Most film audiences today are familiar with names such as Robin Givens, Whoopi Goldberg, Angela Bassett, Halle Berry and Whitney Huston. These are names of African-American women who have played major roles in recent popular Hollywood films. [The term 'Hollywood' is used in this chapter generically to refer to the film industry that used to be based in Hollywood, California.] However familiarity with these names may lead audiences to succumb to the illusion that African-American women are as prominent as Euro-American women in films today, be it in terms of numbers or in terms of major roles. The truth is that African-American women are a minority among a minority in Hollywood films. In fact if we were to list all the prominent African-American women performers in either central or supporting roles in Hollywood films over the past 100 years or so, from the time films were first made to the present, they would probably number no more than fifty at the most, in addition to the five above.  [They would include: Jennifer Beals, Louise Beavers, Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, Rae Dawn Chong, Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby Dee, Tamara Dobson, Lola Falana, Ella Fitzgerald, Tyra Ferrell, Shiela Frazier, Teresa Graves, Pam Grier, Edna Mae Harris, Lena Horne, Grace Jones, Eartha Kitt, Joie Lee, Hattie McDaniel, Vonetta McGee, Lonette McKee, Nina Mae McKinney, Claudia McNeil, Butterfly McQueen, Juanita Moore, Carmen Newsome, Beah Richards, Esther Rolle, Diana Ross, Dianah Sands, Bessie Smith, Cicely Tyson, Ethel Waters, Fredi Washington, and Alfre Woodard.] As for African-American women who have had the opportunity to be film producers and/or directors the number becomes a mere handful, even taking into consideration independently made films.
 

Underrepresentation
 

The first point to note, therefore, in any general discussion of African-American women in cinema is their underrepresentation (as a function of racist discrimination) in films and filmmaking. The underrepresentation of African-American women in cinema is tied in with underrepresentation of the two larger groups they belong to: African-Americans and women. Both these groups have been historically underrepresented in cinema, consequently it is not surprising that African-American women as a minority among minorities, would be severely underrepresented. @> A point of clarification regarding the minority status of women in U.S. society: it does not refer to their numerical strength (from this perspective women are in the majority), rather it refers to their underrepresentation in the world outside the home. <@ There are three dimensions of underrepresentation that must be noted, and African-American women are victims of all of them.

First, is their underrepresentation in the filmmaking business as a whole (in terms of producers, directors, writers, editors, accountants, and so on). Standard histories of the film industry rarely discuss a pervasive aspect of the industry, its monopolistic domination at almost every level, by white men since its inception, up to the present day. The barriers to employment in the industry, in whatever capacity, (be it as full-time management and support staff, or as permanent production personnel, or as film by film, free-lance personnel) are immense for those who do not belong to the historically exclusive club of Euro-American men. These barriers range from historically determined traditional hiring practices, to outright racist and sexist discrimination. (See, for example, George [1994], an illuminating, but male-oriented account of an African-American's recent experiences in the industry.)

For example, hiring in the film industry is often on the basis of priority hiring of members of unions and guilds (such as the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, and the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees). However, membership of these unions is a complicated process which often boils down to a 'catch 22' system: to be a member you have to have had job experience, to obtain job experience you have to be a member. Moreover, where there is provision for obtaining the first job without membership of a union, 'nepotism' in various guises (meaning 'who-you-know-in-the-inside' is what matters) effectively bars racial minorities and women to most first jobs. Further, even after one has obtained a toe-hold in a given branch, sector or division of the industry, there are unbreakable 'glass-ceilings' to contend with.

The net effect of such an employment system is that the industry as a whole continues to be overwhelmingly dominated, up to the present day, by Euro-American males. As an NAACP report issued in 1991 on the film and television industries reported, "...Hollywood 'is a closed shop' with positions of decision making and power totally dominated by White Males" (NAACP, 1991:29) It must be remembered that the struggle for equal opportunity in education and employment begun by the Civil Rights Movement is, after all, in measurable terms only about three decades old. Up until that the struggle began, Euro-American males had almost everything to themselves--in other words, it was 100% affirmative action for Euro-American males since the inception of the industry almost a hundred years ago. Under the circumstances not only have racial minorities and women been, as a group, severely under-represented in the industry, historically and up to the present, but the proportion of African-American women represented in the industry within this under-represented group has been, and continues to be, shamefully infinitesimal.

Second, is their under-representation in roles traditionally occupied by Euro-American actresses; regardless of whether these roles have been negative or positive ones. The consequence of discrimination at this level, has been the paucity of films with parts written to showcase the talent of the likes of Nina Mae McKinney, Dorothy Dandridge, Lonette McKee, Cicely Tyson, Diana Ross and others. Regardless of how well these actresses performed the few roles they were offered, racist discrimination saw to it that there careers in cinema went nowhere.

Third, is their underrepresentation in roles of power within the narrative of the film. This form of underrepresentation itself, however, has taken two forms: One, in the years up to the 1940s, in general, African-Americans, females (and males) were usually treated in the narrative of the film as only incidental or peripheral characters. They were, in a sense, used simply as part of the film 'decor.' For example, if the narrative called for a scene in which there was a servant, but who had no other function in the narrative, then it was common for this bit part to be given to an African-American actor/actress.

Two, as has been the case traditionally for Euro-American women too, African-American women have generally been featured in the narrative as subservient to the male authority, ambition and vision. This fact generally holds true even in situations where women (African-American or Euro-American) may appear to be the central characters of a film narrative. Consider, for example, the film Thelma and Louise which was held by many women as a woman's 'buddy' film. Yet even in this film, ultimately, the narrative does not stray too far from reminding the viewer that the male is still the dominant power; the second half of the film is occupied with the chase in which literally and figuratively the women are victims. As if the viewer may still be in doubt as to who really is in charge in the film's narrative, it concludes with the suggestion that the only way of confronting male power is by not confronting it, by choosing death through suicide. (An example of a true female 'buddy' film would, perhaps, be Steel Magnolias.)

Notice, however, that even though Euro-American women are also victims of this aspect of under-representation, when they appear in films that also feature African-American women, their roles become the important ones relative to the roles of African-American women. There is, in other words, a pecking order in representation of roles in Hollywood film narratives: white males are placed first, followed by white females, and below them come African-American males, and the last are African-American females. Therefore, even in a story such as Ghost (1990) in which Whoopi Goldberg plays a fairly prominent role (as the spirit medium, and for which she was given an Oscar [in the category of the best supporting actress]), this role is subservient to that of white female character (played by Demi Moore), and her role in turn is subservient to the role of the white male character, played by Patrick Swayze (even though he is dead!).

Consider another example: the film a A Long Walk Home. The film is about the civil rights struggle in Montgomery, Alabama in the mid-1950s in which the immediate task at hand is the desegregatuion of public transportation. The narrative is built around two women: a housekeeper (or mammy) played by Whoopi Goldberg, and her mistress (played by Sissy Spacek). Yet, even though this narrative rightly belongs to the character played by Goldberg given the context of the film (it is, after all, about the Civil Rights struggle), the narrative unfolds in such a way as to leave no doubt that ultimately the story is really about the white mistress as she undergoes political conversion, and in the process achieves her own private victory in her own 'civil rights struggle' to achieve independence from the oppressive domination of her husband.

There is absolutely nothing wrong in making a film that suggests that first, women were also prominently involved in the Civil Rights Struggle, and second that some white women were also involved in the struggle, and third that the Civil Rights Struggle had the added benefit of allowing white women to achieve political consciouness and mount their own 'Civil Rights Struggle.' The question that has to be asked is that why is it that even in instances (and there aren't that many) where Hollywood attempts to make a film about the struggle against racist oppression, invariably the narrative is slanted in the direction of minimizing the role of African-Americans and maximising that of whites. Consider the following examples, which it ought to be also pointed out are male dominated (with the exception of Love Field, and that is because it features a black man and a white woman): Mississippi Burning (1988, this film is an unconscienable travesty); Glory (1989); Cry Freedom (1987); A Dry White Season (1989, this film was made by a black woman filmmaker); and Love Field (1991).
 

Cinematic Stereotypes and Racist-Sexism
 

As if the underrepresentation in cinema is not enough, African-American women have also been forced to succumb to racist-sexism and sexism, as expressed in the kinds of roles they have usually been forced to perform in films: roles that reflect stereotypes emanating from the unique situation that African-American women have historically faced (and continue to face) in the U.S.⁽¹⁾ This unique situation is that they have had to struggle against multiple levels of oppression, which have taken such forms as the racism of Euro-American men, the racism of Euro-American women, the sexism of Euro-American men, the sexism of African-American men, and for want of a better word "classism" (class oppression) that all working class and underclass (permanently unemployed) people face at the hands of the middle class in capitalist societies.

What then are the principal stereotype roles performed by African-American women that the film audiences of the past and of the present have been and continue to be presented with by filmmakers, regardless of whether they are Hollywood filmmakers or independent filmmakers? The following, going by Bogle (1989) are the easily identifiable stereotypes that African-American women have been forced to portray in their character roles: the female coon, the mammy, the aunt jemima, the tragic Euro/Afro-American (or the tragic Afro/Euro-American), the exotic, the vamp/whore and the amazon.⁽²⁾
 

The Entertainer
 

In addition to these stereotypes, one must also add the all embracing one, that of the entertainer. That is, it was not uncommon, especially in the early years of sound film through to the 1950s, for African-American actors (male and female) to wear two hats simultaneously: portray the stereotypes just identified, as well as serve in the role of the entertainer (either through singing or dancing or both). Take, for instance, Ethel Waters: she not only portrayed the mammy stereotype in films, but she also sang in them. Another typical entertainer was Lena Horne, who not only sang in films but was also assigned to play the role of the vamp. In fact, prior to the 1960s, it would appear that most African-American actresses had little choice but to add the role of the entertainer to their usual stereotype role. Here are more examples: Pearl Bailey, Louise Beavers, Diahann Carroll, Dorothy Dandridge, Ella Fitzgerald, Hattie McDaniel, Eartha Kitt, Nina Mae McKinney, Hazel Scott, Diana Ross, Bessie Smith, Dionne Warwick and Fredi Washington. In recent years, this dual stereotype role has been played by Whoopi Goldberg.

