To Be Loved

Shug: "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it."
Celie: "Are you sayin’ it just want to be loved like it say in the Bible?"
Shug: "Yeah, Celie. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler... just tryin’ to be loved."

-          The Color Purple (film) [1985]

Amidst all of the recent craze involving pop star Miley Cyrus and her infatuation with the infamous form of dance known as “twerking,” I was compelled to see what was really going on.  After seeing her MTV Video Music Awards performance to her single “We Can’t Stop” as well as the music video to the same song, I was appalled.  In her music video, she is in the company of three young black women “twerking” when she delivers these lyrics: “To my home girls here with the big butt/shaking it like we at the strip club/remember only God can judge ya/forget the haters ‘cause somebody loves ya” (“Miley Cyrus Lyrics – We Can’t Stop”; Cyrus, "We Can't Stop").  Although she acknowledges a possibility that somebody loves her "home girls," I find myself not being able to disassociate this so-called love from the physical attributes that she visually and verbally highlights.

One of the reasons why I stopped listening to mainstream hip-hop and other genres of music several years ago was because of its tendency to perpetuate the idea of a black woman being no more than—in the words of Bell Biv DeVoe—“a big butt and a smile” to say the least (“Poison”).  I came to an understanding back then that an artist (most often a black male) and an industry capitalized off of projecting images that made women the objects of male fantasy and dominance.  However, I think what disturbed me this time with Miley Cyrus was that it was now a white woman who appeared to objectify black women in this manner.  Although I am sure she is not the first to do something like this, this became one of the first instances that I can recall.  Yet, I do not think this is what troubled me the most.  When I gave more thought to her VMA performance, what began to bother me was that the black women twerking on stage were wearing big stuffed animals on their backs as a part of their stage costumes which, in turn, also gave more attention to their back sides.  Moreover, some women were wearing animal-print pants and were also allowing Miley to smack their behinds while they were bending over.  These costume pieces and behaviors raised concerns as to if these women were seen not just as objects, but as something, shall I say, animalistic ("Miley...2013").  Maybe I am overanalyzing, but I cannot help to see these factors as problematic.

The reason why I consider these factors as problematic in an overall troublesome scenario is because black women have been made into something inhumane throughout history.  Ethicist Katie G. Cannon states the following in her book Black Womanist Ethics: “Black women are the most vulnerable and the most exploited members of the American society.  The structure of the capitalist political economy in which Black people are commodities combined with patriarchal contempt for women has caused the Black woman to experience oppression that knows no ethical or physical bounds” (Cannon 4).  During the era of slavery, the black woman was seen as a “brood sow” and a “work ox” (Cannon 31).  She was neither human nor even female except for when she could be exploited as one (Cannon 31).  A black woman became the subject of rape and sexual misuse by white male slave masters and the means of mass reproduction for black men—both of which contributed to the imposed idea that she was an oversexed creature (36-37).  She was also the target of vindictive treatment by white women who were troubled by their own status as the prized property of white men (Cannon 38-39).  She was also the one who was required to do most of the work on the plantation (Cannon 33).  Even as time moved towards emancipation and beyond, she was still overworked and limited to working unskilled, strenuous labor jobs with minimal pay (Cannon 46).  

Today, black women are still greatly challenged by gender discrimination, prejudice, and poverty (Cannon 66-68).  In order for black women to fight against systems of the world which have sought to keep them completely at a disadvantage, it has been necessary for them to develop their own ethical framework and language (Cannon 75; Smitherman, “Testifyin, Sermonizin, and Signifyin,” 240).  In other words, black women have found the need to speak and write for themselves in order to survive and thrive within a society where its white- and male-based infrastructure is made to keep her impoverished, under male subjection, and radically oppressed (Cannon 4).  She has been striving to find and exercise her voice out of the moral wisdom of her community and her own lived experience (Cannon 4, 5-6).

The ethical framework that has surfaced for black women flows out of the black woman’s literary tradition as a source.  Cannon finds that this tradition is a foundation for black women’s ethics “because the development of the Black woman’s historical and literary legacy is tied up with the origin of Black people in America” (Cannon 77).  Stemming out of black oral tradition and the black woman’s stance as a “participant-observer” in black communal life, black women writers have recorded the fullness of the black experience and the morality that emerges within it (Cannon 84, 87, 89, 90).  Drawing from the lived experiences of black women and the black community in general, writers such as Zora Neale Hurston have been able to convey virtues of “quiet grace” and “unshouted courage”—virtues that allow women to find the true essence of their own being as well as their strengths and convictions even in the midst of suffering (Cannon 104, 125, 133-134, 143-144).  It is in works that have considered the black woman’s narrative as important that black women have been able to find and express their voice and moral meaning.

