Songs | Stereotypes | Colin Powell | Conservatism | Florida Legislature | Homeschooling | Stephen Foster | The South | Uncle Ben