The source of this cinematic stereotype of the African-American as 'the entertainer' among Euro-American filmmakers was the age old myth that African-Americans possessed a natural rhythm, and therefore they were born entertainers. However, it is important to observe here, that this stereotype did not develop in order to suggest that this was a positive attribute of African-Americans. On the contrary, underlying this stereotype has been the suggestion that African-Americans cannot be anything else, because of their sub-human intelligence, but entertainers--not far removed from circus clowns--and/or happy-go-lucky servants.

What is more, that their role as entertainers must be in the service of the Euro-American 'massa' (master). In fact, as will be shown below, the cinema roles that African-American women have had to perform in Hollywood films, regardless of what stereotype role it is, have all been built around a central common theme: that the African-American was born to serve the Euro-American as either a servant or entertainer or as a sex object. Further, that in this capacity they are not being oppressed, but rather being allowed to be themselves since that is all they are really capable of given the sub-human status of their brains. It is not surprising, given this attitude, that African-Americans have always been portrayed in their subservient roles in cinema in a comedic or 'happy-go-lucky' mode--thereby suggesting that they are content and happy with their station in life. There is one more element to this racist theme: should they be allowed to deviate from this divinely mandated role of subservient service to the Euro-American, then only trouble will ensue because their lack of civilization will wreak havoc on the life and property of the Euro-American. This theme, ultimately, has its roots in the ideological justification of the enslavement of African-Americans over a hundred years ago.
 

The Female Coon
 

The coon was among the first stereotypes to emerge in film. From Thomas Alva Edison's 1904 short called Ten Pickanninies to all the film versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the stereotype of the African-American as an object of amusement and as a buffoon was introduced by Euro-American filmmakers to the U.S. public. Among the early female versions of the coon, two clearly stand out: Topsy and Prissy. Topsy was the female slave child in Uncle Tom's Cabin, and in the 1927 version of this film the role was performed by Mona Ray. Her sole reason for existence in the narrative was to serve as comic relief. She was so good at this role that she was given her own film to star in: Topsy and Eva (1927).

Prissy, of course, was the female coon (in the form of the O'Hara family's servant girl) who provided comic relief in Gone with the Wind (1939). The second epic racist film (the first being Birth of a Nation [1915]), in which almost all the stereotypes introduced in Birth of a Nation were there, but at a seductively subtler level.⁽³⁾ Her character was played by Butterfly McQueen, and here again the casting could not have been better. She played the character to the hilt. At all the major crisis points in the narrative, her character's hysterionics served as an outlet for the audience. In fairness to McQueen, it ought to be noted that her portrayal of the female coon went beyond the confines of the stereotype; she lent it a touch of the pathetic. The consequence of this mixing of the comic and the pathetic, as Bogle (1989) astutely observes, was to allow her coon portrayals to transcend to some extent the stereotype of the dumb and comic female. McQueen continued to play the female coon role in a number of other films she appeared in (such as The Women [1939]; I Dood It [1943]; Affectionately Yours [1941]; Mildred Pierce [1946]; and Duel in the Sun [1946]).
 

Mammy/ Aunt Jemima
 

According to Bogle (1989), the mammy stereotype made her first appearance around 1914 in films such as Lysistrata and the comedy, Coon Town Suffragettes. This stereotype, via the avenue of 'blackface' minstrelsy, entered films from its origins in the pages of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. In that novel the mammy was the character Aunt Chloe, Uncle Tom's wife and the Shelby family's loyal servant. The essence of this stereotype, after it had undergone various negative transmutations along the way, was that the mammy was strong willed and independent, but loyally devoted; she was comedic, from the perspective of audiences, by being ornery; she had no private life of her own since she existed solely to serve her Euro-American masters; and she was big, dark and fat--hence by Western standards, homely but 'sexless' (in the sense that she was portrayed as one without any semblance of a sex life and one who was sexually unattractive).

The 'sexless' aspect of this stereotype was manufactured during the transition from the novel to the minstrel shows (in the novel Aunt Chloe had children by Uncle Tom which would suggest that she did have some sex life). Why is it important that the mammy be presented as a sexless humanbeing? The underlying reasoning appears to be that she should not be imbued with the potential to present a 'sexual threat' to, both, Euro-American males and females given her close proximity to their personal lives. If she was portrayed as an ordinary female person with her own sexuality, then she would be a threat to the men as a source of temptation; at the same time, she would be a threat to the Euro-American women as a source of competition in their relations to their men. Consider this thought experiment: instead of Hattie McDaniel playing the mammy role in Gone with the Wind (1939), someone with the looks of, say, Fredi Washington, or Lena Horne or Diana Ross, or Robin Givens or a Halle Berry had been given this role. Vivian Leigh's character, Scarlett O'Hara would have had competition, not only in the minds of audiences, but also in the mind of Clark Gable's character Rhett Butler--not to mention the other central Euro-American male characters in the film.

It should be noted, as Turner (1994) reminds us, that the mammy character was primarily a figment of the imagination of southern whites bent on romanticising the pre-Civil War era. The truth is that, to begin with, only a small percentage of whites (no more than 25% at the most at any one time) could afford slaves, and of these even a smaller minority, the really wealthy, could have enjoyed the luxury of using a slave to work in the kitchen rather than in the field. Further, that these women were unlikely to be overweight given the strict rationing of food, and they were more likely to be light-skinned than dark-skinned because of the general tendency to use women of mixed racial heritage. At the same time, given that most black women (close to 90%) did not live past their fiftieth birthday, these women were unlikely to be old. For southern whites in the post-Civil War era, the need for the mammy stereotype was dictated by the desire to "prove" to Northerners (and the rest of the world) that slavery was not that bad after all. Like the uncle tom and coon stereotypes, this stereotype helped to create the mythology of a humane and idyllic master/slave relationship in which the horrors of the brutality and dehumanization that truly characterised master/slave relationships were absent. Through such stereotypes, not only could slavery be rendered 'normal,' but it permitted making the principal point that the North was wrong for destroying, via the Civil War, something so natural as the enslavement of blacks. The racist view was that the War not only destroyed the good relationships masters had with their slaves, but instead produced no good, troublesome, uppity darkies--thereby souring black/white relations forever. There was one other benefit of these stereotypes: they helped to remove any guilt that the whites may have had for misusing the power they had acquired centuries earlier through the barrel of the gun, and enslaving in the Americas millions of innocent human beings from Africa, as they went on their world-wide orgy of rape, murder, and pillage in the name of civilization.

The Aunt Jemima sterotype is similar to the male stereotype termed the 'the tom,' according to Bogle (1989), and is really a variation on the mammy stereotype. The tom, as hinted above, was a stereotype that grew out of one of the central characters, Uncle Tom, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. (In fairness to Stowe, and as Turner [1994] so well demonstrate, it should be noted that the original Uncle Tom of her novel bore little resemblance to the Uncle Tom stereotype that evolved in the years following his first appearance in her novel). This character was essentially the 'good negro.' Euro-Americans had nothing to fear from the good negro regardles of what they did to him. Whether he was enslaved, or beaten, or insulted or harassed or chased, the good negro never rebelled against his Euro-American tormentors. He remained stoic, obedient, good tempered and kind. The female version of the tom, aunt jemima, added one more characteristic to this stereotype, she was blessed with religion says Bogle (1989)--specifically Christian stoicism. A slightly different version of aunt jemima was the stereotype based on the mammy, but who had learned the ways of the Euro-American folk and served them selflessly. One classic example of a mammy stereotype is to be found in D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Since that film, up to the present, almost all cinematic portrayals of African-American maids have taken the form of the aunt jemima sterotype.

Many of the films of Mae West (e.g. I'm No Angel [1933]; She Done Him Wrong [1933]; Belle of the Nineties [1934]) and Shirley Temple (e.g. The Littlest Rebel [1935]; The Little Colonel [1935]; Since You Went Away [1944]), featured African-American maids who easily fit into this aunt jemima category. The maids were not just mere servants of their mistresses, but they also served as their confidantes; and they gave advice, they protected them, and when necessary admonished them. It is the aunt jemima stereotype that gave rise to the line "African-American shoulders were meant to cry on." Additionally, in the case of mistresses played by the likes of Mae West, Katherin Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Harlow, the maids also served to accentuate their mistresses sexuality by possessing none of their own.

Among the most memorable portrayals of the mammy stereotype were those of Louise Beavers, Ethel Waters and, of course, Hattie McDaniel. More recently, this role has been played remarkably well by Whoopi Goldberg.

Undoubtedly, Imitation of Life (directed by John Stahl and released by Universal in 1934) was among the most important cinematic vehicles for the mammy talents of Louis Beavers. The principal plot of this film revolves around an aunt jemima mammy (Aunt Delilah) and her employer "Miss Bea" (Beatrice Pullman), a Euro-American widow. Miss Bea achieves business success on the basis of a secret recipe for pancakes handed down from generation to generation to Aunt Delilah; however, this success is contradicted by her failed romantic life.⁽⁴⁾ True to the stereotype character of the aunt jemima mammy, Delilah's main wish in life is not to partake of the profits accruing to Miss Bea from Delilah's secret recipe, but to go on serving Miss Bea and her daughter Jessie Pullman selflessly. Consider this interchange in the film when Miss Bea offers a 20% cut to Aunt Delilah:
 

Miss Bea: "Now, Delilah, you're going to be rich. You'll be able to move away and buy yourself a nice house."
 

Aunt Delilah: "My own house? You gonna send me away? Don't do that to me. How I gonna take care of you and Miss Jessie if I'se away? I'se yo'cook. You kin have it. I makes you a present of it."

Needless to say, in this film the selfless devotion of the African-American servant to her Euro-American mistress is taken to ridiculous levels (especially considering that the film is set in the 1930s depression era when poverty among African-Americans was many many times that of the Euro-Americans). Through her character, Beavers helps to confirm the absurd stereotype view of African-Americans by Euro-Americans that the good darkie was not only eternally and loyally devoted to them, but unintelligent enough to be so contented with his/her station in life, that he/she refused to rise above it--even when opportunity presented itself. Consider the absurdity of this: in exchange for making her mistress commercially successful, all she wanted was a funeral with pomp and ceremony replete with white horses, if and when she died (which she does in the film because of a broken heart induced by the behavior of her mulatto daughter).

