A ‘Ho' By Any Other Color: The History and Economics of Black Female Sexual Exploitation
by contributing editor Dr. Edward Rhymes
"Raunchiness is deracialized when the practitioners are
white."
Don Imus in his
"apology" went on to say that the term "ho" didn't originate in
the white
community, but rather in the Black community. As the term "ho" is a variation
of the word "whore" (a word not foreign to the American lexicon and indeed has
been used with great frequency in the white community), that assertion does not
hold water. So once again, what is endemic in American society is viewed as a
specific "Black" identifier or just a "Black thing." That would be the
equivalent of saying that the first person to call the television a TV
undeniably invented it or the individual who first referred to the automobile
as a car, now holds the patent to the creation. However, let it be
understood, this truth does not excuse or exonerate sexist hip-hop from its
shameful contribution to the debasement of women.
In regard to gender,
there have been two, pronounced, conflicting and unjust narratives concerning
female sexuality in America. Although all women who were viewed or
accused as loose or promiscuous faced the ire and consternation of a
(predominantly white) male-dominated society, there has always been this
duplicitous racial application of the penalties incurred for committing
perceived "moral" crimes against society. Historically, White women, as a
category, have been portrayed as examples of self-respect, self-control, and
modesty - even sexual purity - but Black women were often (and still are)
portrayed as innately promiscuous, even predatory. I would like to focus on the various ways
White female sexual promiscuity has been viewed, recognized and oft-times
celebrated in today's media and in popular culture.
In her publication, "Female Chauvinist
Pigs," New York magazine writer Ariel Levy argues that the recent trend
for soft-porn styling in everything from music videos to popular TV is reducing
female sexuality to its basest levels. In short: "A tawdry, tarty,
cartoon-like version of female sexuality has become so ubiquitous, it no longer
seems particular."
"Black
women were often (and still are) portrayed as innately promiscuous, even
predatory."
Kathleen Parker in her article, "Girls Gone
Ridiculous," further elaborates this point: "...the message to girls the past 20
years or so has been that they can be and do anything they please. Being a
stripper or a porn star is just another option among many. In some feminist
circles, porn is seen as the ultimate feminist expression - women exercising
autonomy over their bodies, profiting from men's desire, rather than merely
being objectified by it. Self-exploitation has become the raised middle finger
of women's sexual freedom." And that "raised middle-finger" in popular culture,
rap videos aside, has largely been a white one.
Society, by and large, has deracialized
white female sexual explicitness while at the same time strongly accentuating
what is perceived as Black female promiscuity and immodesty. That message has
been communicated to us time and time again on the pages of Maxim, FHM,
Playboy, Penthouse and Sports Illustrated - and this list goes on.
Although these mags have, in the past 10 years, featured more women of color,
they are still (overwhelmingly) a celebration of white female sexual
explicitness.
The ultra-celebrity
accorded to white female sexual explicitness burst on the scene in the person
of Marilyn Monroe. Can anyone argue that Monroe was more recognized for her
acting talents than for her "natural assets?" Yet, she is regarded as a legend.
The celebrity that has been granted to white women such as Anna Nicole Smith,
Pamela Anderson, Carmen Elecktra, Paris Hilton and a whole host of others, is
also given based upon sexual assets and not upon talent. This theme is
consistent in today's raunch-infested society, but the raunchiness, once
again, is deracialized when the practitioners are white. WWE women's wrestling
has increased in popularity in the past few years with its predominantly white
roster of sex-kittens and their highly sexualized plots and subplots. Even
current and former white porn stars such as Ginger Lynn, Traci Lords and Jenna
Jameson are made the topics of E! Hollywood True Stories exposes, thus
giving them a place of prominence and legitimacy and without ever linking their
promiscuity to her whiteness. While, in contrast, one would be
hard-pressed to name as many Black women (or any other women of color) - absent
of talent - who enjoy the same level of celebrity and success.
"Even at her most licentious, the white
woman is made to appear innocent, wholesome and strangely virginal."
Even in, seemingly
light-hearted (at least that is the impression that we've been given), popular
movies we see this phenomenon played out. Risky Business, the film that
introduced Tom Cruise to mainstream America, was about a young man (with the
help of a spunky prostitute fleeing her pimp, played by Rebecca De Mornay) who
opened up a brothel in his parent's home while they were away on vacation. Pretty
Woman, the film that made Julia Roberts a megastar, essentially is a remake
of the children's classic Cinderella, except this time Cinderella is a hooker.
