race/ethnicity: Blacks/Africans

As you may know, Disney has a movie coming out later this year called “The Princess and the Frog,” a retelling of the story of the princess who kisses a frog that then helpfully turns into a handsome prince for her to marry. The noteworthy aspect of this film, aimed at a mainstream audience, is that the female protagonist is African American. We’ve seen Disney films with non-White protagonists before–“Mulan” and “Pocahontas,” for instance–but to my knowledge there haven’t been any with a Black main character, unless I guess you count the Uncle Remus stuff, and that’s just a whole lot of ick.

While many people have eagerly awaited “The Princess and the Frog,” Disney’s long history of negative or stereotypical portrayals of non-White characters (i.e., “Fantasia“) meant many were concerned about what the final product might be, expressing concerns based on the trailer and other promotional materials that have emerged so far. Margaret Lyons at EW.com says,

Disney’s track record with racism and racist caricature makes me a little nervous when I see stuff like that toothless firefly.

According to Jezebel, “…Tiana was originally a maid named Maddy (to0 close to mammy?)…” And Leontine says,

…based on this trailer, the other things that Black people get to do are voodoo shit, playing jazz and dancing, and making jokes about their butts.  Charming.

For the record, the protagonist is only African American for part of the movie; for a good chunk of it she’s a green frog. But then, doesn’t the princess turn into an ogre in at least some of the “Shrek” movies? I can’t quite recall.

The movie website has a video game. In the game (from io9),

…Tiana, is sent on a mission to retrieve the rich white girl’s tiara, so she can borrow it, but along the way she’s asked to fetch some hot sauce for the gumbo before she has permission to get to the rich girl’s bedroom.

A screenshot of the hot sauce part:

Rebekah R. pointed out a deck of promotional cards handed out at Comic-Con (also at io9). There are some interesting gender and racial elements. Here are Tiana’s parents; note that her mother is “nurturing” while her father is “inspirational”:

Dr. Facilier is a “witch doctor,” practices voodoo, and looks a bit like cartoonish images of pimps I’ve seen now and then:

I did notice that the valet (is that the same as a butler?) for the prince is White rather than Black:

The text for one of the cards says “It’s not in yo’ cards”:

Here’s Mama Odie, the godmother figure, is a “seer” with a snake:

These images and objections are interesting by themselves, but they also bring up some of the difficulties in portraying groups that have historically been stereotyped negatively and occupied a subordinate social status. For instance, the fact that Tiana was originally going to be a maid wouldn’t, on the surface, necessarily be that different from “Cinderella,” in which the (White) protagonist is basically a maid. And there’s nothing wrong with playing jazz or, for that matter, practicing voodoo (which could be seen as very similar to the magic that is so common in kids’ films).

But of course, an image of a Black woman as a maid carries different connotations than that of a White woman doing the same job. There have certainly been large numbers of White maids  in the U.S. as well as other countries; in the late 1800s many female Irish immigrants to the U.S. took jobs as domestic servants. But they fairly quickly transitioned, as a group, into other types of work. African American women were stuck with jobs as maids a lot longer because of job discrimination. The “Mammy” figure, a happy-go-lucky servant pleased to take care of the White family she worked for, was applied exclusively to Black women.

Depicting Cinderella as a maid doesn’t play into pre-existing stereotypes of White women; it’s just an individual portrayal. A Black character cast as a maid, to many people, reproduces an image of Black women that goes beyond the individual–whether the creators intend to or not, such images bring with them associations to the Mammy character and real oppression of African American women in a culture that saw them primarily as servants for more privileged groups.

Disney may have intentionally tapped into those cultural images when Tiana was originally imagined as a maid for a White character (as well as including other stereotypical elements). Or the creators may have unthinkingly reproduced stereotypes because, when thinking about characters to use in a movie set in New Orleans with a Black protagonist, they drew on existing cultural imagery. In the absence of a concerted, thoughtful effort to avoid reproducing them, it’s not surprising that problematic elements show up in TV shows, movies, and so on.