Another film that takes this mythical loyalty ("canine loyalty," as Mapp [1971:43] calls it) to extremes is the film Sanctuary (1961). Here the character Nancy willingly faces the death penalty, by confessing to a crime she did not commit, in order to give the white heroine (played by Lee Remick) a second chance at life. Nancy is played by the well known African-American folk singer Odetta. In the film Stiletto, 'canine loyalty' takes a slightly different form: Barbara McNair, in her character role as Ahn Desaje, suffers grievously at the hands of an African-American hoodlum in a black barwhile trying to protect her white boyfriend. The twist here, however, is that she was well aware that the white boyfriend was not really in love with her, but with another woman, a Euro-American.

In the film Pinky (1949, see also below), Ethel Waters, while playing the character of Aunt Dicey, delivers a powerful performance of a mammy plus tom rolled into one. She was nominated for the 1949 Academy Award in the category of Best Supporting Actress. Aunt Dicey was the town's laundress taking in the dirty clothes of the town's Euro-Americans so as to earn money to pay for her granddaughter's education in the North. Waters brings to her stereotype character not only the usual elements of servitude and Christian belief, but also a seriousness and sense of purpose that empties the stereotype of its comedic element and instead replaces it with a deep and all embracing humanity. That Ethel Waters could use her character to go beyond the confines of the traditional mammy stereotype, is not surprising; she was a very talented actress.

Like such other African-American actresses as Nina Mae McKinney, Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne she was an accomplished singer too. However, this also meant that in some of her other films her mammy role was usually combined with the stereotype role of entertainer. In Cabin in the Sky (1943), for example, Waters was able to showcase her talent as a singer when she sang the song "Happiness is a Thing Called Joe." Among the many other films she appeared in, the following stand out for mention: Cairo (1942); Tales of Manhattan (1943); The Member of the Wedding (1952); and The Sound of Fury (1959).

Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to be awarded an Oscar. She got it for the Academy Award's category of Best Supporting Actress in her role as Scarlet O'Hara's Mammy in Gone with the Wind. McDaniel played that role superbly; what is more, she gave her character the humanity and intelligence not typically intended for a such a stereotype role. In Gone with the Wind she was certainly an aunt jemima mammy, but she lent the role dignity on par with any of the other principal Euro-American characters in the film. Scarlet O'Hara's Mammy was not an inferior darkie, whatever else she may have been. She was intelligent enough and powerful enough, for example, to keep the plantation at Tara going during the War years.⁽⁵⁾ In recognizing this fact, however, one must not be detracted from also observing that in almost all other respects she fulfilled the stereotype role of aunt jemima to perfection: her character was replete with a dry sense of humor; utterly self-less but no-nonsense devotion; and a bulky, dark skinned, sexless frame. In her later films too she would continue in this tradition of the typical aunt jemima, that is, minus the intelligence and dignity she imparted to her character in Gone with the Wind. (See her, for example, in Maryland [1940]; Since You Went Away [1944]; Song of the South [1946]; and Margie [1946].)

Gone with the Wind was not the first film, of course, in which McDaniel played the mammy role. She had already appeared in a number of other films before (such as The Gold West [1932]; Blond Venus [1932]; Little Men [1934]; Judge Priest [1934] and The Little Colonel [1935]), however, in these films her mammy role was lackluster, according to Bogle (1989), untill she appeared in the film Alice Adams (1935). In this film (which starred Katherine Hepburn) audiences were give a taste of the superb talents McDaniel had in bringing to life the classic mammy stereotype. Her other memorable performances as a mammy before 1939 was in Saratoga (starring Clark Gable and Jean Harlow [1937]) and The Mad Miss Manton (starring Barbara Stanwyck [1938]).

Louise Beavers demonstrated in Imitation of Life a special knack at bringing out the 'always kind, not a mean bone in the body' aspect of the aunt jemima stereotype. In almost all her films she played this particular version of the stereotype to the hilt. Well before there was a Hattie McDaniel or Ethel Waters, there was Louise Beavers. She was, one may venture to say, the original quintessential aunt jemima and she worked hard at cultivating this role. To give three examples: She often had to overeat in order to maintain the ideal jemima weight (a minimum of two hundred pounds, going by the portrayals of this stereotype). She hated cooking even though in many of her film roles that was her job. (Professional cooks did the cooking during filming whenever she had to be in the kitchen.) She had to learn to speak in the Southern dialect since that is not how she spoke normally. Hollywood filmmakers found her ideal for the type of jemima that Euro-American 1930s cinema heroins like Jean Harlow, Mae West and Claudette Colbert required: always cheerful, always kind, always loyal and always ready with good advice. Among the many films (besides Imitation of Life) Beavers appeared in as a mammy include: She Done Him Wrong (1933); Bombshell (1933); Rainbow on the River (1936); Made for Each Other (1939); and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948).

Of course, these three, Beavers, McDaniel and Waters, were not the only African-American actresses who had been forced to take on the mammy mantle. However, they were among the best in the sense of giving their all to lend dignity and intelligence to what is essentially a sub-human stereotype role.

Among others who played the mammy role who need to be mentioned is Pearl Bailey. In the films Carmen Jones, That Certain Feeling (1956) St. Louis Blues (1958) and Porgy and Bess, she portrayed the mammy stereotype, but minus the catankerous element of the stereotype says Bogle (1989:189). In Carmen Jones she played the character of Frankie, the good-time girl. In That Certain Feeling she was the maid called Gussie, while in St. Louis Blues she played the character of aunt. In Porgy and Bess she was Maria.

Whoopi Goldberg is undoubtedly the most popular African-American actress working in Hollywood today. Yet, her predominant roles in films have been to reproduce the traditional stereotypes, chiefly the mammy, the coon and even the entertainer (the last is somewhat surprising considering that she did not have a singing career before she entered Hollywood). In Jumpin' Jack Flash (1987, a film directed by a white woman, Penny Marshall) she plays the coon role through the chracter of Terry Doolittle. In fact, as Bogle (1989) points out, she comes very close to imitating the coon role of Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind. She plays the mammy character in Clara's Heart (1988) in the shape of a Jamaican mammy working for a white family.

Other examples of films with prominent mammy characters in them include: That Certain Feeling (1956, has Pearl Bailey play the mammy role); Show Boat (1936, in this version Hattie McDaniel is the maid-cook); Facts of Life (1961, another of Pearl Bailey's mammy films); The Miracle Worker (1962, Bea Richards is the devoted mammy in this one); Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962, Maidi Norman plays the mammy character of Elvira Stitt whose devotion to one of her mistresses becomes the source of Stitt's death); Hurry Sundown (1967, here Beah Richards' character is a belatedly rebellious mammy); Cross Creek (1983, features Alfre Woodward in the mammy role)

Note: although the preceding discussion appears to suggest that the mammy character only surfaced in the context of ministration to the needs of whites, this was not always the case. In some films the mammy stereotype was also brought out in the context of African-American families. Examples of such films include A Raisin in the Sun (1961); Georgia, Georgia (1972); and even the much praised film Sounder (1972), in which Rebecca embodies most of the elements of the mammy character (except perhaps for physical looks).

Before going on to look at the next stereotype, it is necessary to draw attention to an important contradictory aspect of the mammy or aunt jemima stereotype, in terms of her day to day existence, in order to point out its embodiment for African-American women of the duality of racism and sexism. The immediate beneficiaries of the services of the mammy character were white women who were (and are) themselves victims of the sexism of the white male. That they could avail themselves of the services of a mammy was surely a function of their race priviliged position relative to the African-American women. This is one of the implications of suggesting that the mammy was a victim of both sexism and racism.
 

The Tragic Euro/Afro-American
 

The 'tragic Euro/Afro-American' was a stereotype created by filmmakers in such early films as The Debt (1912), In Slavery Days (1913), The Octoroon (1913), and the Nigger (1915), according to Bogle (1989), to suggest that offspring of interracial unions are doomed to perpetual tragedy given that they are neither African-American nor Euro-American. The characteristics of this stereotype, besides being a female, include the unrequited desire to be Euro-American. In it later incarnation, the audience is made to sympathise with the character and the predicament of her circumstances as a product of mixed parentage. However, given that the tragic Euro/Afro-American never reaches full contentment and happiness even if she may resign herself to her African-American heritage, there is always the underlying racist suggestion that interracial unions spell nothing but tragedy for all around, and therefore must be condemned. In other words, this stereotype surfaced in order to emphasize the necessity for vigilance in support of the mythical racial purity of the white. It spoke against the obsessive fear of racist whites of inter-racial sexuality among consenting adults. The Euro/Afro-American represented, both, a warning (the need for vigilance against racial impurity), and an unpalatable reminder (of the existence of interracial sexuality). A classic example of the tragic Euro/Afro-American theme is to be found in the various film versions of Showboat (1929, 1936 and 1951) in the character of Julie, in various versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin and in the very film Imitation of Life discussed above.

Looking at Imitation of Life, it is in its the sub-plot that the tragic Euro/Afro-American stereotype surfaces, but with a different twist. Here, Peola (played by the beautiful Fredi Washington--a Euro-American person with sufficient African-American derived genes to be labelled African-American) is light-skinned enough to pass for Euro-American; and that is what she aspires to as she grows into adulthood. One consequence of this attitude is the conflict that develops between her dark-skinned mother Aunt Delilah and herself which culminates in Peola's angry departure from home with the words: "Don't come for me. If you see me in the street, don't speak to me. From this moment on I'm Euro-American. I am not colored. You have to give me up." Toward the end of the film when a heart-broken Aunt Delilah dies, Peola eventually reconciles herself to who she is, but only barely. In films that exploit this theme (as in this particular film), the general rule is to present the tragic Euro/Afro-American unsympathetically. The suggestion appears to be, as Leab (1975) observes, that mixed parentage is a source of nothing but sorrow.

In the highly popular film of the day, Pinky (Twentieth-Century Fox, 1949) this suggestion becomes the very basis of the film plot. That is, the central character Pinky, who is light enough to pass for Euro-American, chooses a life of celibacy rather than succumb to miscegenation when she is wooed by an unsuspecting Euro-American doctor during her nursing school days. One ridiculous twist to the plot is that Pinky sees the light of day, so to speak, while caring for a dying and impoverished old aristocratic Euro-American woman, Miss Em. The mammy role in the film, Pinky's grandmother known as Aunt Dicey, is played by Ethel Waters.

