The Mammy

Description

The mammy caricature is a fictional African American woman who takes care of children and plays a motherly role in child rearing. However, they are always subservient to white families and the children they take care of would be white children. They are seen taking care of chores that white families would deem menial or bothersome.

Brief History

The mammy began as a propaganda piece in the pre-Civil War era as a way for white people to legitimize the institution of slavery. By depicting black women as happy and content with serving as caretakers of white families, white people created the narrative that slavery brought satisfaction to black women and was the ideal relationship. In the words of Patricia Hill Collins from “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images”, “By loving, nurturing, and caring for her White children and “family” better than her own, the mammy symbolizes the dominant group’s perceptions of the ideal Black female relationship to elite White male power. Even though she may be well loved and may wield considerable authority in her White ‘family’, the mammy still knows her ‘place’ as obedient servant. She has accepted her subordination.” Through this perception of natural subordination, it is only right, in the minds of white families, that African American women are lower in both economic wealth and social standing. African American women, in this viewpoint, shouldn’t be able to be above the white families they serve and have a natural talent and tendency towards servitude.

As a result of this notion of African American women as servants, many of the available jobs for African American women during the Civil Rights era were those related to domestic duties. Of course, as a caricature, “a figment of imagination…The real-life black domestics of the Jim Crow era were poor women denied other opportunities. They performed many of the duties of the fictional mammies, but, unlike the caricature, they were dedicated to their own families, and often resentful of their lowly societal status.” (Jim Crow Museum) Because of the added perception of the mammy figure, African American women had fewer options to choose from despite the many jobs available to white women at the time. As natural-born servants, as seen in the mammy narrative, it was only right that African American women take the low-paying service jobs while white women had access to the higher ones. While in modern times, African American women are capable of occupying any jobs, there still exist inequalities and power structures that afflict them.

Ongoing Legacy and Contemporary Depiction

The mammy caricature still exists in the modern era, especially in popular media. From the release of Gone with the Wind during the 40s to the release of the show Bridgerton in the 2020s, the mammy has been a popular and prominent role within the film and television world. While some of these contemporary shows might not show the stereotypical maternal, Southern black woman typically associated with the mammy, they do carry the same characteristics of servitude and emotional support to white characters. As mentioned in the article “Why are we still depicting Black women as ‘Mammies’?” about a major black character in the show Bridgerton, “She remains on the peripherals of the core story and is purely a vehicle for the white or lighter-skinned Black characters’ narratives. She has an upper-class English demeanour, so stylistically she doesn’t meet the Southern conception of the mammy trope, and yet in substance she’s very similar; consistently depicted as content with serving others’ emotional needs whilst having none of her own.“ Despite the positive light that the character shows within the show, little is done within the story itself to explore more in depth to the story of the character and, as a result, only the maternal role she has is exhibited. While it has been more than half a decade since the first inception of the mammy caricature, many of its characteristics persist and affect African American women to this day. Within the portfolio of many African American actresses, there will always be at least one role in which they play a servant-like African American woman. Through the constant depiction of the mammy caricature within popular works of media, the audience is reinforced with the idea that many African American women have a natural-born talent for domestic duties. It creates a power structure that pigeonholes them into a caretaker status that is inherently subordinate to others, and from that lowered status, discrimination, such as lowered wages or less opportunities, occurs more often in comparison to white women. Thus, the mammy caricature continues to haunt and demean the lives of modern-day African American women.

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