Anyway, this should be an interesting situation to watch unfold when the movie is finally released.

UPDATE: Commenter John Lewis says,

This movie’s worth analyzing, but Gwen’s commentary here is not among the most insightful I’ve read on this blog. From my viewing of the trailer, without knowing much else about the film, I think she’s really reaching.

I don’t know that I’m “reaching,” exactly–we know quite a bit of other stuff about the film, such as the fact that Disney originally had Tiana cast as a maid, and that many people who want this to be a good film are very frightened about how it might turn out, which I think is fascinating in and of itself–but he’s right about it not being the best commentary ever. Meh. It’s free content, people, and this is the first week of classes. My brain works better at putting together a coherent argument some days than others. Taking the post down b/c it’s not my best, or b/c people say I’m off-base, seems sort of intellectually dishonest, like I’m trying to hide anything that gets criticized, so I guess I’ll just leave it up and people can read the critical comments.

And in my defense, it also turns out Disney has recut the trailer and some of the scenes that were in it when I first started writing up some commentary aren’t in it any more. I didn’t realize when I found a link to the trailer after the original link disappeared that it had been changed to leave out some things I found odd in the first one.

See also this post that includes a discussion of concerns that the movie “Up” wouldn’t be popular because it had an Asian lead character as well as our post on gender in Pixar films, gender roles in “Bee Movie,”

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Chrissy Y., Stacey S., and a former student of mine, Kenjus Watson, have all suggested that we post about the controversy over Olympic athlete Caster Semenya’s sex.

A lot of people are talking about whether or not it’s appropriate to be asking about her sex and why we would be so obsessed with knowing the answer. Those are fine questions (and I address them secondarily).  But first I would like to suggest that, even if we were to decide that it is appropriate to want to determine her sex (that we are obsessed with it for a good reason), it would be impossible to actually determine her sex definitively. Let me explain:

If you were to try to decide what qualifies a person as male or female, what quality would you choose?

I can think of eight candidates:

1. Identity (whatever the person says they are, they are)
2. Sexual orientation (boys dig girls, vice versa)
3. Secondary sex characteristics (e.g., boobs/no boobs, pubic hair patterns, distribution of fat on the body)
4. External genitalia (e.g., clitoris, labia, vaginal opening/penis and scrotum)
5. Internal genitalia (e.g., vagina, uterus, and fallopian tubes/epididymis, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, prostate, etc)
6. Hormones (preponderance of estrogens/androgens)
7. Gonads (ovaries/testes)
8. Chromosomes (XX/XY, the SRY gene)

Most of us assume that these criteria all line up. That is, that people with XY chromosomes have testes that make androgens which creates a penis, epididymis, vas deferens etc… all the way up to a male-identified person who wants to have sex with women.  We also assume that these things are binary (e.g., boobs/no boobs), when in reality most of them are on a spectrum (e.g., hormones, also boobs, likely sexual orientation).

But these criteria don’t always line up and sex-linked charactertics aren’t binary.  Examples of “syndromes” that disrupt these trajectories abound (e.g., Klinefelter’s syndrome).  And all kinds of practices, including surgeries, are sometimes used to force a binary when there isn’t one (e.g., intersex surgery to fix the “micropenis” and “obtrustive” clitoris and breast reduction surgery for men).

If these criteria don’t always line up, then we have to pick one as THE determinant of sex.  But any choice would ultimately be arbitrary.  The truth is that none of these criteria could ever actually definitively qualify a person as male or female.

The alternative would be to require that a person qualify as male or female according to ALL of the criteria.  And you might be surprised, then, how many people are neither male or female.

I think the debate over whether we should test Semenya’s sex is getting ahead of itself, given that there is no such test.