It should be noted that in comparing the tragic Euro/Afro-American character in films like Immitation of Life and Pinky with the old tragic Euro/Afro-American of the The Debt and The Octoroon, an important difference emerges, as hinted above: in the old stereotype it was a case of 'blaming the victim.' That is, the Euro/Afro-American was portrayed in a degrading and shameful manner for being born with 'racial impurity,' and the punishment for this 'impurity' was eternal unhappiness. It should be noted here that at an earlier time in U.S. history, specifically before the Civil Rights Movement helped to liberalize racism, the Euro/Afro-American was often targeted for special racist contempt. The reason is two-fold: first, he/she, by his/her very existence brought disorder to the oderly racist demarcation of the color boundary in the psyche of the white racist; and second, he/she was a permanent reminder of the often illicit sexual unions between the supposed inferior and the supposed superior races.

In the newer version of the stereotype, the element of unhappiness was still there, but its source was different: the dilemma of passing (or not to pass) for white. The underlying racist message behind this newer version of the stereotype appeared to be that, granted, the desire to escape from one's 'African-American' background was understandable, given the supposed terribly inferior and undesirable quality of life associated with such a background, however, the Euro/Afro-American had the duty to make peace with her African-American background by undertaking the necessary sacrifice of remaining with her own African-American community, since she could never really be white (even if she could pass for one at the physical level).⁽⁶⁾
 

In Pinky the Afro/Euro-American character was played, strangely, by actress Jeanne Craine, who is Euro-American in real life. This use of a Euro-American actress to play the role of a Euro/Afro-American is also to be found in, of all films, the remake of Imitation of Life in 1959 (Universal-International). In this film Peola is called Sarah Jane, and she is played by the Euro-American actress Susan Kohner, while her mother Aunt Delilah is named in this film as Annie Johnson (played by Juanita Moore). In this remake, the tragic Euro/Afro-American theme becomes much more central to the film plot, and it includes such racist 'juicy' parts as the beating up of Sarah Jane by her Euro-American boyfriend, upon his discovery that her mother is African-American.

Another film that ought to be mentioned here featuring Euro-American actors playing the part of tragic Euro/Afro-Americanes, to ensure audience identification with the characters as well as success at the box-office, is Lost Boundaries (1949). This film was based on a supposedly true account, published in the Readers Digest magazine, of Dr. Albert Johnston and his family (an African-American family) living in the New England community of New Hampshire, and who for twenty years had been considered upright citizens while they passed for Euro-Americans (though not out of choice, but circumstances). The role of the husband in the Carter family is played by Mel Ferrer, while that of his wife is played by Beatrice Pearson. The family are discovered to be African-American because of an investigation into Scott Carter's background by the Navy when he tries to enlist as a commissioned officer. (The Navy, ofcourse, in keeping with the racism of the day, rejects him. Needless to say, their Euro-American friends and neighbors turn their backs on them, untill chastized by their pastor.)

Other films that have used white actresses to play the characters of tragic Euro/Afro-Americans include: Show Boat (1951), a musical about life on a Mississippi showboat in which Ava Gardner plays the tragic Euro/Afro-American character Julie; Band of Angels (1957), a Civil War epic based on Robert Pen Warren's novel featuring Yvonne De Carlo in the role of the tragic Euro/Afro-American; Kings Go Forth (1958), a romantic film set in World War II France in which Natalie Wood plays a wealthy but tragic Euro/Afro-American pursued by two G.I.s; Night of the Quarter Moon (1959), a film about interracial marriage in which Julie London plays the tragic Euro/Afro-American; Raintree County (1959), a film set in the Civil War era in which the mere suspicion (unfounded) that a Southern belle, played by Elizabeth Taylor, has African-American blood in her, eventually leads her to a mental institution, and later death; I Passed for White (1960), a tragic Euro/Afro-American, played by Sonya Wilde, faces the consequences of trying to pass for white following the delivery of her baby fathered by her white husband.

There is one other important characteristic of the tragic Euro/Afro-American stereotype: unlike in the case of the mammy, the tragic Euro/Afro-American is not desexed. Possessing a skin color and physical features that are close to those of Euro-Americans, filmmakers (both African-Americans and Euro-Americans) have tended to imbue this stereotype with sex appeal--though not to the same extent as with the vamp/whore stereotype. Bogle (1989:33) suggests that for Euro-Americans the female mutatto represents an enticing balance between the spiritual (her Euro-American side) and the animal (her African-American side). However, a more likely source of fascination with the female Euro/Afro-American among both African-American and Euro-American males is their perception that the supposed exotic, animal-like sexuality of the African-American woman--an illusory perception in itself--is 'packaged' by nature in acceptable or desirable Euro-American phenotypical features. (Here, the particular African-American male one has in mind is the type that has fallen victim to the Euro-American stereotype of ideal beauty as embodied by a Euro-American woman, or a woman with Euro-American features.) In other words, she appears to incorporate, strictly from a sexual point of view, the best of Euro-American and African-American women. Moreover, from the perspective of both the African-American and the Euro-American male, she stands in the no-person's land, since she is neither wholly African-American nor wholly Euro-American; therefore, she is 'fair game' (so to speak).

Again, like with most of the other stereotypes, credit for this separation of African-American women on the basis of their skin complexion goes to D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. In that film the tragic Euro/Afro-American stereotype was developed through the character of Lydia, the mistress of the Northern Euro-American abolitionist, Senator Stoneman. Bogle (1989) observes that not only was this character the only passionate woman in the film, but it set in motion the practice of giving dark skinned African-American women actresses mammy roles while the light skinned actresses were allowed to be sex objects. In fact, to the present day, a dark skinned African-American women actress has little chance of aspiring to the position of a love goddess--should she desire it. (Compare, for example, the cinematic roles, on one hand, of Robin Givens and Halle Berry with that, on the other hand, of Cicely Tyson and Whoopi Goldberg.)

Among those who were burdened with the tragic Euro/Afro-American stereotype role by Hollywood, there is one person who clearly stands out: Dorothy Dandridge. However, in her case, this role was usually merged with that of another stereotype: the vamp/whore.

The following films are more examples that contain the tragic mulatto stereotype: Slaves (1969, Dionne Warwick plays the role of the tragic mulatto in this film about a slave rebel set in Kentucky); Georgia Georgia (1972, a Maya Angelou scripted film, but with the same old stereotype with a different twist placed on it: the main character played by Diana Sands is not a mulatto, but yet suffers all the symptoms of a tragic mulatto); The Cotton Club (1984, Lonette McKee's character is little more than a tragic mulatto in this Italian gangster film directed by Francis Ford Copolla and set in Harlem); Angel Heart (1987, Lisa Bonet plays the tragic mulatto in this off-beat detective film featuring voodoo cults, murder and gross sex)
 

Vamp/Whore
 

Film director King Vidor can be credited, perhaps, for bringing into prominence the African-American whore stereotype in film through his all African-American cast musical titled Hallelujah (1929).⁽⁷⁾ Vidor had claimed that his intention in making this film was to portray the lives of African-Americans living in the South realistically and seriously. It turned out, however, that by this he meant that the film was intended to capture, what he claimed, were the twin central aspects of African-American life: the fervor of religious expression and an uncomplicated sexual drive. Clearly, (as Leab 1975 points out) whatever his intentions, Vidor was a prisoner of his Texan upbringing and the rampant stereotypical African-American images of the day. He may have thought that he was not making a racist film, but it had all the hallmarks of one, except that it was subtler when compared to films such as Birth of a Nation.

The basic theme of this film is that of a good negro (Zeke played by Daniel Haynes) being corrupted by a whore (Chick played by Nina Mae McKinney). Bogle (1989) states that the character of McKinney was the first African-American whore to be portrayed on screen. Interestingly, despite her very successful and talented portrayal of her character, McKinney was never given the opportunity by Hollywood moguls to move from the point of a highly acclaimed leading lady in a successful film to a point where she could be considered a star in her own right. Instead she was relegated to bit parts, and in the end she had turn to cabaret singing in nightclubs in Europe to build her fame. After her return from Europe, she was able to obtain parts in independently produced all-African-American films. This phase, however, was the twilight of her career.

A talented and stunningly attractive actress, whose career would also include successfull nightclub singing, was Dorothy Dandridge. Yet, the honor of being the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Actress, was rendered hollow by virtue of the particular role Dandridge was being nominated for: a vamp. Although she performed this role with great talent in the cinematic rendition of the all-African-American Broadway hit of the same title, Carmen Jones (Twentieth-Century Foc, 1954), one could not avoid the distasteful feeling at realising that Hollywood's first attempt at awarding an Oscar in the Best Actress category to an African-American women was for one of the traditional stereotype roles forced upon attractive African-American actresses of mixed parentage: the slut. It ought to be recalled too that the Broadway hit itself was an Americanized version (Oscar Hammerstein II was the author) of a well known racist opera, Carmen, by the French composer Georges Bizet--the victims of the racist stereotypes in the opera were, however, European Gypsies. Leab (1975) reminds us, moreover, that even after the critical acclaim and a contract with the Hollywood studio giant of the day, MGM, Dandridge was never permitted to perform roles other than those traditionally reserved for African-American actresses; in her particular case, for instance: the sexy exotic native girl (as in Tarzan's Peril [1952]), or the beautiful Euro/Afro-American vamp (as in the other all-African-American musical Porgy and Bess [MGM, 1959] and in the films Island in the Sun [1957] and The Decks Ran Red [1958]).

Another African-American women who would be frequently assigned the vamp role, and who was also a talented singer in her own right, was Lena Horne. Her appearances in films was usually in the form of an amalgam of entertainer and the Euro/Afro-American vamp. However, in her case given her enormous singing talent, the vamp role was usually moderated to that of 'respectable' sex object. The first film in which she performed this role (besides a brief appearance as a Latin singer in Panama Hattie [1942]) was in Thousands Cheer (1943). It is in her next two appearances that she was given starring roles: in the films Cabin in the Sky (MGM, 1943) and Stormy Weather (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1943) that sought to showcase the African-American stereotype as the eternal entertainer.

