This is a fantastic essay, but there is something I would like to correct/add. Female house slaves were a mix of young dark-skinned African-descended girls as well as young light-skinned mixed-race girls. The white master would prey on these girls and the white mistress would take out her frustrations on these girls, instead of their husbands. The Mammy archetype was created both to reassure the white majority that Black women were happy to serve as well as to reasurre white women that Black women were undesirable to white men, even though this absolutely was not the case. It is a sexist-racist archetype.
Really enjoyed this. I’ve always thought about how my sociology courses have had a disproportionately high amount of Black women (and men) compared to the overall demographics of the student body. And despite me feeling some strange sense of contentment in having our views and morals align, I came to realize that my satisfaction was misplaced. If the only thoughtful and nuanced conversations that we’re having on race and other social issues consist of those who already grasp the magnitude of these issues, who’s truly being helped? That’s not to say that academia and discourse isn’t valuable, but rather questions how we can transfer this knowledge to others without the burden of emotional labor and the threat of others parroting our words without digesting them.
This is a fantastic essay, but there is something I would like to correct/add. Female house slaves were a mix of young dark-skinned African-descended girls as well as young light-skinned mixed-race girls. The white master would prey on these girls and the white mistress would take out her frustrations on these girls, instead of their husbands. The Mammy archetype was created both to reassure the white majority that Black women were happy to serve as well as to reasurre white women that Black women were undesirable to white men, even though this absolutely was not the case. It is a sexist-racist archetype.
Absolutely brilliant 👏👏
Really enjoyed this. I’ve always thought about how my sociology courses have had a disproportionately high amount of Black women (and men) compared to the overall demographics of the student body. And despite me feeling some strange sense of contentment in having our views and morals align, I came to realize that my satisfaction was misplaced. If the only thoughtful and nuanced conversations that we’re having on race and other social issues consist of those who already grasp the magnitude of these issues, who’s truly being helped? That’s not to say that academia and discourse isn’t valuable, but rather questions how we can transfer this knowledge to others without the burden of emotional labor and the threat of others parroting our words without digesting them.