"Remembering my past in the relation to screen images of black womanhood, I wrote a short essay, “Do..."

Remembering my past in the relation to screen images of black womanhood, I wrote a short essay, “Do you remember Sapphire?” which explored both the negation of black female representation in cinema and television and our rejection of these images. Identifying the character of “Sapphire” from Amos ‘n’ Andy as that screen representation of black femaleness I first say in childhood, I wrote:

She was even then backdrop, foil. She was bitch—nag. She was there to soften images of black men, to make them seem vulnerable, easygoing, funny and unthreatening to a white audience. She was there as a man in drag, castrating bitch, as someone to be lied to, someone to be tricked, someone the white and black audience could hate. Scapegoated on all sides. She was not us. We laughed with the black men, with the white people. We laughed at this black woman who was not us. And we did not even long to be there on the screen. How could be long to be there when our image, visually constructed, was so ugly. We did not long to be there. We did not long for her. We did not want our construction to be the hated black female thing—foil, backdrop. Her black female image was not the body of desire. There was nothing to see. She was not us.

Grown black women had a different response to Sapphire; they identified with her frustrations and her woes. They resented the way she was mocked. They resented the way these screen images could assault black womanhood, could name us bitches, nags. And in opposition they claimed Sapphire as their own, as the symbol of that angry part of themselves white folks and black men could not even begin to understand.