The Woody Allen (that alone gives it legitimacy) film The Mighty Aphrodite
stars Mira Sorvino in the "acceptable" prostitute role (for which she won an
Oscar). In the recent film, The Girl Next Door (featuring another rising
star, Elisha Cuthbert) the movie centers on the relationship between an
accomplished high school senior and his 19 year-old porn star (Cuthbert)
neighbor. In the descriptions of the main characters in these films (the women)
words such as, free-spirited, spunky, playful, spontaneous were used. I tried
imagining these same films with Black main characters and I could not envision
the same light-hearted response by the American public-at-large. There has yet
to be a critically-acclaimed or commercially successful film, where a central
character was a Black prostitute. So even when the "textbook" requirements of what
constitutes being promiscuous is met, her whiteness saves the day. Even at her
most licentious, she is made to appear innocent, wholesome and strangely
virginal.
These movies were huge box office
successes, and if one subscribes to the theory that the lyrics contained in
some hip-hop songs desensitizes individuals to misogyny and normalizes sexism,
then that same ethos would have to applied to the films that have essentially
"deified" and normalized white female explicitness and promiscuity. So
when the same messages that are being demonized in hip-hop are also found in
these popular films and white-dominated music genres (but couched in the safety
and familiarity of whiteness), what society is essentially telling us is
that it is better PR that hip-hop needs, not a lessening of sexist themes in
their music and videos.
So it has to be
understood that racism is at the heart of this current debate regarding
misogyny and sexism. America continues to prove (day in and day out)
that it has absolutely no problem with sexual promiscuity. So what is
their problem with hip-hop? It is the sheer "Blackness" of it. Historically (as
well as now), there has been a fear of Black (especially Black male) sexuality.
This irrational and racist fear was repeatedly used in the countless lynchings
of Black men in the history of this nation (which often included castration as
well). Black equals dangerous; Black equals savage; Black equals barbaric;
Black equals forbidden, infected and inferior. Therefore hip-hop, like Blackness,
is something that society should be, must be, protected from. It
is from this context that ALL things Black have been realized and it
is from this context that white female sexual explicitness has been sanitized.
The History of the "Sexploitation" of the Black Woman
The degrading images of Black women were cemented in
American culture centuries previous to the first rapper uttering their first
words into a microphone. The English colonists accepted the Elizabethan image
of "the lusty Moor," (Moor being Elizabethan for Black) and used this
and similar stereotypes to justify enslaving Blacks. In part, this was
accomplished by arguing that Blacks were subhumans: intellectually inferior,
culturally stunted, morally underdeveloped, and with a bestial sexuality. The
hypersexualized stereotype of Black women was used during slavery as a
rationalization for sexual relations between White men and Black women,
especially sexual unions involving masters and slaves. The Black woman was
depicted as a woman with an insatiable appetite for sex. She was not satisfied
with Black men. It was claimed that the female slave desired sexual relations
with White men; therefore, White men did not have to rape Black women. James
Redpath, who was of all things an abolitionist, wrote that slave women were
"gratified by the criminal advances of Saxons." This view is
contradicted by Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and former slave, who
claimed that the "slave woman is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or
brothers of her master." Douglass's account is consistent with the
accounts of other former slaves. In Narrative of the Life and
Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Bibb tells of how his
master forced a young slave to be his son's concubine; later, Bibb and his wife
were sold to a Kentucky trader who forced Bibb's wife into prostitution.
"The
hypersexualized stereotype of Black women was used during slavery as a
rationalization for sexual relations between White men and Black women"
Slave women were property; therefore, legally they could not
be raped. Often slavers would offer gifts or promises of reduced labor if the
slave women would consent to sexual relations. Nevertheless, as John D'Emilio
and Estelle B. Freedman state in Intimate Matters: A Sexual History of Sexuality
In America, "the rape of a female slave was probably the most common form
of interracial sex" during that time.
The idea that Black women were naturally and unavoidably
sexually immoral was reinforced by several features of the slavery institution.
Slaves, whether on the auction block or offered privately for sale, were often
stripped naked and physically examined. In premise, this was done to ensure
that they were healthy, able to reproduce, and, equally important, to look for
whipping scars - the presence of which implied that the slave was rebellious.
In practice, the stripping and touching of slaves had a sexually exploitative,
sometimes sadistic function. Nakedness, especially among women in the
18th and 19th centuries, implied lack of civility, morality, and sexual
restraint even when the nakedness was forced. Slaves, of both sexes and all
ages, often wore few clothes or clothes so ragged that their legs, thighs, and
chests were exposed. Conversely, Whites, especially women, wore clothing over most
of their bodies. The contrast between the clothing reinforced the belief that
White women were civilized, modest, and sexually pure, whereas Black women were
crude, immodest, and sexually deviant.
Black slave women were also frequently pregnant. The
institution of slavery depended on Black women to supply future slaves. By
every method imaginable, slave women were "encouraged" to reproduce.
