by bell hooks
Systematic devaluation of black womanhood was not simply a
direct consequence of race hatred, it was a calculated method of social control. During the reconstruction years, manumitted black people had demonstrated that given the same opportunities as whites they could excel in all areas. Their accomplishments were a direct challenge to racist notions about the inherent inferiority of dark races. In those glorious years, it seemed that black people would quickly and successfully assimilate and amalgamate into the mainstream of American culture. White people reacted to the progress of black people by attempting to return to the old social order. To maintain white supremacy they established a new social order based on apartheid. The period in American history is commonly known as the Jim Crow or “separate but equal” years, but both phrases shift attention away from the fact that separation of the races once slavery ended was a deliberate political move on the part of white supremacists. As miscegenation represented the greatest threat to white racial solidarity, a complex system of laws and social taboos was enacted to maintain separation of the races. In most states laws were enacted forbidding inter-racial marriage, but such laws did not prevent blacks and whites from uniting. Manumitted black men and white women in northern states were married in noticeable numbers. White men, who so desired, legalized relationships with ex-slave women. A report of a marriage between a white man and a black woman published in a New Orleans newspaper, the Tribune, carried the headlines, “The World Moves.” In the article, the journalist advised other white men to “take a hint now that the law allows it legitimize their children.” Inter-racial marriages between black women and white men evoked fear and rage in the white public. White male legalized sexual unions with black women and black male legalized sexual unions with white women threatened the entire foundation of apartheid. Since anti-amalgamation laws were not sufficient deterrents to interracial marriage, white men used psychological warfare to enforce the ideal of white supremacy. They employed two important myths to brainwash all whites against the newly manumitted blacks: the myth of the “bad,” sexually loose black woman and the myth of the black male rapist. Neither myth
was based on fact.
At no time in the early part of the 20th century were any large numbers of black men raping white women or seeking illicit relationships with them. Joseph Washington, Jr.’s, study of inter-racial union, Marriage in Black and White, documents the fact that black men who sought relationships with white women were eager for marriage. White people were never reacting to any high incidence of inter-racial rape during reconstruction; they simply wanted to prevent inter-racial marriage. They used lynchings, castration, and other brutal punishments to prevent black men from initiating relationships with white women. They perpetuated the myth that all black men were eager to rape white women so that white females would not seek friendships with black men for fear of brutal assault. The horrific nature of violent attacks on black manhood has caused historiographers and sociologists to assume that whites feared unions between white women and black men most. In actuality, they feared legally sanctioned racial mixing on the part of the sexes of either group, but as black men were more likely to seek legal sanction through marriage of their relationships with white women, they received the brunt of attacks by white supremacists. By brainwashing white women to see black men as savage beasts, white supremacists were able to implant enough fear in the white female’s psyche so that she would avoid any contact with black men.
In the case of black women and white men, inter-racial sex was both encouraged and condoned as long as it did not lead to marriage. By perpetuating the myth that all black women were incapable of fidelity and sexually loose, whites hoped to so devalue them that no white man would marry a black woman. After manumission, white men who treated black women with respect or sought to integrate a black female into respectable white society were persecuted and ostracized. During slavery, it had been a common occurrence for an upper class or middle class white man to take a black woman mistress and live openly with her without incurring much public disapproval. In Roll, Jordan, Roll Eugene Genovese comments:
Some prominent planters flaunted their slave mistresses and mulatto children. David Dickson of Georgia, one of the most celebrated leaders in the movement to reform southern agriculture, lost his wife early in life, took a mistress, and accepted a measure of social disapproval to live openly with her and their children. Bennett H. Barrow of Louisiana exploded with rage over similar conduct on the part of his neighbors. His fellow planters of West Feliciana Parish were, he said, of course all opponents of the abolitionists. “Yet, the people submit to amalgamation in its worst form in this Parish. Josias Grey takes his mulatto children with him to public places, etc. and receives similar company from New Orleans...” The first mayor of Memphis, Marcus Winchester, had a beautiful quadroon mistress whom he married and took to Louisiana. His successor, Ike Rawlins, lived with a slave woman. He did not marry her but did provide handsomely for their sons. And the haughty nabobs of Natches had their own scandals. Other white observers report such relationships, displayed publicly and accepted by society with nothing worse than muttering and minor social ostracism. Several daughters of wealthy free Negroes married respectable white men.
