Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture 9781478002482

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JEZEBEL UNHINGED

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JEZEBEL UNHINGED Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture

Tamura Lomax Duke University Press  Durham and London  2018

© 2018 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­ic­ a on acid-­free paper ∞ Designed by Heather Hensley Typeset in Arno Pro by Westchester Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Lomax, Tamura A., author. Title: Jezebel unhinged : loosing the black female body in religion and culture / Tamura Lomax. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2018008230 (print) | lccn 2018009531 (ebook) isbn 9781478002482 (ebook) isbn 9781478000792 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 9781478001072 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: African American ­women. | African American churches. | African American ­women—­Sexual be­hav­ior. | Jezebel, Queen, consort of Ahab, King of Israel. Classification: lcc e185.86 (ebook) | lcc e185.86 .L625 2018 (print) | ddc 305.48/896073—­dc23 lc rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2018008230 Cover art: Tschabalala Self, Get It (detail), 2016, acrylic, Flashe, handmade paper, and fabric on canvas, 116.8 x 101.6 cm; 46 x 40 in. Courtesy the artist; Pilar Corrias, London; T293, Rome; and Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York. Photo credit: Maurizio Esposito.

FOR

Michael Raymond, Michael Leroy, and Martin Joseph

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CONTENTS

prolegomenon

“Hoeism or What­ever”: Black Girls and the Sable Letter “B” ix Acknowledgments

xix introduction

“A Thousand Details, Anecdotes, Stories”: Mining the Discourse on Black Womanhood 1 chapter 1

Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts: Writing Race, Sex, and Gender in Religion and Culture 13 chapter 2

“­These Hos ­Ain’t Loyal”: White Perversions, Black Possessions 34 chapter 3

Theologizing Jezebel: Womanist Cultural Criticism, a Divine Intervention 59

chapter 4

“Changing the Letter”: ­Toward a Black Feminist Study of Religion 82 chapter 5

The Black Church, the Black Lady, and Jezebel: The Cultural Production of Feminine-­ism 108 chapter 6

Whose “­Woman” Is This?: Reading Bishop T. D. Jakes’s ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! 130 chapter 7

Tyler Perry’s New Revival: Black Sexual Politics, Black Popu­lar Religion, and an American Icon 169 epilogue

Dangerous Machinations: Black Feminists Taught Us 201 notes

211 bibliography

243 index

251

PROLEGOMENON

“HOEISM OR WHAT­E VER” Black Girls and the Sable Letter “B”

He picked a ho by the name of Rahab . . . ​so h­ e’ll pick you too! —Rev. Dr. Jasmin Sculark, ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed conference, 2014

The Black Church at its best is a wellspring of black religiosity, cultural formation, and liberatory acts. It is complex communal space where many black Americans feel ­human, valued, loved, and hopeful; where black participation, voice, expression, leadership, artistry, and survival may be affirmed; where chosen familial ties, psychic space for alternative realities, and new beginnings can be made; where black protest and politics might be explored; and where black folk beaten down by false racial narratives might construct new and redemptive bylines. But while the Black Church provides hope and guidance for many of t­oday’s maladies, in some cases it dispenses the illness, diagnosis, and prescription. That is, the Black Church sometimes mirrors the antiblack, sexist, classist, homophobic, transantagonistic vio­ lence experienced in the rest of the world. And for black w ­ omen and girls, it can be a battleground for simultaneous erasure and stereotypic seeing, or, more explic­itly, marginalization and sex discrimination on some days, and sexualization, clandestine catcalling, unblinking stares, name calling, sexual harassment, and sexual vio­lence—­emotional, physical, epistemological, and other­wise—on ­others. Not all black Americans1 are Christian or even religious. And to be clear, Chris­tian­ity is irreducible to the Black Church.2 Yet if one happens to identify as black in Amer­i­ca, the Black Church’s cultural force is difficult to escape. First, Amer­i­ca is not only largely religious but also Christian.3 And second,

black Americans remain primarily affiliated with the Black Church. A Religious Landscape Study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2014 reported that of the black adults surveyed, 79 ­percent identified as Christian, with over 50 ­percent terming themselves as “Historically Black Protestant.”4 Though almost half of t­hose surveyed attend ser­vices periodically, seldom, or never, the Christian tradition, and particularly the Black Church, remains a vital source of information and meaning making for black life in Amer­i­ca. More than half of ­those surveyed in a Gallup poll in 2012 believe religion provides answers to most of t­ oday’s prob­lems and guidance on right and wrong.5 Or does it? Full disclosure: I am the d­ aughter of a black Baptist preacher (a.k.a. pk, a.k.a. preacher’s kid), reared in the Black Church and a moderately conservative Christian ­house­hold. Love, re­spect, and respectability ­were the laws of the land. My parents loved me deeply and modeled the good parts of the Black Church. Unfortunately, they w ­ ere not my only teachers. Christian education in the Black Church can be dicey. I grew up regularly attending Sunday school, Tuesday church school, Wednesday night Bible study, Saturday choir practice, vacation Bible school, and youth and teen programming. I built lifelong communities and learned many valuable lessons about love, kindness, faithfulness, and forgiveness. At the same time, however, through individual and collective engagement, chance encounters, and as an adult, through preaching, m ­ usic, film, and books, I learned about the synchronous seeing and labeling of black ­women and girls between the Black Church and black popu­lar culture. I learned that some of the same ste­reo­typical images and ideas thrust upon black ­women and girls by society ­were pervasive in the Black Church. I learned that the Black Church and black popu­lar culture significantly influence each other, especially in their omnipresent circulating discourse on black womanhood. And I learned that the promulgating of this discourse as “truth” can be just as death dealing, anxiety inducing, and de­ humanizing as white supremacist discourses on race. Both discourses on race and black womanhood intend to misread ­people, communities, and histories, and each marks black folk with illusory innate difference (sexual and other­wise), demands infinite reaction from ­those so marked, and disciplines responses deemed out of line. My earliest memory of marking is vivid. I was eleven years old when a prominent male elder of my childhood church told my ­father that he could not focus during altar call ­because he was sexually overwhelmed by my prepubescent derriere. As opposed to chin checking the man for sexual harassment ­toward a child, I x Prolegomenon

was lightly chastised for looking “too grown” and prohibited from ever again wearing the black-­and-­red fishtail cotton dress that donned my eleven-­year-­ old body that Sunday. I am certain my parents meant only to protect me from the church elders’ lusty eyes. They did what they knew to do and what many parents of girl c­ hildren do. They attempted to shift the male gaze by giving me a list of pertinent rules: d­ on’t wear clothes that show your body, d­ on’t wear clothes that are too tight or too revealing, watch where you go and who ­you’re with at night, and always, I mean always, make sure your breasts and ­behind are covered. I still appropriate some of t­ hese rules. Nonetheless, the implicit and unintentional message was that black girls’ bodies are a distraction and the distractions and/or prob­lems they cause are in some way their fault. I prayed tirelessly, asking God to rid me of my “defect.” I did not want to be a prob­lem and I certainly did not want my body to take up space in a way that was distracting or caused trou­ble. I even learned to move about in a way that tucked my butt in so that it would not protrude. Notwithstanding, I now know some prayers get left unanswered. Moreover, the church member’s comment was not about my dress or anything I had done. It was about him and how he had sexualized my eleven-­year-­old body. It was about a church culture that subconsciously and consciously reads black ­women and girls in terms of sexual deviance, excess, accessibility, and pursuance—­the activity of literal and ongoing pursuit, approach, availability, access, and entry. It was about the everydayness of t­ hese sorts of projections and how black girls are given rules for covering and closeting while black boys are taught to explore and conquer. It was about the ubiquity of a grammar on race and gender, and how black girls are sexualized long before puberty, and how being ­imagined as some version of temptress, promiscuous, whore or ho, or just overall unscrupulous, comes with the territory of being both black and female in the United States, even in the Black Church. In Hine Sight: Black W ­ omen and the Reconstruction of American History (1994), black feminist historian Darlene Clark Hine asserts that u­ nder slavery black ­women and girls placed priority on protecting their sexual being due to rape. In freedom, primacy was placed on safeguarding not only their bodies but also their sexual image. Anyone half paying attention to culture and society knows that defining black w ­ omen’s and girls’ sexual image is one of Amer­ic­ a’s favorite pastimes. Black girls such as Sasha and Malia Obama, Mo’ne Davis, and Quvenzhané Wallis learned to resist and dodge the yokes of racist and sexist my­thol­ogy before they hit double digits. Unlike Hester “ Hoeism or What­e ver ”  

xi

Prynne, the protagonist in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter (1850), who was problematically condemned by her Puritan neighbors for adultery and forced to wear a vis­i­ble scarlet letter “A” for the rest of her life, black ­women and girls are marked by hypersexuality and pursuance as an essential component of coming of age—­regardless of sexual experience or consent. My pinning was not a scarlet “A” but a symbolic sable “B” for black, which inherently included promiscuity. It was conferred at age eleven in the Black Church and confirmed at age fourteen in high school during a raucous discussion about sex with friends. I was the new black girl, just in from a predominantly black working-­class East Coast neighborhood, readying my best valley girl impression with hopes of fitting into my new predominantly white and affluent environment on the West Coast. As the white boys bragged about their many sexual conquests, the white girls boasted about their depth of sexual knowledge. Public (and private) discourses on sex and sexuality ­were vulgar in my ­house­hold, so I remained ­silent. Unbeknownst to me, it was my very being that had ignited the conversation in the first place. My presence unintentionally created a context for racist and sexist adolescent sex talk. I was the text. And they w ­ ere “reading” me, or at least who they thought I was supposed to be. Drawing upon rife and insidious mythologies influenced by theological, artistic, scientific, philosophical, literary, and medical racism, and by colonization and neo­co­lo­nial gazing, my new “friends” marked me with inbred sexual savagery. They sanguinely declared that I was born to crave and provide sex for anyone and anything “just like a monkey.” In fact, all black girls ­were. A f­ ather of one of the girls was a medical doctor and he had told her so. Every­one laughed in agreement. Some even pretended to be monkeys having sex, making loud “hoo . . . ​hoo . . . ​hoo” noises while wildly thrusting their pelvises, poking out their elbows and scratching their sides with their fingernails. This was their repre­sen­ta­tion of all black girls, and it naturally included uninhibited corybantic animal sex. While socially construed ideas about blackness, womanhood, and black female sexuality permeated the air I breathed long before I stepped foot onto the campus of my predominantly white and wealthy high school, I could neither adequately frame nor pinpoint them, nor was I certain that they ­were supposed to apply to me. They ­were in the air, hovering about, waiting for an opportunity to fasten to my chest and fix me—­and o­ thers who looked like me. Looking back, however, t­ here was l­ ittle difference between the significaxii Prolegomenon

tion encountered that inglorious day in the Black Church and that fateful day in high school, or that which I sensed when participating in conventional teenage pastimes, such as reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ­Uncle Tom’s Cabin in ­middle school or listening to my personal stash of plastic cassette tapes containing my favorite Hip Hop m ­ usic carefully concealed under­neath my bed. The challenge was bringing t­ hese discourses together, finding the common thread, and rupturing the latter. My interest in this proj­ect—­the circulating discourse on black womanhood in religion and popu­lar culture—­came full circle in 2010 ­after reading an interview with pop musician John Mayer for Playboy Magazine. Mayer, well known for his collaborations with B. B. King and Jay Z, was asked if black ­women threw themselves at him.6 He replied, “I ­don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m ­going to start dating separately from my dick.”7 Many black p­ eople in the digital world (and beyond) w ­ ere infuriated by Mayer’s biopolitics, namely his asymmetrical heart, split between the pseudoharmony of the Benetton brand and the bigotry of David Duke. Many who had previously uncritically accepted him, expressly t­ hose in the Hip Hop community, wanted to know one t­ hing: is he racist? While the unfurling of this story placed emphasis on Mayer’s answer, I wanted to know more about the question. It was familiar. Inherent in the question ­were assumptions about black ­women’s and girls’ hypersexuality. But what kind of interpretive guide and/or histories enabled such an ordinary question and lackadaisical response? The question, response, and gendered silence within black Amer­i­ca’s verbosity on race reflect not only a long-­standing internal conflict regarding the place, role, and value of black ­women and girls in American society but also the Freudian assumption that ­women and girls always “want the D” and that black female sexuality is homogenous and always already hyper and fiendish. ­W hether black w ­ omen threw themselves at Mayer is not the issue. The prob­lem lies in how the query suggests common knowledge. My “aha!” moment came when I realized that the ideas that s­ haped Mayer’s interview w ­ ere influenced by the same discourse on black womanhood that sculpted so many ­others—­from Georges Léopold Cuvier’s report on Saartjie Baartman to J. Marion Sims’s interpretation of North American black female slaves to Ronald Reagan’s account of his welfare queen to Don Imus’s portrait of Rutgers’ girls’ basketball team to my high school colleagues’ interpretation of black female sexuality and, yes, to even the church member’s reading of my eleven-­year-­old body. “ Hoeism or What­e ver ”  

xiii

The discourse on black womanhood, then, is what must be central. It is the common thread. It weaves the quilt of race and gender signification and repre­sen­ta­tion and rereads black w ­ omen and girls as indiscriminate jezebelian enthusiasts—­across time and contexts. This book provides a framework for mapping, theorizing, and unhinging. Frankly, it is the text I wish my parents or I had when I was growing up. It locates the ruthless dawning of racist, sexist, and classist mythologies about black womanhood and sexuality in Eu­ro­pean contact/conquest and its offspring, colonial/neo­co­lo­nial white supremacist culture. Yet it refuses to turn a blind eye to how t­ hese ideas get negotiated and propagated in black religion, the Black Church, and black popu­lar culture. Critiques of white racism and popu­lar culture are necessary and ongoing. What remains underexamined is how the Black Church and black popu­lar culture often inform each other, at times reproducing, maintaining, and circulating malevolent racialized gendered meanings. What I needed growing up was not only a histo- or cartogram of sorts but a genealogy of cross-­disseminated racial and gendered repre­sen­ta­tions and a structure for critically reading them. And not just read them as preeminent parts of white supremacist heterosexist discourses but as pivotal ele­ments of black religious and cultural discourse. This book places emphasis on the latter: the circulation and functionality of the discourse on black womanhood, in par­tic­u­lar jezebelian tropes, in black religion and black popu­lar culture. It examines how racial and gendered meanings reproduced in the Black Church and black popu­lar culture may be harmful, how the Black Church remains an impor­tant fount of inspiration that shapes identity and experiences, for good and bad, and how racial and gendered meanings reproduced in black religion, the Black Church, and black popu­lar culture get maintained and appropriated by black ­women and girls who have their own critical consciousnesses. This book is a critical black feminist source of discontentment. It holds that the incessant vio­lence of multicultural signification that black w ­ omen and girls face requires language that enables critical recognition and righ­ teous refusal. It is disinterested in straight-­lined good/bad binaries but rather comes alive in messy gray space. For example, it explores how the discourse on black womanhood produced by white cap­it­al­ist racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism birthed a simultaneous jezebelian “ho” discourse in black communities and institutions—to the point where “hoeism or what­ ever” seems normative, even within the Black Church, which constructs and peddles its own brand of ho theology, which draws on and helps solidify the xiv Prolegomenon

jezebelian metanarrative. Additionally, what of the ways in which this metanarrative gets deployed by black ­women? The title of this prolegomenon, “hoeism or what­ever,” is an ode to Twitter personality Zola (@_zolarmoon a.k.a. Muva Hoe) and her personal narrative about sex work and sex trafficking.8 Zola is neither ashamed of nor apol­o­getic about her sexual ­labor or sexual autonomy. How might we problematize ho discourses operating in culture and ho theologies functioning in black churches without demonizing Zola’s right to sexual decision making? Concurrently, the title calls attention to the sable pinning, disrobing, sexualizing, and trafficking of bodies in ideas, thus serving as a framework for interpreting identity and sexual activity, ­imagined or real. It challenges the practice of distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable ­women: jezebels and true ­women, or, more contemporarily, hos and ladies. Who better exemplifies the messy cataclysmic paroxysmal junction between black religion, the Black Church, black popu­lar culture, and ho/lady binaries than Bishop T. D. Jakes and popu­lar cultural producer Tyler Perry? Neither had much to say in response to Mayer’s interview. Perhaps they did not know about it or maybe the jezebelian discourse influential in Mayer’s Playboy interview is equally power­ful in their religious productions, and particularly ho theologies. No, they are not synonymous. And no, I am not suggesting that Jakes and Perry are downright sexist misogynoirists9 who imagine black ­women solely for sexual plea­sure and/or cap­it­ al­ist gain. What I am noting is the obvious presence of a prevailing and routinized discourse. Why examine them when ­there is an entire stadium of o­ thers, you ask? Or, as my beautician once asserted when engaging about Perry during a hair appointment, “At the end of the day it’s entertainment. ­There are worse ste­reo­ types and worse p­ eople. He has a good message: ‘Regardless of what y­ ou’re ­going through, you can turn ­things around.’ P ­ eople need to know that. I think it’s ­great—­like a sermon for t­ hose who may or may not go to church.” She was right. ­There are worse ste­reo­types and worse ­people. I explore some of them, too. Still, while neither Jakes nor Perry is functioning as D. W. Griffith in blackface, nor have they remixed a Black Church version of Dr. Dre’s classic “Bitches ­Ain’t Shit” (but hos and tricks), we can no longer ignore how mass-­mediated black religious and sermonic messages reappropriate race-­ and gender-­specific ho/lady and other doppelgangers to “educate, empower, entertain” mainstream audiences.10 As mentioned elsewhere, a quick glance at Christian history reveals a disconcerting narrative on what happens to ­women seen as “bad” or accused of ­doing “bad” ­things. “ Hoeism or What­e ver ”  

xv

I am reminded of how t­ hose charged and found guilty of ­doing “witchcraft” in medieval Eu­rope ­were executed by way of burning, stoning, or hanging. Add New World interpretations of race, gender, and sexuality to the mix, and vio­lence against w ­ omen and girls who disrupt religious and cultural scripts is pushed to new and literally unspeakable levels. Let us recall how NuNu, a spiritual and po­liti­cal leader on a southern plantation in the film Sankofa (1993), loses her life at the hands of her mixed-­race son for similar reasons. And one need not physically die for vio­lence or social crucifixion to be experienced. Do call to mind how Yellow Mary was signified and ostracized by her Gullah community at Ibo Landing in ­Daughters of the Dust (1991) a­ fter being raped, sexually exploited, and prostituted. True enough, cultural products such as film, including t­hose steeped in history, are part hy­po­thet­i­cal. Nevertheless, they are also part imitation. Of course, this works both ways. The point is, while t­ here are worse ste­reo­types and worse ­people, in real life and popu­lar culture, no one should be (or ­shall be) let off the hook. To put it bluntly, ­there are no passes to give. And no bonus points for not being as bad as o­ thers. All antiblack misogynoirist cultural projections are due for a read. This includes ­those produced by ­those we love. The ho/lady discourses pervasive in black religion, the Black Church, and black popu­lar culture must be called out, diagnosed, and refused from all ­angles. It is not coincidental that Rev. Dr. Jasmin Sculark preached, “He picked a ho by the name of Rahab . . . ​ so ­he’ll pick you too,” at Jakes’s popu­lar “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” conference in Atlanta in 2014, or that Rev. Dr. Juanita Bynum, Jakes’s prodigal spiritual d­ aughter, released a videogram in 2016 for “No More Sheets, Part 2” in which she mass mediated a vehement discourse on hoing and holiness, to both of which mostly black w ­ omen enthusiastically said amen. What does it mean that black preachers use the Bible to champion theologies on hoing and holiness? Or that black w ­ omen affirmed Sculark and Bynum’s messaging? Or that black ­women and girls are Perry and Jakes’s number one supporters? Or that black w ­ omen make up most Black Church congregations and look to the church for guidance on right and wrong despite its concomitant sexualization and erotophobia? Or that the Black Church may serve as both healer and abuser? Or that the Black Church may be one of few places where black ­women and girls hear, “Regardless of what ­you’re ­going through you can turn ­things around”? Or that Sculark and Bynum’s ho theology was likely influenced by Jakes (perhaps unintentionally)? Or that the production of ho theology may have been intended for good, as a response to biblical Jezebel and jezebel the racial trope? xvi Prolegomenon

