Friday, September 15, 2006

Black women demand respect

Here's another article on Black Women. Ms. McCloud is right on the money on how mass media and politicians attack Black Women. Let's not include Black men in it, for they too also benefit from Black Womens' degradation by society at large. Look at MTV, BET, the networks, cable, magazines, newspapers, hate radio, media pundits. They all have a role in the devaluation of Black women and girls. The hatred continues to spread to all quarters of American society. We export those hateful views around the world today. Here's the article below:



By MELODY McCLOUD
Published on: 09/12/06
Black women demand respect

Why are black women so increasingly ignored, abhorred, disrespected and rejected in this country?

Who declared "open season" on us, and why?

Increasingly over the past decade, the media have projected images of black women as battered about, cast down, kicked aside, ignored, denigrated and disrespected at the will of all who take delight and sport in doing so. It is tantamount to a public flogging in the modern-day town square — the media, the Internet, TV, movies and music videos.

The latest venue? The University of Georgia in Athens, where Chi Phi fraternity pledges flashed naked images of black women to passers-by. Why? Because they could. It's acceptable sport in the 21st century. They're just black women; who cares? One student told a reporter he thought it was funny. It's not.

The late comedian, Rodney Dangerfield, enjoyed a lifetime of fame and fortune and received many a laugh saying, "I don't get no respect." Many of today's black women may feel Dangerfield's battle cry is one they, too, can claim. But hardly any are laughing.

More and more, black male models and actors are readily cast opposite white and Hispanic women, to the blatant, total exclusion of black women. Magazine ads frequently engage colorism — favoring light-skinned blacks over brown-skinned ones. Lighter black women often get the sexy ads and poses; they're positioned to look soft and desirable while brown-skinned women are posed stern, frowning and even masculine with bald heads.

It also seems that the media are ever eager to show black women as "crazy " — think U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), model Naomi Campbell, Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth of the TV show "The Apprentice" and others — but won't allow others to be heard or seen. It seems, "well, there's Oprah," so that's all the room they'll allow for "good" black women.

Sadly, too, those blacks in position to present black women in a better light, including Oprah, often fail to do so. Tyler Perry and Martin Lawrence, more so, get rich on the image of the fat, gun-toting, loud black granny.

Shonda Rhimes, the black female creator/producer of "Grey's Anatomy," has the black male character sleeping with Asian Sandra Oh (who brushes her teeth in the kitchen sink), while Chandra Wilson, the lone black actress on the show, is "the Nazi."

And MTV — whose president, Christina Norman, is a black woman — recently aired a cartoon to young Saturday morning viewers entitled "Where My Dogs At," which had black women squatting on all fours, tethered to leashes. In 2004, U.S. Army reservist Sgt. Lynndie England subjected Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib to the same denigration and was convicted and sentenced to prison. Where is the justice for black women?

Someone must speak out against this societal poison. White women aren't going to say anything because they readily benefit from negative images of black women. Many white men — media executives, and obviously some UGA frat brothers — are having too much fun and cash flow at the expense of black women's dignity and social value; and sadly, many black men are inexplicably silent, standing on the sidelines.

This year, I wrote Marc Cherry, creator of the hit show "Desperate Housewives." Normally, to see a black woman get a recurring role in the No. 1 prime-time network program would be a major coup, a step in the right direction for American media and black imagery. But alas, once again, the lone black woman — on a show that mostly deals with sexy, alluring women with kinky trysts and family matters — is portrayed as a psychopath who chains her son in the basement.

I suggest congressional hearings to effect a tangible change in the depiction of women in music videos. Black women who participate in such videos must stop; there are better, more respectful ways to gain acceptance. Black men need to step forward: Say and do something. Honor your women. Speak to young boys.

Black film and music producers need to be socially conscious and think what effect the images they set forth have on the community and the world. White media and ad executives must advance past colorism; they also need to cast black actresses and models of all hues in loving, desirable roles.

White parents need to stop teaching racist attitudes to their offspring. And UGA students need to find something else to do in the town square. Denigrating and disrespecting black women is not a sport. It's sad that members of the Chi Phi fraternity think it is.


Dr. Melody McCloud is a physician and writer living in Roswell.

Find this article at:

Atlanta Journal: Black Women Demands Respect

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stephanie.

As long as the white man runs the show, racist hateful images of black women will continue unabated for a long time. Until white women willingly give up their pedestal of being in the position to kick everyone's teeth down their throat, until black men stop remaining silent on the degredation and abuse of black women and some of them who work this degredation against black women in their "bitches" and "hos" comments, and until some black women out there learn that they come from a race of beautiful women who have survived some sick twisted shit (sorry for the profanity) in this country and that they do not have to degrade and insult themselves in music videos, black woman-bashing movies and ads,---until all the afore stated comes finally crashing down in this country---figure on black women continually being degraded, debased and devalued for a very long time.

This she-wolf of a country HATES black women. The Great Whore hates the fact that black women have survived some vicious, grossest most perverse abombinations that many women of other races couldn't have survived.

And that we black women have not crumbled from the never-ending onslaught against us, has caused many in America to hate us. Of course if you have living in your midst a person or group of people whom you have tried to destroy every which way you could---and still they survived any and everything you threw at them, of course you would hate them.

You would hate them for surviving your hatred and in their surviving your hatred, they showed through their sublime beauty that they were better than you, that throughout all you could heap on them, they did not go down.

That is why America hates black women.

Because we set the standard throughout our sojourn in this sick, depraved country that you do not have to resort to the ways of the demons in this country who wish to destroy you. But, sadly, there are some black women who are being worn down by this cesspool of a country. And we see it in the loss of self-esteem.

You cannot live in this Sodom and Gomorrah of a country and not be affected by its perversions.

Therefore, I sing the body electric of the beauty and fortitude of black women! I glory in the young women yet to come. I toast to their continuing, when their beauty will once again be revealed to the blind and hated, just as their beauty was, and still is, world without end.

The whole world knows of the beauty of black women in America. The whole world knows of the loveliness we were able to produce in ourselves that came from surviving the fires of slavery, Reconstruction and segregation. The whole world sees this. Everyone pretty much outside of America sees this.

Everyone except America.

La Reyna said...

Ann,

That's because the racist a## society wants people to believe in their twisted lies that white women are the epitome of everything good when we all know that they're anything but. Then Amerika imports such lies to other countries to believe that white women are good and black women are bad. The perpetrators of the mythology are white men and women and most black men, sad to say.

Steph

La Reyna said...

The following comment was posted by Renata at Race, Culture, and Ecomony section of AABLC.com:

Renata: "LOL I can PROMISE you, on the UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA campus, those WOULD NEVER have been white women's pictures. They try so hard to intimidate black people from attending there, but they find enough naked pictures of them and NONE of white women when it's clear through their associations/mating habits that it's clearly white women they prefer? But this has nothing to do with them disrespecting black women? Please.

But, again, just find me ONE campus ANYWHERE IN THE US where pictures of other women are posted IN PUBLIC. Then I might see what you're saying. And not one picture of the ex-girlfriend of some heartbroken boy....pictures of women who may as well be NAMELESS to the people posting them. Find me that school......or better yet, my earlier suggestion, post some pictures of Hispanic and White women at Morehouse, and see if their MEN don't kick more than a little ass before the week is out."

Exactly!

For more opinions on "Black Women Demand Respect", click on:

http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/179/15772.html?1158422353

Stephanie

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's crazy man. They should really try to do something to fix that.

Anonymous said...

Nice post, kind of drawn out though. Really good subject matter though.

Anonymous said...
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