Mammy has always had a dual role in American society which I assume goes back to the children of Southern aristocrats being raised by nannies who were slaves: How could you keep in dehumanizing subjugation the woman who was, for all intents, your mother? Unlike other relics of slavery this one thrived into the 1960s and, to a lesser extent, later. Our most famous examples of Mammies are Mammy in Gone With the Wind, who was the most sympathetic and respectable character in the movie and I understand was portrayed even moreso in the book, and Aunt Jemima, but she has been PCed into a shadow of her former self. This is truly disappointing because I, and I assume others or else they would not have used her image to sell food, associate Mammy with a strong and maternal personality, an upright moral code, and, especially, GOOD COOKING. These are not negative traits and I rarely even think of slavery when I see a picture of a stout Black woman in a gingham dress, apron, and do-rag. No, my pavlovian response is salivation as I think of collards done by someone who knows how to cook them. However, over the years Aunt Jemima has been gradually made younger, more stylish, and thinner until now she looks like a Woman On the Go who prefers Thai takeout to fried chicken and who hasn’t lit her stove in years. How can I trust the cooking of a woman like that? I mean, I’ve HAD the cooking of women like that and it wasn’t pretty.
Are you offended by the Mammy stereotype? Why or why not?
You’ve named all the positive traits of Mammy, but the negatives are what stick out to me.
She’s subserviant to white folks, either as a slave or as a might-as-well-be slave. She lived for white folks. Her every thought was about white folks and their needs.
She’s always smiling. The smiling Mammy convinced so many that nigras loved their enslavement. The era of fake-happy, eager-to-please black folks is over, thank God.
Mammies always loved their white charges more than their own kids. She loves white folks more than her own people. She never has a bad word against whites (the people who oppress her), but she’s always talking about those no-account, shiftless negroes. I’m looking at you, Mammy in Gone With the Wind.
She’s ugly and asexual. In literature, she contrasts starkly with the beautiful white mistress.
She’s loud, uneducated, and regularly engages in buffoonary. Who had the funniest lines in Gone With the Wind? But were you supposed to laugh with her or at her? Are you supposed to respect her?
She’s a stereotype of black women. Stereotypes should not be encouraged, even if they are “positive”.
Perhaps it’s easier for whites (I’m assuming that’s what you are. Apologies if I’m wrong) to forget/not dwell on these negative messages. It makes sense…Mammy would only be a beloved figure for whites. For blacks, she’s a symbol of when we had to demean and humiliate ourselves to survive.
For awhile I had a personal boycott against Aunt Jemima products. It bothered me that this icon of the “bad old days” was allowed to exist, along with Uncle Ben’s and the Cream of Wheat man. But now, I’ve come to terms with Aunt J. I still don’t like it, but symbolism can change. Aunt J can mean “anyone’s aunt” nowadays. That’s how I imagine it to be.
For most of us she’s not any kind of figure, just a character out of one or two costume dramas like GWtW. I mean, how many white people nowadays were raised by black nurses? Today, rich people who need a nanny are more likely to hire an illegal from El Salvador.
Brain, I didn’t mean it like that. When I say that Mammy is only a beloved figure for whites, I don’t mean that all or even most whites love her. I mean that only a white person could love her.
That stereotype endured beyond just the Aunt Jemima label even when I was a child. I knew that my father was politically liberal and that my parents had friends of both races in the 1950’s. But in my mother’s kitchen, she had a little wooden board that had a permanent list of groceries and supplies written on it with little pegs to move around to mark when she needed something. Painted on it was a Mammy figure with a quizical look on her face and the words “We Needs?” I guess it was supposed to be humorous.
I still have that board. It’s chilling.
I guess the “Big Mama” stereotype is different in that she takes care of her own, she doesn’t take any gruff off of anybody and she certainly is nobody’s fool. Judge Joe Brown said that the title “Big Mama” has to be earned.
I would appreciate comments on that, especially from monstro.
Coincidentally, I had thought earlier today about posting a thread about women of color and the effect that they have had on me and that I have seen in the lives of others.
That reminds me of the “jolly nigger bank” and suchlike minstrelsy memorabilia collected by TV producer Pierre Delacroix in the 2000 Spike Lee film Bamboozled.
