With reference to femininity, discuss the ways in which gender norms intersect with ideas about race and ethnicity.

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With reference to femininity, discuss the ways in which gender norms intersect with ideas about race and ethnicity.

In this essay I aim to examine how ideological and cultural assumptions and standards of femininity influence the construction of racial identity with regards to black feminine identity.

As Cuomo and Hall identify, the concept of race, like gender, is a socially constructed phenomena; ‘Racial categories are socially constructed and contextually defined. These deconstructive and reconstructive academic strategies help undermine popular acceptance of biological and other naturalistic understandings of race.’ (1999:2) and is therefore subject to the changing currents of attitude among social acceptance, desirability and respectability as well as shame, embarrassment and unacceptance.

The construction of an ideal form of femininity while shrouded in sexist stereotypes and outdated assumptions about the ability of women, is also constructed with ideas of racial identity with whiteness being celebrated in what is called white privilege or white solipcism and alternative racial identities facing gendered, sexualised oppression.

Mamma in Beyond the Masks (1995) discusses the way in which black women face ‘tripple oppression’ at the intersection of race, gender and class by the hand of dominant cultural ideology favouring white middle class men. (1995:121) Gender norms intersect with ideas about race and ethnicity in a way which encourages oppression of black femininity and sexuality through cultural imagery like stereotypes and the male gaze which are influenced by racism, sexism and orientalism.

The struggles of women in gender inequality are magnified for black women because of their race, as Mamma notes, ‘For black women, the dominant order is both racially oppressive in gendered ways and sexually oppressive in racialised ways’. Throughout this essay I aim to investigate some of the ways in which race and gender, particularly in regard to black femininity, and the manner in which they are culturally constructed have oppressed black feminine identities, how this oppression is manifested and upheld, and what effect this has on the visibility and embodiment of such identities.

Adewumni (2011), addresses the influence of the history of slavery to the construction of racist attitudes and hierarchy of dark skin tones within black identities which can be traced back to attitudes from the times of Slavery.

The separation of black people as slaves from white people as their owners, or later on in history as their employers, constructed a gap between social groups, categorizing values and cultural identity of black people as socially inferior and powerless and white people as superior in power, more sophisticated, more deserving of a privilege created for themselves.

Following from racist separation of black and white people, a hierarchy was created of exact skin tone. The term ‘colourism’ refers to a form of prejudice within racist discourse which differentiates people in the same racial group by the exact shade of skin tone. The shade of skin tone ascribes assumptions of behaviour to a person; slave owners favoured slaves with a lighter shade of skin as safer, more reliable and more trust worthy. The lighter a slaves skin tone, the more obedient and receptive they might be to the acceptance of white privilege, especially slaves of mixed heritages who were labelled ‘half white’.

"Generally speaking on plantations, you had what you would call the house slaves and the field slaves. The delineation of shade in that regard would be those who were darker would be in the fields while those who were fairer or of mixed heritage would be the house slaves. Part of it was because of the fear factor; those who were more closely associated with being African or those who were new to the plantation would be darker and more resistant than those who were born on the plantation and therefore considered to be less aggressive, less rowdy.’’ Explains Ruth fisher, a project manager for the Understanding Slavery Initiative, speaking with Adewumni.

The favouring of lighter skin is prevalent in Victorian class differentiation whereby the lighter a persons skin tone, the wealthier they were assumed to be because they didn’t have to spend time outside;  anybody doing manual work in a field would have a darker skin tone from being in contact from the sun.

These two out dated systems of classifications are still used to construct black identity through racist ideologies.

The history of black women in the civil rights movement, in struggles against oppression now influence attitudes which form oppressive stereotypes  and how images of beauty and identity are constructed.  In liberating themselves, black women have made efforts to assert their identity as active in political expression and challenging norms of white privileged culture.

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Following this reassertion and redefinition of black identity, the cultural image of the black woman now depict ‘aggressive matriachs’ and ‘dumb domestics’ (Mamma, 1995:123); the dominant order places oppressive and restrictive categories of black women who are reduced to gendered subjects like maids, slaves, or nagging mothers who are often looked upon as figures of ridicule so as the ‘yo momma’ stereotype depicting black mothers as overweight, overly sexualised, tacky and uncontrollable.

The identity of black women as challenging and provocative which earned them respect during the civil rights movement is now used to oppress them by  incorporation into the ...

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