Cabin in the Sky, an all African-American cast musical, rested on the familiar Hollywood storyline of the struggle between good and evil in the shape of the good man, Little Joe Jackson (played by Eddie Anderson), married to a dutiful God-fearing Christian wife, Petunia (played by Ethel Waters), being waylaid by a beautiful temptress, Georgia Brown (played by Lena Horne), untill he comes to his senses. (This musical also featured an abundance of toms, coons, mammies and entertainers, played by Ruby Dandridge, Butterfly McQueen, Mantan Moreland, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and others.) Stormy Weather was yet another musical that served as a vehicle for the top African-American entertainers of their day (such as Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, the Nicholas Brothers, etc.). In this film Lena Horne played opposite Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson as his lover. The film itself was very loosely based on Robinson's own life.

Among her many other films in which Lena Horne played essentially the role of entertainer plus 'respectable' vamp, include: Swing Fever [1943]; Two Girls and a Sailor [1944]; Ziegfield Follies [1944]; Words and Music [1948]; Dutchess of Idaho [1950]; Meet Me in Las Vagas [1956]; and Death of a Gunfighter [1969].

Further examples of the vamp/whore character played by African-American actresses can be found in these films: Anna Lucasta (1959, Eartha Kitt plays the character Anna, an ex-prostitute whose mended ways become an incovenience for her male significant others); The Balcony (1963, Ruby Dee is a prostitute in a brothel who helps recreate the perverse fantasies of the brothel's customers); Synanon (1965, in this one Eartha Kitt in the character role of Betty Coleman is a reformed prostitute); The Pawnbroker (1965, the character of Mabel, played by Thelma Oliver, is a whore with a heart in this film); The Comedians (1967, Marie Therese is a happy prostitute in this one, her character is played by Cicely Tyson); Three in the Attic (1969, here Judy Pace plays the character Eunice, one of three vamps on a college campus who exact sexual revenge on a white student they have imprisoned in an attic); Uptight (1969, Ruby Dee plays a part-time whore in the character of Laurie Hudson); The Liberation of L. B. Jones (1969, Lola Falana in the character of the wife of a succesful and respectable African American undertaker, becomes a white policeman's mistress in a racist town, with eventual disasterous consequences for, of all people, the two-timed husband); Slaves (1969, Dionne Warwick plays a slave-owner's concubine); Getting Straight (1970, Brenda Sykes plays the the role of siren as she hops into bed with a white graduate student); They Call Me Mr. Tibbs (1970, Beverly Todd plays the character of Puff, the prostitute and mistress to a white bi-sexual pimp); Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970, Emily Yancy, in the character of Solana, is the intelligent siren with, and note this, a white paralyzed homosexual in her sights); Angel Levine (1970, Sally, played by Gloria Foster, is the siren in this film); There Was a Crooked Man (1970, features Claudia McNeil in the role of a brothel keeper); Up in the Cellar (1970, in this film, Judy Pace is, once again, in a role that seems to be her trademark--it involves two white men); The Skin Game (1971, Brenda Sykes is the sexual diversion for Lou Gosett in this film); Doctor's Wives (1971, Diana Sands plays the nurse turned mistress for a white doctor); The New Centurions (1972, Rosalind Cash is another nurse turned mistress, but in this case the beneficiary of her sexual favors is a white policeman); The Landlord (1975, Diana Sands is the married siren pursuing the white landlord, while her militant African-American husband is doing time in jail); Fort Apache: the Bronx (1981, Pam Grier plays the violent street walker)
 

The Exotic Female
 

This stereotype comes very close to the tragic mulatto stereotype in that the character that portrays this stereotype serves primarily as a sex object, but it differs from the tragic mulatto stereotype in that it lacks the element of the dilemma of being able to pass for white. The principal feature of this stereotype, in other words, is the African American woman as an exotic sexual object. The key word here is 'exotic,' where what is at play here is male eroticism combined with racist-sexism. Many of the films that have been made in the era of post-Civil Rights Movement where African American actresses have been cast in supporting roles, this is the stereotype that they have often had to portray in these roles. Consider, for example, the following films: In Vamp (1986) and Siesta (1987) the sexual exotic role goes to Grace Jones; Tina Turner appears in her metal-meshed erotic minidress in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985); Rae Dawn Chong plays the sexual exotic stereotype in Quest for Fire (1981), Commando (1985) and American Flyers (1985); Jennifer Beals is the sexually charged dancer in Flashdance (1983) and as an exotic creation of the insane Dr. Frankenstein in The Bride (1985).

Interestingly, the use of African American actresses in the role of sexual exotica has also been true for films that have had African-Americans in central roles. Take, for example, the following three films: Purple Rain (1984), Coming to America (1988) and Boomerang (1992--note that this film was directed by an African American, Reginald Hudlin). In all three films the central roles are played by African Americans, Prince in the first film and Eddie Murphy in the last two, yet these films host African American actresses (e.g. Appolonia Kotero, Robin Givens, Halle Berry, Shari Headley, etc.) in various roles that almost all serve as nothing more than sexual props. Of course, it is perhaps necessary to point out that for African American male audiences the women are simply sex objects, not 'exotic' sex objects. In other words, what is at work here is eroticism plus sexism, but minus racism (in the form of exoticism). It is in the case of the white male audiences that the women in the films become sexual exotica.
 

The Amazon
 

In the mid-1970s, there emerged within the category of 'blaxploitation films' a special sub-category that featured the amazon stereotype, in the form of the African-American 'superwoman.' This stereotype is referred to by Bogel (1989) as the female version of the 'brutal buck,' popularised by D. W. Griffith in his The Birth of a Nation, (but laced with elements from the tragic mulatto and mammy stereotypes as well). In Griffith's film, the buck was the embodiment of white fears: the oversexed and savage, huge, African-American male brute out to despoil the purity of the white woman.

In Griffith's film, this stereotype is played out via the characters of Gus, who is out to rape the younger daughter of the Southern white Cameron family (forcing her to commit suicide rather than give in to the rape) and the mulatto Silas Lynch who tries to force the white Elsie Stoneman to marry him. She is saved from this fate by the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, who, Griffith suggests through his film, serve as the saviors of the white South during the Reconstruction era immediately following the Civil War. Leaving aside the highly sexist notion that white women are incapable of taking charge of their own sexuality, consequently any relations they may have with males of color have to be in the context of male rape, Griffith, through his buck stereotype was giving vent to an age-old preposterous and racist myth among whites that the mere presence of a white woman in the same room will render a male of color into a dithering, panting, salivating, violently explosive and dangerous ball of sexual energy.

It is this buck stereotype, tempered with the femme fatale stereotype commonly reserved for white women by Hollywood, that made up the new stereotype of the African-American amazon to hit the screens via such 'blaxploitation' films as Cleopatra Jones (1973), Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). The actresses that played the amazon roles were chiefly Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson, and later in the 1980s this role was taken over by Grace Jones in such films as Conan the Destroyer (1984) and A View to Kill (1985). Although this stereotype involved a female who could more than match any male in terms of violence and bloody gore, males did not find it threatening to their egos. Consider, for example, the film Foxy Brown in which the character of Grier castrates the white male protagonist and delivers the organ in a jar to his girlfriend. On the surface, such a sequence ought to have made any male squirm. On the contrary, however, this stereotype did not threaten the male ego--after all it was authored by males. One reason is that the amazon also represented the male fantasy of a voluptuous, beautiful and alluringly raw woman who was as free with sex as with violence. To ensure that the stereotype did not threaten males, the amazon was 'defanged' by usually dressing her in sexually suggestive outfits. To drive home this point consider the following thought experiment: replace the Grace Joneses, the Tamara Dobsons and the Pam Griers with actresses of the type traditionally used to portray mammies. It is doubtful that male audiences would have gone to such films in droves. The mere thought of being a victim of the violence of a de-sexed amazon, rather than the usual day-dreams of being the willing object of a sexually alluring amazon's seduction would have kept them away from the box-office.⁽⁸⁾
 

African-American Filmmakers and Sexism
 

In excoriating Hollywood for the racist-sexist treatment of African-American women, one must not be misled into thinking that African American male filmmakers have been any better. While it is true that the number of African-American filmmakers in general of (either sex) have been few and far between, it is also true, sadly, that the output of the male filmmakers has been, for the most part, little different from that of their Euro-American male counterparts. Sexism has been as rampant in films of African-American male filmmakers as it has been in Hollywood films. This fact is evident going as far back as the early independent films produced for African-American audiences.

Among the earliest African-American film producers was the legendary Oscar Micheaux, who, as a consequence of the usual racist discrimination of the day, worked outside Hollywood as an independent filmmaker. For a period of some thirty years, from 1919 when he released his first film, The Homesteader, to 1948 when his last known film, The Betrayal, was released, Micheaux quietly but steadily turned out some forty films on a shoe-string budget. This son of freed slaves, with a childhood background of poverty and little formal education, wrote, produced, directed and edited almost all his films. However, without any intention of diminishing his stupendous achievement (unparalleled to this day in the history of cinema) as an independent filmmaker, one must also confront the truth that whether by personal design or by the dictate of market forces, or both, his films were by and large of the exploitational variety in which sexually titillating scenes unrelated to the film narrative, for instance, were common place.

Among the common elements of Micheaux's filmic narratives was the exploitation of the tragic Afro/Euro-American stereotype. In his first film, however, this stereotype is stood on its head. The central character, Jean Baptiste (played by Charles Lucas) falls in love with a Euro-American woman, Agnes, (played by Evelyn Preer) but for obvious reasons cannot marry her. Toward the end of the narrative, however, Baptiste discovers that Agnes is not completely Euro-American after all, consequently they are free to marry and live happily ever after. Years later, this same theme is played out again in his 1931 release The Exile. A young urbanite escapes the vices of the city to the plains of South Dakota where he befriends a woman who is assumed to be Euro-American. Upon the discovery that she has some drops of African-American blood in her he is free to marry her. His last film, The Betrayal, was yet another rehash of the same theme.

It ought to be mentioned that in time audiences of Micheaux's films grew weary of his sexist and 'ethnicist' themes.⁽⁹⁾
 

For example, one particular film of Micheaux's that appears to have aroused considerable ire among audiences and in the press was God's Stepchildren. In this film, reports Sampson (1977:53), there is a scene in which a Euro-American person is portrayed assaulting a young girl and spitting on her because she had a percentage of African-American blood in her veins. Micheaux, however, portrays this incident as deserved because she was selfish and disdainful of her own people.

