Black Women Shown through White Women

Black women’s role in society has never been a very significant one except for when it comes to their culture being stolen from them.  In the past decade, white women have been taking hints form trends that have been considered trashy on black women and making them new and innovative.  The truth is African American culture is only acceptable when it has a white face.  In the era of Instagram models and lip fillers, white women all over the world are embracing the exact same features that black women have been condemned and ostracized for since they stepped onto American soil.  Representation of black women becomes forgotten because having a white woman do the exact same thing is more appealing.  Because of this, the African American culture becomes absorbed into American culture.  This is another way to keep the power of black people subdued.  This action happened when white people attempted to take away slaves’ humanity and culture in order to keep them quiet and under controlled.  The media is a mirror image of its audience, and it shows that black women seldom have a place in mass media because of the way their culture looks on them. 

Black women are looked at as trashy when accepting and celebrating their own culture, but it takes on a different light once white people attempt to get ahold of them.  Recently black women have come to embrace their natural hair, and forget about what has been ingrained in us from the beginning.  Since I was a child my mother has always wanted my hair to be straight in order for me to fit in with the white people I grew up around.  She wanted to minimize the number of battles I would have to face as an apparent outsider.  Black women have taken a step to be above that and embrace their natural hair and protective styles created and spread throughout our culture, instead of ruining their hair in efforts to be accepted.  As this transition happened, at first it was not accepted, even within portions of the black community, but now everywhere we witness white women recreating these styles and claiming them as their own.  The most famous example of this is when the Kardashians decided to claim cornrows as their own and give them the new name of “boxer braids”, or the sudden craze for white women to try and create these tight afro-like curls.

This blurred line of cultures has been apparent in the misrepresentation and disconnect with black people, resulting in extremely insensitive and basically racist ads and public mistakes.  Recently, the dove ad (showing a black women transforming into a white woman after using the product) struck a nerve with just about every black woman in America because it basically shows that the ideal beauty is to be more white.  Dove has created these problematic ads multiple times and although it is insensitive, it is a representation of the ideal form of beauty our society has created. The lack of representation of black women in media and in the boardrooms of these companies results in ads like these.  Although, because this is dove’s third or so time offending women whether for their body or their skin color, the excuse of “missing the mark” is no longer valid. Our society treats white as better and this ad is only a representation of that.  The ability for non-black women to appropriate African American culture so much so that they can rebrand it as their own, is our society’s feelings come to life.  In mass media, black traits will sell better with a white face, and the white people in charge will go to great lengths to keep it that way

https://medium.com/gender-theory/black-is-only-acceptable-when-it-is-white-874a43e09e37

WC: 622

Pledged by: Logan Griffin