Controlling Images

Controlling Images

1. Patricia Hill-Collins

2. race, class, gender oppression could not exist without ideological justification

   • controlling images are part of a generalized ideology of domination
     • "major instrument of power" (68)
     • designed to make racism, sexism and poverty seem natural
       • ↪ maintain subordination

3. objectification as the other

   • either/or dichotomous thinking
     • e.g. black/white, male/female, reason/emotion, culture/nature...
     • "In either/or dichotomous thinking, difference is defined in oppositional terms. One part is not simply different from its counterpart; it is inherently opposed to its 'other'." (69)
       • "As objects, one's reality is defined by other's, one's identity created by others, one's history named only in ways that define one's relationship to those who are subject." - bell hooks (1989, 24)

4. ➤ 4 interrelated, socially constructed controlling images

   • MAMMY
     • desexualized faithful servant
     • has accepted her subordination
     • puts the needs of her white family before that of her own
     • created to justify the economic exploitation of house slaves
   • BLACK MATRIARCH (SAPPHIRE)
     • symbolizes the "bad" black mother
     • allows the dominant group to blame African-American women for the success or failure of their children
     • overly aggressive, unfeminine, emasculating anger
   • WELFARE MOTHER
     • stigmatizes black women as the cause of their own poverty
     • signify a threat to political & economic stability
       • takes the focus away from structural sources of poverty by blaming the victim
   • JEZEBEL
     • sexually aggressive, hypersexuality
     • originated under slavery to provide rational for the widespread sexual assault suffered under slavery