The black female gaze

The gaze has been known as a way of understanding how the gaze of the other affects the individual and how this gaze or response influences the receiver. I wonder why black women who express their feelings and challenge the status quo are often seen as aggressive rather than progressive. This answer could be seen as a negative black stare.

Out of this type of stereotype arises the notion of the strong black woman. The concept of the strong black woman is based on what I have termed the black western archetype emanating from slavery. During slavery, African women were seen to have no emotions or needs. She was torn from her family to tend to the white teacher’s needs. She washed, cooked and cleaned for the master and his family. She cared for the master’s children, was subject to the call of the master’s wife, and was the master’s maternal and sexual object. The teacher and his family depended on her for these elements of their daily life and she could hardly rest. He gets up at dawn and is forced to stay awake with lashes until the mistress of the house gives him permission.

Slaves were prohibited from having formal marriages and African men were denied the right to family life. The slave had to work in the fields and at home. His sexuality was a product and his body a production line for the next generation of slaves. The protest against the abuse and sexual exploitation of the teacher was prohibited. The African slave was subjected to a white male misogynistic gaze and the voyeuristic, envious gaze of the white woman as they watched and colluded with the master’s sexual exploitation of black bodies.

The black woman internalized a negative look from the slave family. As a result of the negative gaze, he fulfilled his duties upon request without question, at the beck and call of the teacher and his family. She cleaned, washed, cooked, and cared for the children without protest. She gave the appearance of being strong and capable of enduring the endless tasks with which she was burdened and the beatings and atrocious treatment her people received. In short, they treated her like a workhorse and put her in shape. The negative gaze of his teacher and his lover, the harsh expectations of acting endlessly without questioning and withholding his emotions created a model for what I called the step and looked for it black western archetype.

The Black Western archetype is a concept that I have devised to address how racism and the impact of slavery pervades the psychology of black people in contemporary Western society. The idea arises from combining traditional psychoanalytic theory and ideas on black issues. At the risk of homogenizing, I would suggest that this intergenerational phenomenon has influenced the behavior of many black women in our modern society.

Black women of African descent sometimes display traits of this negative stereotype. The black woman was silenced for her history of abuse. Out of this came the harshness of the accumulation of relentless and unreasonable work experience. She is often compulsively independent and reluctant to ask for her needs to be met. You are prone to overworking and are often expected to overwork. She loses her own care for the care of others, including extended family, so her health is affected and she is prone to mental health problems. This stems from the large number of black women who are exhausted or enter the mental health system as a result of oppression in the workplace.