On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on “The Drew Barrymore Present,” and in a lighthearted second, defined — as she did over the last presidential election cycle — that in her blended household, her stepchildren affectionately name her Momala.
Barrymore responded that all of us want “an amazing hug” proper now and instructed Harris, “We’d like you to be Momala of the nation.”
I don’t suppose Barrymore supposed any hurt, fairly the alternative, and the vice chairman was magnanimous, taking the remark in stride and with good cheer. The studio viewers applauded.
However even mild and oblivious stereotyping may be dangerous, and it’s necessary that we discover why this remark, which can appear innocuous to some, is offensive to others.
Black ladies and women spend their complete lives in flight from a society insistent on de-individualizing and dehumanizing them, insistent on forcing them to suit broad generalizations.
There’s the Sapphire caricature from “Amos ’n’ Andy,” the emasculating shrew who’s impolite, meanspirited and vulnerable to matches of rage. There’s the Jezebel, dominated by a lascivious spirit and missing an ethical compass or self-control. There’s the welfare queen — a stereotype popularized throughout Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential marketing campaign — rooted within the poisonous mixture of promiscuity and work avoidance. And naturally, there’s the concept of the indignant Black girl, a stereotype that usually overlaps and amplifies others.
However on this case, the stereotype at play is that of the mammy — the caretaker, the bosom through which all can relaxation, the apron on which we’ve got a proper to hold.
Within the American psyche, it’s the Miss Millie story line from Alice Walker’s “The Coloration Purple,” about somebody so blinded by a conception of her personal advantage that it doesn’t register when she condescends.
When Miss Millie, the mayor’s spouse, encounters Sofia and sees the care that she has taken of her kids — and the flamboyant automotive through which Sofia drives and the wristwatch she wears — Miss Millie not solely needs that take care of herself, however she additionally seeks to scale back Sofia. She instantly asks Sofia to be her maid. She totally believes that it’s her proper and that her request, politely spoken, should be honored.
The way in which that Harris and her household categorical love and connection is theirs, even when Harris shares it. It stays a part of her non-public life, not her skilled and political obligations. She deserves separation between the 2, and we should respect that boundary.
That she could be known as upon to consolation and nurture the nation, relatively than dutifully characterize it, is demeaning and holds Black ladies captive to historic mythologies. Our nation could certainly want ethical steering and collective counsel, however Black ladies aren’t obligated to supply it.
In elections, Black ladies are incessantly heralded by liberals because the saviors of democracy due to their excessive charge of voting for Democratic candidates. Right here, even unwittingly, Barrymore isn’t removed from suggesting that Black ladies — no less than this Black girl, arguably probably the most highly effective on the earth — mustn’t solely save the nation but additionally nurse it.
It’s an illustration of the nanny-fication of Black ladies that casts them as racialized human safety blankets — forgiving, tranquil and even magical.
With this stereotype, Black ladies are considered as possessing a preternatural capability to assuage, to supply a secure harbor for others regardless that they discover no secure harbor for themselves. Because the Georgetown Middle on Poverty and Inequality reported in 2019, its researchers present in a 2017 examine that “adults imagine Black women ages 5-19 want much less nurturing, safety, help and luxury than white women of the identical age.”
On this, there’s an expectation of selflessness that erases the very risk of a non-public self, held aside, with needs, wants and needs of its personal.
Barrymore appeared to suppose that asking Harris to be the nation’s Momala was a type of reward, as honoring the excessive regard through which she holds her. However she did so with a historic blindness that America usually demonstrates when speaking about Black individuals.
It’s the contradiction of elevating whereas decreasing.
As James Baldwin wrote in “Notes of a Native Son”: “People, unhappily, have probably the most exceptional capability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous however piquant confection and to rework their ethical contradictions, or public dialogue of such contradictions, right into a proud ornament, corresponding to are given for heroism on the sphere of battle.”
In an try and convey intimacy in her dialog with the vice chairman, Barrymore allowed informality to veer into disrespect.
The nation doesn’t want and shouldn’t ask Vice President Harris to be its mama or its mammy. The nation wants her to proceed to advance the agenda of the administration through which she serves — and for which People voted — like each white man earlier than her.
And America must develop up and be accountable for its personal actions and no matter repercussions move from them. Comforting the nation on this second of disaster isn’t Black ladies’s burden.