This book is framed in part by my personal experience outside of academia and in part from what I adjudged to be an opening between black theological thought and black religious thought and, more expressly, womanist theo-­ ethical thought and black feminist thought. My initial research was sparked by Kelly Brown Douglas’s book Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (1999) and Emilie Townes’s book Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (2006). ­These texts provided a framework and language for interpreting black ­women’s day-­to-­day encounters with white racist and sexist ste­reo­types in con­temporary culture. Notwithstanding, my experiences required something more. I longed for a grimier account of how the discourse on black womanhood cross-­pollinates black American cultural traditions and contexts, to include the religious but also how black ­women and girls both resist and reappropriate them, at times actively taking plea­sure in their meanings. In thinking about Zola, one might argue that her discourse on “hoeism or what­ever” is augmented by her sex work, which often gives rise to, at minimum, questions about socioeconomic class positionality, coercion, and consent. But what of how my girls and I secretively kept the Geto Boys in heavy rotation during my freshman year of college or how the bassline (and base lyr­ics) of “The Other Level” made us so freely dance? It is easy to reject certain discourses on black womanhood while o­ thers, if truth be told, are more difficult. For example, I unequivocally detest and reject D. W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation (1915). Hating and resisting it as white-­on-­black anti­black-­ white-­racist-­capitalist-­patriarchal-­hetero-­sexist propaganda is uncompli­ cated. Black cultural products that move us in one way or another, not so much. Yet the jezebelian metanarrative on innate black female immorality and promiscuity can be central to both. When the Geto Boys ­were played outside of what was ultimately freedom space in the privacy of our dorm, we donned our symbolic “righteous-­sistas” hats, offering doubly conscious biting critiques to our college ­brothers for even thinking about considering black ­women as bitches or hos. We never stopped dancing in private though. This nuance in mind, it is one ­thing to critique and dismiss Mayer and ­others for antiblack sexist projections. It is another to publicly censure Hip Hop and the Geto Boys, despite knowing e­ very lyric and dancing for dear life in private. However, it is entirely dif­fer­ent to turn that critical gaze to the Black Church, Jakes, Perry, and ­others. What happens when they too produce patriarchal texts that make us dance and/or wave our hands? I do not claim to have all the answers. I am of the mind that Drs. Sculark and Bynum, “ Hoeism or What­e ver ”  

xvii

Zola, my girls, and I are quite possibly differing sides of the same coin. Each of us appropriated the language that was given. Despite that, none of us was wholly determined by the language. The reading offered in the pages to follow ponders how the discourse on black womanhood serves as the anecdotal glue holding a range of religious, theological, social, cultural, literary, scientific, artistic, and po­liti­cal expressions and ideas together, how this discourse might be negotiated by black cultures, institutions, and ­people, and how it might be more sufficiently read. It hopes to add to the conversation by critically holding all t­ hese complex gazes together, and, moreover, by turning stale notions of “hoeism or what­ever” upside down and chin checking, once and for all, the sable letter “B,” wherever it might operate, including the dear old Black Church.

xviii Prolegomenon

ACKNOWL­E DGMENTS

Books never come forth in a vacuum. They rise up and are given life in community. And though many academic books breathe fresh air as the writer scribes freely on the hillside, open greens, or cobbled streets of foreign land, thanks to hefty research reserves, this text was written mostly in the carpool line, the athletic arena, the church parking lot, and any other ­free space I could find and support on my own dime. In short, Jezebel Unhinged came alive in the spaces where I lived. ­Because of that, I thank my husband Michael, our beautiful son’s Michael and Martin, and our furry loves, Maxx and Jesse, first and foremost. This book lives thanks to the unyielding and unapologetic love and support we share. Second, I thank my advisor, Victor Anderson. This book would not be one eigh­teenth of what it is without the foundational work we did on my dissertation. This study is deeply indebted to not only Beyond Ontological Blackness, but the precious time he invested in me and the ways in which he pushed me to be a black feminist religionist and cultural theorist. All of t­ hose early mornings with him (and Sebastian) and long nights mattered much. Some advisors merely advise. ­Others share their body of knowledge. And few give their hearts. Anderson did all of the above. I am particularly thankful that he pushed me in the direction of Tracy D. Sharpley-­W hiting and Lewis V. Baldwin early on. While I appreciate the l­abors of my entire committee, the work I did with Sharpley-­W hiting and Baldwin is bar none. I owe each of them a lifetime of gratitude. Third, I am fortunate to have had a g­ reat number of healthy mentorships along the way. To Alton Pollard, Dianne M. Stewart, Kimberly Wallace-­Sanders,

Pamela Lightsey, Stacey Floyd-­Thomas, Beverly Guy-­Sheftall, Monica Casper, Carol Duncan, Zillah Eisenstein, and Aishah Shahidah Simmons, I give boundless thanksgiving. Si­mul­ta­neously, I am blessed to have colleagues whose critical gaze helped to sharpen my own. I cannot thank Arthur F. Car­ter, Wil Gafney, and Kimberly Russaw enough for their richly textured biblical readings. Additionally, I want to add special thanks for Keri Day, Stephen Finley, Crystal A. de Gregory, Darnell Moore, Rhon S. Manigault-­Bryant, Birgitta Johnson, Jeffrey McCune, Black Vandy, and TFW for their constant, ever critical, and always timely push and pull. Much love goes to my parents, Cheryl and Leroy Gainey, and my “in loves,” Kathy and Joe Lomax, as well as the Thornton’s, the Miller’s, the Showalter’s, and Sis. Perkins, for taking care of us and especially Michael and Martin (and even Maxx and Jesse) when we needed it most. Jezebel Unhinged is fi­nally h­ ere thanks to you! Fi­nally, many thanks to my reviewers and Duke University Press for all of their enthusiasm and support. To Monica Miller and Mark Anthony Neal, I am especially and eternally grateful. Jezebel Unhinged moved from dissertation to book thanks to their expert critical, expedient, and shrewd readings, and more, their patient and decisive generosity.

xx 

Acknowl­e dgments

INTRODUCTION

“A THOUSAND DETAILS, ANECDOTES, STORIES” Mining the Discourse on Black Womanhood

The quin­tes­sen­tial differences, blackness and femaleness, provide the stuff of fantastical narratives and allow French male literati, directors and their audiences, and scientists to weave them out of and into “a thousand details, anecdotes, stories.” Black females are perpetually ensnared, imprisoned in an essence of themselves created from without: Black Venus. —T. Denean Sharpley-­W hiting, Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French

The phrase “discourse on black womanhood” sums up a set of ideas and practices, including ways of gazing—­from the unreflected taken for granted to the intentionally critical interventional. It denotes conflict, namely that between black female flesh as overdetermined1 by colonizing epistemologies and as determined to self-­designate within contexts of thriving and/ or oppression. It calls attention to the “pernicious editing” that black feminist Kimberly Wallace-­Sanders writes about in Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture (2002). And it notes the reinvention, recoding, and manipulation of subjects, signs, and phenomena that black feminist Hortense Spillers articulates in her essay “Changing the Letter: The Yokes, the Jokes of Discourse, or, Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Reed” (2003). Moreover, it provides the framework for mining and theorizing what black feminist T. Denean Sharpley-­W hiting postures as “ ‘a thousand details, anecdotes, stories’ . . . ​created from without.”2

The discourse on black womanhood recognizes the sociopo­liti­cal and cultural work of race-­sex-­gender-­class-­specific my­thol­ogy as an essential Ameri­ can and diasporic proj­ect. It foregrounds the cross-­penetration of metanarratives on black venus, jezebel, and black-­woman-­as-­whore/ho/thot (that ho over t­ here)3 as indispensable to white Western and global dominion, and, in some instances, North American black patriarchy. It notes the ways in which discourse intricately connects to power, producing knowledge and constructing narrations on “truth.” And it attends to what has been thought, said, and communicated, placing emphasis on who is d­ oing the speaking, against what historical backdrop, in what context, to what audience, utilizing which technologies, producing what knowledge, and deploying what language—­epistemic, ideological, discursive, visual, repre­sen­ta­tional, and other­wise. It holds that what is communicated is just as significant as who is ­doing the communicating, particularly as the “who” helps frame what becomes knowledge, and thus what can be known, or at least what we think we know to be true. Fi­nally, the discourse on black womanhood understands that once knowledge and/or truth is linked to repre­sen­ta­tion, said knowledge and repre­sen­ta­tion, combined, become regulating.4 The discourse on black womanhood, propagated across e­ very pos­si­ble ave­nue of culture and society—­language, images, poetry, photography, print, philosophy, art, science, education, politics, theology, lit­er­a­ture, magazines, film, media, news reporting, fashion, advertising, religious teaching, and preaching—­sets the terms for how identities get re/presented, exhibited, and treated, shaping not only lives and interpersonal relations but institutions and sociopo­liti­cal praxis. Yet discourse is not fixed. Discourse, a source of both power and knowledge, though at times seemingly calcified, controlling, and irrepressible, is constantly in flux and can be deployed for ­either oppressive or productive aims, or both. Moreover, its oppressive yoke can be (at least) loosened through collective unapologetic, unwavering, forceful, and mass-­mediated strategic intervention. To be clear, the discourse on black womanhood names an inordinate collection of operative racial and gendered tropes carefully, ceaselessly, injudiciously, and vapidly “written” into history, thus affecting black ­women’s and girls’ lives. Nevertheless, the collective of ideas and images pivotal to the discourse are not a final destination. The discourse on black womanhood, and its ubiquitous trope and ideo­ logy, jezebel (a.k.a. black venus), circulating within and between black religion and black popu­lar culture, informing our reading of and conduct ­toward the black female body, is the subject of this book. Many have written 2 Introduction

about jezebel and how she shows up in popu­lar culture, typically covered as one-­third of the jezebel-­mammy-­sapphire trinity or as the infamous biblical whore. Jezebel Unhinged takes a dif­fer­ent course, placing jezebel and her lineage front and center. In 2013, black feminist author of ­Sister Citizen: Shame, Ste­reo­types, and Black W ­ omen in Amer­i­ca (2013), Melissa Harris-­Perry wrote about the po­liti­cal and cultural anx­ie­ ties around Michelle Obama’s body as a site of jezebelian fodder. Of par­tic­ul­ar interest to Harris-­Perry was the Salon essay by Erin Aubrey Kaplan, a black w ­ oman, “First Lady Got Back” (2008).5 Harris-­Perry notes the essay as “one of the most profane.” Yes and no. In short, Harris-­Perry misses the messy shades of gray between signification, projection, thingification, repre­sen­ta­tion, pre­sen­ta­tion, interiority, and identification. I happened to respond to Kaplan’s essay back in 2008 in an article titled “Is It Wrong to Talk about Michelle Obama’s Body?” published with Alternet. While ­there is a necessary critique about First Lady Obama being “a subject—­more than a body, and, more than a butt,” and how that kind of projection is dangerous, the connection between Obama and Sir Mix-­a-­Lot’s hit song “Baby Got Back,” requires further nuance. I wrote, To be sure, the mass production of “Baby Got Back” via radio and tele­ vi­sion took ongoing essentialist discourses about black female hyper-­ sexuality to new dimensions. The constant reproduction of the gyrating images became a source of social studies on black female sexuality. This was obviously deeply problematic. However, as ste­reo­typically reductive as this song and video was, in its own way, it also celebrated black w ­ omen’s bodies . . . ​many black ­women, including myself, strangely found a sense of pride in our bodies, specifically our butts.  Thus, while Sir Mix-­a-­Lot (and o­ thers) reassigned mythical legacies to our ­behinds, some black ­women w ­ ere re-­imagining themselves as subjects with beautiful bodies.6 Truth is, Obama made many black ­women and girls beam with pride ­every time her beautiful body sashayed center stage. She looked like kinfolk; like “one of us.” Fully h­ uman and wonderfully made. Still the constant fragmenting and sexualizing of her body was exhausting. This book holds ­these gazes in balance. Unhinging jezebel means loosing her from black ­women’s and girls’ bodies and black-­and-­white binary interpretations. It means unscrewing the symbolic bolts that clasp her together and letting her fall while also exploring and making sense of what keeps holding her together in the first place. And it means d­ oing this work while still managing to celebrate our “ A Thousand Details, Anecdotes, Stories ”  

3

gorgeous bodies—­not from a deficit of personhood or historical knowledge but from a profusion of self-­recognition and self-­actualization. Harris-­Perry, along with other black feminists such as Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Hortense Spillers, Beverly Guy-­Sheftall, Angela Y. Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, T. Denean Sharpley-­W hiting, Kimberly Wallace-­Sanders, Saidiya Hartman, Hazel  V. Carby, Michele Wallace, bell hooks, Jacqueline Bobo, Valerie Smith, Wahneema H. Lubiano, Joy James, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia J. Williams, and o­ thers, provide a robust critical discourse on race, gender, sexuality, and repre­sen­ta­tion. However, their works predominantly place emphasis on black ­women in history, politics, culture, science, law, and lit­er­a­ture. Though Harris-­Perry and a few ­others have taken up religion, ­there is no book-­length black feminist study on the power­ful functionality of race, gender, and repre­sen­ta­tion within black religion. And t­ here is no study that critically underscores the significant and collaborative work of discourse, which includes a range of speech acts such as talking and modes of writing and repre­sen­ta­tion, circulating between black religion and black popu­lar culture. Womanist scholars in religion7 (also “womanists” or “womanism”) developed a significant paradigm in religious and theological studies for examining black w ­ omen’s experiences with sexism in black churches and for reimagining them as thinking and feeling moral agents with experiences worthy of academic inquiry. Pivotal to their discourse is demythologizing black womanhood and its variety of cultural repre­sen­ta­tions. Kelly Brown Douglas and Emilie Townes, mentioned earlier, are of par­tic­u­lar import. Both open up space in black theo-­ethical (theological studies, theological ethics, the study of ethics in theology) studies for problematizing and theologizing harmful racial and gendered ste­reo­types, thus expanding the critical work of black feminist cultural criticism. However, though Douglas and Townes, in their seminal texts Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (1999) and Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (2006), respectively, construct a necessary template in theo-­ethical studies for examining black ­women’s experience, black female cultural repre­sen­ta­tions, and the Black Church, each place primary emphasis on white supremacy and white cultural production. Jezebel Unhinged reveals a need for theoretical studies on race, sex, gender, sexuality, and repre­sen­ta­tion, and how they collectively produce meanings about black womanhood and girlhood that are circulated within and between religion and culture, and more specifically black religion and black 4 Introduction

popu­lar culture. And though I am well aware of how whiteness8 functions as an oppressive marker of difference in both religion and culture, this book is not about white folk. The initial historicizing of the white/Eu­ro­pean gaze in chapter 1 is not an intervention on how white always already determines black. While the white gaze is forcefully mass mediated, it is not incontrovertible. ­There is an ongoing strug­gle between previous existence—­black existence prior to the activity or knowledge of racial and gender signification—­ interiority, contact/conquest/projection, appropriation, re­sis­tance, and negotiation. Consequently, meaning making in black religion and black popu­lar culture is never merely a reflection of the white/Eu­ro­pean gaze. It is preceding/already, active, inherited, collaborative, and visionary. Hence this text is most interested in how sex and gender oppression enables a taken-­for-­granted reappropriation of stereotypic ideas about race, sex, gender, and sexuality in black cultural spaces, to include the black religious and the Black Church. Ergo, what follows the initial historicizing is an exploration of the ways that historical ideas function not only “out t­ here” but “in ­here.” The aim of such a proj­ect is emphatically not to give antiblack white supremacist cap­it­ al­ist patriarchal misogynoirist—­male and female—­ phallocentric gazes and praxis a pass. It is to note language and repre­sen­ta­ tion as everyday instruments of oppression and power for black ­women and girls—­beyond white ideological bias. And it is to locate ­these instruments of oppression and power in both black religion and black popu­lar culture. Black feminists and womanists have done well in articulating sexism and white racism in cultural production. Black feminist scholarship on race, gender, and the politics of repre­sen­ta­tion within and beyond black popu­lar culture is masterly and foundational. Si­mul­ta­neously, womanist scholarship on black ­women and the Black Church is groundbreaking and at the very least virtuosic. To ­these ends, this book is indebted to, brings together, and builds upon black feminist and womanist scholarship. At the same time, it challenges ­these lines of thought and holds three pertinent theories in tension. First, womanist cultural criticism, namely the works of Douglas and Townes, provides a cornerstone for reading and critiquing cultural production and repre­sen­ta­tion, black w ­ omen’s experience, and the Black Church. Notwithstanding, ­there is a de­pen­dency on controlling analyses of black ­women’s experiences as well as methodological and conceptual limitations. What is needed to move that discourse forward in black religion is a nuanced examination of the manner in which the force of repre­sen­ta­tional epistemes like jezebel operate within black religion and black popu­lar culture “ A Thousand Details, Anecdotes, Stories ”  

