#MenAreTrash vs #MeToo: How the media kills Black women

In my previous article in my #MenAreTrash vs #MeToo series, I dealt with how living within an intersection has caused a brushing aside of Black women’s suffering. I concluded that #MenAreTrash, a movement that was sparked by the death of Karabo Mokoena, received worse social media perception and news coverage than #MeToo because society cares more about White women’s struggles than the death of a Black woman. But now, I wonder what exactly creates this perception.

 

In the previous article, I mentioned briefly that Black women are seen more as objects than people, and though White women can also be objectified, they do not have the added weight and discrimination that comes about by simply existing as a Black person. So where does this attitude come from?

 

Throughout history, Black people have been portrayed as savages. They have been likened to monkeys, are prime suspects in crimes and are associated with poor morals. This is in sharp contrast with civilised, morally upright and law-abiding White people. The media reinforces these kind of stereotypes by using compromising photographs of Black people who are suspects of a crime, while using pictures that have been posed for when a white person has committed the same crime. Sometimes Black people are portrayed negatively when they have done something that fits into negative stereotypes.

 

A perfect example of this is Carlique DeBerry, a Black man, and Marla Fenner, a White woman. They both sold high dosages of fentanyl which resulted in users’ death. The news channel used an unflattering photograph of Carlique, and put a posed-for picture of Marla. The lack of effort in finding or taking a better picture of Carlique presents him in a worse light than Marla. Not surprising to this, Marla got 5 years of probation while Carlique got 20 years in prison. Imagery reproduces stereotypes which influences people’s reactions to others.

    

 

In the background of all this, we also have imperialist ideas reinforcing racist ideas. Examples of this are Edward Said’s Orientalist framework. Here, he writes of the ways in which the “West” constructs its identity by comparing itself to the “East”. The West comprises of those countries which are civilised and forward thinking, while the “East” is a dark and barbaric.

 

A similar theory to this is the Hamitic hypothesis, a theory which separates the civilised Hamite from the savage Bantu or other ethnic group in Africa. This theory was developed from the Bible through the story of Ham, where his skin was turned black as a “curse” for his misdeeds. It is believed that the Ancient Egyptians are descendants of Ham. Though they are outwardly Black, for developers of this theory, the Egyptians were superior to other Africans because they were originally Caucasian. And this explains why they had such early civilization. This is why we often see White people depicting Ancient Egyptians in movies instead of Black people. These theories aim to maintain the image of a backward, brutish African and therefore primitive African countries.

 

Women have also had to endure unfair stereotypes since time immemorial. Women are portrayed as subservient to men with the main purpose of serving and nurturing them. That would mean that men are the opposite, as in dominant, strong, and leaders of the world. women need a man to lead them and therefore lead the household. While women are associated with softness, men are associated with strength. Men are always in control and women are always meant to follow their orders.

 

These gender stereotypes have become warped over time and so, this dominance and strength has morphed into aggression and violence. In my opinion, gender roles are not necessarily bad, but assigning them to specific genders and shaming those who cannot carry out these roles in a certain way is. It creates an atmosphere where performing these roles becomes obsessive and unhealthy, resulting in undesirable actions. SO for example, if a man is struggling to gain control of a situation by natural means, he then resorts to violence. And this, for me, is the cause of rape and femicide.

 

These kinds of ideas then create ideas of who is important in this world and who is not. If power is said to be masculine, then those who are masculine will respected. Hence, men sit at the top of society and women sit beneath them. If White people are the civilisers, then they rule and the rest follow them. If Westerners are the forward thinkers, then they set the rules of the world and the rest have to abide by them. If one group becomes more important, that then means the other begins to become irrelevant. This brings on the objectification of “others” which them makes them invisible. If one is invisible, then they are disposable. That means that when you kill them, it does not matter. It only matters when you kill the people at the top of the social structures we live in.

