Patricia Hill Collins Contribution To Negative Stereotypes Of Black Women

Black women’s assumed qualities contribute to negative stereotypes of Black women. Dominant ideologies use these negative portrayals to oppress and control Black women, ultimately elevating white male ideas and interests (Collins, 1989: 7). This method of suppressing Black feminist thought – what Patricia Hill Collins refers to as “controlling images” – is especially pertinent to Dorothy Roberts’ claim that naturalizing characteristics such as lasciviousness and neglectfulness onto Black women leads to icons such as Jezebel, the immoral Black mother, and Mammy, the negligent Black mother. These icons, collections of negative qualities tacked onto the category “Black women,” suppress Black women’s reproductive liberties and Black feminist thought,
a practice tracing back, and deeply related to slavery (Collins, 1989: 7). Dominant ideologies locate sexuality within Black women – the lowest of the social hierarchy and supposedly the most primal.
Assuming Black women to be the locus of sexuality, negative stereotypes like Jezebel, the immoral Black mother, arise (Roberts, 1998: 11). This image of Black women acts as a foil for white women. Black women’s eroticism enhances white women’s chastity and elevates them as morally superior True Women, reinforcing the “system of social control designed to keep African-American women in an assigned, subordinate place” even after emancipation (Roberts, 1998: 10-11; Collins, 1989: 7). Additionally, locating sexuality within Black women allows white men to sexually exploit their human property without penalty because the law didn’t recognize the rape of slave women (Roberts, 1998: 29). The rapes of Black women have been left largely unrecognized because of the white men’s sense of entitlement to Black women’s bodies and the unrespectability of Black women for their supposed inherent sexuality, both of which stem from the time slave women were legally human property, inferior to white people, and seen as more primitive. Dr. Flint’s wife terrorizes Linda during the night because, buying into the images that white elite men constructed, Dr. Flint’s wife believed that Black women were the locus of sexuality, the locus of problems (Jacobs, 2001: 31). These practices stem from slave owners’ economic stake in the ability of slave women to produce and reproduce, ultimately elevating and profiting the white
man. Black women have been assumed to be neglectful to their children, giving rise to negative stereotypes such as Mammy, the negligent Black mother. “While whites adored Mammy, who dutifully nurtured white children, they portrayed Black slave mothers as careless and unable to care for their own children” (Roberts, 1998: 14). Again, characteristics naturalized onto Black women create a negative stereotype that acts as a foil and enhances qualities of white women and their place as morally superior. Yet Mammy was “both the perfect mother [for the employer’s children] and the perfect slave,” because she was an icon of devotion to and subservience under white families (Roberts, 1998: 13). Evelyn Nakano Glenn quotes Tucker’s report, “All whites […] ‘assume that you have a mother, or an older daughter to keep your child, so it’s all right to leave your kids’” (Glenn, 1992: 18). This employer invested in the stereotype of Black women’s hyperfertility to justify her employee’s attention to her children, rather than the Black woman’s own children. Today, popular culture contributes to controlling images that oppress Black women and elevate white men. While Aunt Jemima’s face still appears on syrup containers, American culture “upholds no popular image of a Black mother tenderly nurturing her child” (Roberts, 1998: 15). Icons concentrated like Mammy, the negligent mother, serve white men and propagate the suppression of Black women’s ideas and interests. Dominant structures of power naturalized negative qualities onto slave women and create icons from negative stereotypes of Black women. This racist mythology, which Collins refers to as “controlling images,” elevates white male ideas and interests in scholarship and in popular culture while justifying the suppression of Black feminist thought (Collins, 1989: 7). White women achieve Victorian ideals of womanhood by defining themselves against their foils – Black women. White ladies’ chastity and motherliness are elevated when compared to the Jezebel’s immoral sexuality and Mammy’s neglect of her own children. However, Black women’s outsider-within perspective has challenged white male authority and contributing in reclaiming the tradition of Black feminist thought (Collins, 1989: 10-13).