Deborah Gray White, in Ar'n't I a Woman?, speaks of major periodicals
carrying articles detailing optimal conditions under which bonded women were
known to reproduce, and the merits of a particular "breeder" were
often the topic of parlor or dinner table conversations. Gray White goes on to
say "the fact that something so personal and private became a matter of public
discussion prompted one ex-slave to declare that ‘women wasn't nothing but
cattle.' Once reproduction became a topic of public conversation, so did the
slave woman's sexual activities."
The portrayal of Black women as sexually promiscuous began
in slavery, extended through the Jim Crow period, and continues today. Although
the Mammy distortion was the dominant popular cultural image of Black women
from slavery to the 1950s, the depiction of Black women as sexually licentious
was common in American material culture. There was practically no item that was
considered out-of-bounds in depicting the Black woman as immodest and lacking
in sexual restraint as ordinary articles such as ashtrays, postcards, sheet
music, fishing lures, drinking glasses, featured scantily-clad Black women. For
example, a metal nutcracker, from the 1930's, depicts a topless Black woman.
The nut is placed under her skirt, in her crotch, and crushed. Were sexually
explicit items such as these made in the image of white women? Yes. However,
they were never mainstreamed like the objects that caricatured Black women. The
seamy novelty objects depicting white women were sold on the down-low, the QT
and always hush-hush. An analysis of these racist items also reveals that
Black female children were sexually objectified. Black girls, with the faces of
pre-teenagers, were drawn with adult sized buttocks, which were exposed. They
were naked, scantily clad, or hiding seductively behind towels, blankets,
trees, or other objects.
"Black girls, with
the faces of pre-teenagers, were drawn with adult sized buttocks, which were
exposed."
As we enter the late 60's and early 70's the vestiges of the
old Mammy and Picaninny caricatures were replaced with the
supersexualized female (as well as male) protagonists and heroines -
often in the form of prostitutes or women using sex as a means to the greater
end of achieving a vendetta. These films are now referred to as "blaxploitation"
movies. These movies were supposedly steeped in the Black experience. However,
many were produced and directed by Whites. Author and film historian Daniel J.
Leab in his narrative, Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion
Pictures, wrote: "Whites packaged, financed, and sold these films, and
they received the bulk of the big money." The world depicted in
blaxploitation movies included corrupt police and politicians, pimps, drug
dealers, violent criminals, prostitutes, and whores. In the main, these movies
were low-budget, formulaic interpretations of Black life by White producers,
directors, and distributors. Black actors and actresses, many unable to find
work in mainstream movies, found work in blaxploitation movies. Black patrons
supported these movies because they showed Blacks fighting the "White
establishment," resisting the "pigs" (police), in control of their fate
and sexual beings.
There are compelling parallels between this period and where
we find ourselves today in regard to sexist hip-hop. Parallels such as the
erroneous perceptions that certain images were and are indeed steeped in the
true Black experience: who controlled and controls the production and
distribution of the "black" product; the preeminence of distorted sexual roles;
and who disproportionately benefits, financially, from this destructive
typecasting. It is a painful reality that the lack of real opportunities can
sometimes tempt us to be co-facilitators in our own cultural demise, as we
engage in endeavors that aid in the buttressing and reinforcement of pernicious
and racist stereotypes.
One of our strengths as Black people (contrary to popular
opinion) is our ability to engage in deep and insightful self-critique - and in
that spirit we must take responsibility for our role in this. Toni Morrison, in
addressing the dynamics of racial and gender internalized oppression in her
novel The Bluest Eye, stated that it was "as though some
mysterious all-knowing master had said, ‘You are ugly people.' . . . [a]nd they
(Black folk) took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over
them, and went about the world with it. And we as Black people (male &
female), have now taken ownership, or taken it in our hands as it were, this
deplorable legacy and have worn this disgraceful and destructive garment
proudly; and we have indeed gone about the world with it. We in the Black
community who have consumed, purchased and repeated the words and images; we,
Black male and female exploiters of Black sexuality, who have participated in
this dishonor are like the Laodecians who were rebuked by Christ because they
were convinced that they were rich and increased with goods and had need of
nothing without understanding; without realizing that they were blind,
wretched, miserable and naked. And like Esau, we have gave up our God-given
birthright that entitled us to something better, for a mess of pottage; for
husks that satiate us for only a little while; with nothing to show for the
bitter and foolish trade but pain, regret and longing."
"The lack of real
opportunities can sometimes tempt us to be co-facilitators in our own cultural
demise."
Seeing that her womb supplied the steady flow of slaves that
facilitated the accumulation of wealth for plantation owners and the various
industries in this country (rice, cotton, tobacco and sugar to name a few), America
was built, in large part, on the sexual exploitation of the Black woman. With
the coffers of the major corporations that own the record labels and the music
video networks, bursting from the profits of this new millennium's minstrel
show, it is a malicious irony of epic and tragic proportions that we have now
come full circle.
