Seeing is Believing…
TLDR: How in the heck are we supposed to dream of bigger and better things if the only images of ourselves that we are fed consist of poverty porn, sanitized glorification of enslaved people, or violent criminals? We can believe in ambitious expressions of our future selves, but only if we see examples of those ideals.
Today I was cheerfully scrolling though my Facebook feed when I came across a lovely post about Nancy Green. For those of you who don’t know, Nancy Green was born into slavery on November 17, 1834, in Kentucky. In 1890 she was hired to represent "Aunt Jemima", an advertising character named after a song from a minstrel show also popularized by Italian-American blackface performer Tess Gardella. According to the post, Ms. Green’s contract was pretty sweet - she got rave reviews for her appearance at the World’s Fair in Chicago, she was signed to a lifetime contract (which allowed her to be financially independent), she was so powerful she even got to fight for equal rights in Chicago! (gosh golly!)
Here is my response to the post:
What a wonderful success story for Nancy Green! I love to hear of artists and models who #MAKETHATMONEY !!!
I guess the flip side is this:
For my entire life pretty much the only images of Black people that I saw outside of my family and our circle of friends were criminals, starving children with distended bellies, or slaves/domestic workers (like Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima). These images were damaging to me as a child and they are damaging to my children now. With very few exceptions I never saw educated, upwardly mobile families and it left me shook and confused...
We’ve all heard the expression “seeing is believing,” well, that also holds true for our hopes and dreams. Representation matters. How we are represented in the world shapes of self-image and our self-worth. The way we see and value ourselves affects what we view as possible for our futures. If we only ever see poverty-stricken examples of ourselves, what, pray tell, are we supposed believe we can become?
While I’m happy that Nancy Green had a wonderful contract, the way her image was used was/is demeaning as it reinforces the “happy slave” myth and the notion that Black womxn = slave/domestic worker. Her image certainly did nothing to help any other Black people.
The question I’m pondering is “what exactly is Green’s legacy that the original poster is lamenting has been so maliciously erased by political correct bedwetters?”
Nancy Green’s image was used to sell syrup. And she wasn’t in control of her image. That ain’t no legacy.
Black women intentionally depicted as slaves/domestic workers. That ain’t no legacy.
The Happy Slave Myth. That ain’t no legacy.
It seems to me that the legacy the OP is mourning is the legacy of white supremacy. The use of Green’s image and its manufactured persona helped contribute to Caucasian-centric structures (aka systemic racism and white supremacy) that kept/keep Black people’s hopes and dreams suppressed.
TRUST ME- no domestic worker is happy to clean someone else’s dirty underwear or cook their food. Not. A. One.
Sorry to the original poster, but the anger, and frustration and exasperation of generations of Black people, whose ambitions have been kept in check by images like Aunt Jemima’s is not political correctness, nor is it “bed-wetting” (which i assume is meant to be translated as weak and childish). It is the expression of people who have reached the end of their collective rope and are demanding that acts of white supremacy, big and small, go the way of the dodo bird (as in become extinct). I’d also love to understand why Quaker Oats taking a moment to actually listen to Black people and taking decisive action is politically correct. It seems to me that the company is being socially responsible and trying to ease some of the pain that they have helped to create. Where is the wrong in that? We owe it to our children to celebrate imagery that is actually uplifting and inspiring to Black people.”
END NOTE: As I sat down to write this post on the critical need for representation in media (including theatre) I did a bit of elementary googling. Within one click I discovered that this post is factually inaccurate. Nancy Green did not die a millionaire, her contract wasn’t lifetime. By 1900 she was working as cook and in 1910 was working as a housekeeper (I maintain, NOBODY IS HAPPY CLEANING YOUR UNDERWEAR AND COOKING YOUR FOOD). She died in 1923 with no mention of her millions which in today’s currency would equal abut $13 million. Call me what you will, but it seems to me that a former slave dying after amassing a $13 million fortune would be newsworthy.
“At one point the most reliable means of consolidating the country involved inducing a kind of national amnesia about the history of slavery. Aunt Jemima was created to celebrate state-of-the-art technology through a pancake mix; she did not celebrate the promise of post-Emancipation progress for African Americans. Aunt Jemima’s “freedom” was negated, or revoked, in this role because of the character’s persona as a plantation slave, not a free black woman employed as a domestic. An African American woman, pretending to be a slave, was pivotal to the trademark’s commercial achievement in 1893. Its success revolved around the fantasy of returning a black woman to a sanitized version of slavery. The Aunt Jemima character involved a regression of race relations, and her character helped usher in a prominent resurgence of the “happy slave” mythology of the antebellum South.”