Interrogating the Functionality of Stereotypes of Racist White Women

• In Event: What Can White People Do? Whiteness and Education in the Current Moment

Abstract

In this talk, I interrogate the functionality of stereotypes of racist white women, such as the popular Becky stereotype (Matias, 2020). I suggest that these stereotypes serve as unhelpful normative yardsticks in measuring the “ideal” white antiracist woman. This work is important because, while stereotypes of white women like Becky do not carry the life and death consequences as stereotypes do for black men and women, they do undermine racial justice agendas. Through a series of stories about white women in my own life, I demonstrate how how scholars would be better off searching for deeper understandings of the distortions of white women, rather than over-relying on stereotypes to label, punish, and ostracize them.

My thinking is most informed by theories of race and racism that highlight the ways the white mind is at war with itself. In the book, Souls of White Folks (2013) Veronica T. Watson articulated a theory of whiteness derived from black scholars who are interested in the strange and violent psyches of white people. Drawing on Yerby (1946), DuBois (1986), Chesnutt (1905/2005), Hurston (1948/1991), and Beales (1994), Watson showcased how white supremacy left “a deep and fester ing wound in the collective psyche of white America” (p. 53).
White women, in particular, use the Africanist persona to define the white feminine ideal. To understand this, one must concern themselves not with the mythical locus of pure white bodies, but the white woman’s “miscegenated mind” (Watson, 2013, p. 32). Put another way, white women are “always already in a rhetorical dialogue with Blackness” (p. 71). Relying on the methodological traditions of narrative inquiry and cultural biography, my presentation intends to serve as a cautionary tale about the scapegoating of white women through racist white women stereotypes.

To guide this talk, I begin with the following questions:

How are stereotypes of racist white women serviced by antiracist white women?

What meanings can be derived from stereotypes of racist women that inform the thinking and behavior of antiracist white women?

References

Beales, M. P. (1994). Warriors don’t cry: A searing memoir of the battle to integrate Little Rock’s Central High. Simon & Schuster.

Chesnutt, C. (2005). The Colonel’s dream. Harlem Moon. (Original work published 1905)
DuBois, W. E. B. (1986). Writings. Compiled by Nathan Huggins. New York.

Hurston, Z. N. (1991). Seraph on the Suwanne. Harper Perennial. (Original work published 1948)

Matias, C. (2020). Surviving Becky(s): An intimate discussion with IRISE Visiting Associate Professor, Dr. Cheryl E. Matias. [Podcast]. IRISE. Ashemu, H. [Host].

Yerby, F. (1946). The foxes of harrow. Sun Dial Press.

Watson, V. T. (2013). The souls of white folk: African American writers theorize whiteness. University Press of Mississippi.

Author

• Erin Till Miller, University of North Carolina - Charlotte
  Presenting Author