The Problem with Mammy...

In My Humble Opinion
1

After reading this post by Shagnasty, I realized that there is a problem with the “Mammy” thing. I’m not offended by the concept of mammy. As a matter of fact, I had a boyfriend who called me mammy, and I thought it was sweet! (I am a large black woman, large breasted, I even often wrap my hair up in scarves!)

No, the problem I see is the idea of actually having a ‘mammy’. I realize most people didn’t have a mammy…but for those who did have one and don’t see the problem with it…I do see it.

I don’t mean to pick on Shagnasty who obviously loved and misses the woman who worked for his family. This thread is not about Shagnasty’s relationship with Lola.

The problem with mammy is that the relationship can not be honest. If you had a mammy, you had a woman who was paid to pretend to love you. Simply put, that is the truth. If she hated your guts, she couldn’t tell you. She sucked it up.

My mom is a nurse’s aide. She is the sweetest woman I have ever met. (I know lots of folks say that about their moms, but I swear to you, I have had random people come up to me and say to me that my mom is an angel, after meeting her just briefly. Literally.) She is very meek, (too meek, really) and soft spoken.

She has taken care of old white folks for over 30 years. She loves her job. She really does. But the only times I have ever heard my mom speak harshly of others were times when she vented about patients. And these patients adored her, often trying to demand that no other nurse aide work with them.

My mom is not a mammy, but I can only imagine the dilemma of the ‘mammy’. A poor black woman who is seen as a persona instead of a person.

The problem with ‘Mammy’ is that “Mammy” isn’t a job title. It’s a stereotype. It strips the woman of her sexuality, femininity, sensuality, eroticism and many other characteristics that most healthy people have.

The problem with ‘Mammy’ is that it isn’t fair to the children in the family to have a relationship that is bought and paid for. They deserve better than that.

Also, the Mammy deserves better. She works hard to provide a clean and orderly home and well reared children, but she still has to live the lie of ‘loving’ her charges when she doesn’t. She may fantasize about telling them what she really thinks!

Langston Hughes had a poemthat I learned to recite as a child. It strikes me now that the woman in that poem could never have really said that. The poem paints the picture of a woman who actually wishes she could dare say those things to her madam.

I think it is healthier to actively avoid seeing your nanny as a ‘mammy’. Even if she is a large, dark, matronly black woman. The word ‘mammy’ is loaded. I swear to you, I am not the easily offended type. I use words like nigga, nigger, retard, etc, all the time. This isn’t about being offended by the word ‘mammy’. This is about seeing the problem with the idea of having a mammy.

If you are going to have a nanny for your kids, and that nanny happens to be black, it would probably be healthier for everyone involved to avoid the idea of her being a ‘mammy’.

2

Is that really a term that is still used? The last time I heard it spoken was in an Al Jolson song of the same name, or perhaps in Gone With The Wind. Why would anybody dredge up a term that old to describe a current situation? Nanny, housekeeper, babysitter are all better descriptives, IMO.

3

How old is Shagnasty?

Does anyone using a nanny in the last 20 years even come close to treating them, much less calling them, a “Mammy”.

The majority of today’s nannies are college aged girls or “au pairs” from Europe.

4

I had a student one time who wrote his college essay about his nanny/housekeeper. It was pretty generic fare: how important she was to the family and how important she had been to him growing up. It was a sincere attempt by him to honor someone he loved, but it was also clear to me, reading the essay, that he didn’t know her at all. The whole essay was about all the wonderful things she had done for him and how much those things had helped him and how much better of a person he was because of her.

Now, that’s sincere admiration, and I am not going to say he was a terrible person, because he wasn’t, but it was really interesting to me how self-centered his relationship was with her, and how he hadn’t noticed that.

I think this is the problem with these sorts of relationships. It’s very one way–the nanny may become “part of the family”, but the family never becomes part of the Nanny’s family. In fact, the nanny’s family is sort of ignored, because part of the illusion she is supposed to project is that her employer’s family is her greatest concern, more important to her than her own family or concerns.

