The Simultaneous Demonization and Sexualization of Black Women

“The most disrespected person in America is the black woman.

The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.

The most neglected person in America is the black woman.”

--- Malcolm X

During the 2018 U.S. Open final in women’s tennis, Naomi Osaka defeated Serena Williams, 6-2, in what was Osaka’s first Grand Slam win at the age of 20. However, that is not what the match was remembered for. During the match, chair umpire Carlos Ramos penalized Williams for receiving coaching, a clear, though rarely enforced, rule in tennis. After the set, Williams dented her racket on the court in frustration and called Ramos a thief because of the point he had taken away from her because of it. After, more interactions with the umpire and a poorly played rest of the game (in part due to the change of momentum), Williams lost what would have been her 24th Grand Slam victory, further cementing her legacy as one of if not the greatest athlete in history. 

Serena Williams’ legacy speaks for itself. The Grand Slam wins, the longevity of excellence, and the constant uphill battle of being a black woman in the public eye have made her one of the truly distinguishable sports figures of the last half-century. However, her obvious talent, greatness, and class has not rid her of the vitriol that comes with the intersection of race and gender; being a black woman. 

Despite Williams’ success, she is still subject to the indoctrinated simultaneous dehumanization and sexualization of black women in America and in the world. In a cartoon published by an Australian newspaper in the wake of the Open’s events, Williams’ is portrayed as a brutish, boisterous, petulant child while jumping on her racket in front of Ramos, Osaka and the match spectators (Vox 2018). The racial undertones, while harmless to many, have followed Williams’ throughout her career and contribute to the stereotypical trope of the angry black woman. In describing the named stereotype, Sapphire, in her work The Angry Black Woman: The Impact of Pejorative Stereotypes on Psychotherapy with Black Women, Wendy Ashley said: “The Sapphire syndrome characterizes Black women as brutish, domineering, matriarchal, and castrating and serves to degrade the dignity and inherent value of Black women.”(2014) The cartoon, though for jokes, reinscribes a belief about black women being angry, loud, and unable to see their wrongs or be respectful to others. 

While Williams’ has accomplished all that she has despite these intersectional slights and attacks, she has also been the object of widespread sexual observation and commentary. Hip hop has been a main culprit of this with popular artists like Drake and Kanye West implicitly and explicitly commenting on Williams’ physique, particularly her buttocks. The world of tennis, however, has not been a place devoid of implication toward Williams’ body and its’ difference from her counterparts. Womens tennis player Caroline Wozniacki once stuffed her breast and buttocks area with towels to imitate Williams’ body during a match against Maria Sharapova. The act was later chalked to humor (again) and Wozniacki’s friendship with Williams was cast as an alibi (Vogue, 2015). It is interesting that, to poke fun at a friend, you imitate the features that have less to do with her dominance in the sport than (I don’t know) her well-conditioned arms and legs and go straight to what so many black women have been objectified for in the past.

The dehumanization, demonization, and sexualization of black women go hand in hand (in hand) once you realize the crux of why black women are seen the way they are from a historical reference point. 

Though black women are still objectified and unprotected in today’s world, there was a time not so long ago that black women were not even seen as that. Upon the early stages of African colonialism on the part of Europeans, tales of how Africans lived and what they looked like formed perceptions of African people before most had seen them. These perceptions would not be easily disproved. African men were said to have abnormally large genitals and African women were said to have practiced bestiality with apes (Holmes 2016). These tales created a widespread belief that not only were African people savage, mindless, and animalistic, but their bodies were misshapen, inhuman, and grotesque. The sexuality of the African was seen as just as conquerable as the land and women were seen as sexually driven and indifferent regarding sexual partners.  

