The matriarch stereotype is one of the main pictures white Americans have in their heads about black women. The matriarch is a strong black woman who acts as both mother and father to her children – either because the father has left or is not living up to his duties. She is pictured as dark, fat and ugly, as acting and looking much like a man.
From the 1960s to the 1990s the matriarch was one of the main stereotypes about black women, taking the place of the Mammy. In the 1970s it gave rise to a new stereotype – the welfare queen. By 1993 the Sapphire stereotype had become more common among young whites.
- Like the Mammy, the matriarch is pictured as dark, fat and ugly. She is a Mammy in her own home.
- Like the welfare queen, she is the head of the household and poor, unable to bring up her children properly.
- Like the Sapphire she is overbearing and cuts men down. But she is not as mean – nor as womanly – as the Sapphire. And much less likely to have a man.
The black matriarch is curiously the opposite of a common white American stereotype about Asian women.
In a 1994 study done on the television show “All My Children”, black women were pictured as matriarchs more than anything else.
Another study was done on how black and white women are shown in magazine advertisements. It found that black women are more likely to be shown alone without a boyfriend or a husband than are white women. (And more likely to have straight hair!)
Sad to say, there is some truth to this stereotype: far too many black women are bringing up their children alone.
This sort of family was rare in the Africa that blacks were taken from and, for that matter, in Black America before 1960.
In 1965 the American government did a study, known as the Moynihan Report, to find out why black people are so poor. It shifted the blame off of whites and onto black women, namely the matriarch.
The story goes like this: back in slave days, for 350 years, black marriage did not have the backing of law. So sales of slaves would often separate man and wife. This left many families with a woman at the head. Thus the matriarch. This sort of black family has lasted down to the present day.
The pattern continues today partly because black girls do better in school than black boys. That makes it harder for these girls later in life to find and keep husbands. So the matriarch lives on.
But families without fathers are more likely to be poor and troubled. Thus black poverty.
This is like in the old days when they said the Irish were poor because they drank too much.
Like with the drunken Irishman, the matriarch is not so much an attempt to understand black people as a way to excuse white people.
See also:
This is among the most popular stereotype pundits and mainstream public about Black women. Yes, I noticed the media doesn’t promote the whole Black family, just the Black women and children alone. That’s why Hollywood is uncomfortable in showing married Black couples with children, showing affection to one another. That would challenge the stereotype.
Barack Obama’s family is a refutation to the stereotype of Black women as matriarchs, as being heads of housholds with succession of boyfriends, never husbands. This is refreshing but we still have a long way to go.
Stephanie B.
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Very good post. In 1920, 90% of all black children lived in a two parent home. Something has gone very wrong since then.
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Good point. It was still 10% as late as 1960. Then it went south. But that is another post, one I know I will write because it affects my life too much.
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Dear Abagond,
I was reading today’s post and then turned to the “Sapphire Stereotype” and the “Matriarch Stereotype”. I once heard on either a PBS documentary or in a story on NPR that enslaved African mothers were hard on their sons in an attempt to keep them from getting angry in front of whites so they would not be beaten and/or killed. And that this is something that mothers, (and fathers) do today to keep their sons from being hauled off to jail in our society that incarcerates black males at huge disproportionate rates.
The Blame-the-Victim, Moynihan Report aside, could this account for the origins of how strong black mothers were saddled with this “Matriarch Stereotype”? Please tell me if I’m way off base. I was just writing as a way to maybe defend strong black women due to many generations of trying to protect their families from harm(?).
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Matriarchs, who happen to have males crossdressing to satisfy the white collective? WHat was Bel Hooks on:
Clearly black women wanted to be in a position to fully participate in the 50s pursuit of “idealized femininity” and resented black men for not aiding them in this quest. They measured black men against a standard set by white males. Since whites defined “achieving manhood” as the ability of a man to be a sole economic provider in a family, many black females tended to regard the black male as a “failed” man. (p 178) As both genders were uncertain about their roles, tensions and conflicts emerged which was exaggerated by Danial Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.’
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“Clearly black women wanted to be in a position to fully participate in the 50s pursuit of “idealized femininity” and resented black men for not aiding them in this quest.”