Marriages between black women and white men could be tolerated during slavery because they were so few in number and represented no threat to the white supremacist regime. After manumission they were no longer tolerated. In the state of Kentucky, the Supreme Court was asked to judge insane a white man who desired to marry a female slave he had once owned. Once slavery ended and whites declared that no black woman regardless of her class status or skin color could ever be a “lady,” it was no longer socially acceptable for a white man to have a black mistress. Instead, the institutionalized devaluation of black womanhood encouraged all white men to regard black females as whores or prostitutes. Lower class white men, who had had little sexual contact with black women during slavery, were encouraged to believe they were entitled to access to the bodies of black women. In large cities their lust for black female sex objects led to the formation of numerous houses of prostitution which supplied black bodies to meet the growing demands of white men. The myth perpetuated by whites that black women were the possessors of a heightened sexuality encouraged white male rapists and sexual exploiters. This myth
so dominated the psyches of whites that a southern white male writer asserts:
I knew all about the sexual act, but not until I was twelve years old did I know that it was performed with white women for pleasure; I had thought that only Negro women engaged in the act of love with white men just for fun, because they were the only ones with the animal desire to submit that way.
Racial integration in the latter part of the 20th century caused many barriers against inter-racial marriages to be torn down. Yet the amalgamation of the races that sociologists had predicted might take place did not occur. While black men married white women in ever-increasing numbers, large numbers of white men did not marry black women. These differences in responses were no accident. While changes in public attitudes toward black men had occurred, there had not been any change in negative images of black women. The myth that all black men were rapists had ceased to dominate the consciousness of the American public by the 70s. One explanation for the change was the growing knowledge of the way in which this myth was used by whites in power to persecute and torture black men. Once the myth was no longer accepted as absolute truth, white women who so desired could freely engage in relationships with black men and vice versa.
The success of movies like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and The Great White Hope revealed that the white American public was not averse to acknowledging attractions between black men and white women that led to marriage. The public’s acceptance of these movies indicates that it no longer feared black males and white females uniting. While the myth that all black men are rapists is no longer perpetuated by a majority of whites, they continue to promote the
myth that all black women are sexually loose and they use devaluation of black womanhood as a way to discourage marriage between large numbers of white men and black women. White Americans have legally relinquished the apartheid structure that once characterized race relations but they have not given up white rule. Given that power in capitalist patriarchal America is in the hands of white men, the present obvious threat to white
solidarity is inter-marriage between white men and non-white women, and in particular black women. As whites have been much more voyeuristically, phobically interested in sexual relationships between white women and black men, the existence of rigid social taboos prohibiting white male marriage to black females is often totally ignored, yet such taboos may prove to have far greater impact on our society than taboos against black male-white female mating. The white American public that could dismiss with disinterest contemporary showings of movies like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner that depict black male marriage to a white woman on national television reacted with outrage and anger when a day time soap opera, Days of Our Lives, aired a program in which a respectable young white male was shown falling in love with a black female.
Taboos against white women mating with black men were maintained by white men because they were interested in limiting the sexual freedom of white women and insuring that their female “property” was not trespassed on by black men. Now that improved male-invented contraceptive devices have diminished the emphasis on female sexual purity and provided all men greater access to women’s bodies, white men have shown less interest in overseeing the sexual activities of white women. In contemporary times, marriages between black men and white women are more readily accepted and occur in ever increasing numbers. Explanations as to why marriages between white women and black men are more readily accepted than marriages between white men and black women can be found in patriarchal sexual politics. Since white women represent a powerless group when not allied with powerful white men, their marriage to black men is no great threat to existing white patriarchal rule. In our patriarchal society if a wealthy white woman marries a black man she legally adopts his status. Accordingly a black woman who marries a white man adopts his status; she takes his name and their children are his heirs. Consequently, if a large majority of that small group of white men who dominate decision-making bodies in American society were to marry black women, the foundation of white rule would be threatened.
A complex system of negative myths and stereotypes daily socializes white men to regard black women as unsuitable marriage partners. In American history, white men have never sought to marry black women in as great numbers as black men have sought to marry white women. Scholars have argued that since white men have always had “free,” unlimited access to the bodies of black women they have seen no need to legitimize these relationships by marriage. This argument fails to show consideration of the various factors that determine marriage suitability. Joseph Washington comments:
White men have failed to be serious in their relationships with the black woman in comparison to the seriousness of relationships between the black man and the white woman.
