Stop Combatting Stereotypes

The White Gaze Doesn't Care Anyway

“It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” - Toni Morrison

We presumably developed stereotypes to be safe. Men in dark clothes may present a threat. People from X part of the world (lets say Vikings) may raid your land and kidnap your women. Europeans may be associated with dangerous diseases. Stereotypes have helped us make life changing decisions quickly. But in most modern scenarios, stereotypes seem to present more problems than solutions. As a Black woman, I certainly face stereotypes or tropes related to being hypersexual, angry, and aggressive. None of these encapsulate me or the Black women I know, but they are not 100% false either. Black women are sensual and sexual beings, we certainly have a right to be angry, and every person on earth has the propensity to be aggressive, given the right circumstances. We find ourselves trying to stand upright in what Melissa Harris Perry called The Crooked Room.

Black men are portrayed as criminals, deadbeat fathers, and lazy workers. We have data that disprove all of these but there are definitely Black men that fit into these categories too. That is the other side of stereotypes. They are not true, but they aren’t completely false either. But because stereotypes about marginalized people tend to have negative consequences, up to and including our lives and livelihoods, we often spend significant time fighting against those images. Stereotypes simply deny us our full humanity. Instead of leaning into our full selves we find ourselves constantly working against a stereotype to try to prove someone wrong. This is not only a waste of time since those people don’t care, it also takes you away from the important work of being yourself, whoever that may be.

I thought a lot about the above Toni Morrison quote when I was doing my PhD. “Am I doing too much? Am I centering White people and White depictions of Black women? Who am I doing this for? Who will be helped by my work?”. I wanted to write something that centered Black women, affirmed Black women, and helped Black women to make informed choices. Unfortunately, I think that this sort of metacognition also took up too much space in my brain. But in the end, I was able to complete my research and writing, and write my dissertation in an accessible way. That is what matters most to me.

I see a lot of Black people focusing their energy on combatting stereotypes or ‘changing the narrative’. A lot of folks worry about the portrayal of Black life in the media. This isn’t inherently bad, and I get it. The reasoning is solid: if we can make White people believe we are more than XYZ, we can live freer, healthier, fuller lives. Unfortunately this presumes that White employers, judges, teachers, police, and nonwhites upholding these systems, will see these displays and change their minds about us. That hasn’t worked. We have seen the likes of the Obamas, Oprah, Kamala, and Victor Glover just in my lifetime. They have not changed the fact that we are undereducated, underemployed, over-imprisoned, and killed by police at twice the rate of White people. The reality is people like Oprah and Michelle Obama are often viewed as the exception to the rule, AKA ‘one of the good ones’. And Black exceptionalism won’t save us.

As Black people, especially Black women, Black queer, and Black poor people, we are the birthday. We’re never alone because White eyes love watching our every move lol. Whether you are perceived as loud, assertive, ghetto, free, or generally ‘too much’, people are still going to find a reason to be antiblack if they want to. We do everything everyone else does, the good and the bad, they just refuse to see it and us as human. In addition, a lot of the ‘combatting the stereotype’ rhetoric is really just antiblackness, internalized classism, and shame, which you should definitely be interrogating. So I’m not saying not to be excellent, whatever that means to you, but mediocre is fine too, because that may be more authentic and save you some trauma. I am saying to be yourself, without worrying about the White Gaze. You don’t have to represent anyone but yourself.