———————————————–

Yet, while we won’t be learning anything definitive about Semenya’s sex, the controversy does teach us something about our obsession with sex difference.  On MSNBC, Dave Zirin explains what the controversy over is really about:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK-w6lDOZ5Q[/youtube]

To me, one of the most interesting things that Zirin says is that sex isn’t actually a good indicator of athletic ability.  He may be a guy, he says, but having a penis doesn’t translate into outrunning anyone.

He is implying that sex segregation in athletics, as a rule, is more about an obsession with sex categories and their affirmation than it is about sports. Remember, Semenya’s sex is being questioned not just because she appears masculine to some (she always has), but because she kicked major ass on the track.

Kenjus, my former student, writes:

…why didn’t they test Usain Bolt?  He did amazingly well… Yet, his otherworldly accomplishments are considered the result of his never-before-seen body structure… Usain, however, is a big, strong, fast Black man. The fact that his times are just as mind-boggling as Caster’s gets lost in the widely accepted narrative that big, strong, fast Black men accomplish amazing athletic feats. It’s what they’re built for.

But this woman has apparently baffled the athletic and scientific experts because her body is not doing what a woman’s body is supposed to do. More specifically, her shape is too muscular, her voice is too deep, and her time is too fast. Essentially, “Semenya-the-woman” CANNOT exist in an exclusively two-gendered (i.e. men and women) society in which men are innately bigger, stronger, more deeply-voiced, and particularly FASTER than women…

Semenya is getting far more media attention than the recent cheating scandals of higher profile athletes. This is precisely because there’s something that separates Caster from an A-Rod, a Marion, a Sosa… The world is captivated by Caster because something that should be certain; unquestionable; medical; pre-ordained, is in flux.  It is regrettable that some athletes take illegal drugs to gain an edge over the competition. It’s entirely unethical, unnatural, and ungodly for an athlete to not fit into our narrow specifications of what constitutes gender or sex.

Indeed.  Our obsession with Semenya’s sex, in addition to being hurtful and invasive, says a great deal more about us, than it does about her.  And perhaps the reason we are so obsessed with proving Semenya’s sex, to bring this post back to its beginnings, is because binary sex doesn’t actually exist.  Me thinks we protest too much.

(Thanks to Mimi Schippers, via the Sociologists for Women in Society listserve, for alerting me to the video. Images found here and here.)

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Clayton W. alerted us to this September’s issue of Harper’s Bazaar. Paul Goude decided to photograph Naomi Campbell as if she were in Africa with animals.  Clayton writes that it “…very nearly turns her into some sort of animal.”  Below are some images from the photo shoot, courtesy of Womanist Musings (via Feministing):

On this cover of Vibe, Lil’ Kim is posed animalistically and, it is asserted, she is “ready to roar”:

NEW! Naomi Campbell, is also put in leopard print in this photo in the December 2008 issue of Russian Vogue (found here):

ALSO NEW! Iman with a cheetah, and with a cheetah print scarf on her head, as photographed by Peter Beard, 1985 (found here):

ALSO ALSO NEW! These two pictures of Grace Jones (from here) involve animalization (explicitly in the second case). These images may not be safe for work, so I’ve put them after the jump, along with another example:

more...

Associations of black people with monkeys and apes have been used for centuries to make them seem less-than-human and justify hatred and exploitation.  This associations continue to be propagated (e,g., here, here, and here).  This week Costco pulled the black “Lil’ Monkey” baby doll from its shelves, along with its white “Pretty Panda” counterpart, as a result of protests that it was racist.

As you can see, the black doll has on a hat that says “lil’ monkey,” is surrounded by products that have monkeys on them, as well as a stuffed monkey.  A peeled banana points at the child’s mouth.

Here is the white counterpart, the “Pretty Panda” doll:

The manufacturer of the dolls is claiming that there was no intention to be racist.  Specifically, they argued:

We don’t think in that way. We don’t operate in that kind of thinking.

