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- Title
Construction of the Crack Mother Icon.
- Authors
CARPENTER, TRACY R.
- Abstract
This article examines the progression of stereotypical images of African American women in film and advertisements (Mammy, Aunt Jemima, Sapphire, etc.) to deviant figures in political discourse (the Matriarch and Welfare Queen). Locating caricatures within theories of African American deviance, the history of welfare policy, and the crack cocaine controversy, I argue that icons of African American women serve as recognizable, shortcut representations of purported African American pathology used to promote political agendas. Methods include discourse analysis of social policies, historical analysis of images of African Americans in media, visual and literary forms, and ethnographic research with African American former substance abusers. The data informed narrative analysis of the Crack Mother characters in films by African American filmmakers from the 1990s and early 2000s. The data reveals that the Crack Mother icon is an amalgamation of previous stereotypes, operating as a stock character to generate predictable responses from audiences and propagate gender and racial ideology. The Crack Mother is not only a loaded signifier infused with notions of racialized deviance; she is also closely associated with broad social problems. The article brings to question the role of hypervisible African American caricatures, suggesting that they function to sustain white normality.
- Subjects
DRUGS &; mass media; STEREOTYPES in mass media; AFRICAN Americans in mass media; SOCIAL conditions of African American women; AFRICAN American women in motion pictures; AFRICAN Americans in motion pictures; DRUG abuse in motion pictures; COCAINE abuse
- Publication
Western Journal of Black Studies, 2012, Vol 36, Issue 4, p264
- ISSN
0197-4327
- Publication type
Article