What The Market Will Bear
It is a multibillion-dollar industry, accounting for one of
every five records sold in America. Eighty percent of buyers are white. The music that now generates over $10 billion per
year (according to Forbes magazine) was initially ignored by corporate
America. Now corporations use the phrases, the images, and the sounds of
hip-hop to sell everything from McDonald's dollar menus to Cadillacs.
Although the faces of hip-hop are predominantly Black and
the Black community birthed the music, who are the real power-players at
Universal Music and Viacom that are pushing the green or red button on what
gets produced and promoted in hip-hop? Dr. Jared Ball in his composition, "Hip-Hop,
Mass Media & 21st Century Colonization," states: "Given the
societal need and function of mass media and popular culture, all that is
popular is fraudulent. Popularity is in almost every case an intentionally
constructed fabrication of what it claims to represent. Too few who comment on
the lamentable condition of today's popular hip-hop seem to grasp this, the
political nature of the nation's media system, nor the political function that
system serves. Hip-hop is often taken out of the existing context of political
struggle, repression, or the primacy of a domestic/neo-colonialism in the
service of which mass media play a (the?) leading role. Media, often
incorrectly defined by their technologies, are the primary conduits of ideology
or worldview and must be seen as such. Therefore, their highly consolidated
ownership and content management structure (corporate interlocking boards of
directors, advertisers, stockholders, etc.) cannot be understood absent their
ability to disseminate a consciousness they themselves sanction and mass
produce. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrable than in hip-hop."
"Hip-hop is often
taken out of the existing context of political struggle, repression, or the
primacy of a domestic/neo-colonialism."
Entertainment has always been a sponsor/market-driven
entity. This is important to remember as a multitude begins to mourn Don Imus
as the latest "sacrifice" on the altar of the god called political correctness,
their outrage is suspect at best and hypocritical at worst. To say that a
campaign of this sort has never been lodged against a rap artist deemed guilty
of derogatory attitudes towards Black women is not supported by history or the
facts. In 2002 Pepsi-Cola pulled a national, 30-second commercial featuring
multiplatinum rapper Ludacris from the air after Fox News Channel's host Bill
O'Reilly called for a boycott of the company. O'Reilly characterized Pepsi as
"immoral" for using the rapper, whom he described as a rap thug.
O'Reilly, on his program, read several of the rapper's lyrics, which he said
emphasized a lifestyle that included getting intoxicated, selling drugs,
fighting people, and degrading women - by the way, in
all my research, not once did I discover that Ludacris was ever sued for sexual
harassment or charged with sexual misconduct. The same cannot be said of Mr.
O'Reilly and yet he still holds a position as a moral authority with millions
of Americans.
Pepsi-Cola released a statement explaining its decision to
pull the ad, "We have a responsibility to listen to our consumers and
customers, and we've heard from a number of people that were uncomfortable with
our association with this artist. We've decided to discontinue our ad campaign
with this artist and we're sorry that we've offended anyone."
Let's fast-forward two years to 2004 when Whoopi Goldberg's
sexual puns on President Bush's name at a John Kerry fundraiser got her fired
as spokeswoman for Slim-Fast weight-loss products. The West Palm Beach,
Fla.-based maker of diet aids pulled the ad campaign featuring Goldberg stating
that it regretted that Goldberg's remarks "offended some of their consumers."
Contrast the rapidity of Pepsi and Slim Fast in dispatching Ludacris and
Whoopi, with the decades-long, accommodating, look-the-other-way attitude of
sponsors and networks when it comes to individuals such as Imus.
Armstrong Williams on the MSNBC news program Hardball
(4/11/07), said that Don Imus should not be fired and "the marketplace should
make that decision." And alas, the marketplace did make that decision when the
sponsors pulled out en masse. If that is the criterion that we are to use, then
what do we do when hip-hop's/rap's vast popularity is determined by that same
marketplace - and as was stated previously, that purchasing marketplace is 80%
white and the company executives making the final decision as to what gets made
and what gets played are predominantly white.
If corporations want to push anti-woman and sexist music
this year, millions of dollars will be pumped into the budget of whatever
rapper is ignorant enough to write the lyrics. Sure the artists can choose to
make something different. They just won't have the backing that others do who
agree to play the game. So, by all means hold hip-hop (and ALL artists of ALL
genres) who are guilty of producing the misogynistic and sexist messages in
their lyrics and videos morally and politically accountable. However, although
they may be guilty of providing the supply, it is the American culture that
created the demand.
Dr. Edward Rhymes, author
of When Racism Is Law & Prejudice Is Policy, is an
internationally-recognized authority in the areas of critical race theory and
Black studies. Please view his website: Rhymes Reasons. He can be reached at [email protected]
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