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Loose
talk about the case has fed the stereotype that black
women are hyper-sexual and readily available. Rush Limbaugh,
for example, called the black student a ``ho'' on the
radio. He later apologized.
The
stereotype is everywhere, said Rebecca Hall, a lecturer
at University of California, Berkeley who studies images
of black women.
``Turn
on a music video. A black woman is somebody who has
excess sexuality spilling out all over the place. It's
excess sexuality that white men are entitled to,'' she
said.
Black
women stew about the narrow, negative ways they are
nearly always portrayed. They are either quick-tempered
and full of attitude like Tyler Perry's Medea character
or the comedian Mo'Nique, or they are barely dressed
and brazenly sexual like the women mimicking strippers
in so many music videos.
Black
women cheered when Halle Berry won an Academy Award
in
2002 for ``Monster's Ball.'' But why, they grumbled,
did a black woman have to take off her clothes and perform
sex scenes with a white man to win acting's highest
honor? Why are black women so rarely portrayed as flirty
or romantic without being slutty?
So
when the Duke case erupted, it hit a nerve. The facts
remain in doubt, but the image of a black woman stripping
for a room full of white athletes shouting racial epithets
is painful to many black women.
This
woman may be a stripper, but that is not all she is,
black woman say. She is also a student and a working
mother.
``If
she's a stripper, she becomes part of a seedy underworld,''
Williams said. ``What would the story look like if the
headline had said, `Lacrosse team allegedly gang-raped
and strangled a mother of two'?''
Formal
discussions of the case have been held at Duke, North
Carolina Central University, the alleged victim's school,
and at such institutions as Vanderbilt University in
Tennessee and Spelman College in Atlanta. The discussions
start with the Duke incident but quickly turn toward
larger concerns of black women.
``There's
a certain level of disrespect on campus toward African-American
females,'' said Erica Howard, a junior at Vanderbilt.
She cringes at the memories of a string of incidents
on her campus with ``girls who were walking in front
of dorms and white guys would come up and grab them.''
It
happens so often that campus police even have a name
for it.
They call it ``forcible fondling.''
Santina
White, a black senior at the University of Texas at
San Antonio, was enjoying a Dave Matthews Band concert
when a white male student struck up a conversation.
``The first thing he wanted to talk about is how sizable
his manhood is compared to black men,'' she said. ``We
are always being looked upon as if that (sex) is all
I like to do _ that's all I want.''
Again
and again, women say pop culture reinforces the stereotypes.
``The
way the media portrays black women, there are very few
roles for black women that aren't hyper-sexual,'' Williams
said.
``Music videos are an obvious source. As benign as we
think they may be, for some people music videos and
movies are the only glimpse into black life that they
will ever have.''
Hip-hop
music videos routinely show black women nearly nude
simulating sex acts and dancing erotically.
Rapper
Remy Ma wears a sheer lace bustier, thigh-high boots
and little else in the video for her latest single,
``Conceited.'' She says it is unfair to point the finger
at hip-hop.
``Is
that a rapper's fault that that's the way society is
portrayed?'' she asks. ``Sex sells everywhere. Every
commercial you look at, it's all based around sex.''
Of
course, it is complicated. No one forces black women
to disrobe on screen. And many of these images of black
women accompany music produced and performed by black
men. The raciest hip-hop videos play on ``Uncut,'' a
Black Entertainment Television program starting at 3
a.m.
``The
message that men get about black women is these are
women that are available to them, that they have easy
access and their sole purpose is to serve their pleasure,''
said Mark Anthony Neal, a professor at Duke.
``The
history of white men and black women, and the special
fantasies and exploitation, is old and ancient,'' the
Rev. Jesse Jackson said when asked about the case. ``The
historical pattern of this behavior arouses so many
fears and conjures up so many bad memories.''
Joan
Morgan, author of ``When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost:
A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down,'' said hyper-sexualized
images of black women have ``been here since slavery,''
when white men owned black women and used them sexually.
``But when you can look at a music video and see the
same images acted out by white folks in the early 19th
century, you've got to connect the dots there.''
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