Heresy and Rhetoric.
There is no evidence to suggest or support the myth that black women didn’t enjoy the egalitarian model of the black nuclear family which offered the flexibility to pursue economic self-sufficiency or partnerships. In fact if you look at the level of entrepreneurship, organized labor, activism and community/civic participation in the 50’s and 60’s on the part of black women I’d say the opposite if your “analysis” is true. Painting a picture of bitterness in those times is inaccurate and meant to insult.
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I love how US tries to blame poverty on everything but its inequitable culturally and racially biased system.
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I cannot take you seriously, @omalone1. Black women were feminists as far back as when Sojourner asked: “Ain’t I A Woman”. As far back as when Margaret Garner killed one of her children to save her from being in slavery (many women fought over their rights to reproduction). As far back as when Ida B. Wells advocated not only for lynching but also for the rights of womanhood of Black women. And, let us not get started with the women who are responsible for not only the concept of a minimum wage (Atlanta Washerwomen Strike of 1881) but also the women who pioneered sexual violence laws in America. So, yeah, when Black men were being whipped, lynched, unemployed, etc., some Black women clearly were not going to cater to their emasculated male counterpart. No one was fighting to work; they had to work. No one was fighting to vote; here is a notable quote: “All the Blacks are men. All the women are White.” White women could not fathom that “Blacks” vote, but at the same time, they failed to realize that it would never have included Black women due to their racism– even if Black men were terrorized for it. No one was fighting to be strong and independent; they needed to build communities under both slavery and Jim Crow to remain safe. And, lastly, no one (save women like Rosa Parks, Ida Wells, etc. and the Communist Party) focused on the widespread practice of rape; the CR’s leaders negated it on the grounds that it would spark a debate about the dreaded Black rapist, thus it impeded progress to the rights that “mattered”. Oh, and look no further than pregnant, poor, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, who was actually the first noted individual to not give up her spot on the bus. But Rosa was not only older and not pregnant, she was a light-skinned whom Whites felt they could more easily relate with. She embodied what they believed middle-class Blacks looked at the time. The bus boycott was actually a travesty to many Black women, as they made up nearly 70% of its users, you know working as maids and traveling to and from grocery stories to make dinner. They were the worst hit by that choice, regardless of what it had done. Yet, many were still fervent in the sidelines. Sometimes, Black women would go down to police stations, risking their own safety, to get their spouses, sons, and brothers out of jail (If I find the video of the woman who nearly got shot by a White man for it, I will post it). Frederick Douglass cheated on Anna with a White woman, even referring to her with a negative name. Eldrige Cleaver raped Black women in the ghetto to prepare to rape White women because nobody cared about poor, Black women. Black men got upset about the Color Purple because of the father raping Celie as if it were unreal. The most disturbing thing was listening to a bunch of men pretending that White men were the only pedophiles and child molesters, only to find out that it was a lie. There was no care in the world, save from a personal level as evidenced by Recy Taylor’s father sitting up in a tree with a shotgun every night because she decided to tell about her rapists, for Black girls and Black women concerning their rights. No matter how many times I hear of lynching and MLK this and that, I reminded just why I need to distance myself from being race first. Black men, when it is time to talk about domestic violence, supposed 60% of sexual assaults before age 18, Bill Cosby and R. Kelly, pedophilia, murders of transgender people, etc., deflect and blame shift Black women just like White people do the same for Black people. Remember, a child who is being abused by his parent can still go bully kids at the playground. So, no, I am not angry. I am sad. I am sad to receive the same treatment from a group of men who have no problem doing the same thing to Black women that racist Whites do to Black people. And for BLM and #MeToo, it seems that Black women are still just Blacks, but not the “kind” of Blacks that are worth any notoriety. King Louis, sadly, said it best.
https://www.thenation.com/article/sexual-harassment-law-was-shaped-by-the-battles-of-black-women/
https://www.theroot.com/these-are-the-women-of-color-who-fought-both-sexism-and-1823720002
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@ofbordelloandmen
I think you’re trying to force the reality to match pro-feminist views.
Fortunately, the reality is much more complicated and therefore much more interesting a phenomenon than any abomination of a political gender theory.
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