The Nation: Bad Black Mothers

Bad black mothers are everywhere these days.

With Michelle Obama in the White House, consciously and conspicuously serving as mom-in-chief, I expected (even somewhat dreaded) a resurgence of Claire Huxtable images of black motherhood: effortless glamour, professional success, measured wit, firm guidance, loving partnership, and the calm reassurance that American women can, in fact, have it all.

Instead the news is currently dominated by horrifying images of African American mothers.

Most ubiquitous is the near universally celebrated performance of Mo'Nique in the new film Precious. Critically and popularly acclaimed Precious is the film adaption of the novel Push. It is the story of an illiterate, obese, dark-skinned, teenager who is pregnant, for the second time, with her rapist father's child. (Think The Color Purple in a 1980s inner-city rather than 1930s rural Georgia)

At the core of the film is Precious' unimaginably brutal mother. She is an unredeemed monster who brutalizes her daughter verbally, emotionally, physically and sexually. This mother pimps both her daughter and the government. Stealing her daughter's childhood and her welfare payments.

Just as Precious was opening to national audiences a real-life corollary emerged in the news cycle, when 5-year-old Shaniya Davis was found dead along a roadside in North Carolina. Her mother, a 25-year-old woman with a history of drug abuse, has been arrested on charges of child trafficking. The charges allege that this mother offered her 5-year-old daughter for sex with adult men.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/500468/bad_black_mothers

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, is completing her latest book, Sister Citizen: A Text for Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Isn't Enough.

anyway, I'm sure her academic credentials are well above board...

and suddenly we're being "bombarded" with these images?? I'm not sure if I buy this.

The story of Shaniya Davis was horrifying and widely reported, but so were the stories of Caylee Anthony and that little girl who said "I love you" to her mother as she and her boyfriend were beating her to death. (The child was 2-years old; I read that story about 3 months or so ago and still haven't recovered.)

As for Alexis Hutchinson, I think what she did was fantastic and heroic. I'm not sure I subscribe to the we're being overwhelmed with images of bad, black mothers theme. This is a good read and an interesting topic, though.

of pathologizing black women, in general, and black mothers in particular, not necessarily just about the movie or the death of that poor child.
i agree with her about morrison's brilliant "beloved." can you imagine what it must have been like to raise a child that society viewed as nothing more than a commodity? i can't imagine what the would be like, and i am sure many women chose to kill their children rather than let them be slaves. we have always been under attack is this hellhole of a country, and consequently, forced to make some heart-wrenching decisions.

that the tearing down of black womanhood in this country would stop and we'd all be portrayed as Claire Huxtable seems a bit naive to me. That didn't even happen when Claire Huxtable was a prominent character in American pop culture.

Oh God. I can't even think about what being a black woman 100 years ago, let alone 150-200 years ago must have been like. As hard as it is today, my mind reels.

and hope she revises it.