Volume CXXXI, Number 22 April 19, 2002 f

Dating and the Black female
CRYSTAL WELCH

I have noticed a certain level of unconsciousness lurking in the air of the Bowdoin community. As an African-American female, I wish to explore a certain level of daily discomfort that Black women feel when submerged in a predominantly white community.

Before I go any further, I feel it necessary to make lucid that African Americans are not the only minorities that experience racism in Bowdoin's social arenas, and females are not the only minority longing for justice. Rather, my method here is more sophisticated than pure discourse.

That being said, this is my attempt to explore the position of Black females on Bowdoin's campus and how they are affected by the cultural images constructed by the privileged.

I conducted a survey, asking students of Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic origins whether or not they felt there was a fair amount of interracial dating at Bowdoin.

Only two students said that Bowdoin had a fair amount of these types of relationships; most said that such dating isn't happening. Many of the White students stated that the College is not particularly diverse, which allows for little interracial dating. Only 20 percent of the White community expressed concern that there is little dating of this sort.

Though I am sure that these students mean well, their explanation just doesn't do it for me. In the surveys, 100 percent of Black females acknowledged that a problem with the interracial dating scene exists. None of the Black females surveyed had dated outside their race at Bowdoin. Listen to some of their reasons:

1) I haven't been approached by any men outside my race at Bowdoin.
2) The guys outside my race don't seem interested.
3) I have not had the opportunity to date at Bowdoin.

The majority of interracial relationships between Black students on campus involve Black males and White females. Many times I find myself wondering why Black females get the short end of the stick. Why are Black males "considered" in the dating pool, while females are not?

I would like to make sense of this absurdity, because many people on a campus "committed to diversity" suffer from it. In answering this question-which I hear bellowing from the mouths of many other African-American women as well-I have found understanding within historical imagery.

The cultural images that embody Black females affect the ways in which we are perceived by non-African-American men. One of the most pervasive images of Black females is the mammy-the large-statured domestic whose position ranges from cook to nanny. The mammy's disposition is inconsistent and dependent upon the person she is dealing with. She is submissive to the white boss, but is crude and sometimes talks down to other Blacks, particularly males. She exerts power over her own kind in order to assume an authoritative position in society. Her overly exaggerated breasts and buttocks are attempts to desexualize her and make her less of a threat to White female counterparts.

Sapphire is another example of a cultural icon constructed by the privileged to embrace Black female identity. In From Mammy to Miss America and Beyond, K. Sue Jewel says that Sapphire is characterized by "her sassiness, which is exceeded only by her verbosity....Because of her intense expressiveness and hands-on-hip, finger-pointing style, Sapphire is viewed as comedic and is never taken seriously."

The final, most pervasive cultural image of African-American women is the jezebel, also delineated as the bad black girl. She can be either an African American with a light complexion or a mulatto. She has overwhelmingly Eurocentric features including a thin nose, thin lips, and straightened, lengthy hair. The jezebel conforms to a Eurocentric beauty standard and is considered attractive by both White and Black men. The only problem is that even though she is attractive enough to get the White man, her blackness hinders her from keeping him. She is the exact opposite of the mammy/Aunt Jemima figure in that she is hypersexual-her goal is to constantly engage in some type of sexual activity.

With the existence of these negative stereotypes constructed by the White majority, it is no wonder that we as communities suffer without education of our true images. These images' roots lie in the early 20th century, but I can see their poisonous remains in the modern Bowdoin community.

So what do we do about it? Is it the fault of the White community? Is it the responsibility of Bowdoin's African-American women to speak up for themselves and deliver the message that we are neither desexualized nor hypersexual?

While I may not have the answers to such questions, my inclination is to beckon a general consciousness of social dilemmas that African Americans face every day. It is my goal to collapse the distance between the particulars of racial consciousness and the opaqueness of the "Bowdoin bubble." Black women have long been ostracized from that "cult of true womanhood," and it is time now to undo that venomous trend.