As Geneva Smiterman asserts, it is vital that African American women “fashion a language, building on and rooted in the African American Experience, that speaks to the head and the heart of African America” (Smitherman, 238).  Let us look to the testimony of Anita Hill against Clarence Thomas in 1991 as a historical example of a need for black women to have their own language to convey their truths for the purpose of understanding their experiences.  It is troublesome that there were black women in particular who sided with Clarence Thomas over Anita Hill in allegations of sexual harassment because he chose to use language that correlated with “blackness” and she chose not to do so (Smitherman 237-238).  The general notion that there was a failure for her testimony to be heard seriously is a problem in itself, and it is not her fault that her word was not acknowledged in full sincerity.  However, there must be further work done in linguistics by black women for black women in order for their stories and struggles to be considered significant among themselves, the African American community, and the larger society (Smitherman 240).  On the other hand, the acknowledgement of the stories and struggles of black women should not only be the concern of black women.

Everyone has a role in making sure the narratives and needs of black women are attended to and that further exploitation, abuse, and neglect of black women does not happen.  Deriving out of Shug Avery’s proclamation in her dialogue with Celie in The Color Purple, it should be a disgrace to God that we bypass a black woman and do not consider her significance.  Just as any human being, she longs to be loved.  She may even seek to find this love through some type of performance or in a cry.  However, we who stand outside of her embodied personhood might continue to not only deny her love but perpetuate abusive and oppressive actions.  We might continue to objectify her and reduce her down to sexualized property or, as Miley would say, “a home girl with the big butt.”  All the while, she is left to rise up out of her overworked, underpaid, objectified, and racialized situation with the aim of “hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick” (Cannon 33, 66-68, 128).  This should not be.

As black women continue to construct a language and an ethic that emerges out of their literary tradition and lived history, I propose that those of us who do not embody their particular experience should support black women in their endeavors to craft narratives and voices and acknowledge them for who they find themselves to truly be.  I believe there needs to be more efforts in place to ensure that black women and their lived experiences are not looked over and abused.  Considering that I initially looked at what has recently transpired in the entertainment world, I particularly see a need for this type of work to take place in realms of media among other arenas.  Perhaps industry insiders and music performers would reconsider the exploitation of black female bodies if they were sensitive to the stories of black women throughout history who have been seen as nothing more than someone’s property.  Perhaps consumers of media and connoisseurs of pop culture would think before endorsing negative images of women if they read a novel by Zora Neale Hurston in their educational formation.  Furthermore, perhaps if employers would become aware of the value of black women as extraordinary human beings, we would no longer seek to subjectively fashion her in all of her excellence into servitude roles in which she is the most needed person in the formation and function of this country (Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” 203; Cannon 33-35).  Perhaps by all of us seeking to know a black woman for the person she truly finds herself to be, we can all know that she is of great virtue and that she shares the same ultimate longing as any other being made in the image of God—to be loved.         

Bell Biv DeVoe.  “Poison.”  By Martin Richard Gilks, Miles Stephen Hunt, Robert Jones, Malcolm Roy Treece, and Elliott Straite.  Poison, MCA/Universal R 1645, 1990, compact disc.

Cannon, Katie G.  Black Womanist Ethics.  1988.  Reprint.  Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006.

Color Purple, The.  Directed by Steven Spielberg. 1985.  Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2007.  DVD.

Cyrus, Miley.  “We Can’t Stop.”  YouTube video, 3:34.  September 30, 2013.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrUvu1mlWco.

“Miley Cyrus Lyrics – We Can’t Stop.” A-Z Lyrics Universe.  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mileycyrus/wecantstop.html (accessed September 30, 2013).       

“Miley Cyrus We Can't Stop Blurred Lines Give It 2 U Robin Thick e Video Music Awards 2013.”  YouTube video, 6:20.  September 30, 2013.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5f7nUBGTts.    

Smitherman, Geneva.  “Testifyin, Sermonizin, and Signifyin: Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the African American Verbal Tradition.”  In African American Women Speak Out on Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas, 224-242.  Edited by Geneva Smitherman.  Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.

Spillers, Hortense.  “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.”  In Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, 203-229.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.