black body is “less of a thing or being, than a shifting or changing historical meaning that is subject to cultural configuration and reconfiguration.”
I think this really highlights a point I don't often hear made, which is just how deep systemic racism goes. It's not just judgment based on the color of one's skin, it goes way beyond that. For people who don't believe in/can't understand why systemic racism has pervaded the societal norm for so long, this is why.
While After Earth breaks new ground as the first Hollywood science fiction film to star a young black male child, its depic-tion of the child hero is much less groundbreaking.
This snippet made me excited to discuss Black Girlhood + Science Fiction, because I think there are many nuanced explanations for why black girls and black people are not often portrayed in science fiction, beyond just lack of representation. Also I'm hoping we discuss Ava DuVernay's "A Wrinkle in Time" because I think I would be able to watch it with a new lens, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it.
In the Little Rascal’s episode “Little Daddy” (1931) Stymie and Farina discuss why “daddy’s in jail” and in “A Lad an’ a Lamp” (1932) Stymie asks the lamp for some “chicken” and to “get his daddy outta jail”: his requests both historically rooted and are persis-tent stereotypes about blacks.
a stereotype still commonplace in cinema today
Today, teen black girls are routinely depicted in reality television shows and music videos as hypersexual and aggressive. Such images, in contrast to white teen girl images, which most often emphasize innocence and purity, instead suggest “the overt sexuality of the black child,” and espe-cially poor black girls, drawing attention to the power of white discourse to frame cultural notions of childhood
this reminds me of an episode of dance moms where Nia is given a pretty overtly sexual dance for her age and when her mom is upset about it, TLC poses her as the instigator and villain
the sole purpose of the majority of women in these types of music videos is to expose their bottoms for male visual pleasu
what constitutes these types of music videos? Not acknowledging that women have chosen to be in this role shows a lack of nuance in my opinion. And even more so than that, in many Nicki Minaj videos there are women around "exposing their bottoms", so would this author consider that a positive expression of sexuality or featuring the Jezebel stereotype. Hoping this reading addresses the ways that women have been able to own more of their own autonomy
xample of the ways in which young black women are portrayed as the overtly sexual Jezebel figure, their worth equated with their bottom size
I do agree that this is definitely remnants of the "Jezebel", especially with the dynamic of the video being made by a man for men, however I also think its okay if its also just women having fun and dancing, especially black women having fun. It's not their fault that their bodies have been characterized this way and whenever we consider every time they dance as a way of perpetuating that stereotype, it's not really fair.
She is a sexual being, but not one that white men would consider.
The juxtaposition of these depictions of black women as sexual but "grotesque" versus the actual common practice of white men raping black women shows another proof that they were already spreading the idea of these women as asking for it. That even their "monstrous" appearance couldn't prevent men from resisting their pull because they were so aggressively sexual.
persistent depiction of black woman as “sexually lascivious provided an excuse for imagining that they always consented
Succinct way of putting an idea that is still a threat to women today
black women have historically had to fight the racism battle on two fronts: their humanity and their femininity.
intersectionality