Racially gendered stereotypes of women of color are employed to confirm their greater subservience, deny them the respect and “protection” accorded to white women, and to sanction their use and abuse. All too often these stereotypes reflect this society’s obsessive and twisted fixation on female sexuality. If white women were once locked into tightly prescribed roles that deified their virtue, the stereotyping of women of color frequently has depicted them as virtueless, sexually available, and eager. Where some white women are labeled “sluts” and therefore made to seem like “acceptable prey,” all women of color are often stereotyped in that way. In addition to being labeled sexually loose, women of color have also been characterized as lazy, irresponsible, childlike, and untrustworthy, among a host of other diminishing terms and images meant to justify their perceived lack of status. In popular culture, the colored “she” becomes nameless: “squaw,”nigger bitch,”mama san,”tamale.” Racially gendered stereotyping not only seeks to destroy women’s worth to enhance the superiority of others but it also seeks to undermine women’s value within their own group, and to distort women’s collective and individual sense of esteem.
How many stories and films, how many news reports have played to this theme by depicting women of color being abused, given away or traded by their own kin, or typically cast as addicts, prostitutes, derelicts, drug dealers, or abusive or negligent mothers? Through the distorted lens of racial stereotypes, the woman on welfare almost automatically becomes beige or brown, and her mothering skills, state of need, sexual behavior, reproductive choices, ethics, and morals are immediately suspect in the public mind. She can be demonized and used to justify punitive policies. If you say “illegal immigrant,” the imagined person’s skin is immediately visualized as dark. Images of women of color as breeders dropping babies wherever they go, taking public resources, and giving nothing back in return fuel the fire of those who cry for a policy to close the doors and kick the “interlopers” out.
The Essay on Woman Artist Women Color Society
Many conditions of women s lives shape their voices and their artistic expression. The perception a woman artist has of who she is as an artist and what she intends her art to convey are affected by these conditions. Her race, presence of family in her life, and society s expectations all pose as obstacles she must deal with in order to fully understand her place as an artist. Family plays an ...
Through this lens the woman on drugs is vilified and criminalization supersedes treatment; the issue of teenage sexuality is reduced to branding pregnant teenagers as shameless wantons in need of harsh supervision; poor women’s sexual behavior and responsibility become even more suspect and in need of outside controls ranging from pushing contraceptive techniques to forced sterilization to denying funding for abortion. These racial stereotypes of “illegal immigrants” perpetuate their subjugation when, in reality, countless women without U. S. citizenship often perform menial, low-paying tasks, without job security, union protection, or other benefits afforded to women in mainstream U. S.
society. Stereotyping also leads to public indifference regarding issues ranging from women’s increased rates of incarceration (because the majority of those behind bars are women of color) to the decline in public health or housing services (because it is assumed that women of color are the major beneficiaries).
In a society where violence and poverty overshadow the lives of millions of women and children, these stereotypes are used to distance further those ugly realities, deaden the public’s conscience, distort the debate, and stifle reform.
