Sexy, Sapphire, Psycho: Disciplining Black Women Through Mental Illness Rhetoric

• In Event: Pluralism and Intersectional Politics

Abstract

In this paper, I explore bitch narratives of news media and other forms of cultural discourse as they apply to black women in American politics. I contend that powerful black women in politics find themselves disciplined and constrained in the shadow of the figure of the “crazy bitch.” The crazy bitch is one of a typology of “Mad” figures that occupy prominent places in American culture and conversation about mental illness helping to shape political discourse and policy. The crazy bitch stands out amongst these figures for her explicitly gendered nature; in name alone she evokes sexism. The crazy bitch also exposes a form of ableism by mobilizing bias against persons with mental illness through the qualifier, “crazy.” But I argue that the crazy bitch, as she applies to black women, does more than act as a problematic moniker: she supports a form of respectability politics that punishes black women for their gender and their race through the rhetoric of mental illness. I examine the treatment of black women in different positions of political power as they come into conflict with powerful men on the national stage. One such woman is Anita Hill, who during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings was portrayed as ruthless, vengeful, lusty, and mentally unstable. I draw a line from the rhetoric of the crazy bitch to the treatment of Anita Hill and other black women to show how the ideologies of sexism and racism are channeled through mental illness rhetoric to undermine the power of black women in power.

Author

• Anna Daily, Mount Holyoke College