Which is not to say that I think people should never have nannies. But if it’s a “family retainer” type of relationship, I think it would well serve the parents to make sure the kids see that the nanny is a complete person, not one who only lives to take care of them.

5

I don’t have anything to add other than to say that that was an excellent and thought provoking OP.

6

Thanks. Like Omar said, I realize it’s not very timely. I just was moved to start thinking about the whole idea of black nannies, and it occurred to me how one might miss what the problem was witht the idea of ‘mammy’.

ETA: Chefguy, I plead guilty. I am the one who dredged the term up in the linked thread.

7

My first boyfriend (met in college) is from a very wealthy part of Atlanta, and his family had an elderly black housekeeper/nanny - both his parents were doctors, and very cool and strict with all their kids (very scary for a girlfriend, let me tell you!). This one lady had been with his family since his mother was a child. He timed his visits home to coincide with times his parents would be at work, so he could visit with just her.

One thing that stuck with me was that every holiday, she’d carefully make up their whole holiday shindig - cleaning, decorating, multiple feast-style meals, and then leave to go home to her own family celebrations. I remember asking the first time it happened if she wasn’t invited (I thought it was sad that she wasn’t there) and he said they always invite her every holiday, and she always declines.

My next thought was what she’d do if they moved their celebration to a time when she could still celebrate with her own family on the holiday. My (soon-to-be-ex) boyfriend gave me a look like I was suggesting they go eat on Mars. I tried to explain the concept, but he informed me that she didn’t want to impose on them during their holidays. :confused: :frowning:

So, it always made me wonder if she really did like them that much, or was just glad to have a permanent fairly cushy job with some really rich folks.

It was sweet that he was so fond of her, but very weird the disconnect involved there. It freaked me quite out.

8

Did you ever watch I’ll Fly Away? That was a good show. Now the woman who played the housekeeper/maid was not called “Mammy” (I consider that a throw-back term to slavery times…I can’t imagine anyone born in the 20th century seriously calling someone that). They called her by her first name, which I’m guessing was the norm back in those days.

The reason why I liked the show was because the character was not one-dimensional. You saw that she had love for the children she worked for, but that it was clearly a different kind of love that she had for her own child. That’s generally the opposite of the Mammy stereotype. And that being a maid was really not what she was meant to be, but the only thing society offered her.

I’ve got a thing for coming-of-age novels set in the South during 1950s-1960s. The black maid is a ubiguitous feature (you’d think every white family had a black maid if you read enough library books). I have to say…none of the characters are portrayed in unrealistic ways. They’re usually presented as being the only one keeping the dysfunctional family together, or they’re just window dressing to the main character’s life, but they are not lionized as being “mother” figures especially. Though, depending on how dysfunctional the family is, there are exceptions. I remember in Danna Tartt’s book “The Little Friend”, the little girl is overwhelmed with grief when the housekeeper is fired, and not only that but doesn’t say good-bye. Yeah, the housekeeper wasn’t under any obligation to do that, but I still felt bad for the little girl. She’d lost an important presence in her life.

I do think the black maid has been romanticized as some kind of “holiness savior” figure. But the fact that they are so prominate in Southern literature tells me that they were beloved by the families they worked for and left an indelible mark on the children they helped raise. That love is real. It may be one-sided or lop-sided, but it’s unfair to castigate people for loving someone who practically raised them.

Calling them “Mammy” is weird, like I said. But “nanny” isn’t that far from “Nana”, which is what I call my grandmother. So if we’re just going to focus on the names we call servants, then I would think “nanny” would be weird as well.

9

I don’t know. I mean, I see your point and there’s lots of things about my growing-up-Southern childhood that give me a full body cultural cringe, but the two black ladies that did a lot of the raising of me and a lot of the looking after my elderly relatives- I don’t know that that’s part of it.

