For awhile now, I’ve wanted to write about depictions of black women in the mainstream media. I've been looking for a currently-running popular TV show I could closely analyze or use as an example and couldn’t think of any. And that’s the problem. I remember when I was growing up there were plenty of black shows on primetime television. Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Living Single – I have fond memories of watching these shows because they were funny, well-made and more relatable to me on a personal level than the shows we see today. Long gone are the times when networks threw in a black show to cater to African-American audiences – that role is now being fulfilled by black networks like BET and TVOne. BET started airing Reed Between the Lines this past fall, while TVOne just started airing the third season of Love That Girl, staring Tatiyana Ali (of Fresh Prince fame) as the leading character Tyana Jones. The show is produced by Martin Lawrence, and includes several writers from The Jamie Foxx Show. I’ve watched season two of the series, and I have to say it’s pretty terrible. It’s not very funny, the characters are all stereotypes (the gay best friend, the cheap father), and the show never caught my attention.
But of all the clichéd characters in Love That Girl, the most bothersome is definitely Imunique. Imunique works as a secretary to Tyana’s father, and was hired through a rehabilitation program. She wears garish clothing and weaves, has long fake nails and a bad attitude to go along with her ghetto fabulous name. Her ghetto persona is accompanied by neck rolls, finger snaps and references to other shows featuring similarly ghetto women like Basketball Wives that are supposed to be funny. Really? Are we still seeing the ‘sassy black woman’ cliché after all these years? It’s sad that the most persistent images we see of black women are violent, angry women or single mothers closer to the Mammy stereotype. And to the chagrin of aspiring black actresses, some of the most famous depictions of black women have been played by men, such as Tyler Perry's Madea. Unfortunately, these images trickle down into the way people perceive blacks in real life: I’ve been told many times that I don’t ‘act black’ because I’m well spoken and don’t (usually) have an attitude. So the message people receive from the media about blacks is that they are all rude and unintelligent – and any black who doesn’t fit into these categories is an exception at best or a sellout at worst. What this means is that when we see the images of stereotypical blacks in the media like Imunique is that we aren't supposed to be laughing with them but at them.
While conditions of poverty or imprisonment may be true for a portion of the black population, the media rarely addresses the politics of the issue: why is it that more blacks are struggling with poverty or are in jail? The media are quick to offer statistics showing that more black women are single than any other group – but they don’t take any responsibility for the negative images of black women they create, or for defining and judging beauty by Eurocentric standards. Many people would argue that there are black women out there who are 'ghetto' or Mammy-types. And of course, I know that most people take these stereotypes with a grain of salt and judge people on an individual basis. But when the cultural perception of a group is so consistently negative (if that group is lucky enough to get included at all), then what does that say about us? The answer to that isn't so simple - and neither is the solution.
