AN EXAMPLE OF THIS SADISTIC VIEW OF BLACK WOMEN BY WHITES

"Historically, the Black woman’s sexual self-concept has been distorted and actually objectified under White supremacy and ultimately Black sexism. Objectification, as explained by Ani, is a “cognitive modality which designates every thing other than the ‘self’ as object. This process mandates a despiritualized, isolated ego and facilitates the use of knowledge as control and power over those other than the self.” The harming of any human being by another human being, especially if there exists familiarity, is extremely difficult psychologically and requires great conditional motivation. Sexualization creates the psychological distance necessary to do something as horrific as rape another human being because she is not looked at as a human being. She simply becomes a sexual object. 

However, the sexualized image of the Black female would not have been possible without the preceding suppression of the facts that support God as originally being depicted as a Black woman. Unfortunately, to quote Akbar, “once you begin to believe that the deity is somebody other than you, then you are put into a psychologically dependent state that renders you incapable of breaking loose until you break the hold of that image.” 

The sexualization of the African-American female actually began prior to enslavement with the Jezebel myth, a justification for the enslavement, rape, and forced impregnation of enslaved African females, and continues as a psychological legacy of enslavement. David Pilgrim wrote that “the belief that Blacks are sexually lewd predates the institution of slavery in America. European travelers to Africa found scantily clad natives. This semi nudity was misinterpreted as lewdness. White Europeans, locked into the racial ethnocentrism of the 17th century, saw African polygamy and tribal dances as proof the African’s uncontrolled sexual lust…The genesis of anti-Black sexual arch types emerged from the writings of these and other Europeans: the Black male as brute and potential rapist, the Black woman as Jezebel whore. The English colonist accepted the Elizabethan image of ‘the lusty Moor,’ 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 animal-like sexually. Whites used racist and sexist ideologies to argue that they alone were civilized and rational, whereas Blacks, and other people of color, were barbaric and deserved to be subjugated.” 

Carolyn West explained that “the image [of the Black woman as] Jezebel can historically be traced back to White slave owners who used rape, forced breeding, and the sale of slave children to exert control over African American women's sexuality and reproductive activities. This sexual stereotype encourages sexual exploitation of African American women and the construction of an image that characterizes them as aggressive predators and sexually irresponsible. Under this image, society can believe that African American women cannot be victims of sexual assault or rape as they are constant seekers of sexual pleasures and provoke the violence with their immoral ways. Men that perpetuate the Jezebel image see African American women as always-willing sexual partners and use violence when the woman resists. Community members and advocates that have internalized this Jezebel stereotype believe an African American woman has some fault in the sexual assault because ‘she got the man all riled up.’” 

Marilyn Yarbrough described Jezebel as “the promiscuous female with an insatiable sexual appetite. In Biblical history, Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab of Israel. Jezebel’s actions came to exemplify lust. Subsequently, the name Jezebel has become synonymous with women who engage in lewd sexual acts and who take advantage of men through sex. Jezebel is depicted as erotically appealing and openly seductive…the sexual myth of Jezebel functions as a tool for controlling African American women.” 

Accordingly, “the Jezebel stereotype was used during slavery as a rationalization for sexual rations between White men and Black women, especially sexual unions involving slavers and slaves. The Jezebel was depicted as a Black woman with an insatiable appetite for sex. She was not satisfied with Black men. The slavery-era Jezebel, it was claimed, desired sexual relations with White men; therefore, White men did not have to rape 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, and there were instances where the slaver and slave shared sexual attraction; however, the rape of a female slave was probably the most common form of interracial sex.” 

Pilgrim further explained that “a slave who refused the sexual advances of her slaver risked being sold, beaten, raped, and having her ‘husband’ or children sold. Many slave women conceded to sexual relations with Whites, thereby reinforcing the belief that Black women were lustful and available. The idea that Black women were naturally and inevitably sexually promiscuous 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 theory, this was done to insure 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 sexual 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 beliefs that White women were civilized, modest, and sexually pure, whereas Black women were uncivilized, immodest, and sexually aberrant.” 

Additionally, “Black slave women were so frequently pregnant. The institution of slavery depended on Black women to supply future slaves. By every method imaginable, slave women were ‘encouraged’ to reproduce…When they did reproduce, their fecundity was seen as proof of their insatiable sexual appetites.” As confirmed by Vincent Thompson, “the evidence was not that the negroes were licentious but rather that they were forced into relationships in which they were compelled to produced so many children within a definite period, all in the interest of profit.”

Slave-raising plantations concentrated on targeting enslaved women of childbearing age and used a relatively small number of studs. Akbar noted that during African enslavement in America, “the African-American woman was valued primarily as a breeder or sexual receptacle to show the capacity to have healthy children. Her worth as a human being was reduced to the particular financial value or personal pleasure she could hold for the master. As a breeder she was to be mated with the plantation’s strongest ‘studs’ regardless of human attachment. She was also usually expected to be receptive to the sexual exploitation of the slave master.”

During the Jim Crow era, Hooks acknowledged that “Black women struggled to change negative images of Black womanhood perpetuated by whites [who] made a concerted effort to perpetuate the myth that all black women were sexually loose and immoral…aimed at maintaining separation of the races. [White leaders] convinced [other] whites that they would not want to live as social equals with black people by arguing that contact with the loose morals of blacks (and particularly those of black women) would lead to a breakdown of all moral values. The white public justified white male sexual assault of black females by arguing that the women invited sexual abuse by their lack of morals.”

Moreover, “so pervasive was the tendency of whites to regard all black women as sexually loose and unworthy of respect that their achievements were ignored. Even if an individual black female became a lawyer, doctor, or teacher, she was likely to be labeled a whore or prostitute by whites. All black women irrespective of their circumstances, were lumped into the category of available sex objects.”

Pilgrim proposed that “from slavery to the 1950s, the depiction of Black women as Jezebels was common in American material culture. Everyday items—such as ashtrays, postcards, sheet music, fishing lures, drinking glasses, and so forth—depicted naked or scantily dressed Black women, lacking modesty and sexual restraint.” 

Modern examples of the sexualization of the African-American female and the perpetuation of the Jezebel myth, now predominately executed by African-American males, can be found in all forms of media including music lyrics and videos. Pilgrim observed that “televised music videos, especially those by gangsta rap performers, portray scantily clad, nubile Black women who thrust their hips to lyrics which often depict them as ‘hos, skeezers, and bitches. A half century after the American civil rights movement, it is increasingly easy to find Black women, expecially young ones, depicted as Jezebels whose only value is as sexual commodities.”