 

The media reproduces these ideas by giving very little coverage to the mass murders of people of colour while giving ample time to the deaths of White people. It does this by reproducing stereotypes in the characters of movies and series. Black women are often either portrayed as mammy types or as professional class women who have assimilated into American or British culture, etc. The loud, angry Black woman is made fun of and not taken seriously while the more “cultured” and refined, usually lighter skinned Black woman is the white characters’ preference. When people mention their travels to Africa in movies, they never mention the country let alone the people. When news is reported on Africa, it is rarely positive. It only depicts famine, tyranny and underdevelopment. Rarely are the citizens of any of these countries mentioned, and when they are, they are always shown in a bad light. Disturbing images of dead bodies are shown, and yet that would never be done in the West. The deceased would be respected and given the dignity they deserve. This disregard for Black people or other people of colour and their bodies is what causes them to be invisible outside these kinds of narratives.

 

For example, we are always reminded that six million people died in the Holocaust but it is unknown to us that much more than that figure died in conflicts like the war for Independence in India. It does not matter to anyone that King Leopold II killed 10 million Congolese people. We never celebrate the efforts of the soldiers from African countries when they fought in the two World Wars. We only wear poppies for the British soldiers and so on. Do we even ask about the women who fought? No. Because the loss of a Black life is no news and the loss of a woman is not much to write home about. The death of a Black woman? So what? The death of Black African woman? You will be lucky if you even hear crickets in response to that. Why should we be talking about such an irrelevant thing?

 

And that for me is the reason why Karabo Mokoena died and the voices of the South African women in response to her death were not heard. The media has succeeded in reproducing an image of Africa as a big country where everyone knows everyone and people live in mud huts with their pet lions. Its a place of no real importance. So the people there are not worth hearing. This is why #MenAreTrash got lost in translation and therefore issues of femicide, domestic violence and rape of Black African women were not raised in the way they should have been.

 

Black womanhood and White womanhood are not the same. White womanhood fits better into patriarchy’s outline of the most desirable woman. Respectability politics are shaped around middle class White women’s behavioural expectations. And because Black women often do not fit into this description, they are valued less.

 

You might argue that things have changed because the voices of Black women in the United States have been heard. But although they live in the intersection of being Black and a woman, they do not have the added oppression of being from an African country. They benefit from living in the civilised West and not in barbaric Africa. They gave the media slightly more on their side than Africans do. And that is a Tarana Burke, though she was previously ignored, has now been recognised as the leader of the #MeToo movement, but South African women have still not been recognised for sparking #MenAreTrash. In fact, #MenAreTrash is not even seen as a movement. Just the words of angry, loud, bitter, Black women.

 

Bibliography:

Collins, P. and Bilge, S. (2016) Intersectionality, Oxford: Polity Press

Kretsedemas, P (2010) ‘But She’s Not Black’ Journal of African American Studies, Vol 14, Issue 2, pp149-170

Myers, G. A. (2001) ‘Introductory Human Geography Textbook Representations of Africa’ Professional Geographer, Vol 53, Issue 4, pp 522-532

Quinlan, M. M., Bates, B. R., and Webb, J. B. (2012) ‘Michelle Obama ‘Got Back’: (Re)Defining Counter Stereotypes of Black Females.’, Women & Language, Vol 35, Issue 1, pp 119-126

Said, E. W. and Gerome, J. L (1979) Orientalism, Vintage

Spottel, M (1998) ‘German Ethnology and Anti-Semitism: the Hamitic Hypothesis’ Dialectic Anthropology, Vol 23, Issue 2, pp131-150

Stabile, C. A. and Kumar, D. (2005) ‘Unveiling imperialism: media, gender and the war of Afghanistan’ Media Culture and Society, Vol 27, Issue 5, pp 765-782

The Guardian (1999) ‘The hidden holocaust’ [Online] https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/may/13/features11.g22 Accessed on: 12/02/2019

United States Department of Justice (2019) ‘Buffalo Man Indicted For Distributing Fentanyl Which Resulted In Death’ [Online]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdny/pr/buffalo-man-indicted-distributing-fentanyl-which-resulted-death Accessed on: 12/02/2019

WHEC (2019) ‘Geneva woman to serve 5 years probation for fatal fentanyl sale’ [Online]: https://www.whec.com/news/geneva-woman-to-serve-5-years-probation-for-fatal-fentanyl-sale/5235379/ Accessed 12/02/2019