Mammy stereotype
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Mammy is a variant of "mother". It is no longer in common use and, when used today to refer to a black woman, it is considered an ethnic slur.
However, it was and is also in common use in Ireland and parts of Great Britain where it is still used as an affectionate term for mother.
Archetype
The mammy archetype is another kind of domestic servant who was an earth mother type, good-natured, often overweight, sometimes jovial and loud.
A "wet-mammy" was a term used for a female domestic servant that acted as a nanny and was also assigned the duty to nurse the child in lieu of the child's mother, often due to the mother's fear of disfigurement of the breasts as a result of nursing.
In pop culture
A number of variations and usage of the mammy character became prominent in pop culture during the pre-civil rights period. One of the most notable examples is Aunt Jemima, a mascot for Quaker Oats's Aunt Jemima brand pancakes, pancake flour and mixes, and syrup. In recent years, the packaging has been redesigned to replace the mammy image with a more contemporary image.
In music, film, radio, and television
Mammy characters were a staple of blackface minstrelsy, giving rise to many sentimental show tunes dedicated to or mentioning mammies, including Al Jolson's My Mammy from The Jazz Singer and Judy Garland's performance of Swanee from A Star is Born. Various "Mammy" characters would appear in radio and TV shows. One prominent example was the radio and later short-lived TV show Beulah, which featured a black maid named Beulah who helped solve a Caucasian family's problems. The manner in which the black maid was depicted on the show led to charges by the NAACP that the show was perpetuating a racist mammy stereotype. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Mammy Two Shoes, the housekeeper in Tom and Jerry presented an animated example of the stereotype, complete with dark skin and an African American accent. The 1984 Frank Zappa album Thing Fish featured characters called "mammy nuns".
See also
External links
- Pilgrim, David. "The Mammy Caricature". Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Ferris State University, Michigan.