Please support our programs

Melissa Harris-Perry: Confronting Stereotypes of the Black Woman

Listen:

Never miss a show! @ symbol icon Email Signup Spotify Logo Spotify RSS Feed Apple Podcasts

Portrait via Flickr (cc) user Good_1

Since the days of slavery, the African-American woman has been subjected to stereotypes: the mammy, the angry black female and the hyper-sexual woman . These stereotypes continue to this day and permeate thru pop culture.

On this edition, author and political science professor Melissa Harris-Perry speaks about the stereotypes black women face, its impacts on their identity and how it has limited the ways in which society views them as true “citizens.”

Featuring:

Melissa Harris-Perry, professor of political science at Tulane University, where she is founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South. She is also the author of  Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. She is a columnist for The Nation magazine and a contributor to MSNBC, and other media outlets. This discussion was moderated by Blanche Richardson, heads the 40-year-old Marcus Book Stores in San Francisco and Oakland, California and editor, author and anthologist.

Special Thanks to KPFA for the audio.

***WEB EXCLUSIVES***

Blackface Montage from Spike Lee’s Bamboozled

Melissa Harris-Lacewell Keynote at Facing Race 2010

For More Information:

Marcus Books
Melissa Harris-Perry
Melissa Harris- Perry’s Columns in The Nation
Black Face, a history
The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
National Association of Colored Women (NACW)

Books/Articles:

Embracing Sisterhood: Class, Identity, and Contemporary Black Women by Katrina Bell McDonald 
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, by Melissa Harris-Perry
R.N. Bradley’s Book Review of Citizen Abstained?: Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris-Perry
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
‘She’s Ghetto’: Stereotypes Black Women Internalize by Bene Viera
“How Spike Lee’s ‘Bamboozled’ challenges Hollywood’s portrayal of black people on screen” by Megan Fox

Author: Radio Project

Share This Post On