ABSTRACT
Black women intellectuals have aggressively criticized the image of African-American women as contented mammies. Portraying African-American women as stereotypical mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients, and hot mommas helps justify US Black women’s oppression. Black women intellectuals who study African-American families and Black motherhood typically report finding few matriarchs and even fewer mammies. Analyzing the particular controlling images applied to African-American women reveals the specific contours of Black women’s objectification as well as the ways in which oppressions of race, gender, sexuality, and class intersect. The controlling images of Black women are not simply grafted onto existing social institutions but are so pervasive that even though the images change in the popular imagination, Black women’s portrayal as the other persists. Dealing with prevailing standards of beauty—particularly skin color, facial features, and hair texture—is one specific example of how controlling images derogate African-American women.