It ought to be pointed out here, that the approach to the tragic Afro/Euro-American stereotype by white filmmakers and African-American filmmakers was not from the same viewpoint in so far as the issue of inter-racial sexuality was concerned. Whereas the former was essentially motivated by racist concerns (see above), the latter was motivated by concerns of a different sort: on one hand, the Afro/Euro-American was despised because he/she appeared to reject his/her black heritage. That is, he/she was betraying the community by attempting to pass for white or appearing to want to pass for white. From this perspective, there were two related underlying issues: one, of the Afro/Euro-American appearing to act as if he/she was superior to other darker skinned members of the community; and two, joining or appearing to want to join the ranks of the oppressors of the community.

On the other hand, however, the Afro/Euro-American was envied because he/she possessed skin color that was desirable because it came close to the skin color of the Euro-American 'massa' (master). That is, the underlying assumption behind this envy was that if anyone among African-Americans stood a chance to achieve integration with the white majority than it would be those whose skin color did not loudly proclaim to the world the word 'black.' We see here, in other words, the tragic Afro/Euro-American as an embodiment of the two principal contradictory tendencies that have plagued African-Americans (as well as other racial minorities) from almost day one of their arrival in the Americas: an inferiority complex and a 'nationalist' (self-pride) complex.⁽¹⁰⁾

Following in the footsteps of Micheaux, almost two decades later, in the early 1970s, a new breed of African-American filmmakers, often working in alliance with Hollywood, added their personal twist to sexist portrayals of African-American women. The films they produced were so blatantly exploitative that they came to be called 'blaxpoitation' films. The films exploited the factor of race for the sole purpose of turning a quick profit by targeting them specifically at the African American ignorantsia. Then, as today, the African-American ingnorantsia had shown an appetite for formulaic films featuring African-American actors/actresses in principal roles (and set often in the urban ghetto), but with an overemphasis on the male macho glorification fantasies of sex, violence and crime, coupled with little or no attention to cinematic quality and art. Examples of these films included: Shaft (1971, directed by Gordon Parks, Sr.); Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song ([SSBS] 1971, directed by Melvin Van Peebles); Melinda (1972, directed by Hugh Robertson); Shaft's Big Score (1972, directed by Gordon Parks, Sr.); Super Fly (1972, directed by Parks's son, Gordon Parks, Jr., a film that went so far to even feature a well known Harlem pimp playing himself); Trouble Man (1972, directed by Ivan Dixon); Cleopatra Jones (1973, written and co-produced by Max Julien); Super Fly T.N.T. (1973, directed by Ron O'Neal); Willie Dynamite (1973, directed by Gilbert Moses); Penitentiary (1979, followed by two other sequels, in 1982 and 1987, and all directed by Jamaa Fanaka).

With the initial box-office success of these films, a further string of 'blaxploitation' films were released by Hollywood, but which were usually written, directed and produced by whites; they included: The Legend of Nigger Charlie (1972, directed by Martin Goldman); Black Ceaser (1973, directed by Larry Cohen); Hell Up in Harlem (1973, directed by Larry Cohen); Blacula (1972, directed by William Crain); Slaughter (1972, directed by Jack Starrett); Hit Man (1972, directed by George Armitage); The Mack (1973, directed by Michael Campus); and Cool Breeze (1972, directed by Barry Pollack). Note: In 1990, another sequel to the Super Fly, The Return of the Super Fly was released; it was directed by the white producer of the first Super Fly, Sig Shore, and it was every bit tawdry as the original.

During the 'blaxploitation' boom Hollywood churned out films by the score to satisfy the high demand generated by the young ghetto-based ignorantsia. However, it is important to point out here that the production of these films by Hollywood was not dictated out of a need to carry out affirmative action in behalf of the predominantly young African-American audiences by bringing out films that met their hitherto unaddressed legitimate need for films that were set within their own milieu (the inner city ghetto). After all, in the pithic words of Kael (1975 [1972]:266), "[t]he movie hustlers--big studio and little--are about as principled as cocaine hustlers." Rather, that once Hollywood realised on the basis of the box-office experiences of SSBS and Ossie Davis's Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) that there was 'gold in them hills,' they quickly jumped on to the blaxploitation bandwagon.

The returns on these films were enormous given the paltry budgets that they appeared to require by normal Hollywood standards. In fact, Guerrero (1993:82) states that the 'blaxploitation' films were a godsend for the Hollywood industry because of the serious economic difficulties the industry was undergoing, for a number of reasons, at the time when they surfaced. So, the core question that must be asked here is, why did these films do so well at the box-office where a film made on the exteremely low budget of half a million to a million dollars could easily produce a return of nine to ten million dollars or more.

The sad truth is that these macho 'blaxploitation' films made the African-American ignorantsia feel good because, at long last, they could vicariously experience what many of them so fervently desired (understandably, of course), to repay 'whitey' for all the wrongs he had inflicted on African Americans. Yet, this vicarious fulfillment of revenge also represented, ironically, a further confirmation of the white stereotype of African-American males: that they were oversexed brutish savages, who, given half the chance, would do the same or more to whites as whites had done to them--therefore, the racist oppression of African-Americans was justified. Moreover, the films may have been set in the inner city and featured primarily blacks in lead roles, but in no way did they challenge the dominant and oppressive power of whites in U.S. society. In fact, on the contrary, what the films helped to do was to erase whatever political consciousness that had developed among the young as a result of the collective struggles of African-Americans for civil rights in the preceding decades. This was achieved by means of glorification, among other things, of individualism, consumerism, drug consumption, and of course machoism.

In discussing these films, attention must of necessity focus on one very specific film that appears to have helped kick off the blaxploitation genre and that clearly went out of its way to celebrate the sexist dehumanization of African-American women: Peebles's SSBS. This film alone quite arguably set the sexist tone for the entire 'blaxploitation' genre. In the process of making what appeared on the surface to be an anti-white establishment film, which contributed greatly to the film's popularity among African American male audiences, Peebles also ends up glorifying the African American male pimp and reducing all women in the film to little more than whores.⁽¹¹⁾ While considerable credit is due to Peebles for writing, producing, directing, editing, and scoring this film independently of Hollywood on a shoestring budget (not to mention the fact that he also acts in it), it does not take away from the fact that the film reeks with misogyny. For example, the main character, Sweetback (played by Peebles) is not only a professional stud, but he escapes from a police manhunt by exploiting his sexual prowess by means of seduction, sex duel, and even raping a woman at knifepoint. The women in this single film are all reduced to sex objects in various guises (vamps, whores, rape victim etc.).

Van Peebles explains that in order to avoid problems with high-wage demanding Hollywood based unions for his necessarily low-budget film, he put out the word that he was making a pornographic film. The unions, he said, did not seem to be concerned with porno films because they thought, probably, that these films were beneath them. Regardless of how legitimate this approach may have been given the constraints facing an independent African-American filmmaker, it appears, sadly, that the deception veered into a reality; the film came pretty close to be as crass as a pornographic film.

Ironically, Van Peebles was motivated with good intentions in making his film. He wanted to make a film that would help African-Americans elevate their political consciousness. This is how he put it:
 

[The problem is] ...how specifically to get the Man's foot out of our ass. The first beachhead, the very first thing that we must do is to reconquer our own minds. The biggest obstacle to the black revolution in America is our conditioned susceptibility to the white man's program. In short, the fact is that the white man has colonized our minds. We've been violated, confused and drained by this colonization and from this brutal, calculated genocide, the most effective and vicious racism has grown, and it is with this starting point in mind and the intention to reverse the process that I went into cinema in the first fucking place. (Van Peebles, 1975 [1971]:225)
 

Yet, the sad truth is that Van Peebles himself was in need of serious elevation of his own poorly developed political consciousness. Supplanting racism with vicious sexism did not constitute political consciousness; it was simply other side of political consciousness: the lack of it. His film ends with a postscript that reads: "A Baadassss Nigger is coming back to collect some dues." The problem, however, is that the dues that Peebles (in the character of Sweetback) wants to collect are from a segment of society that itself would like to collect dues from him and his sex! Consider, also the response Peebles gave when asked how black revolutionary filmmakers could independently raise capital to make films: "Put a couple of chicks on the block, raise the money and make a film" (quoted by Guerrero, 1993:91).

Writing in Ebony magazine at the time of the release of the film, and in direct rebuttal of the argument put forward by Peebles his ignorantsia supporters that the film was a truly black revolutionary film (and therefore by implication would help to assist in the emancipation of African-Americans), Lerone Bennett, Jr., provided the pithiest criticism when he wrote:
 

[I]t is necessary to say frankly that nobody ever [fucked] his way to freedom. And it is mischievous and reactionary finally for anyone to suggest to black people in 1971 that they are going to be able to [screw] theirway across the Red Sea. [Fucking] will not set you free. If [fucking] freed, black people would have celebrated the millennium 400 years ago. (Bennett, 1971:116)
 

Clearly, the identity crisis in the African-American male created by centuries of racism in which his castration at both symbolic and economic levels has always been a constant, was to be solved, as far as these particular filmmakers were concerned on the backs of women, whether African-American or white. The suggestion that freedom from oppression for the African-American male was to be achieved via the dehumanization of women, while perhaps unintended, is nevertheless the central message that comes through these films. Consequently, just as in the days of slavery when African-American women were often reduced to sex toys for the white slave owner, in the blaxploitation films they are reduced to play the same role, but for a new master, one from within their own race. The African-American male ignorantsia, not surprisingly, could not get enough of such portrayals.

Notice too that the sexism against African-American women inherent in the 'blaxploitation' films was extended to white women as well, and in the process denying the possibility of a non-racist, humanistic bonding between an African-American person and a white person through the medium of true love. To the extent that these films glorified the dehumanization of white women, they were not only sexist but racist too. As Kael (1975 [1972]:260) correctly and astutely observes, these films appeared to send two contradictory messages: One, that freedom from racist oppression translated into sleeping with white women at every opportunity; thereby confirming the worst nightmares of racist white males: that given half the chance, black males would convert their wives and daughters into whores. Two, that considering the awfully demeaning treatment of white (and black) women in these films, the only ones who would be willing to associate with African-American males would have to be stupid and shallow tramps. There is the suggestion, then, that no self-respecting white woman would be willing go out with any black male.⁽¹²⁾

One other point about the 'blaxploitation' genre: the celebration of machismo that this genre constituted was not an original invention of the 'blaxploitation' filmmakers. It was simply an extention of what Hollywood had always done in its traditional films targeted at white audiences. The main difference in these films was that rather than a white 'macho' man as the principal characater, we now had a black 'macho' man.