Miss Irene looked after me when I was little in the late 60s and early 70s, and yes, she was a large, very dark, very buxom woman. She convinced me pie dough would make my guts stick together. She whacked my bottom with a wooden spoon if I was being sassy. I was required to use my manner swith her as I was with any other adult. She brough her grandchildren over and I played with them. I went home with her some nights and spent the night with one of her grandchildren, who I am friends with even today. She took me to church with her (an AME church) at least one Sunday a month. I loved her with everything my little girl heart could give. Did she love me back? Well, I don’t know. Does it matter? She died in the early 90s when she was 101 and I was heartbroken. But I kept in touch with her all my life, and she always referred to herself as my ‘black momma’. If she hated me she was good enough at hiding it.

In fact, I have something in my eye right now at work.

She was poor, I get that now. Really, really, inner city Jackson MS black folks only neighborhood poor. I didn’t understand that when I was little. But I know that my family paid for one of her grandkids to go to college and that we ‘remembered’ her at Christmas and Thanksgiving with food and gifts and money. That does give me a big cultural cringe, in terms of it being patronizing, but it’s what was done. Is that wrong? I have no idea now.

The other lady was Miss Alice, and she’s entwined into our family history for the better part of forty years. My daddy is adopted from the Mississippi Baptist Orphange Home. Miss Alice worked there when my daddy was there, before my grandaddy adopted him - daddy was orphaned at 6 and adopted at 12. He wasn’t the best behaved of all kids (he had massive issues around what happened to him and so forth) and he spent a lot of time in trouble. Miss Alice befriended him and let him hang out with her while she did the wash. Years later, when my grandma was dying of cancer, we hired someone to help look after her and move her and so forth. When my daddy walked in, Miss Alice flew across the room, threw her arms around his neck and started to cry. I was 12 and I’ll never forget it. My daddy was crying as well. We had no idea of their history, so it was a total surprise.

Miss Alice worked for us after that for about 20 years, she took care of my grandma and then went on working for my grandma’s sister. (My great grandma really, and her sister was my great great aunt who did a lot of the raising of me.) She looked after me when I came back to Jackson, although I was a teenager then. I can still remember that arched eyebrow and Miss Alice telling me that “Good Christian ladies do not wear skirts that short!” Yeah, I changed clothes.

Towards the end, when my aunt was in her 80s and Miss Alice wasn’t far off that, we still payed her and she would just come for her usual four hours and she and my aunt would sit and watch their stories and talk. She sat with the family at my aunt’s funeral, and rode in the car with me to get there. If she wasn’t sad, she faked it really well. My aunt left her a good deal of money, enough for her to buy a house somewhere less dangerous than her falling down inner city neighborhood. And yes, we, the family, sent her money now and again and remembered her at Thanksgiving and Christmas until she died. And we sat with her family at her funeral. And it was awful and now I’m a mess thinking about both of them.

So, Nzinga, I don’t know. I would never in a million years describe either of these women as a ‘mammy’. My aunt, rest her, would have slapped me in the mouth even in the unenlightened 70s for using the word. And cynically, I guess Miss Irene was paid to love me and Miss Alice was paid to look after me and my elderly and dying relatives. Maybe that’s even true, and they hated us for being reasonably well off with old money and they loathed us for being patronizing assholes, I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I loved them. We, my family, loved them. Not perfectly, god knows, and certainly not without a good deal of old fashioned Southern baggage thrown in. Maybe it’s worth noting that both women worked for my family for years on end. Miss Irene worked for my grandma and aunt long, long before I was born and Miss Alice worked for the family for 20 years - although to be fair the last 5 or so were as a companion, I guess you’d call it, since she was mostly blind by then. From the outside looking it it was two old ladies sitting and talking and eating lunch (which often I served, as I was at college but living at home then) and reading the paper and having little catnap in the afternoon.

I do know they were more than just a nanny, regardless of color, and I know this sort of employer/employee relationship was pretty common in MS in the 70s and 80s.

