A lot of racism has made a comeback since President Obama took office. Everything from monkey humor to vigilante militias — Doesn’t killing suspected immigrants on the border count as terrorism? — has made it back into the mainstream. This week, race “science” re-emerged from the shadows of the 18th century.
On Sunday, Psychology Today posted an article by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa entitled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” The “study” consisted of a series of opinion polls, none of which give any information on how Kanazawa solicited respondents. He theorizes that Africans have more testosterone, which makes the men more attractive than others and the women less so. The article was pulled within hours.
Kanazawa’s ignorance, masquerading as science, reflects the way society has been conditioned to see beauty. It also continues the historical practice of assaulting black women’s self-esteem by implying a division between them and black men.
Crackpot theories under the guise of science have been used to describe blacks dating back to slavery. “Scientists” made claims that blacks had smaller brains or that we were genetically built for labor. Obviously these were neither valid nor had root in any actual science.
Beauty is an inherently subjective topic. What one person considers beauty is drastically different for another. However, societal conditioning does have an effect on perceptions of beauty.
Dating back to slavery, black men and women have been caricatured as polar opposites of sexuality. Black men were portrayed as brutal bucks, physically imposing and over-sexualized. Black women, on the other hand, were seen as unattractive mammies.@@http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/mammies/@@
These minstrel images persist in media today. For example, the measuring at the NFL Combine, where athletes are stripped to their underwear and poked and prodded while commentators marvel at their physiques, resembles a slave auction. Many of the most visible images of black women on television are loud and abrasive, substituting the myth of being physically unattractive with the idea that they are emotionally so.
When you combine this with the media emphasis on the skinny, European version of beauty, it creates a society that scorns black women.
For example, when Washington Redskins defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth was questioned about an alleged sexual assault, he blamed his accuser, asserting she was jealous because he isn’t attracted to black women. Haynesworth, a black man, is the product of societal conditioning, which attacks a black woman’s identity from all angles.
From a young age, black women are encouraged to have “good hair,” which is a euphemism for straightened. Women who wear their hair natural are less likely to get hired than women who use relaxers or wear weaves. The chemicals in relaxers can cause permanent damage. Putting it in a weave can cost into the thousands, not including the cost of maintaining it. To add insult to injury, most of the profit from the weave industry goes to Indian and Asian hair couriers, which adds an element of exploitation to the situation.
In addition to attacks on physical beauty, the concept of independence has been exploited, to the detriment of black women.
The prison industrial complex, largely because of America’s war on drugs, has locked up millions of black men, forcing black women to raise families on their own. This is similar to slavery, where black men were often emasculated in front of their families and women had to be the source of strength.
From an evolutionary perspective, this meant black women had to be strong to survive, but it also served as a double-edged sword by conditioning their isolation.
The notion of “I don’t need a man to…” has morphed from empowering to divisive, often normalizing the stereotype of the single, abrasive black woman.
Even icons like Oprah Winfrey are used to push this image. Her past ordeals and perceived hostilities toward black men are magnified and made to seem integral to her success as an independent woman. In the ultimate manifestation of a backhanded compliment, Winfrey is put on a pedestal as the “acceptable” black woman, while her image is used to normalize the divisions between black men and women.
That many black women have achieved success despite being isolated is a testament to their strength and perseverance, not a sign that they don’t need support.
Slavery and subsequent forms of oppression have relied on the divide and conquer strategy, and it has yet to fail. The Willie Lynch letter famously outlined how a slave master could condition his slaves for centuries by constantly playing on their differences and insecurities.@@http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Perspectives_1/Willie_Lynch_letter_The_Making_of_a_Slave.shtml@@
Kanazawa’s study continued this legacy by trying to make black woman feel ugly and harbor hostility toward black men whose over-sexualization in the media is anything but a compliment.
Simply writing this off as fringe ignorance is misleading. Implicit racial bias is bred in us at an early age. Media reinforcement of stereotypes has a tangible effect in everything from the hair industry to normalization of single-parent families.
Perhaps instead of conducting opinion polls to validate his views, Kanazawa should examine where his bias comes from in the first place.