Post 4 - These Views are Deep and Can Be Traced

Melissa Harris Perry speaks about “the crooked room” in the first chapter of Sister Citizen. Black women are forced to exist in a reality that has been predetermined by a society that does not anticipate nor appreciates their existence. “When they confront race and gender stereotypes, black women are standing a crooked room, and they have to figure out which way is up” (29). The crooked room exemplifies the complexity of the black women’s lives as they try to live beyond the caricatures that society has built for them, and often times it is difficult. With a limited amount of images within mainstream media and laws that promote positive messages of black women owning their sexuality, many women end up standing tilted in their crooked room called reality.

Sarah Baartman was exploited in Europe as
the example of the otherness of the
black body.

            It has documented throughout history that black woman and her sexuality has been a phenomenon. Exhibits and images of Hottentot Venus circulated during the early 19^th century as an example of the otherness of the black female body from the exemplary white female body. Venus’ whose real name was Sarah “Saartjie” Baartman was exploited, and ridiculed by Europeans. For four years she was put on display as if she was an animal. After her death in 1815, she “the subject of a gruesome, hypersexual, post-mortem dissection” (Elkins) Her organs were placed on displaced on display for more than 150 years in the Museum of Man in Paris. Baartman seemed to only exist for the white gaze as her body became a spectacle for white people.

            In the United States in the mid-19^th century the slave trade was abolished. Black women were seen as child bearers to create more workers for the exploitative work of slavery. The black women’s body was also for the use of the master. He would be able to sexually assault her with no one countering his power. For many white men as well as society, the black woman was the exotic beauty who had innate sexual libido within her therefore even if she was assaulted it would not matter. She brought that upon herself.

            In the 1920s, during the Harlem Renaissance, white visitors were enticed to come to Harlem to experience the “primitiveness and authenticity of the black life, enjoyed and came to expect Harlem’s ‘hot’ and ‘barbaric’ jazz, the risqué lyrics, and the ‘junglelike’ dancing of its cabaret floor shows” (Hicks 418) These visitors were just seeing what they wanted to see and nothing more.

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was a blues singer during the Harlem
Renaissance who challenged the heterosexual norm.
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey- Prove It On Me

According to Cheryl D, Hicks, young black single women were criminalized for going to dancehalls and hanging out with certain people. Harriet Holmes was arrested in 1923 for prostitution. She was walking home from a dancehall when four men, who were police, ambushed her, shoved her into her a car, accused of prostitution, and sentenced to spend time in prison (429). Holmes was one of many one women who were arrested and charged with sex crimes when many said they were innocent of prostitution at least at the time of arrest. It is important to recognize the stereotypes that were projected onto the innocent women who were charged with prostitution and the need for the state to control them. As supposed hypersexual beings, it seemed impossible for a black woman to not be a prostitute. Going out for a night, after a full week of working, made young females vulnerable to being arrested. The black female body was perceived as immoral and prone to explicit sexual activity. And how could a black woman counter these ideas, when it was porobably a white officer accusing her of such a crime?

            Many years have passed since Harriet Holmes’s arrest, laws have been created that promote equality and recognition of the black body, there is still a fundamental issue with how the government and society perceive the black female body and her sexuality. Elaine Riddick was sterilized in 1968 after giving birth to her son, who was the result of a sexual attack. Her illiterate grandmother consented to Riddick’s sterilization in response to the threat of her government aid being taken away from her. Riddick did not know anything about the sterilization until she was 19, five years later. Her choice of motherhood ended when the government took that option away from her. When Riddick asked why the state of North Carolina chose to end her fertility, they responded that she was feeble minded and prone to promiscuity. A government that saw Riddick a burden, determining that her children would be future deviants of the state.

That choice to have children was taken away from many women of color of low socioeconomic status as early as the 1930s. Jennifer Nelson says in the introduction from Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement, the government decided the right to motherhood for many women. Federally funded clinics were created with the purpose to lower black rights reason that black women were incompetent (4).  In Riddick’s case as well as demonstrated in the previous paragraphs, black women have not had control of their sexuality and their bodies. They have been figments within a crooked room. Having their power taken away from them, stereotypes forced upon them, and attempting to find a sense of self is a difficult and exhaustive. It has become simpler for women to succumb to the pressures of society and essentially renounce the power that they have, but it is crucial to fight. Audre Lorde wrote in “Poetry is not a Luxury” “For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true sprit rises…These places of possibility within ourselves are dark and deep because they are ancient and hidden…Within these deep places, each of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power…the woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, ancient and it is deep.” It is necessary for women, especially of women of color take back that power, and reinforce it. Women of color have proven to be resilient, creative, and wise beings that can change the world.

It is imperative to recognize images that are constructions of societal stereotypes and how they are perpetuated throughout media and history. Women of color were and have been oppressed by white patriarchal racist misogynistic capitalistic power that exists everywhere throughout the world especially within the realms of government. It is necessary to understand that idea to effectively create change in the narrative and how people think.  Images of the hypersexual young black woman, the asexual black mother, the welfare queen, and Sapphire are all constructs that allow society to accept black women easier. Placing women in exaggerated categories undermine their power as individuals and as a group. Addressing those issues are essential to changing them. “My silence has not protected me. Your silence will not protect you,” said by Audre Lorde in “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”. Remaining silent on the pressing issues of societal perceptions of black female bodies will hinder society rather than help it.

Although seen as a hypersexual being, it is important to recognize Beyonce as a powerful being. She has dominated world charts in music, changed how we see pop music and has owned her sexuality. She challenges society, forcing them to try and place a label on her, demonstrating a power that exists when claiming something as powerful as her sexuality. Beyonce symbolizes the fight for women and their human right to identity, including their sexuality.

                           "Drunk In Love" lyrics place Beyonce's sexuality at the of the forefront.

                          The declaration of her sexuality is empowering and her confidence is amazing, 

                                          especially beside her husband, Jay-Z.

Bibliography

“Blacks Sterilized by Eugenics Program funded by Margaret Sanger’s Financier.” Online video clip. Youtube, 11 April 2014. Web.

Elkins, Caroline. “A Life Exposed” The New York Times. 14 Jan 2007. Web.

Harris-Perry. Melissa. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Print.

Hicks, Cheryl D. “ ‘Bright and Good Looking Girl’: Black Women’s Sexuality and ‘Harmful Intimacy’ in Early-Twentieth- Century New York.” Journal od History of Sexuality 18.3 (2009): 418-456.

Lorde, Audre. “Poetry is Not a Luxury.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. USA: Crossing Press, 2007.

Lorde, Audre. “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” .” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. USA: Crossing Press, 2007.

Nelson, Jennifer. "Introduction: From Abortion to Reproductive Rights. "Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: New York UP, 2003. 1-20.