Within less than a decade of the appearance of the blaxploitation genre, it faded away. There were a number of reasons for this: economics, Hollywood was now on a surer financial footing and therefore no longer needed to rely on the inner city box-office; political opposition, African-American leaders, such as Jesse Jackson, began a concerted campaign against these films; brand disloyalty, African-Americans began to tire at the monotony of these films and started to turn once more to traditional Hollywood films with cross-over (multi-racial) appeal; and even demands by some within the African-American community for contributions to community projects from Hollywood (which Hollywood resisted) in exchange for 'the visual exploitation' of the ghetto (see Murray, 1975 [1972] on this). It would be a some years before a small number of African-American filmmakers would once more acquire the opportunity to make films.

When this did happen, some two decades further on, it would be through the efforts, once again, of an independent African-American filmmaker demonstrating to Hollywood that 'there was gold in them hills.' This filmmaker was Spike Lee. So, for the third time in the history of film in the U.S., a new crop of African-American male filmmakers emerged to add their particular male chauvinist twist on sexist portrayals of African American women.

Spike Lee's first film was his independently produced shoe-string budget film called She's Gotta Have It (1986). Later came other films School Daze (1988); Do the Right Thing; (1989) Mo' Better Blues (1990); Jungle Fever (1991); Malcolm X (1992) and Crooklyn (1994). In nearly all these films Lee goes out of his way to shake up white sensibilities, not to mention black sensibilities too. Without question, most of his films (with the exception, perhaps, of Mo' Better Blues and Malcolm X, leave his audiences considerably shaken up emotionally and intellectually, and therein lie his true genius. Yet, having said this, one is also forced to admit that like many of the other African-American male filmmakers he is unable to break out of the confines of sexist portrayals of women, black or white, except in the case of Crooklyn (which, perhaps not coincidentally he co-wrote with his sister).

After Lee had helped launch this latest cycle of African-American oriented films, others joined him too: such as, Robert Townsend, Reggie and Warrington Hudlin, Bill Duke, Allen and Albert Hughes, Mario Van Peebles, John Singleton, and Matty Rich. However, there was some difference between Lee's films and the films of most of these other directors. Some of the films produced by the other directors were almost classic blaxploitation genre films. To be sure, their basic anti-drug and anti-violence message is welcome, but it gets lost in the general din of the usual violence, sex, etc. that is reproduced in the name of 'telling it like it is' (which the earlier blaxploitation filmmakers claimed they were doing too). films such as:
 

The Origins and Persistence of Racist-Sexist Stereotypes
 

Having described the kinds of stereotypical roles that African-American women have been forced to portray in films, one must now confront the more difficult task of explaining the orgins and persistence of these roles to this day. It is not enough to simply state that these roles were inflicted on African-American women simply because the Hollywood filmmakers were/are racist-sexists or that the independent African-American filmmakers were/are sexists. It is true that only racist-sexist or sexist minds could come up with such stereotype roles. This is not to say, however, that these filmmakers have conspired together to produce racist-sexist/sexist films. Rather, as Turner (1994:180) explains in a related, but slightly different context, filmmakers do not exist independently of the society they live in. Consequently, their approach to film will refelect the popular culture of which they are a part, and which they reinforce through their work. To put the matter differently: the films that are produced by Hollywood are a product of a dialectical interplay between Hollywood on one hand, and the marketplace on the other. So with whom does the fault really lie then? The short answer is that it lies with both: filmmakers and the marketplace (consumers, that is the film audience). While the role of filmmakers in determining what type of films get made appears to be obvious, that of the marketplace does not. Consider, then, the following:

In the U.S., ultimately, filmmaking is a capitalist business not funded by the government in any direct way (unlike in some other countries). The filmmakers can not continue producing racist-sexist and sexist films for as long as they have done unless there is a market for these films. In the capitalist marketplace, irrational behavior (such as racist-sexism), is soon taken care of by the forces of the marketplace. Unless, of course, such irrational behavior ceases to be irrational from the perspective of the marketplace. Consider, for example, the following recent episode that an African-American filmmaker experienced, and recounted by him:
 

I sit outside the corner office of a top studio executive. A white business associate set up the meeting; he thought it would be good for the executive to talk with an "articulate black in touch with the street." In my mind I run through my rap about why African-American filmmakers and their audience should matter to Hollywood....

I start talking. I hold his attention for, maybe, eighty seconds.

"Mind if I pace?" he inquires politely. "No problem, man."

Thus begins a have no-illusions diatribe that goes on for the rest of my half-hour.... "Its not about black film or knowing Spike or the Hudlin Brothers. It's about who can bring in the idea for Ninja Turtles II or a series like Friday the 13th...."

"Theaters have to be filled. People have to be paid. So we've got to grind it out. We're in the pulp business." There was no evil in his voice. No malevolent chuckle.... This is just the way it is. And, oh yeah, "Nice talking to you." (Nelson, 1994:ix)
 

The plain and simple fact, then, is that male filmmakers in Hollywood and outside have found that racist-sexism and sexism helps to sell films; that is, there is a huge market for such films. In other words, regardless of how deeply racist-sexist white male filmmakers may be, or how firmly sexist black male filmmakers are, if there was no market for their films then they would have to stop producing them. In the end, every thing, including the irrational proclivities of the individual capitalist (be it sexism, racism, or whatever), must succumb to the logic of the marketplace.

Therefore, the fundamental question that must be asked here is why is there a market for such films? The short answer is that the U.S. is a racist-sexist society. Consequently, racist-sexism is not an irrational behavior after all, within the context of the U.S. capitalist marketplace. Slavery may have ended over a hundred years ago, but the racist-sexist stereotype images of African-American women that were imported and/or created to justify the enslavement of millions of black women (and men) have continued to permeate U.S. popular culture to such an extent that the production of films with racist-sexist images is 'required' by the market place, and which note, is not just a male marketplace, it also includes a large chunk of the female component. (It should be remembererd, to give one example, among the cheering audiences of even a relentlessly sexist film such as SSBS have been black women. The ignorantsia is, after all, sex neutral in its composition.)

Consequently, what Hollywood filmmakers have been doing all down the century of existence of films is to continue the racist-sexist/sexist role performed by other agencies of popular culture that existed prior to the invention of film (such as: literature, music, theater, dance, advertisements for commercial products, folklore, humor, collectible icons, etc.), namely, deliver to the marketplace the racist-sexist/sexist stereotype images required by it. In stating this, however, one further question emerges: Where did these stereotype images come from in the first place? The short answer is that they were manufactured and propagated by those who had the power to do so (specifically, certain segments of white males), in order to create the mental apparatus necessary to permit the racist-sexist oppression of African-American women during, and after, the period of slavery in U.S. history. The immediate origins of these stereotypes, then, lie within slavery inspired Southern popular culture, as has been pointed out at various points in the preceding discussion.⁽¹³⁾
 

However, in creating these stereotype images, the racists were drawing upon a tradition that had long established the self-arrogated supremacy of Euro-Americans over all Peoples of Color, even before the genocidal colonization of the Americas and the Caribbean. This tradition had arisen out of the crucible of the first large scale and sustained encounter took place between the Western European peoples and Peoples of Color (Africans, Arabs, Asians, etc.) during the Crusades, and then continued at each successive encounter (e.g. during the colonization of the Americas, during the enslavement of African peoples in the Americas, during the colonization of Africa, etc.), up to the present day. In other words, these stereotypes arose in order to meet a specific need: to justify oppression (from the perspective of, both, the oppressed and the oppressors).⁽¹⁴⁾
 

Conclusion

In explaining the production of films by Hollywood that are racist-sexist and sexist as residing in the dialectical interplay between Hollywood and the marketplace (see also the Introduction to this book for more on this issue), there is also the underlying suggestion that changing the demands of the marketplace can also lead to changes in the type of films being made. Therefore, if an effort is to be made to get Hollywood to stop producing films that rely on celebrating and glorifying the achievements, dreams and visions of white males, while at the same time denigrating and/or denying the achievements, dreams and visions of women and racial minorities then it requires 'political action.' The immediate objective of such political action would be consiousness raising of the consumers who make up the marketplace.

Who must undertake this political action? All who are victims of the distortions of representations that Hollywood pumps out, including filmmakers. However, if filmmakers are going to play their part then it is quite likely that they may have to work outside the 'marketplace determined' confines of Hollywood. They may have to be independent filmmakers. One such independent filmmaker who appears to have decided to assume this responsibility of producing films that entertain but yet do not dehumanise African-American women (or any other group for that matter) is Julie Dash.

1. Note: a distinction is being made in this chapter between racist-sexism and sexism. Whereas all women can potentially be victims of sexism, the same is not true for racist-sexism. When Euro-American males discriminate against Euro-American females or when African-American males discriminate against African-American females then such discrimination can be labelled as sexism. However, when the sexism involves males who are racially different from their victims then it is racist-sexism that comes into play. In such a situation the two forms of discrimination are not entirely separable given their common root: inequitous power relationships between the victims and the victimizers.

2. It should be noted here that the identification of these stereotypes into distinct categories is being undertaken here simply for analytical purposes. In reality, elements from two or more stereotypes were often merged into a single character. Films did not always carry in them characters that portrayed the purest form of the stereotypes. For example, it was not uncommon for elements of the tragic Euro/Afro-American stereotype to be merged with elements from the vamp/whore stereotype in a single character. (Note: the terms Euro/Afro-American and Afro/Euro-American will be used interchangeably in this chapter to refer to persons with mixed African-American and Euro-American biological heritage.)

