Patricia Hill Collins: ‘Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images’

According to Collins, stereotypes can serve at least two functions. (A) They can serve to hide or to normalize oppression by making it seem something that the oppressed person wants to do or something that comes from the oppressed person’s nature. (B) They can serve to coerce people into acting in certain ways. Question: How can a mere stereotype exert cultural control?

Consider the stereotype: Men don’t cry. It’s false (since some men do). Yet perhaps it is true that less men cry than women (I don’t know whether that’s true or not either, but let’s suppose it is). If a man doesn’t cry because he doesn’t think he is supposed to and because he will not be much of a man (he won’t be a real man) if he does, then he is using the stereotype to regulate his conduct. NOTE: Stereotypes don’t ‘map’ reality accurately, and when they do it is often because they remake reality in their own imagine (i.e. regulate conduct). Imagine that instead of correcting a crude map, people tried to make reality itself conform to that crude map!!!

Collins gives an account of several stereotypes that serve both of these functions. Her account is a classic example of how oppression involves the ‘interlocking’ of different features (such as race, class, gender, and sex). Her discussion also elucidates that complicated dynamic between attempts to oppress and attempts to resist.

(1)     “The Mammy”. (A) It attempts to hide the fact that black women who work for white families are being exploited (that’s CLASS). The labor that is being exploited is GENDERED (i.e., concerns ‘mothering’). It does this by making it all seem normal (i.e. “The Mammy” as a natural part of a white family). The whole thing also concerns race, since BLACK labor is behind controlled by WHITE families. (B) “The Mammy” is happy with her lot in life. Thus the smiling mammy signals her agreement with the situation. If she is fully happy with these values, then she will pass them down to her own children.

(2)     “The Matriarch”. Of course, in reality, black women didn’t not live up to this image (at least not in their own homes). Instead, they passed on values that went against the attempts to oppress (that’s RESISTANCE). One way to punish such women, who are assertive and who play a strong role in their family is through the stereotype of ‘The Matriarch’. Such a stereotype accused black women of being bad mothers (by being away from their children for working) and for emasculating their husbands. Again, this stereotype attempts to regulate conduct by punishing black women for assertiveness (B). It also hides the oppression by making it seem that black women are naturally this way (e.g. “black people are more masculine, black women are less feminine”) (A). It also institutes this as the causal explanation of class inequality, thereby hiding the true causes of class inequality while stigmatizing black women. It serves as the threat of what happens to women who disobey (and are not feminine).

(3)     “The Welfare Mother”. Another “failed Mammy”. This time, the punishment is for failing to work. So instead of being a bad mother for leaving the children, now the issue is being with the children too much (and not working). Again, by identifying the Welfare Mother as the cause, the true reasons for class inequality are rendered invisible.

Note: You start to see what feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye has called a ‘double-bind’. She takes it as a hallmark of oppression. When behavior is not only regulated by stereotype, but regulated such that one is always in a no-win situation (one is punished no matter what one does), than this is a case of oppression.

(4)     “The Jezebel”. According to Collins, this view underlies all of the stereotypes. It represents black female sexuality as powerful and masculine. This representation is ‘useful’ in justifying the rape of black women (‘she wanted it’). While it overtly underlies stereotypes (2) and (3), it is the antithesis of ‘The Mammy’ who is STRIPPED of all sexuality and left as a powerless surrogate mother for white control. In this way, black female sexuality is conceptualized (in racist ideology) as unacceptable.