Analysis Of Booty Call And Get Your Freak On, By Suzanne Collins

Collins, in “Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and The New Racism”, gives an in-depth analysis to the constructions of Black masculinity and femininity across socioeconomic levels and within particular notable roles (eg. the athlete, the parent). While she does pay close attention to the commodification of the sexualized Black female body by Black men, and what is referred to as “black-on-black violence” especially in her chapters “Booty Call” and “Get Your Freak On”, what she does not examine is how these two ideas intersect. More specifically, Collins fails to address is the role of domestic violence and homicide within this power struggle. My thesis states that due to oppressive conditions created by white hegemonic norms …show more content…
Combined with the image of the “Welfare Queen”, African American women are portrayed not only as inept mothers, but ones that feed off of government money in order to survive. From here arises a tension between the portrayal by the media as being overtly sexual to the point of being animalistic, and seen as a carnal treasure to be plundered, versus the belief that Black women are incapable of being good mothers, despite the fact that all they are seen as good for is their sexualized bodies. Roberts discusses the dichotomy of White and Black motherhood, wherein White childbearing is seen to be productive, versus Black childbearing is seen as degenerate. Roberts gives evidence to show that result of these beliefs have, over the course of history, cumulated into political action, in which there have been instances of African American women being subjected to a coerced sterilization process. She further comments that degrading them as mothers demeans them as women. While Roberts argues that there is a perception that Black motherhood is seen as the source for Black degeneracy as a whole, what is not addressed is the source of single motherhood, which includes mass incarceration, income inequality, and the demoralization of men, all previously mentioned as symptomatic of the Black gender ideology. Collins states that as a result of this Black gender ideology that compares itself to white hegemony, Black men are seen as being “inappropriately weak”, whereas Black women are seen as comparatively “inappropriately strong”. Due to these ideologies one might suspect that domestic homicide rates may show Black women overpowering their intimate partners of the same race, however further studies indicate that it is not, in fact, the true