Reinventing the nigger

Reinventing the nigger

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  1 Reinventing the Nigger:The Perpetuation of Racial and Gender Stereotypes in Energy Drink Ads By Taitu Heron, Women’s Media Watch Jamaica For WMW Newsletter Volume 6, Issue 1, 2010. The history of the interaction of cultures and imperialism has been replete with racial and gender stereotypes of Africans, Asians and Indigenous peoples in relation to European historiography and projections of themselves as a superior standard for the rest of humanity to emulate. For the African, the imperial project was clear: de-Africanize, racialise, dehumanise and objectify. In short, turn Africans into niggers. In looking at the Mandingo roots drink advertisement, WMW finds that it falls victim to a contemporary manifestation of an age-old European ideology and representation of African humanity as black, overly sexed and animalist. Let us go back a few centuries and explore the justificatory language of European discourse that was consistently perpetuated during the 15th to early 20th centuries as means of sustaining the imperial project of capital accumulation and geographical expansion (Said, 1993: 45). During Afro-Caribbean enslavement for instance, the dominant ‘positive’ model of manhood and masculinity was defined in European terms as embodying power, property, gentility, a protestant or Catholic ethic and high command of English, French or Castillian, depending on which European colonial power that provided the narrative. African manhood and masculinity was posited as the negative opposite: muscular, brutish, devoid of intellect, having a large penis, thriving on strong carnal energies that could serve the needs of populating the plantation; while African womanhood and femininity was perceived as: “extreme lasciviousness” and prone to “simple and animal living” (Edward Long, 1774, vol. 2 cited in Jahoda, 1999). With different physical endowments than the European counterparts, these feminine differences of African women were often exaggerated as lacking refinement, posture, and proper reproductive functions, reduced to being “wenches” to breed on plantations and subject to sexual violence by white men. In short, this consistent ideology served to emasculate, defeminise and make niggers out of enslaved African men and women respectively. Certain pejorative categories such as “Hottentots”, “Mandingos”, “Negroes”, “Negresses”, “bejewelled darkies”, “Congoes”, Guineamen” and many more emerged from centuries of writing of European “explorers”,
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  2 planters, colonial administratorsand missionaries from the Renaissance period right through to the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, Imperialist Expansion and well into the 20th century (Alleyne, 2002, Wood, 2000; Jahoda, 1999). If one compares the picture of the willing model, Maliah Michel for the Mandingo ad (above) with the picture of “Hottentut Venus”, (above) the subject of 18th century scientific objectivism, often used to justify “close kinship with apes” and whose body upon death was dissected by George Cuvier who was fascinated by the “genitalia of blacks”; what perpetuations of the nigger do we see? While it is impossible to present the range of European writers, writers such as Christoph Meiners, Freidrich Blumenbach, Hamilton Smith, George Cuvier, G W Hegel, Jules Virey or William Lawrence, to name just a few, all primarily used religion, science, anatomy, zoology and ‘anthropological observation’ to spread a strident ideological message of inferiority of every race that was not European: African, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Native Americans—were equally bad and uncivilised – only the Europeans had it right (Jahoda 1999: 68). Virey for instance, constantly harped on the ‘animality of blacks’: Moreover, the negro brutally abandons himself to the most villainous excesses; his soul is ...more steeped in the material, more encrusted in animality, more driven by purely physical appetites... if man consists mainly of his spiritual faculties, it is incontestable that the negro is less human in this respect; he is closer to the life of brutes because we see him obeying his stomach, his sexual parts, in sum his senses, rather than reason (Virey, 1834, Vol. 2, p. 117, cited in Jahoda). Fast forward these ideologies a few centuries, and we will find that contemporary versions exist and are often imbibed by subjects themselves and the nigger becomes reinvented well into present day in our media culture. The Mandingo roots drink advertisement, alongside other advertisements, join a spate of energy drinks on the Jamaican market that rely on racial and gender stereotypes which promote the idea of black male prowess (if little else) and lascivious and pliant black females ready for receiving. With a woman straddling the human size bottle as large as a phallus, the Mandingo roots wine advertisement asks, “Are you man enough? This is not the first time that we have participated in our own self-denigration. This persistent portrayal of black men as sexual beasts, stud-like, muscular and well-endowed that was also portrayed in the 1975 Hollywood film (re-released on DVD 2008), of the same name “Mandingo”. As seen in the movie’s poster, the man has no identity; he is reduced to being a headless male slave in chains embraced by female whiteness that he has to sexually service.
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  3 Other energy drinkssuch as Jagra play on similar notions of sexual prowess and the potency of the drink that will give men the power to “take charge and rule”, ostensibly over women in the bedroom. There is a very thin line here between what can be perceived as encouraging hard core consensual sex or promoting situations that may create sexual violence. The global media also plays a role in this too, as a conglomerate, images, music and videos play on racial and gender stereotypes, such as thugs, gangstas, hoes, and bitches and is further wrapped up in white dominated ownership of the media. Whilst some members of the African American communities and Jamaican communities internalise these representations and offer them up to fans to emulate, these images have an impact on self-perception, identity and what young people may deem as possible and legitimate expressions of themselves. With every Lil’ Wayne, 50c, or Bounti Killa, there is a Common or Talib Kweli or Tarrus Riley that counter acts the negative flow. Yet there is cause for concern because the flow of the tide is often times heavy and the means to decipher are often times devoid of historical and cultural contexts in which to interpret the present. It is not very often that WMW adopts a historical approach in its critique of the media. However, the energy drink advertisements commanded a response that seeks to remind us all that violence can be mental as much as it can be physical. The use of denigrating racial and gender stereotypes generated by former Imperial/European powers, is a form of self-imposed mental violence when as Jamaicans we continue to give life to lies that reduce our own sense of power; and in so doing reduce our own humanity. As human beings living in an era of post-emancipation, we have an obligation not to perpetuate anti-African, anti-human stereotypes and to point these out where they occur, especially, when we do it to ourselves. It is hoped that the market researchers for these products (and others) can dig deeper into their cultural recesses and use the strength, indomitable spirit, humour and sharp intellect that we have instead in order to generate and market other products. References ALLEYNE, Meryvn. 2002. The Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World. Kingston: UWI Press. Drink responsibly
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  4 JAHODA, Gustav. 1999.Images of Savages: Ancient Roots of Modern Prejudice in Western Culture. London: Routledge. SAID, Edward, 1993. Culture and Imperialism. NY: Verso Books. WOOD, Marcus. 2000. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America 1780- 1865. NY: Routledge.