He offers as an explanation for this attitude white male perception of black women as “beasts,” sexual savages who are unfit for marriage. Washington does not discuss the fact that white people deliberately perpetuate myths about black female bestial sexuality so as to discourage white men from seeing black women as suitable marriage partners. Whites condone inter-racial relationships between black women and white men only in the context of degrading sex. The mass media, especially television, is one way that negative images of black womanhood continue to be impressed upon all our psyches. In the daytime soap opera in which the young white man falls in love with a black female, she is depicted solely in terms of negative stereotypes. Her features are distorted by excessive make-up, a greasy type substance is used on her lips in order to make them look thicker than they are; she wears a wig and dresses in garments that cause her to seem slightly overweight. In real life the black woman in no way resembles the character she portrays on the soap, and she is the only character who is made to look radically different, whose features are grossly distorted. Without the distortions she is a healthy, attractive looking woman who in no way resembles white people’s negative stereotype of black women. Significantly, the facial features of the white woman who is her rival are not altered in any way. In recent years, the most revolting image of black womanhood on television was portrayed in a situation comedy called Detective School. There the black woman is constantly ridiculed for her ugliness, her bad temper, etc. White men in the show are either mocking her or attacking her physically. The white women she is contrasted with are blonde and stereotypically attractive. In other television shows the predominant image of black women is that of the sex object, prostitute, and whore, etc. The second image is that of the overweight nagging maternal figure. Even those shows that have cast black female children depict them within the framework of negative stereotypes. The little black girl on the situation comedy What’s Happening was portrayed as a miniature Sapphire—constantly nagging and telling tales on her brother. Black women have fared no better in American film. A recent film with another image of black womanhood was Remember My Name, a movie that was glorifying the toughness of today’s “liberated” white woman. Significantly, a measure of her toughness is that she is able to beat and brutalize a black woman who just happens to have a white boyfriend. The images of black women that are seen as positive usually are those that depict the black woman as a longsuffering, religious, maternal figure, whose most endearing characteristic is her self-sacrificing self-denial for those she loves.
Negative images of black women in television and film are not simply impressed upon the psyches of white males, they affect all Americans. Black mothers and fathers constantly complain that television lowers the self-confidence and self-esteem of black girls. Even on television commercials the black female child is rarely visible—largely because sexist-racist Americans tend to see the black male as the representative of the black race. So commercials and advertisements in magazines may portray a white female and male but feel that it is enough to have a black male to represent black people. The same logic occurs in regular television programs. On many shows there are single black male figures or single black female figures but rarely are a black woman and man together. In some instances as is often the case on Saturday Night Live, black men dress in female clothing and portray black women, usually mocking and ridiculing them. Whites who control media exclude black women so as to emphasize their undesirability either as friends or sexual partners. This also promotes divisiveness between black men and black women, for white people are saying via their manipulation of black roles that they accept black men but not black women. And black women are not accepted because they are seen as a threat to the existing race-sex hierarchy.
While negative images of black womanhood are used to impress upon white men their undesirability as marriage partners, the belief that all white men desire from black women is illicit sex prevents black women from seeking such unions. Just as whites have not been interested in myths and stereotypes black people perpetuate about them, there is little discussion of the fact that the idea that all white men are eager to rape black women continues to be a widespread belief in black communities. Of course this belief was once based on the actual fact that for many years large numbers of white men could and did sexually exploit black women. The fact that this may no longer be the case has not caused black
people (and in particular black men) to change their attitudes, largely because many black people are just as committed to racial solidarity as white people and they believe it can best be maintained by discouraging legalized union between white men and black women.
Black men have a vested interest in maintaining existing barriers which discourage black female-white male marriage, for it eliminates sexual competition. Just as sexist white folks used the idea that all black men were rapists to
limit the sexual freedom of white women, black people employ the same tactic to control black female sexual behavior. For many years, black people warned black females to beware involvement with white men for fear such relationships would lead to exploitation and degradation of black womanhood. While there is no need to deny the historical fact that white men have sexually exploited black women, this knowledge is used by the white and black public as a psychological weapon to limit and restrain the freedom of black females. Black females who have been socialized by parents to feel threatened or even terrorized by contact with white men often have difficulty relating to white male employers, teachers, doctors, etc. There are many black women who have as phobic a fear about white male sexuality as the fear white women have traditionally felt towards black men. Phobic fear is not a solution to the problem of sexual exploitation or rape. It is a symptom. While an awareness of male power to rape women with impunity in a patriarchal society is necessary for woman’s survival, it is even more important that women realize that they can prevent such assaults and protect themselves should they occur.