Social psychologists have shown, robustly, that any given member of a society, even those who are the target of negative stereotypes, will hold pre-conscious stereotypical beliefs common in that society.  (If you’d like to test your own unconscious biases, and see aggregate test results of others, I highly recommend Harvard’s Project Implicit.)

The fact that we are all racist already, whether we like it or not, is the point that the manufacturer completely misses.  They do think in that way.  We all do.  Not thinking in that way consciously doesn’t mean that racism didn’t play a role in the manufacturing of a black Lil’ Monkey doll.  In fact, their defense actually makes things worse.  Their refusal to think about racism, in favor of a defensive reaction, is as racist as the doll itself.  We can’t fight racism unless we’re prepared to admit that we hold unconscious biases.

By the way, in my opinion, the proper response should have been: “Oh hell, we messed up bad. You are absolutely right. We are really bleeping sorry,” but with stronger curse words. And also: “Can I say I’m sorry again? In addition to racist, we were profoundly insensitive to centuries of violent hatred… and it is simply not okay.”

UPDATE: Commenters alerted me to alternative media coverage that made it clear that “Pretty Panda” and “Lil’ Monkey” dolls both came in black, white, and “Hispanic”:

I’m not sure why none of the media coverage I came across noted this.

In any case, I think this raises an even more interesting question: Does the history of associating black people with primates, and I will refer you again to this post, actually make any product that does so problematic?  Does the fact that the doll comes in white and Hispanic erase any concerns about the fact that the black doll exists?

As usual, our readers are quick to ask difficult questions and this discussion is already well under way in the comments.  What do you think?

Images from here, here, and here, via Resist Racism.

UPDATE: Comments on this post have been closed.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Tracy R. sent in the trailer for the movie “Good Hair,” a documentary by Chris Rock:

This movie looks awesome. It humorously addresses the social construction of “good” hair, which means, of course, straight hair. As we see in the trailer, African American women often feel pressured to wear their hair straight in order to be seen as attractive; this is similar to how lighter skin is often defined as more attractive than darker skin, even by other African Americans (and Latinos). It’s also interesting that the pursuit of “good” hair has created a global market for human hair.

On the topic of African American women and weaves, Sexual Buzz sent in this KGB “Natural Weave” commercial (KGB is a service where you can get answers to questions via text) that plays on the “angry sassy Black woman” image.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Carl G. sent in this cartoon, found at Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom, that ran during the 1864 Presidential election campaign and played on voters’ fears of racial mixing:

The following text accompanied the cartoon:

The Miscegenation Ball at the Headquarters of the Lincoln Central Campaign Club, Corner of Broadway and Twenty Third Street New York Sept. 22d. 1864 being a perfect fac simile of the room &c. &c. (From the New York World Sept. 23d. 1864). No sooner were the formal proceedings and speeches hurried through with, than the room was cleared for a “negro ball,” which then and there took place! Some members of the “Central Lincoln Club” left the room before the mystical and circling rites of languishing glance and mazy dance commenced. But that Many remained is also true. This fact We Certify, “that on the floor during the progress of the ball were many of the accredited leaders of the Black Republican party, thus testifying their faith by works in the hall and headquarters of their political gathering. There were Republican Office-Holders, and prominent men of various degrees, and at least one Presidential Elector On The Republican Ticket.

I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen, so it’s good to see that outright lying in political campaigns isn’t new.

It’s interesting that all the couples feature White men and Black women. Usually opponents to abolition or desegretation depicted White women with Black men, sometimes voluntarily, other times showing Black men as sexually aggressive predators who threaten White women’s virtue.

And of course, while they weren’t generally having “Negro balls,” many White men at the time were sexually involved with Black women, often (though not always) women they owned as slaves and who had little ability to say no to, or do anything about, their sexual advances. So the real outrage here would be not so much that White men were having (often coercive) sex with Black women, but that Black women and White men would be couples, socializing openly and in a situation of “universal freedom” that would put Black women on a more equal footing relative to their White partners (or, anyway, closer to the level of equality White women had with White men, which was more than Black women had but clearly left a lot to be desired).