So yeah, the way you describe a ‘mammy’ sounds horrible. I can totally get behind your criticism. And yet, probably, I had not one, but two.

If I had to describe them at all, it would be as ‘family’, but that’s not right either, is it? We did pay them, make no mistake.

Weird old life, innit?

10

No worries, girlfriend! :smiley:

I mentioned in another thread that we had a houseboy in Mali. He was from the Dogon culture, but had become muslim after moving to Bamako. My wife felt very close to the guy, even though I tried to tell her that he was being paid to be nice and to be friendly. That’s not to say that he wasn’t genuine, but money buys loyalty, however temporarily.

Back to the point of outdated expressions, no Americans there called their help by the terms ‘maid’ or ‘houseboy’, particularly the latter. That included me. In other words, we brought our American correctness to Africa with us.

Then one day I was speaking to Amadou, my Malian-born, American-educated engineer. He asked me how Abdramane was working out for us and I said that he was the hardest worker I’d ever seen. He replied, “Yes, he’s a very good boy,” then looked at me sideways to see my reaction, which was discomfort. “You don’t like that word, do you?” I replied that I didn’t.

“It’s a bad word for black people in America; but in Mali, it means something different. It’s his job description, and the position is an honorable one. You’re in Africa now; you should try to think like an African.” Smart guy. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to use the term. This doesn’t have much to do with your subject, other than that sometimes we bring our baggage with us, when it should be left at home.

11

Chefguy, I agree that you should feel free to call him ‘boy’. (I *completely understand *why you don’t).

Gleena, your post is so moving that I can’t bring myself to counter any points, although I am chomping at the bit to do so. Perhaps I will think of a way to express my counterpoints that offer due respect for your feelings about Miss Irene and Miss Alice.

12

Your post reminded me of a class I took on world art. The professor was a big name in African art. So, we spent a lot of time on African (and African American art) art. It reminded of piece called “What About Me?” (or a variant of that). A mammy type lady is holding a white child and the black child (her child) crying for her attention, but her back to to her child. :frowning: I can’t remember if it’s a picture of a scuplture, but it had a very jarring affect on me. Made me think about a relationship a person can really have with the help (regardless of race).

13

I won’t be offended. I have a lot of mixed feelings about my upbringing. I can totally see what you’re saying - but then, I grew up, left the South, left America even. I’m the antithesis of my upbringing, these days. I can’t help who I am and how I was raised, and I can’t help how I feel about those ladies, even now.

I’m not really trying to counter what you’re saying. I know lots of how we treated them was patronizing. I know it’s not enough to say, well, it was the done thing.

I really meant it when I say, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know how they felt about me and mine and I guess I never thought about it much, and maybe that makes me a bad person.

14

Gleena, I read your posts all the time, and if you are a bad person then I’m the worst judge of character ever.

But, I just wonder if you realize what you are saying when you say you ‘loved’ your nannies. Because I dare say, you didn’t know your nannies to love them. It is my opinion that business gets in the way. They aren’t allowed to show you the ‘real’ them. They will show you the personas that will keep them gainfully employed.

So that is what you fall in love with. When you remove money from an equation…money that is sorely needed by a desperately poor family…you get a whole new person. You move right into their inner emotional circle with their real friends and families. They open up and show flaws and qualities about themselves that you may never have expected. You don’t really know if you would love that very real, conflicted, multi-layered person. Or whether they love you.

Those layers and qualities and flaws and tiny little sparks of personality that ignite when they are relaxed around loved ones that they don’t work for…those are parts of their humanity that gets neglected when they put on their mammy uniform.

Monstro, I never saw I’ll Fly Away. It is one of those shows that looked interesting, but when I tried to actually watch an episode my short attention span betrayed me.

15

I have nothing to contribute. I just want to say that this is a very, very good thread. Thanks, y’all.

16

I don’t think a child’s love for the caretakers in their lives is based on “knowing” them. A child’s love is self-centered. As annoying as that may be sometimes, I think it’s developmentally appropriate.