5

to ­overdetermine con­temporary black ­women’s and girls’ identities and experiences within a pornotropic gaze9 (which they in turn negotiate). The turn ­toward the study of black w ­ omen’s experiences in black religion marks a shift ­toward the study of signs, symbols, significations, repre­sen­ta­tions, and meanings, which enables a more complex reading of black ­women’s and girls’ lives—­a reading un­restrained by tradition, canon, or institution. Second, though black feminist cultural criticism offers useful tools for critically analyzing black w ­ omen’s and girls’ experiences and cultural production, what is needed to move that discourse forward in cultural criticism and in terms of its relevance to a significant ­percent of black ­women and girls who are largely religious and Christian, is an informed, critical, sustained, collective, and foregrounded engagement that explores the significance of Chris­tian­ity, and specifically the Black Church, in black American and diasporic ­women’s and girls’ lives. Such foregrounding in black feminist studies requires centralizing theories and methods in the study of religion as a pivotal discourse therein and marking black religion as being as essential to black feminist thought as it is to black ­women’s and girls’ lives. Third, ­these moves call forth an alternative field for critical inquiry, research, reading, and writing: a black feminist study of religion, which is a theoretical study on religion and culture and the marking of and exchanges between signs, symbols, significations, repre­sen­ta­tions, and meanings and race, sex, gender, and sexuality therein. A black feminist study of religion, a distinctive blend of womanist, black religious, black cultural, and black feminist criticism, opens out into a range of entry points, including black feminist theology, black feminist religious thought, black feminist religio-­cultural criticism, and so on. “Black feminist theology,” to my knowledge, was first coined by black feminist Brittney Cooper in a Facebook post in 2010 where she and I exchanged ideas in response to her likening Beverly Guy-­Sheftall’s Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-­American Feminist Thought (1995) to a black feminist bible and Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought (1990) to “black feminisms’ systematic theology.”10 It notes a womanist/black feminist theoretical engagement on theological phenomena, categories, and interests. That is, in addition to a study of religio-­ cultural signs and meanings, black feminist theology deploys womanist and black feminist tools to examine “the statement of the truth of the Christian message”11 in black ­women’s and girls’ lives. It does this work through critical discourses invested in accounts of God’s existence and/or activity and concepts such as belief, good news, and faith, with hopes of broadening, deepen6 Introduction

ing, and complicating black ­women’s and girls’ theological par­ameters and religious identities, interpretations, and experiences. This book places emphasis on black feminist religious thought and black feminist religio-­cultural criticism. Black feminist religious thought denotes a (re)structure(ing) of philosophical and theoretical concepts. Black feminist religio-­cultural criticism distinguishes itself from black feminist religious thought only in that the former places emphasis on theoretical moves. I should pause h­ ere and say a few words about terminology. My interpretation of the religious, religion, and religio-­is irreducible to traditional religious assumptions, concepts, or institutions. Religion is an aspect of culture. In the broadest sense, culture points to a matrix of ideologically loaded signifying systems12 through which a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced, and explored.13 However, as cultural theorist Stuart Hall notes in Repre­sen­ta­tion: Cultural Repre­sen­ta­tions and Signifying Practices (1997), culture “is never merely a set of practices, technologies or messages, objects whose meaning and identity can be guaranteed by their origin or their intrinsic essences.” It is instead a signifying system that is si­mul­ta­neously reflexive and lived, and that emerges from integrated cultural stimuli, practices, utterances, and interpretations. Pivotal to “lived culture” is cultural production, reproduction, and repre­sen­ta­tion, each explored through language, customs, and practices of re­sis­tance, negotiation, accommodation, appropriation, and consent. Religion, then, is an arbitrary sign that has been stabilized through the consistency of language, practices, and repre­sen­ta­tion over time. It is cultivated within, not without, culture. As such, religion is an ideologically loaded, socially constructed interpretive concept deployed for the purposes of decoding, analyzing, and theorizing legitimate modes of expression within the ­human experience. Concomitantly, it is a distinctive form of culture and signifying system, negotiated through a variety of acts, objects, meanings, and practices in ­human culture. It is both signified and a signifier. And both the signified and the signifier mark a multiplicity of h­ uman be­hav­iors.14 What may be deemed religious, however, depends on the hermeneutics of the signifier. On that account, the religious/religion has several profiles, to include but not limited to black religion. In Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (1986), religious phi­los­o­pher Charles Long articulates religion as the way one comes to terms with one’s ultimate real­ity in the world. Holding the histories of religion, black religion, and black p­ eople in tension, Long notes religion “ A Thousand Details, Anecdotes, Stories ”  

7

as a movement, motivation, and/or expression that precedes yet influences thought and manifests in a variety of ways. Black religion, then, is an innately plural signifying system and interpretive concept that refers to a multipli­ city of black cultural forms, factions, motions, inspirations, articulations, and encounters deemed “religious” by black diasporic p­ eoples making sense of their lives. Accordingly, t­here is a continuous dialogue between black religion and black culture, with each being pollinating and reflexive. Si­mul­ta­ neously, while black religion transcends institutional religion, structures, and presumptions, it includes the Black Church. And although this study resists conflating the plurality of black religion with the historical Black Church, it refuses the urge to diminish or erase the Black Church’s cultural importance as a significant site of black religion. This study invites the reader to turn ­toward culture, to explore black religiosity as it is produced in black popu­lar culture, for example film, texts, athletic stadiums, and tele­vi­sion. ­Because black religiosity as presented and cultivated within black life and black popu­lar culture is significantly Christo-­ and Black Church–­centric, this text accents Black Church–­centric communicative acts such as preaching, writing, per­for­mance, and speaking, as a lens for decoding and theorizing modes of expression, meaning making, and signifying practice. I should note, this is neither a gratuitous conflation nor a traditional theological investigation. It is religious criticism, more precisely, a black feminist religio-­cultural study that interrogates black w ­ omen as the objects of cultural and religious texts, to include black religion and black popu­ lar culture, and as the subjects of womanist and black feminist texts—­and the social, cultural, and psychosexual implications of each. The latter requires sometimes locating gray space between theoretical and theological inquiries and analyses. A black feminist study of religion is sure to blur bound­aries—­both intentionally and unintentionally, particularly a study that places emphasis on jezebel, a biblical figure and racial trope. With this in mind, though black feminist religious thought and black feminist religio-­ cultural criticism place primacy on religion and religious criticism, namely how religion operates in the world to produce meanings, each is also concerned with how jezebel shows up as a detailed theological concept. This necessarily forges a discourse with womanist and black feminist theology. Still, though complimentary, theology and religious criticism are distinct. Black feminist religious thought and black feminist religio-­cultural criticism hold that culture informs religion in normative ways and vice versa. The hyphen between “religio” and “culture/al” (“religio-­cultural”) explic­itly 8 Introduction

signifies this relationship, with religion as an aspect and function of culture, and in consequence, black religion an aspect of black diasporic culture, religious criticism an aspect of cultural criticism, and black religious criticism an aspect and function of black cultural criticism. The latter provides the context for the former. This collective and intentional way of “looking” allows for more nuanced readings of cultural forms by highlighting complex interrelationality as opposed to incommensurability. This interpretation of religion—as an aspect of culture—­may cause anxiety for some, particularly ­those readers with the understanding that religion is “not of this world” and thus stands outside of it, or that religion is always already the ­counter to cultural deviation. This is not always the case. For example, I argue that black religion, and specifically the Black Church, is a recurrent site of antiblack and sexist stereotypic cultivation and pornotropic gazing. This is sure to incite righ­teous indignation for some. Meanwhile, my reading of jezebel may have some readers seeing red. To ­those responses I want to make it clear that Jezebel Unhinged does not begin with binary notions of church and world/state, Christian ideologies around absolution, or race-­only assumptions that prioritize the needs and place of black men and boys whilst erasing t­hose of black w ­ omen and girls. Nor does it pres­ent jezebel in a nice neat ­little package. Au contraire, it draws attention to the host of “details, anecdotes, stories” holding the discourse on black womanhood together, thus calling to consciousness the epistemic ­vio­lence—­the systemic po­liti­cal and l­egal use of mass codification, circulation, and closure as a tool and strategy for demonizing collective and individual identities—of an essentialist black womanhood. In addition, it blasts the repre­sen­ta­tional strategies and habits of language (linguistic and repre­ sen­ta­tional) therein: its internal signals, inferred ideologies, encodings, and operation, in religio-­cultural phenomena. Also, that I center discourse when writing about jezebel may raise a few questions, especially with the study of “repre­sen­ta­tion” being a much more conventional route already meticulously taken to task within cultural studies. The discourse on black womanhood, more specifically jezebel, comprises talking, writing, and repre­sen­ta­tion. It pres­ents an opportunity to engage the complex and intersectional work of cultural production, including language, speakers, audiences, the production of knowledge, and how certain imagistic speech acts get written in and woven together—­chosen over o­ thers—­over time. Additionally, the emphasis on religion and culture calls for more than a repre­sen­ta­tional reading. Repre­sen­ta­tions of the black female body can be “ A Thousand Details, Anecdotes, Stories ”  

9

found in texts such as religious-­based films, photos, and even advertising, but they are also spoken, written, read, preached, sung, exchanged, reported, and more, compelling an emphasis on discourse/power/knowledge that includes repre­sen­ta­tion. Jezebel Unhinged begins with the premise that the discourse on black womanhood circulating and maintained between religion and culture was reappropriated and reproduced in the Black Church and black popu­ lar culture, which in turn churned out a si­mul­ta­neously normative and dangerous jezebelian “ho” discourse that imagines black ­women and girls and black female sexuality as quintessentially dif­fer­ent, hyperlegible, illegible, and the opposite (and absence) of ladydom, the latter of which may be achieved through effort.15 ­These discourses create an essential black womanhood from without, producing a signifying object plus, vital to preserving gender hierarchy, black patriarchy, and heteronormativity in black families, communities, cultures, and institutions. Three major methodological moves frame this book: (1) historicizing and theorizing the discourse on black womanhood, and more specifically jezebel, circulating between religion and culture through a reading of writers and cultural workers invested in essentializing black femininity and black female sexuality and through a reading of black feminist and womanist writers invested in revising racist and sexist history and ideologies; (2) positing a way to reread black w ­ omen’s and girls’ complex—­intersubjective—­multipositionality through a less pornotropic lens in black religion and black popu­lar culture; and (3) performing a revisionist reading of black ­women and girls by exploring the pornotropic gaze in the discourse on jezebel and its determinacy within con­temporary religio-­cultural phenomena. A quick word about structure. This book begins with critical cultural historical analy­sis, drawing attention to select cultural texts most illustrative of low and high modern thinking on race and gender to critically map and engage the discourse on jezebel circulating between black religion and black popu­lar culture, and to more sufficiently target select con­temporary texts where jezebelian discourse is pervasive. Hall posits that contrary to some thinking postmodernity does not eradicate modern forces. Meaning it does not provide an entirely new “moment.” Instead, moments are conjunctural, a mixture of the past and the pres­ent. Therefore, modernity, its influences, peripheries, and determinants are always continuously reappearing and inter­ facing with postmodern forces.16 To this end, we can seek only to loosen the yoke of the omnipresent, totalizing and oftentimes harmful, repre­sen­ta­tional 10 Introduction

force of the discourse on jezebel that regulates social action and normalizes historical ideas of difference. A way to do this is by interrogating and unsettling old and new texts and embedded epistemes. As a consequence, this book, which is part critical historical contextualization and part critical con­ temporary cultural analy­sis, does genealogical and theoretical work on the front end to make reading more productive on the back end. That is to say, the critical cultural historicizing and theorizing of early texts on race, sex, gender, and repre­sen­ta­tion helps explore, name, disrupt, reconfigure, and unhinge the pornotropic gaze in the latter chapters of this study, which turn to the productions of Bishop T. D. Jakes and Tyler Perry, arguably two of the most prominent con­temporary cultural producers of jezebelian-­ centered religio-­cultural texts. ­These chapters are written with Hall’s idea of conjunctural moments in mind, and with the firm belief that Jakes and Perry demand specialized black feminist religio-­cultural treatment. Such an engagement requires a complex and interrogative study of previous moments, influences, and peripheries that creatively and vigorously contour jezebel’s numerous points of departure, including the white/Eu­ro­pean gaze, the biblical narrative, and black cultural appropriation. Chapter 1, “Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts: Writing Race, Sex, and Gender in Religion and Culture,” sets the stage by turning briefly to the white/Eu­ro­ pean gaze, noting the history of projection as well as the voyage from Eu­rope to Amer­i­ca and the significant transmogrification between black venus and jezebel. Chapter 2, “ ‘­These Hos ­Ain’t Loyal’: White Perversions, Black Possessions,” turns away from the white gaze ­toward black possession in black religion and black popu­lar culture. The chapter deploys Rev. Jamal Bryant’s use of singer Chris Brown’s song “Loyal” as an opening to examine the biblical narrative of Jezebel and the significance of jezebelian discourse in the Black Church sermonic moment. Chapter 3, “Theologizing Jezebel: Womanist Cultural Criticism, a Divine Intervention,” explores the work of the cultural reader and the unique position of womanist cultural critics for critically reading jezebelian sexual theologies produced in the Black Church and for holding the Black Church and the black preacher accountable. Chapter  4, “ ‘Changing the Letter’: T ­ oward a Black Feminist Study of Religion” continues the conversation, beginning with Stuart Hall’s question, “What sort of moment is this?” As with Hall, the moment pres­ents new models of black cultural production and thus demands new strategies for critical reading. Unhinging jezebel means lessening the force of her yoke in black ­women’s and girls’ lives. This comes not by way of redeploying the “ A Thousand Details, Anecdotes, Stories ”  

11

master’s tools but by what Paulo Freire calls “critical literacy,”17 the rigorous reading of both discursive and nondiscursive texts and the power relations therein. And, as I argue within the following pages, it comes by “changing the letter”: mapping, disorienting, and dispossessing old narratives and creating space for constructing and mass mediating new ones. Chapter 5, “The Black Church, the Black Lady, and Jezebel: The Cultural Production of Feminine-­ ism,” brings the conversation full circle with an engagement on jezebel and the black lady as not only “the stuff of fantastical narratives” but also an antibiosis of cultural texts in the Black Church for producing the mytheme of the black “nuclear” ­family, each of which is foundational to religio-­cultural big business and Jakes’s and Perry’s success. Chapter  6, “Whose ‘­Woman’ Is This?: Reading Bishop  T.  D. Jakes’s ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed!,” utilizes black feminist religious thought and black feminist religio-­cultural criticism to examine Jakes’s repre­sen­ta­tional strategies, pornotropic optics, feminine-­ist messaging, and what I articulate as jezebelian “ho” theology. Chapter 7, “Tyler Perry’s New Revival: Black Sexual Politics, Black Popu­lar Religion, and an American Icon,” asserts that Perry produces female-­centered works that create narratives of hope, survival, and triumph on one hand, and revive Jakes’s feminine-­ist paradox of ho-­dom and ladyhood on the other, compelling exploration of Perry’s location as a faux feminist pop cultural pastor. The epilogue, “Dangerous Machinations: Black Feminists Taught Us,” returns to “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed,” the conference, ­after fourteen years and urges the Black Church, Jakes, Perry, and ­others, to turn ­toward and place value in the lessons of black feminist foremothers. I am aware that much of this book is densely theoretical. Looking at ­jezebel as a central ideology in the discourse on black womanhood requires a variety of simultaneous critical gazes. Black w ­ omen and girls, including this author, continue to fall u­ nder the logic of pornotropic gazing daily. And black religion and culture do not always provide person-­proof safety netting. It is imperative to cast our nets wider and deeper and keep the conversation ­going—­because the reverberations of our silences could be deadly. Fi­nally, the analyses ­here are meant to provide tools for intervening on interpretations that further marginalize black ­women and girls. They are not ­here for romantic nostalgia. They are ­here for loosing jezebel from the hinges that hold her together, and black ­women and girls from the screws that twist them up with her.

12 Introduction

CHAPTER 1

BLACK VENUS AND JEZEBEL SLUTS Writing Race, Sex, and Gender in Religion and Culture

“Dirty nigger!” Or simply, “Look, a Negro!” I came into the world imbued with the w ­ ill to find a meaning in t­ hings, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects. Sealed into that crushing objecthood, I turned beseechingly to ­others. Their attention was a liberation, r­ unning over my body suddenly abraded into nonbeing, endowing me once more with an agility that I had thought lost, and by taking me out of the world, restoring me to it. But just as I reached the other side, I stumbled, and the movements, the attitudes, the glances of the other fixed me t­ here, in the sense in which a chemical solution is fixed by a dye. I was indignant; I demanded an explanation. Nothing happened. I burst apart. Now the fragments have been put together again by another self. —Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

The energetic editing of black female identity at times moves so effortlessly between religion and culture that one hardly notices signification. From black venus to jezebel sluts to “­ain’t loyal” hos, black w ­ omen are miswritten into religious and cultural history as sites of ultimate ­human and sexual deviation. While not always explicit, the ideology on black female sexual savagery and immorality runs rampant. For the white-­hat signifying sort in black religion and culture, “promiscuous,” “loose,” or “fast” serve as code and often in ser­vice to some ­mixture of respectability, holiness, racial uplift, and patriarchal right.1 Regardless of word choice, the signification means to differentiate between “good” and “bad,” highlight racial and gender difference, and construct hierarchy between

white and black ­people and black men and black ­women. It means to station black womanhood in a museum of otherness, freakery, exoticism, inferiority, and gazing—­white, black, patriarchal, and other­wise—in front of an audience of normative bodies and interpretations. Significant to critically intervening on the racist, sexist, and classist flow of signifying meanings in religion and culture is a genealogical mapping of ­re/pre­sen­ta­tion. The intention is not to locate or secure the racialized repre­ sen­ta­tional arche h­ ere, however. It is to create a framework for interpreting the development of the discourse on black womanhood using key theorizations on race and gender—­both the critical and the unreflected. It is to provide a starting point for framing misnaming, and to name the lineage between specific racialized and gendered repre­sen­ta­tions. Withal, it is to give critical historical context to t­hose moments where black venus/jezebel/ho discourse and religious discourse merge. Moreover, it is to begin thinking about ave­nues ­toward disruption. ­Going forward, this chapter theorizes the discourse on black ­womanhood, moving between critical theorists and critical history, medieval Eu­rope and colonial Amer­i­ca, and black venus and jezebel. The latter entails a turn ­toward North American slavery and its impact on black ­women’s and girls’ identities. I conclude with a brief shift ­toward twentieth-­century media and mediation, and the Black Church’s complicity in keeping jezebel alive. From Black Venus to Jezebel: Theorizing the Discourse on Black Womanhood In Black Skin, White Masks (1967), French phi­los­o­pher Frantz Fanon articulates the pro­cess of becoming black ­under the gaze of white/Eu­ro­pean eyes. “Becoming” marks the beginning of black bondage to racial overdetermination—­a “fact of blackness,” to which Fanon argues t­ here is no ontological re­sis­tance. “Becoming” is not meant to convey the beginning of being. Nor does it pinpoint a racial repre­sen­ta­tional genesis. What it notes is the transnational po­liti­cal proj­ect of making African diasporic folk over, imagining them as objects not subjects, renaming, dismembering, restoring, and weaving them “out into” another self—­structurally and from without. It rec­ords the beginning of being for ­others—of being fixed in the white imagination a­ fter coming into the world already “imbued with the w ­ ill to find a meaning in t­ hings” and to “attain to the source of the world.” It speaks of moving from Being to nonbeing to new being as one is eaten up by the words, movements, attitudes, and glances from o­ thers. And it grounds the construction of black­ 14 Chapter 1

ness as dirty, as t­hing, as fragmented, as predetermined, and as crushing within white audacity and anxiety, to which black individuals and collectives respond with indignation. Drawing on Fanon’s facts of blackness, T. Denean Sharpley-­W hiting, in Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French (1999), posits that white French male “writers of the canon”2 created a crushing objecthood that denotes a peculiar kind of dissection and remaking that is specifically raced and gendered. Though Fanon’s facts of blackness are invaluable for theorizing the “black” that precedes “­woman,” “­women,” or “womanhood,” his theorizations on “the negro” and especially “the w ­ oman of colour” fall short. The latter he notes as bound by the desire for white ac­cep­tance and the ideas that ­others have of her. Be that as (troubling) it may, Fanon’s theory on crushing objecthood is vital for Sharpley-­W hiting’s theorizing on the trope “black venus.” Black venus, not to be mistaken with (white) venus (both of which stem from my­thol­ogy), epitomizes sexual savagery, whereas white venus is interpreted as the goddess of love and fertility in classical Roman my­thol­ogy. White venus generally signifies normative beauty, desirability, and whiteness. When dipped in black, literally, as black is a noun, verb, and an adjective, the latter of which relates to the noun and means to modify it, venus becomes blackened and therefore revised. Black venus, as written into history, is an interpretive grid for fantasying and theorizing about black femininity and sexuality. Sharpley-­W hiting argues that though she serves as a signifier of au­then­tic black female difference, what she reveals are hidden French obsessions, fantasies, and primal fears about black female sexuality. In fact, a close reading of French canonical writers pres­ents a bizarre preoccupation with, or ­really, an occupation of, black female flesh. The trope is encapsulated in Saartjie Baartman, also known as the Hottentot Venus. Baartman was a Khoisan South African w ­ oman exhibited by an animal trainer in and around Paris and London from 1810 to 1815. Beginning when she was nineteen, she was exhibited in a cage wearing a nudelike costume. She was the icon of racial inferiority, black female sexual difference, and white curiosity. Upon her sudden demise at the age of twenty-­four, Baartman was “immortalized” by French zoologist and anatomist Georges Léopold Cuvier, who examined, dissected, and ultimately displayed her vagina, buttocks, and a caste of her corpse at the Musée de l’Homme, Paris, where they remained u­ ntil August 9, 2002. Though Cuvier was not the first Eu­ro­pean to obsess over and rewrite a black ­woman’s body, he holds a distinctive place in the discourse on black womanBlack Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

