Stereotypes exist and hold immense power. They have the ability to permeate the minds and shape the perspectives of individuals and through that, they eventually aid in the generalization of people within a given identified group.
As a black person, I have heard my fair share of stereotypes aimed towards the overall black race, but I have also experienced the stereotypes facing black women in particular. A prominent stereotype of black women is this notion that we are all overtly hypersexual.
Hypersexuality is defined as being excessively active in sexual actions of any sort. This stereotype is placed in regard to this general belief that a black woman possesses the tendency to be excessively lustful, promiscuous, and indecent in nature.
It is of taboo nature for others to see black women choose to display their acquaintance or liking of sexual acts of any sort. If black women choose to do so, they are quickly associated with the notion of “liking sex too much” or for being “too sexual”.
This generalization of the promiscuity of black women continues to plague our daily conversations, what we see on our televisions, what we look at on our internet servers, what we find on our phones, etc… There have been times where I have been subjugated to this stereotype: I have experienced being asked by others “Why do black women tend to perform better at sexual actions compared to their white counterparts?”, “Why do black women tend to consistently desire sex?” and “Why are black women constantly sexually fetishized?"
These three questions prove how powerful this stereotype is. When black women choose to show their bare skin or body parts, they are shamed for being “too scandalous” or for doing “too much”.
When Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” music video came out a few years ago, with her twerking, licking lollipops, and dancing, people immediately felt the need to attack Nicki for her extreme levels of scandalousness and indecency in her video. Once her white counterpart, Miley Cyrus, got on stage during an award show and proceeded with the acts of twerking and licking sexual objects, she is seen as a woman who is “expressing her sexual freedom", but once Nicki Minaj, a black woman decides to show off her own body in her own music video, then she is indecent, promiscuous, and hypersexual?
Do you see the issue here? Why is it that black women are held to this standard that choosing to express our sexual freedom results in being “too much”, “too scandalous”, or “too promiscuous."
Black women are seen as a general group of people who always seek sexual activity of any sort, and this needs to stop. Stop perpetuating this stereotype. Black women are not the problem, it is us as a society who is the issue at hand.
We must learn to unlearn the hurtful biases that we hold towards various groups of people. Black women should not be generalized as hypersexual because it is neither true nor moral to create such a general perspective. Black women are neither your sexual experiments to conquer nor the sex-driven humans that such a stereotype portrays us to be.