I was born in 1963. To me and most whites of my generation, that stuff, and the Mammy stereotype and the minstrel shows and the “Yowzah, Boss!” are things we know only from old books and movies and museums. There’s plenty of racist attitudes among us still, but the stereotypes are different now – they don’t envision blacks as stupid, cowardly, servile and ridiculous, but as crude, violent, drug-addled, overemotional and dangerous. (Like the characters in New Jack City or Boyz in the Hood or any rap number.) Whether that change represents any improvement is debatable.
Big Mama is Mammy for the new century. Except that should’ve been the TWENTIETH century but Mammy overstayed her welcome. She was probably too busy raising Massa’s children. (big, “don’t hit me!” ) But I try to avoid calling Big Mama a stereotype because people have such a negative association with the word. “Archetype” is more like it because it doesn’t bring the same baggage. I know Big Mamas and find them utterly charming company and I know some women who are working towards earning the title. A strong woman, of any race or ethnicity, is more fun than a weak woman. Of course, it helps that I have reached the age where women start becoming Big Mamas and have similar attitudes so this White boy can laugh with them instead of being afraid.
I disagree, though, with Monstro on one thing: Sissy got funnier lines than Mammy. Now, Sissy was an unpleasant stereotype but I try to think of her as an unsophisticated teenager, not an escapee from a minstrel show. And Aunt Jemima is not like any of my aunts. For one thing, she’s not crazy. She’s like the aunt I never had.
Gee, you folks want some “fun” advertising from a hundred years ago? A few years back I saw this wall (you have to scroll down) in a primarily Black neighborhood and my jaw just dropped! The only reason I could imagine it hadn’t been painted over was because it was so faded nobody recognized it except people like me.
Omigod, the Gold Dust Twins! When my mother and her friend Norma worked in Miami during WWII, they got so tan their friends nicknamed them “The Gold Dust Twins.” And that was in the Forties!
(I might add, one of Mom’s less-enlightened coworkers would not believe she was Jewish, because she didn’t have horns.)
Ughh!! I get that same impression from Wayne Brady.
from Brain glutton
I’d say it’s a definate step backwards. Michael Moore had an excellent take on this in Bowling for Columbine. As a black man raising boys, it bothers me greatly that the image of the black man is one that induces fear. But to be fair, I think a lot of people get past that negative image. Anecdotally, sometime last year before I started working from home I was catching a bus from my office (in mostly white San Leandro) when I stepped into the street to see if I could spot the bus. As I was doing this a white woman in a car nearby locked her doors, a boy sitting in the car with her rolled his eyes at her.
See, I find this remarkably unfair. Apparently, if a black man doesn’t spew profanities, talk endlessly about women and sex in degrading fashions or make race jokes, he’s seen as pandering and only half a rung about Steppin Fetchit. How does that work? What exactly does Wayne Brady do wrong, other than fail to fit a stereotype?
He talks White; well, not Ghetto, at least. He sings Pop songs–old Pop songs. His jokes are no naughtier than PG. Old White ladies love him. And IIRC, his wife is not Black.
The man is an obvious sell-out. Exile him to Branson!
If I were an alien from outerspace, the Mammy image would not immediately cause me to think of oppression and subservience. But since I’m not an alien–and in fact, a black woman–I can’t say that. “Mammy” reminds me of the days when the most esteemed status a black woman might hope to attain was that of the Beloved Maid for White Folks. Those days, amazingly enough, were not that long ago.
The picture of a stout dark-skinned (because that is an important part of “Mammy” icon) Black woman in an apron and head scarf does not make me think of MOTHER. It makes me think of SERVANT. Particularly when that image comes slapped on a food label. Is it fair that the same image of a white woman does not have that effect? No, it’s not fair. Then again history wasn’t fair when it made “Mammy” in the first place.
) But I try to avoid calling Big Mama a stereotype because people have such a negative association with the word. “Archetype” is more like it because it doesn’t bring the same baggage. I know Big Mamas and find them utterly charming company and I know some women who are working towards earning the title. A strong woman, of any race or ethnicity, is more fun than a weak woman. Of course, it helps that I have reached the age where women start becoming Big Mamas and have similar attitudes so this White boy can laugh with them instead of being afraid.