15

hood. His “findings,” which married science, sex, sexism, and racism on black ­women’s bodies, w ­ ere published in The Natu­ral History of Mammals, and reduced Baartman to a repulsively alluring pile of excess, a “titillating curiosity, a collage of buttocks and anatomy.”3 Merging black femaleness with pathology and prostitution, Cuvier enclosed a master text on black female otherness and white normalcy within the cast of Baartman’s body. His findings “carried on in fervor well into the twentieth c­ entury,” informing a range of racist and sexist studies, theories, research, and writings on not only racial, biological, moral, historical, and intellectual difference but also on black female sexual difference and black femininity, specifically. Concomitantly, t­ hese discourses s­ haped relations and institutions. Sharpley-­W hiting posits, “Desire for knowledge, and thus mastery of blacks and w ­ omen, led to the creation of racist-­sexist ideologies, images (sexual savages and prostitutes), and institutions (slavery and motherhood) to produce and sustain the illusion of realism, of absolute truth, thereby effecting mastery of otherness.”4 Baartman and black venus, coiled together, became the object of Eu­ro­pean freakery, fascination, and scientific research concerning black female sexuality for centuries to come, shaping even colonization, North American slavery, ideas around innate black female promiscuity, and laws around black ­women and girls and rape. Though Baartman was not the first to embody black venus in the Eu­ro­ pean imagination, she concretizes her existence by unwillingly providing a body, a collage of flesh or corporeal fragmentation of sorts, for overriding and revisioning a sanguinary landscape for play, inquiry, and faux truth. She is the proof of black female sexual difference, which Cuvier locates in the color of flesh, the shape of the buttocks, and a conjured “link” between Eu­ro­pe­ ans and animals. She, without knowledge, intent, or consent, validates and corroborates black venus. Yet black venus Baartman is not. She is not even Baartman, for her given and preferred name is unknown.5 What is known is that she, a sacred subject, came into being long before science claimed her, cracked her open/apart, and hammered her back together. She is certainly more than the sexualized script we are left with. Sharpley-­W hiting notes that one of the first sexualized narratives projected onto black w ­ omen is by medieval French phi­los­o­pher and theologian Peter Abelard in his Les Lettres completes d’Abélard et d’Héloïse, which articulate his tragic love affair with his beloved Héloïse, an Ethiopian, of the Song of Songs. Abelard’s Lettres reduce Héloïse to sex, confining her to his bedchamber while noting her blackness as si­mul­ta­neously less agreeable, abnormal, and desirable. ­These kinds of inscriptions are also found in the travelogues of twelfth-­ 16 Chapter 1

century Jewish explorer Benjamin of Tudela. While exploring Africa, Tudela writes of ­those encountered in southern Egypt, “­There is a ­people t­here . . . ​ who, like animals, eat of the herbs that grow on the banks of the Nile and in the fields. They go about naked and have not the intelligence of ordinary men. They cohabit with their s­ isters and anyone they can find. They are taken as slaves and sold in Egypt and neighboring countries. . . . ​­These sons of Ham are Black slaves.”6 For Tudela the black is primal, hypersexed, and cursed. Though he places emphasis on African men, the inclusion of “their ­sisters” denotes corresponding sexual pathology between African men and w ­ omen. The shift from medieval fetishizing to early modern scientifiction in Eu­ rope and North Amer­ic­ a is significant. While personal journals, letters, and travelogues ­were often deployed as datum advising scientific hypotheses, the insignia of scientific validation corroborated by systematic study, observation, experimentation, and findings, endorsed and helped institutionalize a pervading and flourishing ideological structure. Science reconfigured racial and sexual re/pre­sen­ta­tion and fantasy as truth. Si­mul­ta­neously, it provided cover for white obsession with and fear of black sexuality while offering a façade of moral and intellectual superiority. The production of scientific racist and sexist spin influenced (and continues to inspire) a duplicitous transnational reading of black flesh. Accordingly, modernity’s fixations on race and gender w ­ ere neither benign nor isolated. They ­were power­ful mediated propaganda that ordered both white and black life. In his essay “A New Division of the Earth, According to the Dif­fer­ent Species or Races of Men That Inhabit It” (1684), François Bernier, a French physician and explorer, or­ga­nized ­human beings based on physical characteristics into four to five dif­fer­ent types, moving from white/Eu­ro­pean to black/African, with black being the lowest ranked.7 Drawing on Bernier’s essay, German phi­ los­o­pher Immanuel Kant, hoping to account for permanent hereditary characteristics, namely skin color, invested the concept of race with science, giving it legitimacy. Kant is credited with being the first to define race in 1775 in his essay “Of the Dif­fer­ent ­Human Races,” though the idea of racial difference had been in circulation at least five centuries prior. It is imperative to note that though Kant merges race and science, this conflation is distinct from that of Cuvier forty years ­later, as Cuvier’s analy­sis is particularly raced and gendered. Additionally, though Kant writes about race, black ­women are not central to his work in the way they are for Cuvier. Nor ­were Kant’s writings on race placed on display in any national museum or held up as proof of black female otherness in a premier scientific journal during his day. Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

17

Yet Kant’s writings on race m ­ atter. In his essay “Of the Beautiful and Sublime” (1764), he articulates the following about the nature of blackness: “The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above trifling . . . ​not a single one was ever found who presented anything ­great in art or science or any other praise worthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts earn re­ spect in the world.”8 Kant’s projection on “the Negroes of Africa” as unfeeling and so “trifling” by nature that they are forever cast in the shadows of whites and whiteness, requiring eternal white approval, recognition, and tutelage, notes an interpretation of ­mental capacity as distinguishable by biological difference, namely color, with whites representing superior gifts. This idea is further explicated in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of ­Virginia (1785), which foregrounds biological and moral differences. He writes, The real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances ­will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which ­will prob­ably never end but in the extermination of the one race or the other race. To ­these objections, which are po­liti­cal, may be added ­others, which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of color. W ­ hether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and the scarf-­skin itself; w ­ hether it proceeds from the color of bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature. . . . ​And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expression of e­ very passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reins in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to t­ hese, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by the preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran-­ootan for the black w ­ omen over t­hose of his own species. . . . ​ Besides ­those of colour, figure, and hair, ­there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race.9 Kant’s and Jefferson’s notes on biological, ­mental, and moral differences merge discourses on color difference with t­ hose on racial difference, infusing taken-­for-­granted socially constructed racial discourse with a biological standing in nature that collectively privileges whiteness and, more specifi18 Chapter 1

cally, white masculinity, and fixes black bodies u­ nder and against whiteness/ white bodies and black w ­ omen’s bodies ­under and against every­one. ­These moves, from fetishization to biological, m ­ ental, and moral diagnosis and prescription, left black w ­ omen and girls especially vulnerable to classificatory revisioning and vio­lence. Jefferson’s turn to “the fine mixtures of red and white, the expression of ­every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one” calls attention to specific distinctions between white and black w ­ omen, with white w ­ omen (the fine mixtures of red/rouge/rosy cheeks and white flesh) being naturally preferable over and against ­those with the “immovable veil of black.” Both white and black w ­ omen take up space in Jefferson’s notes as expressions of male passion. To him, they are the embodiment and extension of white male needs and the per­for­mance and breath of his inclinations. They are responsive, not active. However, one denotes “elegant symmetry of form,” judgment and natu­ral preference for white men, while the other does not do any choosing or judging. Rather, she, with the “immovable veil of black,” is chosen, purchased, and used—by “Oran-­ootan” black slaves and white men. Let Jefferson tell it, she does not even respond. She willingly takes life as it comes to her. Historical classificatory practices consumed with proving racial and gender difference, moral superiority, biological domination, and cognitive supremacy traversed a range of cultural forms, replacing the h­ uman with an Africanist essence and providing black venus with a symbolic uterus. One need  not look far to find her lifeline and surplus lineage. She is Abelard’s ­Ethi­opian, Benjamin’s (of Tudela) d­ aughter of Ham, Kant’s negress, and Cuvier’s titillating curiosity. But she is also the black in William Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Pro­gress (1732) and the black female presence in Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863), a repre­sen­ta­tion of Charles Baudelaire’s Venus Noir. She is the stimulus for Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero’s La donna delinquente (1893), which claims prostitution as the rule in “primitive” socie­ ties when they write, “Neither virginity nor adultery has any meaning” to the “primitives.”10 And black venus is the text in J. J. Virey’s early nineteenth-­ century standard study of race, which argues that the “voluptuousness” of black females is “developed to a degree of lascivity unknown to our climate, for their sexual organs are much more developed than ­those of whites.”11 Drawing “proof ” from ­Cuvier’s anatomical studies, Virey notes elsewhere that Hottentot w ­ omen are the epitome of this sexual lasciviousness. And though the lines may be slightly crooked, the signification is con­spic­ u­ous. Eu­rope’s black venus is Amer­i­ca’s jezebel. The same fascinations, fears, Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

19

and anx­i­eties about black female sexuality, genitals, steatopygia, and sex life that arrested Eu­ro­pean explorers, writers, theologians, scientists, and philo­ s­o­phers from the m ­ iddle ages to high modernity have reproduced themselves again and again on American soil—­without respite. ­There is no shortage of jezebelian repre­sen­ta­tions in American culture and politics. We see her in films such as Birth of a Nation (1915) and Mandingo (1975), in Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen, in Don Imus’s repre­sen­ta­tion of Rutgers girls’ basketball team, in sociopo­liti­cal refusals to see black ­women and girls as rape victims and survivors, and more. Given the details of ­these cultural narratives and black venus’s backdrop, it should only make sense that jezebel’s initial and most assertive grounding in North Amer­i­ca is in ideologies about black enslaved w ­ omen, their physical and sexual ­labor, and breeding. Amer­i­ca’s jezebel is as­suredly Jefferson’s black ­woman. And for obvious reasons she calls to mind a list of individual, collective, and national contradictions. It is in­ter­est­ing that Jefferson takes so much care articulating the moral and biological differences between ­those with “flowing hair” and rosy cheeks and t­ hose with skin proceeding “from the color of bile, or from that of some other secretion.” The “expression of [his] e­ very passion” was played out on the black enslaved body of fourteen-­year-­old Sally Hemmings, with whom he had six ­children. It is difficult to imagine that fourteen-­year-­old Hemmings desired master/slave sexual relations with forty-­four-­year-­old Jefferson—­their ages when rapey copulation began in Paris, stretching out over three de­cades in North Amer­ic­ a. And history posits that Hemmings was not alone. North American slavery made child molestation, rape, concubinage, exploitation, and owner­ship reasonable in the white imagination. Ironically, Jefferson’s Notes on the State of V ­ irginia positions him as a moralist and black ­people as degenerate. ­W hether Jefferson had Hemmings in mind when writing is difficult to tell. What is clear is that the symmetry between black venus, his black ­woman, and the jezebel trope is striking. Moreover, his obsessive chatter, neuro­ tic juxtapositions, and insatiable consumption are telling. From the Plantation to the Church House: The Curious Pilgrimage of Jezebel The jezebel trope that emerged from North American plantations pres­ents an integration of modern and New World ideas around race, sex, gender, and class. This paroxysm of tyranny particularly sought residence on the bodies of black enslaved ­women forced to breed, drawing attention to the complex 20 Chapter 1

relationship between North American black w ­ omen and girls, freedom, oppression, repre­sen­ta­tion, and religion. If t­ here is any distinction between black venus and jezebel it is not modernity’s ideas of racial, sexual, and gender difference. It is the congealing of said differences and the rearing of jezebel on North American slave plantations alongside of American capitalism, Western Chris­tian­ity, and, ultimately, the Black Church. It is the intersecting establishment of Christian nationalism12 in a slave economy that marginalized ­women, and black w ­ omen particularly, both physically and ideologically, reducing them to commoditized physical and sexual laborers. It is the convergence of American patriotism with f­ ree enterprise, the f­ ree market with black ­women’s wombs, and black ­women’s wombs with not only American Chris­ tian­ity but with biblical Jezebel and jezebel the racial trope. To be explic­itly clear, though jezebel takes on a life of her own in early Amer­i­ca, black venus receives a sui generis lifeline in black enslaved w ­ omen thanks to the forceful merging of slavery, Chris­tian­ity, and biblical Jezebel. The fixing of blackness and femaleness as object, primitive, immoral, other, accessible, hyper, si­mul­ta­neously titillating, and curious, and, coincidentally, cursed yet good/s worth selling/out and purchasing and/or destroying, draws notable parallels to biblical Jezebel, commonly interpreted as wicked, ­immoral, and seductress. Equally impor­tant to the linkage between biblical Jezebel, jezebel the racial trope, and black w ­ omen are early cultural distinctions between men and ­women, the enslaved and ­free, and white ­women and black ­women.13 ­These dividing lines are worth noting as they show up in the con­temporary context, laying claim to black ­women’s and girls’ bodies, and proffering an adhesive between them and the discourse on black womanhood. I note them ­here as a framework that works in tandem with Eu­rope’s/ modernity’s discourse on racial and sexual difference, for interpreting jezebel’s history and operation in Amer­i­ca. Jezebel thrives off good/bad contrasts. One of the most significant but often missed distinctions is the gendering of jezebel and how she distinguishes between not only ­women but also men and ­women. Aristotle’s Generation of Animals (350 bc), which pioneered ideas about sex division and natu­ral hierarchy, is insightful ­here. Aristotle metaphysically constructs all females as deviations from the male “norm.” While males realized their full potential b­ ecause they had penises and could ejaculate, females w ­ ere interpreted as imperfect, mutilated, and weak, unrealized males. No penis and menstruation served as proof, confining ­women to a lower place in society based on “natu­ral hierarchy.” In The Body and Society: Men, ­Women, and Sexual Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

21

Renunciation in Early Chris­tian­ity (1988), historian Peter Brown notes an appropriation of ­these ideas among second-­century Christians in Rome. He argues that ideas about womanhood, couched in Christian and po­liti­cal beliefs about natu­ral hierarchy and motherhood, ­shaped relationships between men and w ­ omen and the Roman aristocracy and the enslaved. Brown posits that ­these ideas placed significant pressure on ­women and girls to populate the Roman Empire for fear of their world coming to an end due to a lack of (male) citizens. It was believed that girls as young as fourteen should move from puberty to childbearing with “­little interruption,” becoming “bedfellows of men.”14 Many girls began beautification routines by puberty. Si­mul­ta­neously, fearing becoming “womanish,”15 many men affirmed their masculinity through sex with young girls and the enslaved.16 Brown notes that the well-­to-do Greek or Roman was typically a slave owner. If married, fidelity to one’s wife was optional as long as sexual pillaging materialized within the familial h­ ouse­hold, meaning, “Infidelity with servants was ‘a t­ hing which some p­ eople consider without blame, since e­ very master is held to have it in his power to use his slave as he wishes.’ ”17 Early ideas about natu­ral hierarchy, female deviance, and phallic power ­were pivotal in naturalizing beliefs that ­women ­were not only imperfect and weak but categorically needed men/the phallus/penis power to adequately achieve womanhood, and not merely through sex or marriage with men but through patriarchal control. ­These ideas gain traction and take on new life in colonial Amer­ic­ a—­where mortal classification is both theory and ­legal praxis, where white male phallic power and ejaculation are seminal to the establishment of the racist, sexist, and classist po­liti­cal economy, and where identities and social roles are believed to be established in nature. Populating the f­ ree world was as much white w ­ omen’s patriotic duty as maintaining the slave system was the breeder w ­ oman’s toll. Both w ­ ere wedded to second-­ class status, theories of difference, domesticity, and reproduction. And both ­were subject to jezebelian narratives around female deviance, evil, and seduction.18 In fact, the jezebel trope has been attached to all kinds of ­women’s bodies. What is more, t­ here is no male equivalent. The significance of jezebel’s gendering shows up in and is pivotal to l­ater discussions differentiating between black men and black ­women. Another good/bad contrast, and perhaps the most articulated, is the racializing of jezebel, namely between black and white ­women. Though jezebel may sometimes traverse race and ethnicity in Amer­i­ca, her primary and most cogent home is among black w ­ omen and girls. This was established in 22 Chapter 1

at least four ways: (1) the force of a pornotropic gaze that projected previous Africanisms on black enslaved bodies, merging a cultural reading of biblical Jezebel, jezebel the racial trope, and black w ­ omen and girls; (2) the construction of a cap­it­ al­ist society, which distinguished between white and black ­women through interpretations of race, gender, and ­labor; (3) the institution of white femininity as Victorian, natu­ral, and standard; and (4) plantation sexual politics. I discuss the latter three points ­here. In her essay “­Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and Liberation” (1998), black feminist Angela Y. Davis asserts that the North American capitalistic structure, which emphasized l­abor over the h­ uman, wedded ­women to ideas of nature/domesticity and ­doing ­things that appeared “natu­ ral,” for example, childbearing, taking care of the home, and providing sex for their husbands. Men w ­ ere deemed the antithesis of nature. They w ­ ere workers, t­hose who conquer nature. Within this structure ­women ­were interpreted as something to be broken and conquered—by men that dominate nature and are exalted as “workers.” It is impor­tant to note, the emphasis on ­women and domesticity h­ ere differs from early Chris­tian­ity in that capitalism not only ties w ­ omen to their reproductive roles and the domestic sphere but erects a comprehensive socio-­political-­economic structure in which sexual and physical l­abor are commodified along New World sex, gender, and racial lines, and where such distinctions may be exploited in competing markets for private gain. With that said, black enslaved w ­ omen and girls ­were capital and l­abor. They ­were moveable property, bought and sold, seen in terms of nature and as workers, though not equal to men. This made black ­women’s and girls’ ­labor as breeders and field and domestic workers seem natu­ral and thus innocent. It also further bound them up with mythologies on superwomanhood, inhumanity, and hypersexuality. In “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,”19 Hortense Spillers contends that captive reimaginings of Africans as flesh was value driven. Slaves ­were considered as quantities quantifiable by their ability to increase the ­owners’ stock. Enslaved reproduction was especially crucial to plantation capital and gross plantation product. Si­ mul­ta­neously, the colonial structure devalued enslaved w ­ omen and girls for the very ­thing it valued them for: sex. The commodification of black ­women’s and girls’ wombs as si­mul­ta­neously lucrative, imperfect, advantageous, grotesque, enticing, and wild/life distinguished them as quintessentially deviant enclaves upon which the abnormal could be staged, unrestricted curiosities would unfold, and unbridled access was enabled—­sans any semblance of Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