I kind of think it’s the responsibility of any adult in a close relationship with a child to at least pretend to like the kid…not to take shit from a kid or spoil them, but to at least pretend they like them. Don’t tell, but I don’t really like my brother’s older two kids (8 and 6). They have certain personality characteristics that grate on me. I think they’ll probably grow out of them. I hug them and act happy to see them and generally act like a loving auntie to them.

Heck, I have pretend to like my own kids sometime.

17

This is a very good thread, thank you, Nzinga, Seated.

My first thought is that the idea that Mammy is paid to love your children is off base, and that changes everything. Did some Mammies love their charges? Perhaps. But they weren’t paid to do so; in fact they were paid to care for them - in a physical sense, not an emotional one. They were paid to change diapers and do laundry and feed them, same as nannies today. In fact, in quite a bit of historical fiction I’ve read, the Mammy who gets too familiar with the kids and threatens their bond with their mother is sacked.

So, in that sense, it’s like saying that a therapist is a “paid friend”. No, they’re not. Some of their roles (listening to you complain) may look like what a friend does, but they are not paid for their friendship. It doesn’t mean that some therapists don’t become friends with their clients, but it’s not the purpose of the job, so to critique it as such is unfair.

Of course my patients do confuse giving me good nursing care with my liking them. But what’s the alternative? Do I become a cold bitch automaton? No. I got into this field because I do like people, and I firmly believe that compassion and a sense of humor (things which people mistake for liking them) are essential to the healing process. Plus, frankly, they make my day go faster! :wink:

As an aside, have you read The Help? I think you might find it interesting, as it does bring up some of these issues in a very thought provoking way. (The previews for the movie version make me throw up in my mouth; the book is completely different in tone.)

And I think **carlotta **is right. I can guarantee you that the love my daughter feels for me is not because she knows me well as a person. It’s because children are wired to love their caretakers. It’s not at all the same as the love two adults share; the fact that the two emotions have the same word is unfortunate. And yeah, there are days when I have to pretend to like her, too, even though I really do love her.

18

Thank you for this thread, Nzinga. While I neve use the term myself unless doing my Al Jolson impression, I greatly appreciate your insights as it can be at times a challenge for some of us to understand or fully comprehend things that may offend others.

Bri2k

19

Sorry if this seems like a highjack, but in my mind it’s kind of the same thing. But an experience taught me that I would never ever have live in help be it a nanny or maid.

I had some friends in college. They were first generation Asian-American, there parents having immigrated. I had picked up over the years that back in Asia their grandparents had real serious money. And their parent here had very good money. I went over to their house one summer vacation. A woman took my coat and disappeared before I could really say thank you.

20

Sorry if this seems like a highjack, but in my mind it’s kind of the same thing. But an experience taught me that I would never ever have live in help be it a nanny or maid.

I had some friends in college. They were first generation Asian-American, there parents having immigrated. I had picked up over the years that back in Asia their grandparents had real serious money. And their parent here had very good money. I went over to their house one summer vacation. A woman took my coat and disappeared before I could really say thank you. I assumed it was their mother, and expected her to come back and she didn’t. So I asked where their Mom went. They said she isn’t home yet. I said then who was that? They said who totally confused who I was talking about. It took a minute to get on the same page, and they said Oh that’s the maid some_name. I had never known anybody with a maid before, so I asked questions out of curiosity. She had lived with them their whole lives in a back room, but never did any Nanny stuff, just cleaned, and they really knew nothing about her at all.

But it just absolutely blew my mind that these guys I was great friends with and were really nice cool guys. Had just somehow become conditioned that this other person who lived with them wasn’t really worth noticing or caring about, because she was the help. It was obvious they hadn’t really given any consciousness of her existence in years. When I kept pushing the matter they just kind of shrugged and said, ehh It’s just an Asian thing, you are expected to do it if you can afford it.

I decided then and there even if I made billions I would never hire help for the fear of becoming someone who is just used to being better than other people.