Racial stereotypes

So... For my first year women's studies class I wrote a final research essay on the racial stereotypes and disadvantages that happen to black women. The most common stereotypes are the mammy, the Jezebel and the Sapphire. The mammy is the fat ,unattractive, asexual housemother who took care of the home and children of their white master while neglecting their own. A popular image of a mammy would be Aunt Jemima , wearing a rag atop the head and always cooking good food. A Jezebel is a hypersexualized woman who always was hopping from different men's beds, or stealing other women's men. An example of this would be like Thandie Newton's character , Tangie, in For Colored Girls. Lastly , a Sapphire is a woman who is very sassy and emasculated the men around her with verbal put downs. An example of this is Tichina Arnold's character Pam in Martin Lawrence's Martin. She continually teased him about him lack of height and his big ears. With images like these in the media, young black women did not have a positive image to emulate, and non blacks don't see any other images so they assume that all black people ate like that.

The Cosby Show introduced a change in the overall image of black people, showing a positive image of black people being doctors and lawyers. I know that I really enjoy watching reruns of this show, and growing up it gave me a positive image to try to live up to. The Cosby Show paved the way for other awesome programing showing black people in a positive light like, Girlfriends and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

The only way to fix stereotyping in media is to stop supporting it. If you notice that there is stereotyping ,tokenism or typecasting, stop watching the show ! If you stop watching and explain to others why and get them to do the same, ratings will go down and the producers and networks will have no choice but to correct they way they portray people on their shows.