23

bodily integrity, and, to some, sans the m ­ ental capacity or the moral judgment to choose and/or refuse. Womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas asserts that misinterpretations of African ways of life and the conditions of slavery, which forced African ­women to bare their bodies and breed multiple ­children, made the connection between bondwomen’s reproductive abilities, licentiousness, and immorality seem inseparable. She writes, Travelers often interpreted African ­women’s sparse dress—­dress appropriate to the climate of Africa—as a sign of lewdness and lack of chastity. . . . ​ Indeed, the warm climate came to be associated with “hot constition’d Ladies” possessed of a temper “hot and lascivious.” If the habits, way of life and living conditions of the African w ­ oman gave birth to the notion that Black w ­ omen ­were Jezebels, then the conditions and exigencies of slavery brought it to maturity. The life situation of the enslaved ­woman encouraged the idea that she was a Jezebel, even as the Jezebel image served to justify the life situation she was forced to endure.20 Douglas maintains that the necessity of nudity and forced reproduction sanctioned by the institution of slavery distinguished between proper (white) ladies and black jezebels.21 Proper ladies ­were marked by their color, lineage, dress, l­ abor (or lack thereof), leisure, assumed morality, socioeconomic class, and ­free status. Jezebels ­were marked by their blackness, parentage, near nudity, physical and sexual l­abor, supposed immorality, deficit of decency, and enslaved status. The distinction Douglas mentions h­ ere is pertinent but demands further nuancing. The contrast she makes notes a sharp dividing line between the Victorian ideal (“true womanhood”) and black enslaved ­women breeders. The Victorian ideal represented perfect femininity, or what white femininity should entail—­motherhood, nurture, docility, Christian purity and piety, maintenance of the perfect home, and rearing of spiritually noble ­children. ­Jezebel was ­imagined as every­thing the Victorian ideal was not supposed to be. However, the Victorian ideal was not solely ­imagined in opposition to black enslaved ­women breeders. She was also a riposte to eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­ century anx­i­eties around natu­ral hierarchy, which consequentially included white ­women’s sex lives and ­labor. Like black enslaved ­women and girls, white ­women w ­ ere si­mul­ta­neously valued and problematized for sex, beauty, and reproduction. However, ­those who performed womanhood/femininity 24 Chapter 1

outside of the Victorian script ­were interpreted as “public ­women,”22 the white ­woman’s jezebel. The relationship between white/Eu­ro­pean men, power, and science is both revealing and vulgar. As if gendered cultural scripts w ­ ere insufficient for constructing controlling ideas about good and bad womanhood, similar to scientific discourses on race, the budding medical field sought to trou­ble and control ­women’s sex lives by prescribing a potential inborn gender-­based sex pathology, feared to also manifest in ­children.23 For example, in 1836 Alexandre Parent du Châtelet attempted to prove ­women’s predilection for prostitution based on a “peculiar plumpness owed to hot baths or the leading of an animal life.”24 This theory was reconfigured to fit Lombroso and Ferrero’s La donna delinquente, which placed par­tic­u­lar emphasis on African ­women. Ultimately, white ­free ­women’s distinction from black enslaved ­women was mostly uncomplicated. The greater challenge lay in maintaining intraracial distinctions between white ­women and mining the gap between black enslaved and white public w ­ omen. That said, “true” ­women stood against black jezebels, jezebelian white public ­women, and previous notions of inherent female deviance and sex pathology. Still, the social standing of public ­women was at best greater than that of enslaved black ­women breeders. Public w ­ omen made “poor” choices. Black enslaved w ­ omen ­were perceived as the absence of moral possibility. They ­were slaves by virtue of race, and multiply deficient and perverted by virtue of race and gender. Enslaved w ­ omen ­were what even public w ­ omen did not want to be: black. Public ­women could try and reinvent their image through feminine praxis such as dress, manners, be­hav­ior, domesticity, and especially heteropatriarchal marriage. Sigmund Freud’s essay “Femininity” (1932) is instructive h­ ere and for thinking about how marriage may be interpreted as a disinfectant for ­women and how it may be used to distinguish between good and bad ­women, “true” ­women and jezebels, black and white ­women, and good and bad black ­women. Reminiscent of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals, Freud articulates womanhood/white femininity as a site of deficiency and the white phallus a site of envy and completion. Freud argues that the first stage of femininity is established when l­ittle girls, who are like ­little boys (“­little men”) during their phallic stage (both masturbate, and both see the m ­ other as the initial object of desire), discover their lack of a penis, accordingly turning away from their ­mothers, developing “penis envy,” losing enjoyment in masturbation, and turning ­toward Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

25

their ­fathers. He posits that femininity is fully achieved when a husband, and thus wifedom and motherhood, replace the wish for a penis.25 For Freud, white ­women’s sexual pathology manifests in the desire for sexual plea­sure and inherent penis envy. The latter decreases as femininity is achieved through marriage, marital sex, ­children, and, in addition, sexual restraint. Public ­women, then, could achieve a guise of “true” womanhood, especially as they performed and naturalized patriarchy, femininity, and domesticity.26 Marriage worked differently for black enslaved w ­ omen. Despite what ­these ­unions meant internally, marriage failed to make them over, offer gendered or economic protections, limit ­labor, shield their c­ hildren, hedge their families and chosen kinships, sanitize their image and safeguard them from pornotropic jezebelian interpretations, or make them less vulnerable to plantation sexual politics.27 And if nothing ­else drew a clear and razor-­sharp line between black and white ­women, “true,” “public,” or other­wise, plantation sexual politics and the idea that they w ­ ere always already in constant search for multiple boundaryless encounters with the penis, married or not, unequivocally did. I imagine this is how forty-­four-­year-­old Jefferson justified raping fourteen-­year-­old Hemmings. Though we do not have Hemmings’s account of what happened, we do know that many enslaved ­women and girls resisted ­these designations and encounters and strug­gled vehemently to rewrite their experiences and imagine themselves as ­whole. Though slave marriages did not offer entrée into a protected class, they do give voice to how slaves tried to experience and insist upon love, bodily autonomy, sacred bonds, choice, re­spect, virtue, consent, and plea­sure. At the same time, they note white preoccupation with refusing black love and joy, controlling black flesh, both denying and sanctioning sexual perversion, and American greed. In sum, marriage worked differently for black enslaved ­women and girls ­because plantation capital and gross plantation product required perverse sexual politics and thus valued black sexual access—­through rape, forced marriages, and breeding—­over and against black romantic and familial bonds and black per­for­mances of piety and femininity. This was especially so a­ fter the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807, which amplified sexual exploitation and breeding. Even so, black ­women and girls developed a complex code of sexual ethics and moral judgment, often paying harshly for their many forms of radical re­sis­tance. Ellen Rogers of Texas was whipped on multiple occasions for refusing to marry the husband her owner had chosen for her. She was in love and eventually got her way.28 But most ­others ­were less fortunate. Thomas Johns of 26 Chapter 1

Texas remembers, “If a owner had a big w ­ oman slave and she had a l­ ittle man for her husban’, and de owner had a big man slave, den dey would make de ­woman’s l­ittle husban’ leave, and dey would make de ­woman let de big man be with her.”29 Rose Williams was whipped repeatedly for refusing her new husband, even pledging to “bust [his] brains out and stomp on dem.” Ultimately, she complied ­after she was threatened with being sold away from her ­family. Once ­free, Williams asked God for forgiveness for yielding to the sexual whims of her master during slavery and for refusing to remarry ­after emancipation. She expounded, “De lawd have to forgive dis cullud w ­ oman, but he have to ’scuse me and look for some ­others for to ’plenish de earth.”30 It might prove in­ter­est­ing to collate all the data where white men policed ­women’s sexual lives in history, noting good ­women as having decreased sexual appetites and bad ­women as being inherently and irrepressibly lecherous—­ while at the same time managing to violently trespass ­every ­human boundary imaginable and/or achievable. Unlike white w ­ omen, enslaved black ­women and girls did not have the privilege of feigning purity or a decreased sexual drive in response to heteropatriarchal fragility. Plantation sexual politics, which ­were diabolical, vociferous, and omnipresent, set out to categorically and unreservedly deteriorate all pos­si­ble access points to white notions of purity and femininity for black enslaved w ­ omen and girls. As one slave noted, “Dere w ­ asn’t any purity for young girls in slave quarters, ’cause de overseer was always sending for de young negro girls to be with ’em, and some girl was always finding a baby for him.”31 Fannie Norman of Texas suggests some enslaved w ­ omen ­were forced to share and have multiple husbands. She posits, “ ’Twas de rule on many plantations in slave times dat de ­women ­can’t have any regular husband. Dey am fo’ced to live wid de one Marster tells dem to an’ m’ybe dey live first wid one an’ tudder man.”32 Willie McCullough of North Carolina offers the following account about the marriages of his ­mother and grand­mother, ­ other tole me that when she became a w M ­ oman at the age of sixteen years her marster went to a slave owner near by and got a six foot nigger man, almost an entire stranger to her, and told her she must marry him. Her marster read a paper to them, told them they w ­ ere man and wife and told this negro he could take her to a certain cabin and go to bed. This was done without getting consent or even asking her about it. . . . ​Grand­mother said Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

27

that several dif­fer­ent men ­were put to her just about the same if she had been a cow or sow. The slave ­owners treated them as if they had been common animals in this re­spect.33 Betty Powers of Texas reports, Den times, de cullud fo’ks ar jus’ put together. ’Twas as de Marster says. Him says, “Jim an’ Nancy, yous go live together” an w’en de ordah am given, it bettah be done lak given. Dey thinks nothin’ on de plantation ’bout de feelin’s of de w ­ omens. De overseer an ’tudder white mens tooks ’vantage of de ­womens lak dey wants to. De ­women bettah not make any fuss ’bout sich. If she does, ’twas a whuppin’ fo’ her.34 Polly Shine of Texas recalls, “Sometimes when they traded us they would put the ­woman to bed with this negro man and then the other to find out which one would be suited together best, of course that never suited us much but we had to do just like our masers made us, as we could not do any other way.”35 Sylvia King of Texas tells a story about how her owner told her she was married immediately ­after purchase. King was already married with three ­children, however. When asked her new husband’s name she responded, “He jus Bob . . . ​­don’t even care about his name.”36 Though jezebel is race and gender specific in North Amer­i­ca, plantation sexual politics affected black enslaved men and boys too. “Cir­cuit riders” w ­ ere sent from plantation to plantation to have sex with multiple enslaved ­women and girls. While w ­ omen and girls remained with child through childbirth and at minimum moments afterward, cir­cuit riders w ­ ere sent back home a­ fter sex and thus never knew how many ­children they fathered.37 Elige Davison of ­Virginia writes, “I been marry once ’fore freedom, with home weddin’. Massa, he bring some more ­women to see me. He ­wouldn’t let me have jus’ one ­woman. I have ’bout fifteen and I ­don’t know how many chillen. Some over a hundred, I’s sho.”38 Thomas A. Foster writes in “The Sexual Abuse of Black Men u­ nder Slavery” (2011), all parts of breeding ­were exploitative and physically, sexually, psychologically, and emotionally violent.39 Cir­cuit riders ­were hired out like prostitutes. ­These experiences, for slave men and for slave ­women, should be examined within the context of trauma and sexual abuse rather than choice or conquest. Foster notes that breeding, which he refers to as “third-­ party rape,” and other forms of (white male and female on black male) sexual vio­lence w ­ ere sources of shame for black enslaved men and boys. 28 Chapter 1

Plantation sexual politics distinguished between white and black ­women, firmly establishing who was jezebel and who was not, and thusly, who had an inherent sexual pathology and who did not. Concomitantly, the force of an ­imagined and legally established black body as comprehensively treacherous, degenerate, and accessible had inter-­and intracommunal ramifications. It caused a significant break between black men and black w ­ omen and took a toll on black life and black sexual politics. Intraracial and intracommunal challenges ­were particularly prevalent postbellum. And though black sexual politics cannot be overdetermined by perversion, whiteness, or white sexual politics, the afterlife of slavery notes an excess of residuum. The vile nature of plantation sexual politics and/or the foul mis/reading/s of black sexuality as depraved cannot preclude black sexual politics from such critical “looking.” Rather, this quandary of machinations insists on a deepened and perhaps rather uncomfortable engagement. Spillers writes about some of this in “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” She argues that black enslaved f­ athers, who w ­ ere ­either physically absent or mockingly pres­ent, ­were not allowed to name, raise, or protect their ­children and thus experienced erasure in both name and body. This caused a rupture between ­fathers and ­daughters that was distinctly destructive, enabling rape and incest patterns, particularly ­after slavery. Spillers posits that in a typical heterosexist patriarchal system, d­ aughters maintain status as they are attached to men. They are born typically bearing the ­father’s name, and they achieve womanhood by acquiring the husband’s name. As Freud asserts, ­daughters maintain visibility as they become wives and ­mothers to their husbands’ ­children. Notwithstanding its prob­lems, patriarchal right established a degree of visibility/personhood and in many cases protections for the white and ­free. Black enslaved ­women and girls did not receive the privilege of even this second-­class status. Spillers furthers this argument in “ ‘The Permanent Obliquity of an In(pha) llibly Straight’: In the Time of the D ­ aughters and the F ­ athers” (2003), an essay that utilizes F ­ ather Mapple’s sermonic repre­sen­ta­tion of Jonah in Moby Dick (1851) to examine what she interprets as “a cele­bration of incest” in black lit­er­a­ture, such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou, Corregidora (1975) by Gayl Jones, Just above My Head (1979) by James Baldwin, Invisible Man (1947) by Ralph Ellison, The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker, and The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison.40 In Moby Dick, ­Father Mapple’s view of a crooked room parallels Jonah’s soul. The narrator suggests that Jonah’s soul, not the room, is crooked and should be upright. In the same Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

29

way, Spillers argues that the black phallus a­ fter slavery was crooked yet should be “straight.” “Straight,” referring to familial and communal bound­aries, not heteronormativity. She posits that many black literary writers, preoccupied with the black “nuclear” ­family and the absence of black ­fathers during and ­after slavery, overlooked this phenomenon and thus approached incest patterns uncritically. A critical discourse on jezebel naturally explores historical breeding practices and other vio­lences against enslaved black ­women and girls by white men and w ­ omen. But what is often left largely underexamined is how ­these vio­lences—­the inability to choose sexual partners; to decide when, where, and how to have sex; to consent; to scream in re­sis­tance; to decline sexual partners; to opt for monogamy; and to raise and protect their ­children without hindrance or interruption—­laid the groundwork for de­cades of unresolved intraracial cruelty and antagonism, which operates between black men and black ­women as well as among and between black ­women and girls. That is, while t­ here are many radical narratives of black love, longing, refusal, autonomy, care, strug­gle, ecstasy, commitment, friendship, and resolve, we must contend with how a historical look at black sexual politics (though preexisting, multiple, complex, ­whole, and fully ­human) prompts a simultaneous critical discourse on material accounts of intraracial vio­lence, distrust, molestation, abandonment, and slander. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe” is impor­tant ­here ­because it centers the significance of grammar (language, discourse, knowledge) in constructing the world in which we live and how the historical grammar on race and gender underpins intraracial rape and incest patterns ­after slavery. Yet as Spillers necessarily attends to mamas, babies, rape, and incest, she decenters how black enslaved men and boys w ­ ere also victims of sexual assault and how this status ruptured relationships between not only f­ athers and ­daughters but also black men and boys and w ­ omen and girls more generally. Foster’s essay is helpful for shedding pertinent light on the latter. Both sides of this coin m ­ atter. It ­matters that North American slavery made black men and w ­ omen vulnerable to unspeakable and untiring sexual vio­lences, that both men and ­women w ­ ere sexual assault victims and survivors, that ­people ­were “put together” and treated as “common animals” for breeding and other deplorable purposes, that men and ­women ­were prostituted and forced to have multiple sexual partners they did not want, that their romantic bonds and bodily autonomy w ­ ere ignored, that ­women and girls ­were forced to birth and nurture the offspring of their rapists, that they and their ­children ­were born into 30 Chapter 1

such a broken and demonic sociopo­liti­cal structure, and that their access to love, care, and protection was distorted and replaced by uncertainty, absence, mockery, and savagery. It ­matters ­because many enslaved men and w ­ omen carried the shame and markings of their abusers, and ­because such markings also estranged black love and ways of “seeing”—­self, each other, sex, ­family, accountability, responsibility, and bound­aries. It m ­ atters ­because the wreckage from t­hese breaches is quite stubborn, necessitating immediate and rigorous undoing. It ­matters b­ ecause jezebel continues to be called upon to stand in for and repurpose a landslide of sexual distortions and abuses fostered without and within black collectives. Yet jezebel is unqualified for this task. Jezebel is incapable of healing or making ­whole black men and boys, intracommunal relations, or ways of “seeing” and valuing other black subjects. She cannot obliterate slavery’s residuals or black men and w ­ omen’s anx­i­eties around personhood, citizenship, rights, safety, normalcy, and repre­sen­ta­tion. Though she gets deployed in black families, black interrelations, black communities, black institutions, and black culture to construct ranking systems reminiscent of New and Old World interpretations of race and gender; Aristotelian and Freudian conceptualizations of deviance, deficiency, phallic power, and pursuance; unrelenting historical comparisons between white and black ­women; white patriarchal rights; and colonial distinctions between “true” and “public” ­women, having a black “Other” ­will not save the race. What is more, rewriting history in a way that makes black ­women and girls fodder for establishing black humanity and pro­gress41 has yet to yield any real collective or long-­standing benefits. Relocating sex pathology in black ­women and girls is crucial to delineating between black w ­ omen and men intraracially. Black men are not referred to as jezebels nor are their sexual histories with black w ­ omen as problematized intracommunally. Equally essential to this proj­ect is distinguishing between black ­women—­between jezebelian black ­women and “true” black ­women (black ladies), and climacteric to that are cultural interpretations of the black “nuclear” f­amily, which includes black patriarchy. In fact, discerning between good and bad black ­women became a linchpin for demonstrating and substantiating black morality a­ fter slavery. Yet the race to vindicate blackness through black ­women’s and girls’ bodies in Amer­i­ca dismisses how the sociopo­liti­cal neo­co­lo­nial structure is and has long been broken and demonic (not black ­women and girls, not their sex/lives, not their wombs, and not their c­ hildren) and how it operates at the expense of entire black Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