3. In both films the basic underlying propaganda was that the Civil War was a mistake because it rendered the contented and happy slave into a troublesome 'darkie,' and thereby ruined the South for everyone. Both films, therefore, glorify and romanticise 'the good old days' when happy darkies were either in the kitchen or in the fields, and 'whities' sat on their verandas whiling away their time sipping mint juleps. (The films, of course, neglect to mention that the vast majority of whites were not only poor and could not afford slaves, but they were only a notch or two above slaves in terms of social, economic and political status.)

4. Fannie Hurst, on whose novel of the same title this film is based, must have had the Aunt Jemima brand pancake mix and syrup on her brain when she developed this story. In fact, when criticised about her stereotype portrayal of African-Americans she arrogantly retorted with the reply that African-Americans needed to be grateful for the 'break' she had given them by including them in her story. (Reddick, 1975 [1944]:11) A point of interest: according to Turner (1994:44) the use of the Aunt Jemima trademark on a line of breakfast foods was first introduced to the public by the Davis Milling Company at the 1893 Columbia Exposition in Chicago to help sell their new self-rising pancake flour. The idea of using the Aunt Jemima character as a brand name came to one, Chris L. Rutt, the owner of the company that had originally invented the flour and which the Davis Milling had now taken over, via a minstrel song that catalogued the virtues of a mammy called Aunt Jemima. Following this first commercial appearance of Aunt Jemima, other capitalists jumped on to the bandwagon and produced their jemima trademark variations, such as those found on Luzianne Coffee, Fun to Wash laundry soap, and Aunt Dinah molasses. The lovable, fiercely loyal, super caring and unthreatening female 'darkie' servant has helped to create in the minds of white consumers the sense of true 'homeliness' and in the process has helped to make capitalists using this racist-sexist mythical stereotype as a brandname for their products wealthy to this day--just look around your kitchen to verify this fact.

5. Though some may want to argue the reverse and say that if she was that intelligent how come she did not reach for freedom and leave Tara. However, to take this point of view is to suggest that in the war-torn chaos of the post-Civil War years for women like Mammy there was a world of limitless opportunities awaiting them outside, incomparable to what they already had in their roles as mammies. This, of course, is completely untrue. Under the circumstances, a wiser course of action would have been to stay, as many mammies probably did.

6. An important question that arises here is that why is it that if a person has even a small amount of African-American heritage in his/her biological background, then regardless of how 'white' the person may be in biological terms, the person is, (as far as racist Euro-Americans are concerned), 'tainted' for life as an African-American person, and therefore, (to them) an inferior being. Surely, looking at the matter from a purely biological point of view, the opposite can also hold true: that is, that the person is 'tainted' for life as a white person!

In other words, who decided, and on what basis, that if a white person had African-American blood running in his/her veins then he/she was not white, but an African-American? The immediate answer to this question is that, of course, it is Euro-Americans who decided this because they have the power to do so. The question of who among those with mixed African/Euro-American ancestry can be classified African-American is, in other words, a politically determined matter, and not a scientific matter. In stating this, however, one must still explain why they decided to take this approach. To answer this latter question one must go back in history, in fact back to the days when the status of African-Americans was beginning to be transformed from that of indentured servants to slaves.

It will be recalled that among the first African-Americans to be brought to North America was a group of some twenty Africans who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia (the first successful colony in North America to be established by Europeans [the English]), aboard a 'Dutch man of War,' in the latter part of August, 1619. The ship was commanded by pirates who, sometime earlier on the high seas, had relieved a Spanish ship bound for the Caribbean (where slavery was already well established), of its human cargo. Not knowing, it appears, what to do with the slaves the pirates decided to barter them for food, an arrangement that the English settlers readily welcomed. Why? The emerging English colony was in need of cheap labor. The legal status of these bartered Africans within the colony initially appears to have been similar to that of those among the English who provided labor as indentured servants (that is, temporary slaves, in all but name). It is not until 1661 that laws are enacted permitting the permanent enslavement of Africans in the colony.

This transition of Africans from the status of indentured servants to permanent slaves came about primarily as a result of a dialectical interplay of three factors: the need for abundant cheap labor to work on the expanding tobacco plantations of the wealthy; English racism; and political convenience (dividing the poor along racial lines to politically obliterate the class division between all of the poor and the rich that was constantly threatening to upset the political power of the wealthy in the colony). It is within this context of the transformation of the legal status of Africans in the colony that laws are passed not only prohibiting interracial marriage, but also establishing the status of Euro/Afro-Americans as slaves too.

In other words, then, to the slave owners of the first English colony in North America, any offspring of any slave, including Euro/Afro-American children, represented free and self-perpetuating labor to enhance their wealth. (In the children of the slaves, the slaveowner found that money did grow on trees after all.) At the same time, English racism coupled with the need to maintain rigid boundaries between whites and African-Americans for political and economic purposes, ensured in North America the permanent categorization (to this day) of Afro/Euro-American persons as African-Americans and not Euro-Americans. (Compare this status of Afro/Euro-American persons in North America with that Afro/Euro-Americans in South America.)

7. The terms vamp and whore are used interchangeably here to refer to the treatment of women as 'sex objects.' However, some, like Mapp (1975 [1973]:199) may make a distinction between a vamp and a whore on the basis that there is a difference in power commanded by each relative to the male. Hence the former is apt to be in greater control of her sexuality compared to the latter, who is often treated as a mere sex object. This would be a surface level distinction, because in reality (at the deeper level) both the vamp and the whore exist ultimately as satisfiers of the sexual desires of the male in return for either money or some other form of payment (status, symbols of wealth, etc.). Both the vamp and the whore are embroiled in an unequal power-relationship with the male in which the 'price' of the only commodity that both can offer, their sexuality, is still determined by the male.

8. Strangely, white women of the period took to this stereotype and claimed it as their own; to them the roles played by Grier appeared heroic and therefore Grier's characters represented female action heroines out to put men in their place. They, quite obviously, missed, both, the racism and the sexism that was inherent in the amazon stereotype in these films.

9. The term 'ethnicist' is being used here to refer to the light versus dark complexioned prejudices among African-Americans, which it should be noted was also carried over into cinema. In other words, like the Hollywood filmmakers, African-American filmmakers of the day had a decided preference for casting light-complexioned African-American actresses/actors in central roles. Then, as today (albeit to a much lesser extent), the sentiment among African-Americans--also shared to some extent by Euro-Americans--was captured in a popular ditty of the period that went:
 

If you're light, you're all right;

If you're brown, stick aroun';

But if you're black, stand back.

(From Leab, 1975:65)

10. These contradictory tendencies among African-Americans are most openly manifest at the cultural level, for example, in the message of 'black is beautiful' conflicting with the 'message' carried via the popularity of skin-lightening and hair-straightening cosmetics, namely 'white is beautiful.'

11. A note about the pimp/hustler: Guerrero (1993:94) observes that this 'hero,' to use his word, has long enjoyed a colorful history in African-American urban popular culture. This is because, he says, through his persona African-Americans could strike back at the unjust racist society. Leaving aside the matter of precisely how the persona of the pimp/hustler can represent to African-Americans a blow against racial injustice, it is important to stress that for many African-American women the pimp/hustler, far from being a hero, has on the contrary served as one of the agents by whom their oppression by the wider racist society has been mediated. One must be very careful in identifying who among urban African-Americans are likely to consider the pimp/hustler a hero; it is certainly not women.

12. Surely, the ideal society that all victims of racism must aspire to is one in which all forms of prejudice are absent, including black racism and black sexism. In the absence of such a goal (illusory though it may appear under present political and social circumstances), there is really no basis for complaining against racist victimization simply because, at this point in time, the victims happen to be African-Americans and the victimizers whites. No principled stand on opposition to any form of prejudice (be it racist, sexist, ethnicist, classist, etc.) is possible if it is motivated by concerns of revenge--regardless of how cathartically sweet revenge may appear to the victim of the prejudice.

13. There is one problem that arises here that must be addressed: surely, the U.S. had fought a Civil War over the question of slavery, and in which the South had lost. How is it possible then that racist elements of Southern popular culture would gain popularity in the North after the Civil War to the point where, in time, at least by the close of the twentieth century, these racist elements would become part of national popular culture. In posing this question, there is the assumption that since it is the North that had insisted on the abolition of slavery, the North was not racist, only the South was. The truth is that both the South and the North were racist from the beginning of the colonization of the U.S. and continued to be so throughout the period of slavery and upto the present. The North's desire to abolish slavery did not arise out of sentiments of opposition to racism and the acceptance of the equality of all human beings. (Even the white abolitionists, for the most part, while loathing the insitution of slavery as anti-Christian did not, at the same time, undergo a sudden conversion and achieve faith in the equality of all races.)

The Northern motives for preventing the expansion of slavery to other parts of the U.S. (not, notice, abolishing slavery) lay elsewhere, primarily in economics (both capitalists and the working class felt threatened by it by the time the War was fought). However, more importantly, slavery was not the primary cause of the Civil War (one can hardly believe that racist whites would have sacrificed their lives by the thousands simply to free blacks from the clutches of their fellow whites), it was just a catalyst in which the real issue was the unity of the country. In fact, the abolition of slavery throughout the country, was an unintended consequence of the Civil War. The Civil War would still have taken place if slavery had not been around as long as the South had continued to insist on breaking away from the Union for some other reason. Why was the unity of the country so important? Primarily to ensure that Northern capitalists were not denied future access to markets and resources in the South.

Consequently, it is not surprising to observe that the issue of slavery and the Civil War abounds with contradictions, such as the following two: one, Northern whites did not want to permit African-Americans to participate in the War because of pure racism on their part (that is on the part of the whites); two, after slavery had been abolished, those African-Americans who lived in the North and those who migrated North from the South soon discovered that the Northerners were just as racists as the Southerners. Therefore, Abraham Lincoln did not really free the slaves (regardless of what the ignorantsia believes); it is social changes (primarily, but not only, the beginnings of the industrial revolution in the North), over which Lincoln had no control, that eventually led to the freedom of the slaves. (For more on this matter see, for example, Levine, et al. [1989].)

14. Consider, for example, the case of the latest victims of the new stereotypes that are now being manufactured in the U.S.: the new legal/illegal immigrants. The specific need that these stereotypes are designed to meet is the scapegoating of legal/illegal immigrants for the economic chaos that the policies and practices of the wealthy, the capitalist class, has created in order to deflect and divide opposition to their power.