Making Privilege and Power Visible

Hill Collins examines a concept which she labels the sexual politics of black womanhood. By this term, she means that there is a history and a process through which Black women's sexuality has been interpreted and represented, which for the most part, has been done in terms of the privilege of other social groups to mis-name and mis-represent images of black women. Because of the hierarchy of social roles or social power that white men have as males and as whites who structure the dominant culture, that white women have as part of a white dominant culture, even though they are also subjugated as women, and that black men have as males, even though they are also subjugated because of race, and that heterosexuals have because to be straight is to be considered "normal," black women as a group have not had the power to name themselves, to create images and language for understanding their sexuality on their own terms. On your blogs, I want you to begin to apply some of Hill Collins' key terminology to an analysis of the pop culture representations that YOU see in your daily lives. Referring to the sterotypes that Hill Collins examines in Chapter Four, (mammies, matriarchs, the welfare mother, the Black lady/middle-class professional, the hoochie) what examples can you find of how American society mis-represents black women's bodies and sexual identities? Feel free to add pictures or links to whatever you find on the web, and describe in your posts what the stereotypes are as you see them, and consider their impact on all of us who view them. This is not the end of the conversation that we need to have about sexuality, power and stereotypes, but a starting point for making ourselves aware of the problems with images that we see everyday.