On another note, Carl points out that even though this is a cartoon meant to incite fears of racial mixing among Whites, the African American women are not drawn in a way that makes them look grotesque or monstrous like so many cartoons at the time did.

Why did Bloomsbury Press choose this cover for a YA novel about a short-haired black girl? Maybe because, according to publishers, “black covers don’t sell.”

Justine Larbalestier, author of Liar, says she wanted an American cover similar to the Australian cover, which depicted the word “liar” in red letters. But Bloomsbury “has had a lot of success with photos of girls on their covers and that’s what they wanted.” So why a white girl? Larbalestier says not all the girls Bloomsbury proposed were white, but the one they went with may have to do with some upsetting prejudices in the publishing and bookselling industries. She writes:

Since I’ve told publishing friends how upset I am with my Liar cover, I have been hearing anecdotes from every single house about how hard it is to push through covers with people of colour on them. Editors have told me that their sales departments say black covers don’t sell. Sales reps have told me that many of their accounts won’t take books with black covers. Booksellers have told me that they can’t give away YAs with black covers. Authors have told me that their books with black covers are frequently not shelved in the same part of the library as other YA-they’re exiled to the Urban Fiction section-and many bookshops simply don’t stock them at all.

So basically bookstores are acting like restaurants in the Jim Crow South, segregating “black covers” in a special section, or refusing to allow them at all. This may be causing presses like Bloomsbury to whitewash their covers, resulting in confusion and anger, at least among Larbalestier’s readers. One blogger asks,

Did the publishers not want to put a black girl on the cover for fear of not selling enough books to their white customers? Or is the cover supposed to be what Micah [the main character] really looks like, and her description in the book is just another of her lies?

Larbalestier says she never intended for Micah’s race to be in doubt. Nor, obviously, did she want parents not to buy the book because “my teens would find the cover offensive.” But the whitewashing of covers has implications beyond Larbalestier’s readership. She asks, “How welcome is a black teen going to feel in the YA section when all the covers are white?” And she points out that the idea that “black covers don’t sell” is a self-fulfilling prophecy:

I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them. Until that happens more often we can’t know if it’s true that white people won’t buy books about people of colour. All we can say is that poorly publicised books with “black covers” don’t sell. The same is usually true of poorly publicised books with “white covers.”

Larbalestier says that publishers have historically underestimated the size of the African-American leadership, and that the music industry has no problem selling album with black artists on the cover. The supposed inviability of the “black cover” may have more to do with racist assumptions — that white people won’t be interested in a book with a black protagonist, or that black people won’t buy books — than they do with actual commercial realities. According to Larbalestier, these commercial realities haven’t even really been tested yet. But they could be — if Bloomsbury does what Larbalestier now wants, and puts a short-haired black girl on the cover of Liar.

Ain’t That A Shame [Justine Larbalestier]
YA Critics Feel Cheated By Liar Cover Girl [GalleyCat]
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire [The LibrariYAn]

————————–

Anna North recently received an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and is working on a novel.  She writes about books for Jezebel, among other topics.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Elizabeth H. sent in the trailer for the movie Precious (based on the novel Push), which should be released later this year:

As Elizabeth says,

It seems to reinforce…negative associations [of] underclass or working class African-Americans: poor education, single motherhood, teenage pregnancy, abuse, child obesity, etc.

The trailer brings up some interesting issues about skin color as well. Precious’s desire for a light-skinned boyfriend highlights the emphasis placed on skin color as a measure of attractiveness: a light-skinned boyfriend would indicate her own success in the world, just as fame and wealth would. Elizabeth points out that all the “good” adult characters are light-skinned (and thin) as well.

Also see our posts on kids’ perceptions of skin color and attractiveness, an ad for skin lightener, a club letting light-skinned girls in for free, Malaysian anti-racism parody of skin lightening cream ad, and an ad that shows darker skin as more exciting.