Really Big Ideas

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.