To hold onto an ancestry taken away due to slavery and colonialism, African Americans portray a superficial idealistic “Africana” in western media exaggerated by years of stereotype and a manufactured global market to promote a façade of “blackness.”
We’ve seen the visual portrayal of African Americans in our entertainment and social media: the tall, muscular, sometimes athletic black man and a voluptuous but slim, slim but curvy black woman with long hair. Their photoshopped bronze-like skin color encapsulates a dual purpose: light enough to be accepted by a global audience yet dark enough to be reminded of the 400-year-old pain of being rejected.
It would make one believe that all blacks are descendants of an amalgam of Amazonian land within Africa or that the entire continent is one enormous landmass to these beings. These “characters” African Americans portray are collections of derogative racial stereotypes made by whites in the past that have been gentrified and modernized for white audiences today.
We see ‘ Black Athleticism’ for the African American man, theorizing that blacks are genetically more robust than other races, typically whites. Identical to the “Mandingo” stereotypes from the past made by whites, which suggest black men are ‘well endowed,’ sex-driven, feral by nature, and lack civilization. Today, black men have clung to those once traits as positive, which continues the acceptance of black men less for their intelligence and more for their physicality.
The Commodification of Black Athletes — YouTube
Unlike other genders and races, African American women have suffered the most regarding their appearance and acceptance in western society. Today she is almost a ‘clown” in appearance compared to her counterpart ancestor and a complete alien to that of her closest indigenous native African women we see today. Fake eyelashes, synthetic to virgin hair, skin bleaching, buttocks and lip injection, and cheap wholesale clothing have garnished the black women to hide their natural beauty fabricated by a western market influence. The “independent black women” have become an amalgam of the gentrification of past stereotypes like the Jezebel and Sapphire.
African Americans have an identity crisis and insecurity in viewing themselves as preserving their African ancestry. They have taken the once derogative, racial, and negative stereotype created by whites as a positive to today but fail to see that it only hurts them in the long run as many currently try to separate themselves by pursuing an entrepreneur role and becoming more educated.
Africa itself is a diverse continent, sometimes confused by the color of the people’s dark skin. Research shows that a single country in Africa has more genetic diversity than most continents. Suppose African Americans, now recoined as simply “Black Americans” to distance themselves from Africa further, used facts like these about Africa. In that case, they could bring a new portrayal of Africana in western media.
