There are times when you have to imagine that black justice pioneers like Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and the like, must be turning in their graves at the nonsense circumstances that black Americans find themselves in in 2013.
For example, MTV’s Video Music Awards promoted, yet again, the race-driven stereotype of black women as sexualized jezebels. The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University explains the history of the jezebel stereotype:
The portrayal of black women as lascivious by nature is an enduring stereotype. The descriptive words associated with this stereotype are singular in their focus: seductive, alluring, worldly, beguiling, tempting, and lewd. Historically, white women, as a category, were portrayed as models of self-respect, self-control, and modesty – even sexual purity, but black women were often portrayed as innately promiscuous, even predatory. This depiction of black women is signified by the name Jezebel.
While Myley Cyrus, 23, eviscerated her dignity and mocked the values of the family that nurtured her, she used black women’s bodies as sex props while she simulated lewd acts on stage with 36-year-old, married recording artist Robin Thicke. Only black feminists had the courage to connect the Cyrus episode to the historic subjugation of black women by elitist white women. Did Harriet Tubman risk her life to free slaves so that Myley Cyrus could use black women as sex props? Additionally, those black women were also complicit in participating with Cyrus in their being dehumanized and used as mascots.