This belief was only enhanced when Africans were brought to the New World and used as slaves. The black slave woman was the prized item in the slavery infrastructure because on top of the perceived physical dominance they were subjected to, their ability to reproduce and status as slaves made them commodities in ways that black slave men were not. The intersection of race and gender put these women in positions of minimal power in the slave household and even less in the governing of their bodies, their sexuality, and even their minds. Rape by white men and arranged intercourse with able-bodied male slaves were frequent occurrences for black women especially after the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was banned (Slatton 2018). To white slave masters, the rape of their black slave women was multifaceted in its motive. The sexual pleasure, positive economic consequences of making more slaves, and the allure that black women would “let” you do things to them that white women would not were all factors that contributed to the frequent sexual abuse (Holmes 2016; Slatton 2018). 

Multiple examples of literature including works of Thomas Jefferson and regarding Social Darwinism theory suggest the non-human aspect of African existence in America (Holmes 2016). The intersection of that and womanhood has provoked hundreds of years of pain, vulnerability, and exploitation on the behalf of all demographics, including black men. So much so, that the greatest athlete in history has become so great while simultaneously going through trial after trial, personal attack after personal attack, and objectifying act after objectifying act simply because of her identity as a black woman. 

Another example of the distinct treatment of notable black women is a Twitter post shared earlier this year aimed at black R&B artists Ari Lennox and Teyana Taylor: 

“Ari Lennox and Teyana Taylor's ability to have dangerously high sex appeal while simultaneously looking like rottweilers will always amaze me.”

In what other medium or arena other than social media (which has become the closest approximation we can get to knowing one’s thoughts without actually personally knowing them in today’s digital world), is hypersexuality and ferociousness so closely connected when analyzing a group of people?  The experience of the black woman is something that cannot be adequately described with a simple history lesson or the analysis of the sociological perspective. This identity like many others in the realm of intersectionality deserves truth bearing testimonials and requires the confirmation and cooperation of the subjected identity. In researching this topic, the involvement of the black woman’s experience directly from the source became immensely important for the validity of this essay. Two black women roughly thirty years apart in age were asked the same three questions: 

1. How has the perception of you been affected not only by your identity as black or your identity as a woman but the intersection of the two?
   

2. What do you think is the most focused on aspect of your identity when meeting new people (racial, physical, relating to gender)?

1. How has the navigation of your sexuality as a black woman been hijacked or misunderstood by cultural perception?

The first woman asked was an adult mother of four whose focus of the first two questions veered toward the professional field: “The perception of me has been pretty consistent with what is seen in the media... in terms of black women being nurturers and caretakers but also being somewhat aggressive... angry... I have never been told I am perceived as being angry... over the years people have said... ‘she’s mean.’” She also believes that the most focused on aspect of her identity was her face and her features that she recalled makes people think she is upset or angry when she isn’t obviously happy or smiling. She answered the third question this way: “My body type has always been... ‘voluptuous’ so I have to be very mindful of how I dress... a lot of times people misconstrue... men think when they are working around black women that they are open to sexual innuendo... black women are always hypersexualized...”

The second woman is a first-year college student and despite the age difference her experience did not differ from the first’s very much; “Being a black woman is very double sided... I feel an obligation to all other black women to be “well-behaved” ... I’m convinced people perceive my behavior as more of a threat and because of that I sometimes feel the need to modify my behavior.” The answer to the last question is very similar to that of the older woman: “Everything a black woman does is hypersexualized and since I’ve noticed that I rethink decisions I make based on how other people will perceive it.” 

The women that answered these questions are not as “successful” as Serena Williams or Michelle Obama but they endure the same personal trials on a daily basis as so many other black women in this country and in the world. The plight of the women and the plight of the black person are both distinct and important issues. However, the experience of the black women is an especially sensitive field with a not-so-sensitive history. In an article investigating the events of the 2018 U.S. Open, Vox author Alex Abad-Santos said this while highlighting the multiple occasions in which Serena Williams had been cheated and discriminated against in her career: “Williams’s behavior (during conflicts with officiating, is not) admirable. But we also don’t know how much of her defensiveness and anger stem from scars and wounds we’re not privy to. (Vox 2018)”