The Angry Black Woman “It Girl”
By Hettie V. Williams
There have been disparaging images of black women in popular entertainment since the era of enslavement. Historically, derogatory images of black women, including the angry black woman trope, have appeared in many guises first in theater then in television and film. Some popular stereotypes of Black womanhood include the figure of the Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire and Tragic Mulatto. Mammy, a desexualized caricature of Black womanhood, appeared in print media, commercial advertisements, postcards, ashtrays and toys, largely in the nineteenth century as an overweight, content simpleton devoted to the white family.
This stereotype emerged in southern culture as a response to valid claims by abolitionists regarding the sexual exploitation of black women by white men in the Antebellum South. Mammy’s devotion was to the white family as a desexualized, ugly, and unintelligent creature not worthy of attention from white men. Mammy as a representational type was often illustrated as crude and abusive to her own children for her loyalty was to the children of her white mistress on the plantation. Jezebel and Sapphire are mean spirited, hot tempered, and hypersexualized representations of black womanhood that developed after emancipation.
Control of the Black body post-emancipation, as illustrated in moral panics that emerged at…