31

collectives. The Black Church is vital to upholding the black “nuclear” ­family and black patriarchy as seminal tools of black salvation and virtue. Moreover, it has been paramount in distinguishing between good and bad black ­women, making one the moral exemplar of the race, and the other her footstool, or, more specifically, the exemplification of moral bankruptcy. Rather than dealing honestly with the crooked remnants of white perversion circulating between black collectives, harmfully affecting both men and ­women and black sexual politics, many within the Black Church uncritically accepted historical racist and sexist metanarratives on black female sexuality. It is through the Black Church that one may likely encounter some of the most dangerous iterations on jezebel, particularly as the trope so thoroughly entwines with cultural interpretations of biblical Jezebel. That is, rather than confronting rape, exploitation and re/pre­sen­ta­tion, during and a­ fter slavery, rupture, incest, and assault, it is easier to bind all of this baggage to black ­women’s and girl’s backs through a ­simple label: jezebel, the epitome of race, gender, and sex pathology. However, unlike other cultural forms, religious race and gender classificatory practices can be interpreted as divine judgment for the faithful. Like white racist interpretations of Ham, the entangling of religious beliefs with metanarratives on black w ­ omen and girls alleged evil or unbridled freakery constructs a taken-­for-­granted way of “looking,” and thusly a stock of knowledge42 that robs them of complex subjectivity,43 and, perhaps most lethally, misinterprets this entanglement as authoritative, truth telling, necessary, and holy. The repre­sen­ta­tion, and thus black ­women and girls, then, are believed to need constant cleansing, loosing, and making over—­from without. This is a form of repre­sen­ta­tional vio­lence and remaking, not undoing. The discourse on black womanhood, once primarily the property and invention of white racist and sexist gazing, now belongs to every­one. Like a photo­graph, it serves to demonstrate the power structure and corroborate racial difference and oppression. One likely won­ders how it traveled from the medieval period to the plantation to the twenty-­first ­century, and most certainly to the Black Church. The same way photo­graphs do: through p­ eople, preservation, and mediation. Twentieth-­century media reproduced, mass-­ mediated, and conventionalized early fears and obsessions around race, sex, and gender, producing a voy­eur­is­tic visual culture that eagerly revived historical ideas about black female sexuality and femininity. Blurring old and new bound­aries between real­ity and fantasy, fantasy and fixation, and consumption and revulsion, vintage and newfangled media (language, images, 32 Chapter 1

photography, print, philosophy, theology, art, science, lit­er­a­ture, advertising, tele­vi­sion, ­music, film, books, videos, magazines, games, news, social media, the Internet, and more) created fresh access points to black ­women and girls. The force of t­hese matrices and o­ thers increased opportunities for misrepre­sen­ta­tion. Correspondingly, as the discourse on black womanhood got reproduced and circulated, dehumanizing black w ­ omen and girls, and especially ­those considered “bad,” so did vio­lences against them, and with an unnerving casualness.44 Concurrently, as epistemic and other vio­lences inspired media, this circularity and ­these media informed American institutions, politics, culture, relationships, and experiences. To this end, unhinging jezebel cannot come by way of closing the door of a messy old closet and walking away. It comes by way of multilayered multipositional confrontation and of black men and ­women critically engaging each other, old and new media, institutions, politics, and culture. By the 1990s an explicit discourse on good and bad black womanhood revealed itself as a lucrative business in the Black Church and black popu­lar culture, making them two of the most affluential sites of gender-­specific cultural (mis)repre­sen­ta­tion. Unhinging jezebel means examining t­ hese media in par­tic­u­lar and disentangling black ­women and girls from their narratives. To be sure, jezebel is her creators’ to own. And despite use of pronouns, it is impor­tant to make it clear that jezebel is a trope—­a proj­ect and decisive ideology in the discourse on black womanhood with material consequences that notes preoccupations with black female identity and subjectivity, not real­ity. And even as she may be appropriated individually, she is si­mul­ta­ neously always already historically created from without. She is the white man’s oeuvre and as old as North American black w ­ omen’s and girls’ ungraspable purity and intoxicating subjectivity. But she is also biblical Jezebel remixed, revived, and incarnate—­Black Church version. She is the stranglehold that ­shaped the lustful eyes of the church elder during my youth.45 She is the veteran gaze of the black w ­ oman street preacher who called my college friends and I jezebel sluts e­ very time we walked from the train station to the bus stop in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. She is the ­imagined self that many black Christian ­women summon when singing and praying, “Wash me clean, oh Lord!” And she is the muse in con­temporary black religious and cultural productions, where we encounter not only jezebel but her spawn: the ho—­black folks’ thot, white folks’ whore.

Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts  

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CHAPTER 2

“­T HESE HOS ­A IN’T LOYAL” White Perversions, Black Possessions

Let’s face it.  I am a marked ­woman, but not every­body knows my name. “Peaches” and “Brown Sugar,” “Sapphire” and “Earth M ­ other,” “Aunty,” “Granny,” God’s “Holy Fool,” a “Miss Ebony First,” or “Black ­Woman at the Podium”: I describe a locus of confounded identities, a meeting ground of investments and privations in the national trea­ sury of rhetorical wealth. My country needs me, and if I w ­ ere not ­here, I would have to be in­ven­ted. —Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book”

In June 2014, prominent African Methodist Episcopal (ame) pastor of Empowerment T ­ emple in Baltimore, Mary­land, Jamal H. Bryant, appropriated troubled singer Chris Brown’s song “Loyal.” In it Brown pronounces his lack of trust of w ­ omen who he believes cheat on their partners to have sex with him ­because he is rich. Over a catchy baseline, Brown and special Hip Hop guests Lil Wayne and Tyga disregard their own double-­dealing while spiritedly calling out ­women for their faithlessness. In between vainglorious lines about “bitches,” “hos,” “niggas,” and “fucking,” the chorus harmonizes, “­these hos ­ain’t loyal.” The accompanying video does not disappoint. The imagery follows the song and Hip Hop culture to the script. That is, each male artist offers lyrical vigor while surrounded by gorgeous sexually alluring dancing ­women, all of whom clamor for the artists’ and the audience’s attention. Yet despite the theme and imagery of “Loyal,” one is left asking who needs whom more. Do the dancing ­women need the singing men or is it the other

way around? The answer to that depends on who you ask and the position of the gaze. In Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black ­Women (2008), T. Denean Sharpley-­W hiting notes that Hip Hop produced a “playa-­ pimp-­ho-­bitch” culture in the 1980s and 1990s that effectively marginalized ­women. Black ­women and girls ­were particularly targeted, as bitch and ho narratives drew heavi­ly on historical racial and sexual tropes. The irony is the commercial success of Hip Hop’s “playa-­pimp-­ho-­bitch” culture is significantly dependent on phallocentric fantasies that necessarily include ­women in constant search not for any penis but for the penis of the cis-­gender1 heteropatriarchal hypermasculine Hip Hop artist. In short, pimps cannot pimp and playas cannot play without ­women to exploit in this twisted fantasy. Heteronormative virility stipulates beautiful dancing ­women, not the other way around. In a sermon titled “I Am My Enemies’ Worst Nightmare,” Bryant, the son of a prominent ame bishop, gifted orator, More­house College and Duke ­Divinity School gradu­ate, and former youth president of the naacp, quipped to his twelve-­thousand-­plus predominantly female congregation, “­These hos ­ain’t loyal!” To be fair, the sermon was not about “hos” per se but rather what Bryant interpreted as the systemic and structural destruction of black humanity. “I Am My Enemies’ Worst Nightmare” opened with several impor­ tant points about the necessity of affirming black life, how the killing of black male c­ hildren is so common that it no longer gives us pause, how the educational and penal systems, entwined, marginalize black folk and limit thriving, and how black boys get educational opportunities only when bouncing basketballs and throwing footballs. Though Bryant does not center on how ­these same societal issues affect black w ­ omen and girls, and though some of his points seemed to construct girl-­versus-­boy binaries, his attempt to affirm black humanity from the pulpit is notable. ­These pronouncements came by way of throwing black ­women and girls and lgbtqia folk ­under the bus, however. In addition to pathologizing black femininity, black ­women’s and girls’ sexuality, and same-­gender and gender-nonconforming love, Bryant exclaims to the congregants that men are thinkers and w ­ omen are feelers, and that “real men” can be sanctified without becoming “sissies.” And just when ready to sign Bryant up for the nearest “Introduction to W ­ omen, Gender and Sexuality Studies” course, he performs pseudofeminism by couching black ­women’s alleged pathology in rising prison rates, sociopo­liti­cal attacks on young black girls, emotional abuse, and the suffrage movement, particularly ­women’s right to vote and to own property. Notwithstanding Bryant’s troubling sexual politics and erratic “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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logical moves between the carceral state and the nineteenth amendment, he attempts to do something good while ­doing something bad. ­After problematizing black w ­ omen for sex and lesbianism (read: not chasing the penis and allowing men to be “real men”), Bryant tells his congregants to turn to their neighbor and say, “­They’re ­after our ­daughters.” ­Daughters have dreams, he passionately preaches. Although he limits their dreaming to heteropatriarchal domesticity and partnership, he asserts that black Christian w ­ omen are ­daughters with value and purpose and are deserving of male support and protection. Bryant then critiques black men for failing to see black w ­ omen’s and girls’ value, for not living up to heteronormative masculine ideals, and for cheating on their partners—­because ­there is no point in extramarital hanky-­panky when “­these hos a­ in’t loyal.” This collective and decidedly turbulent messaging, along with Bryant’s critique of “side chicks,” resonated with several ­women, both in the video clip and outside of it. Bryant’s sermonic moment, which was si­mul­ta­neously life-­affirming and caring, sexist, heterosexist, patriarchal, transantagonistic, and homophobic, was met by raging applause and a standing ovation. Many in the larger public ­were less enthused. Still, some black male pastors raced to Bryant’s rescue, scolding his critics for cherry picking, ignorance, and jealousy. I ­will not waste time specifying the similarities between Bryant and Brown or their unsettling personal histories ­here. ­Those details can be found in court documents online, along with musings of detractors and supporters alike. Though, the nature of t­ hose details, physical, sexual, and other­wise, is significant, particularly when thinking about the communal break between black men and black ­women. Obviously using any of Brown’s ­music in a context that professes to empower mostly black female congregants through “the Word” is murky. The dilemma is not the exchange between the Black Church and black popu­lar culture. A visit to the black religio-­cultural archives reveals a history of confabulation and remixing between black religion and black culture, and specifically the Black Church and black popu­lar culture. Bryant stands within a long line of black preachers and musicians, such as Thomas A. Dorsey, James Cleveland, C.  L. Franklin, Kirk Franklin, and many ­others, who deployed pop cultural products in religious space (and vice versa) in efforts to not only “make it plain” and “bring it home” but to further mass-­ mediate certain messaging that hearers may instantly connect with. The prob­lem is the force of white perversions (jezebelian discourse, plantation sexual politics) in black cultural spaces as not only reappropriated but as possessed. Not possessed as in categorical false consciousness but as in 36 Chapter 2

individual, and at times collective, appropriated yet constrained and contorted owner­ship, mediation, reproduction, and circulation. It is the rhetorical marking, the locus of confounded identities, and the meeting ground of investments and privations that Hortense Spillers names in “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” (2003). Bryant si­mul­ta­neously stands in a long line of repeat transgressors who use the sermonic and other moments in black churches to draw upon, reproduce, and maintain the discourse on black womanhood, most notably the myth of black ­women’s and girls’ hypersexuality. The discourse on black womanhood circulating in black churches loops ancient racist and sexist ideology with Black Church theology and gender politics, constructing a colonizing epistemology and exploitative cultural politics. Th ­ ese politics display a de­pen­dency on corrupt gender-­specific repre­sen­ta­tional distortions on one hand, and normalize unacceptable liaisons on the other. The prob­lem is also that, though black Americans have historically been interpreted as “prob­lem p­ eople,”2 reifying diasporic subjectivities into an undifferentiated mass of difference and second-class citizenship, the problematizing of black femaleness, womanhood, femininity, and sexuality within black religion and black popu­lar culture as the difference within black difference attempts to not unhinge but breathe immortal air into jezebel and other tropes. Deploying this metanarrative means to distinguish and draw distance between not only men and ­women or white ­women and black w ­ omen but black men and black ­women and good black ­women and bad black ­women as well. Moreover, t­ here is currently no framework to concomitantly map, critically read, and disorient ­these religio-­cultural-­based projections. The discourse on jezebel circulating between the Black Church and black popu­lar culture, situating black w ­ omen and girls as prob­lems and sexual objects, serves to legitimate not only yoked imaginings from without, or more specifically “facts of black female blackness,” but previous ideas about gender hierarchy, female deviance, and phallic power. To this end, the ho discourse exchanged between Bryant and Brown makes sense. Distinctions between Hip Hop and the Black Church are sometimes hazy, particularly regarding jezebelian ho politics. My interest ­here is not in Hip Hop, however. Th ­ ere is already critical work being done on Hip Hop, sexism, and racist repre­sen­ta­tion. The emphasis h­ ere is on how jezebel shows up in and pervades black religio-­cultural spaces, often through ho discourse, and how inherited white perversions came to be claimed therein. Ho discourse is not only a theory of black female difference. It is an engagement “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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on and practice of differentiation that enables vio­lence. Spillers’s description of a “locus of confounded identities, a meeting ground of investments and privations in the national trea­sury of rhetorical wealth,” calls our attention to how pornotropic telegraphic coding of black female corporeality, “so loaded with mythical prepossession that ­there is no easy way for agents beneath them to come clean,” both evolved from and led to vio­lence, specifically black diasporic theft of body (contact/conquest) and crimes against flesh (misnaming/ slander, subjection, bondage, rape, breeding, beating, searing).3 The normative properties produced by pornotropic coding constructed personal pronouns (wench, jezebel, ho) in the ser­vice of a collective function, rendering black ­women and girls not only racially signified but “an example of signifying property plus”—­racialized and gendered bodies with assigned multiple excess over time, with meanings transmitting from one generation to the next. The discourse on black womanhood circulating between the Black Church and black popu­lar culture stands in ser­vice to this collective function. Jezebelian discourse, specifically, leads to vio­lence, and vio­lence led to jezebelian discourse. The assertion that “­these hos ­ain’t loyal” by the preacher or artist denotes a history and presence of recoding, messaging, and consequences, and raises questions about cultural politics and the power dynamics therein. Namely, it queries, disloyal to what, to whom, and at what cost? The ramifications of disloyalty in pimp/ho street politics are epistemic, ideological, physical, sexual, economic, emotional and psychological vio­lence, and/or death. Black preachers are not out ­here collectively beating or killing black w ­ omen. But jezebelian ho ideology, or, perhaps more adequate, ho theology, does enable a culture of vio­lence and silence. Yet many black ­women and men seem to connect with or appropriate it. The connection is not necessarily masochistic. The possession of jezebelian ho discourse in the Black Church marks a curious investment in my­thol­ogy and biblical Jezebel as well as a tangled quest for black normalcy. The last-­mentioned is so problematized and combatted it demands a freakish diversion: jezebel. ­Going forward, this chapter uses womanist and feminist analyses to theorize biblical Jezebel as an icon of cultural disloyalty, excess, sex, beauty, and deviance, followed by an exploration of the work of my­thol­ogy in the pornographic reimagining of biblical Jezebel as not only a raced ­woman but jezebel “the African,” a privation of North American identity formation and symbol of moral deprivation. The chapter concludes with an examination of how the Black Church, the black preacher, and the black sermon sometimes serve as sites of dangerous ho theology and jezebelian validation. 38 Chapter 2

Theorizing Biblical Jezebel: An Icon of Cultural Dis/Loyalty, Beauty, and Deviance Jezebel’s story is narrated in 1 and 2 Kings in the Christian Bible. She was a Phoenician princess from Tyre who married Ahab, king of Northern Israel. Ahab reigned in Samaria over Israel twenty-­two years. 1 Kings 16:30–31 kjv4 posits, “Ahab . . . ​did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that ­were before him. / And it came to pass, as if it had been a light t­ hing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the ­daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him.” The readers’ introduction to Jezebel is negative. First, she is included in one of three points explicating Ahab’s evildoing. Second, she was not Hebrew. Third, the Sidonians served dif­f er­ent deities.5 And fourth, “Jezebel,” not likely her real name, was meant as an insult. Womanist Hebrew Bible scholar Wilda C. M. Gafney defines Jezebel, Izevel in Hebrew, as a “cross between a taunt and a slur,” specifically meaning, “Where is the prince?” (Where is your husband?), transformed into “lacking nobility” and “fecal ­matter.” Jezebel is read as a whore in 2 Kings 9:22 and as a slur in Revelation 2:20: “Notwithstanding I have a few t­ hings against thee, b­ ecause thou sufferest that w ­ oman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat t­ hings sacrificed unto idols.” A surface reading might suggest that Jezebel was disloyal to Ahab or that the Sidonian ­women collectively lacked acceptable sexual decorum. However, neither Jezebel’s marriage to Ahab nor the sexual decision making of Sidonian ­women mark the paramount points of contention in her story. Jezebel’s wedding is archived anonymously in Psalm 45. It is part love song for the mortal king, and part wedding hymn for the infamous Phoenician princess who marries into Israel. Gafney notes that this ­union was not culturally opposed: “She joins a long line of foreign brides from the time of the patriarchs through Moses himself to the golden era of David and Solomon, both of whom used intermarriage as a form of statecraft. David is never critiqued for his foreign marriages; Solomon was critiqued for their number and aftereffects but not their initiation.”6 Gafney asserts, “If Jezebel is the bride—­and ­there is no other royal ­woman of Tyre who marries an Israelite or Judean monarch in the scriptures—­then Psalm 45 preserves an unfamiliar, salutary, hopeful portrait of Jezebel before her name became a curse.”7 The hopeful portraiture dematerializes as Jezebel “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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chooses to worship Baal and Asherah, deities of her culture of origin, and, moreover, as she encourages her husband Ahab to renounce Yahweh, the God of Israel, and as she uses her influence to persecute and kill his prophets.8 In defense of Yahweh, the prophet Elijah charges Ahab with the sin of “abandoning the Lord’s commands” and following Baal. Consequently, Elijah summons “450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s ­table” and slaughters them, igniting the vengeance of Jezebel. “Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, ‘So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.’ ”9 Elijah, afraid, fled for his life into the wilderness. Despite Jezebel’s questionable uses of power, particularly the persecution of ­those who refused to worship her gods, including ­those who w ­ ere executed, it is her combined faithlessness to Yahweh, faithfulness to the religion and deities of her culture, and exceptional authority that mark the principal site of conflict in her story. Gafney writes, Jezebel is distinct from most other ­women in the canon ­because of the vast power she wields; the biblical editors do not, cannot, deny her agency. They are, however, critical of that agency. It is most unseemly for them, most likely ­because of her gender. Jezebel ­will be critiqued in and beyond the canon for her agency, which w ­ ill be constructed as usurpation of male privilege. [She] uses the considerable resources at [her] disposal to support the religious institutions of her p­ eople in her new land; she feeds nearly one thousand prophets out of the royal trea­sury; figuratively “her t­ able” in 1 Kings 18:19 . . . ​Jezebel is not the power ­behind the throne; she is the power of the throne. So, when the story of Elijah butchering her prophets makes its way to the palace, the king’s immediate response is to tell Jezebel (1 Kings 19:1). She has not usurped his authority; he has yielded it to her.10 Jezebel’s power climaxes ­after Ahab dies in ­battle. Upon his death, his chariot is washed in a pool where prostitutes bathe, and dogs lick his blood, as prophesied. Ahab’s son Ahaziah—­whose ­mother we do not know—­reigns over Israel for the next two years. 1 Kings 22:52 posits, “And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of his f­ather, and in the way of his ­mother, and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.” Ahaziah mysteriously falls out of a win­dow and dies. Jezebel and Ahab’s son, Jehoram (also Joram), inherits the throne, officially making Jezebel the queen m ­ other. However, as 2 Kings 8:18 notes, Jehoram 40 Chapter 2

“walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the h­ ouse of Ahab: for the ­daughter of Ahab was his wife: and he did evil in the sight of the Lord.” The prophet Elisha, Elijah’s successor, summons a man to anoint a dif­fer­ent and chosen ruler over Israel, Jehu. His job is to destroy the ­house of Ahab and all of his descendants as punishment for Jezebel’s wielding of power and rejection of Yahweh as prophesied in 1 Kings 21:21–24. When Jehoram sees Jehu and his troops approaching the city, he asks, “Is it peace, Jehu?” Jehu responds, “What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy m ­ other Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?”11 Jehoram and Jezebel are then killed as prophesied. ­There are many ­battles, wars, takeovers, and deaths in the Bible. The strug­gle for physical, ideological, and spiritual territory is extensive. However, the gruesome narration of Jezebel’s detailed death is as impor­tant as the biblical reading of her life. Gafney notes, “Jezebel’s death narrative is without peer in the scriptures . . . ​[it] is an epic event told in four acts that take up an astonishing thirty verses:”12 “God pronounces sentence on Ahab and Jezebel to Elijah in 1 Kings 21:14–24. Ahab dies in 1 Kings 22:34–40, and the aftermath of his death is as God predicted, leaving the reader looking t­ owards Jezebel’s looming fate. An anonymous young prophet reissues the judgment on ­Jezebel and the (remaining) h­ ouse of Ahab in 2 Kings 9:4–10. And, the ­actual narration of Jezebel’s death in 2 Kings 9:30–37.”13 Jezebel puts on makeup, a formal decorated wig, and fine clothes, and awaits her death while looking out of her win­dow. The newly chosen king of Israel, Jehu, ­orders her servants to throw her out of the win­dow. Her blood splatters the walls, the h­ orses trample her underfoot, and stray dogs devour her flesh.14 Only her skull, feet, and the palms of her hands could be found for burial. The cultural and sexually charged reading of Jezebel’s last act is that of seduction; that she hoped to entice her killer into sparing her. Gafney asserts, “The emphasis on Jezebel’s womanliness is not about sex. Jezebel w ­ ill be thrown to her death by eunuchs, men on whom seduction skills would be of no avail. It is Jezebel’s own sense of herself. Jezebel is a w ­ oman, a foreign one, doubly marginalized and doubly despised. It is as a w ­ oman, culturally constructed through the artifice of beauty, that she w ­ ill go to her death. She is a queen u­ ntil the end, determined to go to her death on her own terms.”15 Jezebel lives on her terms and dies a martyr to her ­people, representing her gods, her husband, and her place as queen ­mother. Nevertheless, her majesty is lost in the deconstruction of the power, grandeur, and prestige of the royal h­ ouse. The linkage between assertive w ­ omen, ­women who wear “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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makeup, and hypersexualized immorality is what lives on. Yet when Jehu refers to Jezebel as a sorceress and a whore in 2 Kings 9:22, it is not clear that he is actually making all of ­these connections. Gafney writes, He is clearly calling her names. Jezebel does not use sex or sorcery to kill the Israelite prophets, conspire against Naboth and take his land or kill Ahaziah (if that is in fact what she has done), she uses her power and authority, like any male monarch. The authors of the Hebrew Bible typically use the charge of whoredom to indicate infidelity to the God of Israel. However, Jezebel was never in relationship with the God of Israel. She has not broken any vows. She has been faithful to her gods and to her husband. The charge of sorcery may indicate how inexplicable it was that ­Jezebel, a foreign ­woman, was the de facto monarch of Israel.16 In her essay “Jezebel Revamped” (1999), Bible scholar Tina Pippin traces the relations between the biblical text and other cultural texts, such as drama, poetry, film, and art. Pippin notes that “strange” religions and cultures w ­ ere often associated with whoring and fornication. However, when Jezebel was blamed for Ahab’s deeds in 1 Kings 21:25, both her person and her foreign status ­were problematized, meaning, “She is not one of us,” or, as Pippin writes, “She has ‘been around’—­in/from foreign territory (Tyre; Africa), and she brings danger with her. Therefore, her body must be destroyed.”17 What­ever connections intended in 2 Kings 9:22, Jezebel was effectively made over and reproduced across multiple texts in North Amer­i­ca. When one thinks of biblical Jezebel one likely imagines an evil controlling pagan ­woman and an uninhibited decorated slut all at once—­but one unequivocally fallen. The writers of the biblical text made sure Jezebel died a death that was at the same time individually, collectively, and culturally disabling and fragmenting. Pippin writes, “The codes and signifying practices governing Jezebel’s presence in a variety of texts have implications for the hermeneutics of gender and sexuality. In other words, the ‘trace’ of Jezebel is in her adorned face peering through the lattice (representing the  face of the goddess ­Asherah), with the image of her corpse as a vivid reminder of the defeat of the goddess-­centered cultures . . . ​the text of the goddess is distorted and placed in only negative terms.”18 And perhaps equally significant, the details of Jezebel’s death note the defeat of the w ­ oman who dares to claim autonomy over her own body, beliefs, desires, pre­sen­ta­tion, politics, and legacy. Natu­ral hierarchy and female 42 Chapter 2

deviance are restored, with Jezebel’s distorted body parts and absent torso and lower body serving as proof of both freakish abnormality and non­ex­is­ tent reproductive capabilities. The latter is a defining attribute of true womanhood. In death, Jezebel is neither queen ­mother nor w ­ oman. Jezebel is Other, a collection of ­things to discard. Or as Pippin posits, “Jezebel and her religion are excrement to be excreted.”19 It is impor­tant to pause and note that while Ahab died dishonorably per his culture, Jezebel, the queen ­mother and the king’s ­daughter, becomes, as Pippin articulates, dog food and then dung—­fundamentally contaminated and perpetually humiliated.20 Ahab’s death signals the prob­lems with his leadership, including its impact on his ­family. Jezebel’s death notes the prob­ lem with a certain kind of ­woman within and beyond the Bible. Though the chosen king, Jehu, is ultimately punished by God for taking “no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart: for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin,”21 it is Ahab’s rule that must be singled out and demolished. The latter happens with the death of Jezebel. Her story lives on as warning, slander, and curse. Unlike Ahab, Jezebel does not dissolve into oblivion. She thrives, appearing again and again, responding to and triggering fear and fantasy and desire and distaste over and over, d­ ying a violent death each time, reminding w ­ omen what happens when they stand outside of cultural scripts. In the con­temporary Christian context, it is not uncommon to hear a ­woman referred to as having a “Jezebel spirit.” Almost always this reference has something to do with evil, power, and sex. One would be hard-­pressed to hear the same about Ahab, though an “Ahab spirit” could mean a lot of ­things within the cultural imagination. Apparently, Jezebel still carries more cultural weight. Her ultimate infraction seems to be less so her loyalty to her deities and her husband and more her and Ahab’s refusal to yield to gender ideals, and, moreover, that Ahab appears in some instances to yield power to Jezebel. To be sure, she persecuted and executed prophets for their religious beliefs while demanding the right to maintain her own. But do not her religious commitments and acts of terror mirror ­those of Elijah? Jezebel is not the first or only person to commit horrific acts of cruelty in the name of religious devotion in the Bible. Nor is she the first or only person to maintain loyalty to the deities of her culture. Jezebel is the only ­woman to use such extraordinary power to do so while sidestepping gender ideals, however. And she is the only biblical figure to live, die, and be reborn, only to viciously die again, with such aversion. “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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This is not a case of “well, o­ thers have done it too, so . . .” That is not what I am arguing. The point is, t­here is a gendering of horror and outrage that needs attending to. And ­there is a positioning of deeds and characterizations that need critical analyzing. Storytelling is always “positioned.” While Jezebel’s writing into the text tells us something about her biblical character in terms of what she did, how the story is told tells us more about the concerns of the biblical writers. One might argue that Jezebel was the most evil and seducing figure to ever live. Someone e­ lse might hold that she was just as true to her deities as Elijah was to his. Perhaps in another context he, particularly having murdered 850 ­people, might be despised while she is praised. The Pornographic Seeing of Jezebel: A Marriage of Verbes, Africanisms, and Privations Biblical Jezebel’s mutation into racial and gendered excess is held together by the repre­sen­ta­tion of whoredom and seduction in 2 Kings 9:22 and Revelation 2:20. What is telling is that Jezebel never seeks sexual plea­sure in the text. Per what is written, she never even leaves her palace. Jezebel governs from within, setting off ire and curiosity. The reader has very l­ittle access to her. It is difficult to get to genuinely know Jezebel. The reader is left to read in in order to make sense of her presence in the story—in relation to Ahab’s life as well as the reader’s own. Ultimately Jezebel becomes a template for cultural excuses in North Amer­ic­ a, for example, vio­lence against ­women, but namely colonial and neo­co­lo­nial sexual perversions. Moreover, she is the epitomist catchall for con­temporary black ­women’s and girls’ projected surplus of identities. Loyal and disloyal, honorable and dishonorable, married and unhusbanded, feminine and masculine, made up and made over, adorned and laid bare, fertilizer and waste, selective and promiscuous—in unison. The perfect queen m ­ other, legendary, reviled, dethroned, scrapped, useful, and lionized—in harmony. It is difficult not to think about biblical Jezebel when critically engaging Brown and Bryant’s ode to hos and disloyalty. In similar fashion, they likely care as much about ­women’s religious fidelity as the biblical writers. It is the assertive and painted ­woman’s linkage to promiscuity that draws black cultural producers to jezebelian tropes and underlines Brown and Bryant’s own disquietude. It is also this linkage that some black men use to scapegoat certain hypermasculine ideals. Meaning that black ­women and girls have long stood in for the misdeeds of ­others. For example, when they say #MeToo, 44 Chapter 2

that they too have been sexually assaulted, we ask, “when, how so, and what ­were you wearing or ­doing?” We rarely turn to the abuser and say #YouToo, #NO!, or #TimesUp. Moreover, resolute decision-­making black w ­ omen and girls in charge of their own bodies, image, and power often experience rage, fragmenting, and flattening. The investment in biblical Jezebel and cultural jezebel in the Black Church denotes a marriage of “verbes,” Africanisms, and privations desperately needing critical articulation. The latter comes by way of grasping how that which is taken for granted is socially constructed and finding new ways not to reweave the emperor’s clothing but at least loosen his yoke. If one can figure out how a t­ hing is woven together, one can unravel it and e­ ither put it back together again, reproducing a vestige of the ­thing, or take ­those pieces and make a comparatively dif­fer­ent ­thing. Jezebel is a trope but also a “verbe.” Verbes (words) refer to an integration of psychoanalysis with Levi-­Straussian ideas about the interconnections between linguistics and social structures. They note how words are signs that become full with meanings over time, turning signs into sign-­vehicles,22 or words that move about with collective functionality. Verbes/words/signs turned sign-­vehicles are established in light of historical social arrangements. For example, slavery, colonization, Jim Crow, sexism, classism, and imperialism frame (not totalize) how we interpret “black” as a race and “race” as a social division. Verbes/words/signs turned sign-­vehicles inscribe individuals and collectives with preferred meanings that are negotiated, received, consented to, resisted, and/or appropriated. Meanings, then, are not innate. They are contrived—on both conscious and unconscious levels, through the consistency of signification on signs and pre­sen­ta­tions. Spillers argues that meanings are like “shadows.” They fall over the word, eventually penetrating the interstices between symbols (e.g., letters),23 and defining the functions and identities of its subject and/or object through concrete discourses. The production of cultural meanings seems innocent from the onset. However, innocence is void in a context of p­ eople and hierarchies invested in my­thol­ogy, which moves from personal idea to collective ideology, modifying how we view not only ­things but also histories, circumstances, contexts, and groups. M ­ y­thol­ogy constructs a new narrative, producing not merely a verbe but entire grammars, linking cultural significations to repre­sen­ta­tions to bodies. Power lies not in myth making or truth but in the capacity for my­thol­ ogy to become “truth” over time, rewriting meaning antecedent to myth and “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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camouflaging the work of repre­sen­ta­tional strategy24 within social structures. It lies in myth as finished product, that which goes without saying, that which is detached from critical history, social structures, structures of dominance, and sociopo­liti­cal arrangements. Racial and gender my­thol­ogy has a par­tic­ u­lar pornographic quality as well. In Seeing a Color-­Blind F ­ uture: The Paradox of Race (1997), black feminist ­legal scholar Patricia J. Williams interprets the “pornographic seeing of race” as the nearsighted unblinking focused gaze that bounds fact, fiction, and fetishization and that splits identities between “who one is and who one has to be,” making it so two chairs are always needed at the ­table: one for you and one for your blackness.25 Spillers notes this way of “seeing” as pornotroping—­“seeing” with both the eyes and the psyche.26 The eyes denote what we see. The psyche notes what we proj­ect into “seeing” in relation to self-­interpretation, therefore assigning not only meaning but difference. For example, given what is interpreted as the color black (think crayon box), one has likely never seen a black person. One has seen a person assigned blackness, and blackness represents a range of preferred social-­ cultural-­political meanings. Pornotroping, then, is a critical interpretive category for critiquing the activity of “seeing.” It calls attention to the deconstruction, analy­sis, and reencoding of subjects or phenomena in view of received knowledge, particularly that which reimagines black subjects in general and black ­women in par­tic­u­lar, in mythical and homogenized ways. I define pornotroping as the categorical radiographic seeing of black ­people in a culture of simultaneous anti- and phobic-­blackness. Antiblackness draws attention to social, structural, institutional, and interpersonal opposition ­toward, hatred for, and/or marginalizing of black diasporic p­ eople. Phobic-­blackness denotes the concomitant obsession about, fear and loathing of, and fixation on black diasporic ­people and culture. Pornotroping, then, as I deploy it, means to not only highlight how “seeing” compulsively pulls apart and rereads black flesh27 in terms of essentialist Africanist discourse and repre­sen­ta­tions, it also means to assert how this way of “looking” fanatically and excessively pierces beneath the flesh attempting to see, read, and reread black inner workings in an effort to tear them apart, appropriate, and consume them. Pornotroping as deployed ­here bears in mind how “seeing” and “looking” are mass-­mediated through a variety of gazes, including the religious, denoting pornotropia—­the pluralizing and cross-­pollinating of unreflected controlling mythical ideas through a range of media.28 It calls attention to how taken-­for-­granted inclinations t­oward certain positions, interpretations, ac46 Chapter 2

tions, and attitudes are presumed to be collectively determinant and registers how “looking” and “seeing,” though not wholly determining, invite a sense of powerlessness in terms of perception and a sense of power in terms of collective projection. And it zeros in on the work of Africanisms in the construction of mythical meanings. The pornotropic “seeing” of black ­women and girls hinges upon a merging between already existing race and gender ideologies, cultural interpretations assigned to biblical Jezebel, and the transmutation of biblical Jezebel into jezebel the black enslaved breeder w ­ oman, or, more specifically jezebel “the African.”29 In Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992) black feminist literary theorist Toni Morrison argues that the pervasive “African” in lit­er­a­ture functions as a surrogate enabler for situating whiteness in American consciousness. “The African” is made to appear aesthetically alien but also deploys an Africanist idiom that is so intentionally unintelligible and estranged that it establishes a split between speech and speechlessness and thus civilization and primitivity. The unintelligibility and estranging of “the African” reinforced black otherness while enhancing the qualities of white characters and asserting white privilege and power. Si­mul­ta­neously, white authors constructed imaginative encounters with “the African” that established difference, fear, and class relationships, enabling them and readers to see themselves as f­ ree as opposed to slaves, desirable as opposed to repulsive, power­ful as opposed to helpless, historical as opposed to historyless, innocent as opposed to damned, and a progressive fulfillment of destiny as opposed to a blind accident of evolution.30 Sharpley-­W hiting writes, “Africanism or the Africanist presence represents the abnormal in Eurocentric discourse; blacks, Africa, and blackness are ever-­changing bound­aries, pliable, makeshift moldings, always in the pro­cess of reinvention to suit Eurocentric truths.”31 Jezebel “the African,” then, notes a paralleling set of verbes, not a conflation, with each collectively conjuring the system and structure of language and repre­sen­ta­tions developed around race and gender prior to and during North American colonization. Both represent the unintelligible, the strange, the abnormal, the deviant, the primitive, the immoral, and the faithless. Each enhances whiteness with regard to racial, gender, and class difference. They are collective yet individual finished products, placed into discourse among ahistorical fictionalized themes and concepts, dispatched year a­ fter year. Jezebel “the African” describes the forceful pornotropic gaze and grammar connecting black venus to enslaved African ­women and girls forced to “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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breed for the expansion of plantation capital and to the con­temporary black diaspora. Jezebel “the African” not only articulates race, gender, l­ abor, sexual, and historical distinctions between white and nonblack ­women and black ­women and girls, but also how ­these distinctions are maintained through dogged mythological discourses on difference, mediated reinventions, imaginative encounters, and texts. Jezebel “the African” relegates black ­women’s and girls’ sexuality to the pathological and unusual, cutting them off from full personhood, and needs not proving, only disproving. This has real effects, especially as each, jezebel and “the African,” jointly, reifies in personality, overdetermining black ­women’s and girls’ place and history in the world, gaining strength and setting up power relations as they signify. But though jezebel “the African” oozes and absences sex and sex appeal, like biblical Jezebel, most every­thing is left to the imagination. The pornographic seeing of biblical Jezebel is noted in the fragmented parts we are left with, namely the eroticization of her hands and feet, as well as in what is not ­there: her body. The biblical authors urge the reader to imagine a helpless, strange, and estranged corpse in its place. That body eventually becomes the black/African female slave’s—­severed, reencoded, and “seen.” The logic goes as follows: if Jezebel is the evilest immoral seductress in the Bible, then the black/African enslaved wench, the most villainous and wanton on the plantation, must be jezebel. The black/African female slave, her foreign status, and conjunctural history are problematized at once. The grammar, repre­sen­ ta­tion, and discourse shift from idea to personhood. The collaborative jezebel “the African” calls attention to a coffer of legends, black female ste­reo­types that deny the po­liti­cal, economic, epistemological, ideological, and repre­sen­ta­tional work of contact/conquest as well as the taken-­for-­granted inter-­and intraracial work of producing an erotic Other within exotic difference. Value lies in jezebels’ ability to absorb the sins of Amer­i­ca and in allowing folk to construct new narratives devoid of critical history. Specifically, jezebel “the African” enables assault on black ­women and girls to be re­imagined as natu­ral, innocent, and justified. In the case of sexual assault, they are always “asking for it.” And in terms of physical vio­ lence, they invariably “had it coming.” Within this context, safety becomes a privilege for black ­women and girls, while sadistic assault becomes a necessary right for maintaining natu­ral order. One such ste­reo­type pivotal to the functionality of jezebel “the African” is mammy, a fat, black, asexual, supermothering, deeply religious mythical figure that “came to life” through public display and advertising. In her 48 Chapter 2

book Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (2006) womanist Christian ethicist Emilie Townes asserts that mammy enabled white men to be reread as natu­ral moral leaders of the h­ ouse­hold and therefore society, and thus redeemed ­free white men who raped black enslaved ­women and girls. Si­mul­ta­neously, mammy allowed wealthy white ­women to reconstruct their identities and day-­to-­day realities in a perfect fantasy world in which they maintained perfect homes, perfect c­ hildren, and perfect sex lives. The mass production of the mammy image on pancake boxes and a variety of other cultural sites a­ fter slavery offered related benefits. The message: black ­women are still in the nucleus of white h­ ouse­holds, holding together natu­ral class, racial, gender, and moral order—­and keeping black jezebel sluts at bay. The juxtaposition between jezebel the slut and mammy the religious holds intraracial value worth analyzing as well. While many black American Christians resist the language of mammy, they si­mul­ta­neously uphold the “virtuous ­woman” in Proverbs 31:10–31 as an exemplar of womanhood. The parallel is in no way exact. Yet the feminization of virtue in black Christian contexts produced some cross-­pollination between the Victorian ideal, respectability politics, and the historical mammy figure that cannot be ignored. Black ­women of virtue, often interchanged with the black lady trope, are every­thing jezebel sluts are supposedly not. They are expected to hold a higher moral standard and maintain beauty ideals while nurturing and carry­ing entire black communities on their backs from sunup to sundown. Of course, t­here are several distinctions to be made between mammy, the virtuous ­woman, and the black lady. However, the expectation of communal nurture deserves further examination. Repre­sen­ta­tions of mammy and the black lady make similarities seem particularly unlikely. Yet the enveloping of each in Christian virtue, communal care, and l­abor suggests some pos­si­ble overlapping, even if minute. More work is needed on the continued praise for black ­women who allegedly place loyalty to the God of Chris­tian­ity, black men, communities, churches, and families over personal needs, including sexual and other pleasures. This potentially remixed idea of mammy affords leniency with regard to notions of desirability, size, beauty ideals, and beliefs that enslaved African w ­ omen caregivers stressed more about white culture and families than their own, however. History tells us that black w ­ omen’s desirability transcends European-­ size ideals, and their love and support for black men, black families, and black communities is unparalleled. “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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Biblical and cultural jezebel ­rose up on North American plantations alongside the Black Church and black desire for full humanity. The virtuous ­woman of Proverbs 31—­who gets up at the crack of dawn to work all day in the public sphere, take care of the home, shop, sew, cook, plant, purchase property, trade goods, feed the poor, speak wisdom, and praise the Lord while following instructions and refusing idleness, complaining, and sleep, all while dressed in fine clothing, and while making sure her lamp does not go out at night—­pres­ents an opportunity for nobility and humanity that is inaccessible to the jezebel trope. Though black ­women and girls may not control pornotropic gazing, they may resist the metanarrative. The virtuous w ­ oman of Proverbs 31 is particularly significant ­because, unlike the Victorian ideal, her attributes are applicable to all w ­ omen. And though she works like an indentured servant, caring for home, community, and personal flair, the virtuous ­woman turned supermothering, deeply religious mythical figure turned black lady at least makes dignity seem attainable. It should make sense, then, that Black Church sermons often juxtapose theologies of virtue and ideologies of innate promiscuity, untrustworthiness, and immorality. The cultivation of biblical and cultural jezebel on American soil created angst around hierarchy, power, and racial, gender, and sexual pathology within black communities. The quest for black normalcy demands some sort of standard deviation. However, while jezebel “the African” allowed white folk to rewrite themselves anew, black w ­ omen and girls w ­ ere primarily left to choose between the lesser of several evils, despite potential rewards. The challenge lies in locating possibilities for divesting the discourse on black womanhood, and especially jezebel “the African,” of inter-­and intraracial value. As long as the discourse, and jezebel in par­tic­u­lar, remains essential to not only white and American identity formation but black identity and religious and cultural production as well, black ­women and girls ­will continue to endure the call and response experienced between Bryant and Brown and so many ­others, which pits so-­called hos against super nurturing virtuous ladies. Consecrating Ho Discourse in the Black Church: Black ­Women’s and Girls’ Worst Nightmare The exchange between Bryant and Brown evokes and problematizes black ­women and girls that wield power on behalf of themselves and ­others and fetishizes their sex and beauty, calling to consciousness the saying that w ­ omen are to be seen, not heard. B ­ ecause ­those heard, t­ hose acting autonomously 50 Chapter 2

and speaking their own existence, may in fact be loathed, bathed in whoredom and dishonor, and defeated. The calling forth of the collective jezebel “the African,” an allied source of many vio­lences and voy­eur­is­tic interpretations, names a specific kind of impending torture that is existential, epistemological, and ideological. This summoning means to pierce, occupy, and remake black w ­ omen and girls, at a minimum. To make it plain, Bryant and Brown’s disloyal ho is a trite sublimation for the discourse on jezebel. “The African,” or as Fanon might insert, “the black,” goes without saying. The collective signification is remixed again and again and remains on repeat. The effects, though differently experienced, persist—­steadily. Pivotal to unhinging jezebel from our collective psyche is undoing meaning. Whore/ho/promiscuous language/discourse/epistemes/ideology requires further theorizing and disentangling. Namely ­because it turns the pornotropic gaze and its preoccupations away from the one “looking” and imagines black ­women and girls, not the gazer, as sites of danger, evil, perversion, and mockery, thus framing their sexual experiences and choices as pathological and men’s (hetero)sexual experiences and choices as evidence of true masculinity. Black w ­ omen’s and girls’ sexual identities, possibilities, and experiences are made a prob­lem (­whether by force or consent), while black men and boys’ sex is made a rite of passage. For the black male preacher and black men in general, cis-­gender male-­on-­female sexual conquest becomes a right, while black female sexuality becomes a dilemma to be solved, fixed, loosed, or destroyed altogether. Or, as a twenty-­first-­century racially inclusive Freud might note, black female sexuality is something to be hidden and repressed ­unless summoned by the inclinations of a husband. Meaning that it is to be responsive, not active, and controlled, not in control. Black female sexuality is shamed into a whoredom/ho-­dom/promiscuity abyss. And as with biblical Jezebel, it is reproduced and transported between ages, speaking volumes without actually saying very much. The metanarrative on whoredom/ho-­dom/promiscuity is a sexist social construction, not a divine imperative. And it is already pres­ent, w ­ hether black female sexuality and desire are hidden or exposed. It aims to limit, regulate, and redefine black ­women’s and girls’ sexuality as threatening and impure, ironically misreading personhood as booty (pun intended) to be plundered, marketed, and disposed of, and severing persons from compassion and community. It is ­because of this that Bryant’s nod to Brown and ho discourse is especially unnerving. I note four immediate c­ auses for concern. First, Bryant’s circle of influence is significant. In addition to leading a 12,000-­member “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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congregation, in the summer of 2016, he cohosted a daytime tele­vi­sion talk show called The Preachers, and he has 257,000 (and counting) Twitter followers and 167,000 (and counting) Instagram followers. Second, the juggling Bryant does in his sermon between good and bad ­women, the perils of heteropatriarchal black families, and the precariousness of black life is symptomatic of Bryant’s style. He peppers impor­tant social issues with ubiquitous hetero-­patriarchal-­sexist attitudes. This cannot be ignored. Such wrangling could have multiple long-­standing effects. By sprinkling critiques of black social crisis with chauvinism and bigotry, it is easy to miss the latter in affirmation and cele­bration of the former. ­Additionally, by conjuring jezebel “the African” in the sermonic con/text as a surrogate enabler for situating black men and good and bad black ­women, Bryant draws upon and reproduces a destructive grammar detached from critical history and structures of dominance. In essence, good ­women are race only ­women who support the uplift of cis-­gender heteropatriarchal black families and help work tirelessly against collective black plight over and against all other oppressions, particularly t­ hose having to do with sex, gender, and sexuality. Bad ­women are disloyal to black patriarchy and thus racial pro­gress, and t­ here are consequences for that. But depending on how one defines racial pro­gress and loyalty, Brown and Bryant are equally guilty of traitorousness. Neither pro­gress nor loyalty can be defined by patriarchal ­hierarchy or slandering w ­ omen and girls. Both Brown and Bryant deploy an explicit pornotropic gaze to define black ­women. Bryant, in par­tic­ul­ar, uses his power and position to uncritically mass mediate biblical Jezebel and jezebel “the African” in his messaging, for which t­ here seems to be ­little ramification. And if anyone understands the power of the black preacher and the black sermon in black Christian w ­ omen’s lives and the jezebelian/Africanist presence in the life of the Black Church, it is Bryant. Though he is a product of its numerous triumphs, he also echoes its complications, inconsistencies, and omnipresent way of “looking” at black ­women and girls. Third, while the Black Church is undeniably an exceptional site of black jubilation, optimism, transformation, empowerment, and spiritual, psychic, and communal power, Bryant’s use of Browns’ lyr­ics calls to mind the curious history between the black male preacher,32 the black sermon, black female congregants, and pornotropia. In her essay “Moving on Down the Line: Variations on the African-­ American Sermon” (2003), Spillers argues that the black preacher holds 52 Chapter 2

a distinguished position among black Americans. Historically, the black preacher was understood as a community leader and an authority figure bestowed with the divine power and knowledge to address the h­ uman condition, including but not limited to healing the sick, teaching the unlearned, judging the wayward, parenting the parentless, loving the unlovable, and counseling the troubled. This positionality granted a significant amount of power and influence. The Black Church sermon serves as an impor­tant source of affirmation and insight where dif­fer­ent needs may be answered and selfhood, hope, and transcendent possibilities may be re­imagined and realigned. The black preacher created an ethos through the sermonic moment where subjects could actualize critical consciousness and agency and entwine their vari­ous values and beliefs to create strategies for living that articulated their own humanity, truths, identities, meanings, and needs. Yet the black sermonic moment may also be tinged with liberatory aims that make use of oppressive strategies. I conducted repre­sen­ta­tional and cultural analyses on Black Church sermons performed by both ­women and men.33 My research revealed a presence of language and imagery, particularly in con­temporary sermons, that reflected discourses on black womanhood that often swung on a pendulum between whore/ho-­dom and ladyhood/ sainthood. Of course, not all black preachers deploy pornotropic gazes when depicting black womanhood. Most maintain a critical consciousness that promotes and enables strategic re­sis­tance to existing racist and sexist epistemes and ideologies. Still, in all, the presences need further analyzing. Pornotropia in the sermonic moment invokes the gendering of sexual discourse in religious spaces. Heterosexual male congregants are rarely, if ever, chastised for their sexual histories and f­ utures from the pulpit. Additionally, black ­women preachers can be just as committed to whore/ho-­dom/ ladyhood/ sainthood theologies as men. For our purposes, the complex relationship between the black male preacher and female congregants, which may teeter along the lines of spiritual leader and/or spiritual ­father, and, occasionally, lover and/or assailant, needs naming and analyzing. Relationships between the male preacher and female congregants are framed by the role of Chris­tian­ity in black life and culture; the authority of the black male preacher in the Black Church, black families, and black communities; the significance of the black sermon in the Black Church; and, at times, indistinct bound­aries, resulting from Africanisms, broken kinships during slavery, and disoriented sexual politics. The “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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positionality of the black male preacher as “­father” and/or “­daddy” in certain Black Church contexts is of par­tic­u­lar interest. It signifies hierarchy, right/ rites, influence, association, jurisdiction, kinship, privilege, power, authority, protection, care, and responsibility, concomitantly. It also appeals to black American history and the strug­gle to create “home” through resituated articulations of chosen familial ties, identity, and community. Further, it brings to mind misplaced sexual tensions and arrangements, for example, historical incest patterns between ­fathers and ­daughters. The identification of some black male preachers as “­father” and/or “­daddy” and female congregants as “­daughter”34 establishes a power arrangement, structured in patriarchal dominance that aligns, distributes, and exercises authority in in­ter­est­ing ways. In most cases the father/daughter marker highlights an innocent spiritual bond and/or mentorship. However, in ­others, it may pres­ent an opening or “alibi” for desire, which may be ignored, indulged, denied, coerced, or consented to. It is in­ter­est­ing that Bryant’s sermon defined and distinguished between good (domestic dreamers) and bad (hos and lesbians) ­women by emphasizing their sex lives. Yet near the end of the clip he tells the congregants to turn to their neighbor and say, “­They’re ­after our d­ aughters.” Perhaps Bryant was innocently thinking of his own ­daughters, or maybe the d­ aughters of o­ thers. Perchance he meant to defy the denial of daughterhood to black ­women and girls during slavery. Nevertheless, the designation of “­daughters” in this context as opposed to “congregants,” “­sisters,” or “kinfolk” articulates hierarchy. The simultaneous emphasis on black w ­ omen’s sex life suggests pretext. And unfortunately, Bryant is not alone stylistically. Though court documents indicate Bryant has had a tryst or two with female congregants (he is not alone in that ­either), relationships between black male preachers and female congregants are likely mostly platonic. The intention ­here is in no way to overdetermine the Black Church, the black male preacher, or black men in historical ste­reo­types of sexual perversion. I am painfully aware of and sensitive to mandingo and other tropes and how they collectively and violently reencode black men in innate hypersexual metanarratives. This marking is ferocious and has led to white racist vio­lences such as castration, rape, lynching, and murder. I am also mindful how black male-­centered hypersexual tropes are mostly deployed to problematize sexual encounters between black men and white ­women. Black ­women and girls are often left out of the equation. At the same time, while white supremacist repre­sen­ta­tions of black men and boys must be called out, they do not pro54 Chapter 2

vide a pass for intraracial misnaming or perverse liaisons in black churches, black cultural production, black communities, and black families. Intraracial epistemological and ideological vio­lence in the Black Church and black popu­lar culture can be a terrifying experience and danger to black ­women and girls, leading to other vio­lences, sexual, physical, psychological, emotional, and other­wise. And although dif­fer­ent, the psychological and emotional effects of pornotropia in the sermonic moment can be puncturing, ­whether intentional or not, and w ­ hether public or private. What­ever the case, pornotropia pres­ents an ave­nue for explicit accounts of the erotic from the sacred desk (the pulpit), enabling the preacher to assume a posture of innocence while conveying certain cultural codes, verbes, grammars, and mythologies that situate black femaleness as good or bad, for example, black-­female-­as-­ virtuous-­saint or black-­female-­as-­jezebel-­w(ho)re. This too must be called out. Bryant’s nod to Brown’s song “Loyal” and ideals about ­women’s and girls’ alleged promiscuity and disloyalty evinces a pos­si­ble fetish and/or cover, which stands in for the taboo within the black Christian context, perhaps desire or maybe lapse. The simultaneous emphasis on ­women’s lasciviousness, unfaithfulness, and gender trou­ble, juxtaposed with the preacher’s supposed moral right, faithfulness, and heteropatriarchy (this is the same person that once required his congregants to respond affirmatively to his sermon points with “Preach, black man!”), conceals history (or court documents), personal inclinations, and potential misogynoir. Fourth, the moral authority of the sacred desk—­illusory, putative, or real—­should distinguish Bryant from Brown. Th ­ ere lies an ethical prob­lem on both ends as it relates to pornotropia. However, Bryant’s baptism of ho discourse in the sermonic moment is perhaps most hazardous. The discourse on jezebel (ho discourse) is a structural prob­lem, which moves about not only with mastery and devout conviction, enabling gender-­specific anti-­and phobic-­ black vio­lences but also with state, locally and communally sanctioned impunity. The cult of marking black ­women and girls writ large might be considered a weapon of mass destruction. Its collective function is that of social disruption, corruption, fragmentation, marginalization, dehumanization, and loss. However, the christening of jezebel “the African,” the con­temporary “ho,” in the Black Church validates and underwrites her ubiquity in black popu­lar culture and the ­free market and affirms her role as an expendable commodity in the cap­i­tal­ist structure. Furthermore, it reduces black w ­ omen and girls to their sexual parts, heightening vulnerabilities to a range of crimes against them. “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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The Black Church’s possession and reappropriation of this discourse is perhaps black w ­ omen’s and girls’ worst nightmare. Black w ­ omen and girls are the Black Church’s number one supporters. Many flock to the Black Church for reprieve from the sexism and racism experienced in society. But if the Black Church maintains ­these sociopo­liti­cal constructions, and, more specifically, if the preacher declares black w ­ omen and girls are disloyal hos, where ­shall they ever find freedom and safety from the social-­cultural, epistemic, and existential swords that continue to pierce their flesh? What is produced in ­these contexts is not only sexism but a ho theology, in which Bryant stands among a collection of consummate ho theologians. The latter names not (necessarily) personal sexual history but instead a collective theological gaze, disposition, and belief system regarding black ­women and girls. Ho theology is distinguishable from ho discourse, though the former is a form of discourse. Both theorize innate black female sexual difference while providing a “locus of confounded identities” and dangerous personal pronouns. Ho theology deploys Christian scriptures and convictions to collocate theologies of virtue and ideologies of inherent promiscuity in order to regulate and censure black ­women’s and girls’ identities, desires, and experiences. Si­mul­ta­neously, it characterizes God’s response to black ­women’s and girls’ sex by splitting: purported sexual perversion, on one hand, and aspirations ­toward virtue and piety, on the other, while negating histories, contexts, and accountability. The latter raises questions about the need for jezebels/ hos, ho discourses, and ho theologies. It is telling that black male-­on-­female vio­lence—­epistemic, sexual, physical, and other­wise—is often swept ­under the rug or outright denied within black churches and communities. One would think the Black Church, with its liberative aims and its predominant congregational body of black ­women and girls, would be a primary site of re­sis­tance and accountability. In “Moving on Down the Line” Spillers ponders if the Black Church, given its radical quest to address and heal the ­human condition and its pursuit of critical self-­actualization and truth, might be a space for exploring and disrupting historically assigned racial and gender meanings. It could be. If it committed to the work of undoing by aggressively, consistently, and unrelentingly maintaining a countervoice to all black diasporic oppressions. If it divested itself of racist and sexist theological imaginings and legitimations. If it seriously attended to the history of physical and sexual trauma affecting black men and ­women alike and examined how the fear of each constructs a need for not only a more rigorously ­imagined black femininity but also a 56 Chapter 2

patriarchal ideal. If it definitively dispossessed any and all po­liti­cal, rhetorical, and repre­sen­ta­tional iterations of heteronormative imperialist white supremacist cap­i­tal­ist patriarchy. If it committed to critical discourses on desire and power rather than erotophobia, repression, and closeting. If it unapologetically engaged in uncovering and healing histories of unresolved tensions and antagonisms between black ­women and men. And if it committed to loving all its p­ eople the same. U ­ ntil then, the Black Church, while an impor­tant site of promise, ­will remain a significant meeting ground of black possessions of white perversions, however restrained and fragile. Or, more specifically, it w ­ ill remain a foundry of historical and con­temporary jezebelian/ho theologies. Despite religio-­cultural force, jezebel, jezebelian discourses, and ho theologies are not collectively determinant. Still, jezebel and all her sister-­ho-­ promiscuous-­wives must go. Black ­women and girls decide for themselves what is right and wrong and what works for them and what does not. Yet they deserve to live unyoked by jezebelian projections. Unhinging jezebel necessitates examining the critical cultural gazes of t­hose attending to the ways that black ­women identify with black religion and, more specifically, the Black Church, how cultural producers deploy its meanings and profiles, how the Black Church uses cultural meanings, and how black p­ eople in general, and black w ­ omen in par­tic­u­lar, sometimes invest in the meanings derived. This sort of reading also requires a critical gaze that understands that black folk may never fully rid themselves of jezebel, as history is conjunctural. But also, while many enslaved and early twentieth-­century ­free black ­women ferociously resisted notions of inherent lubricity through respectability politics, black ­women and girls sometimes appropriate jezebelian discourse to assert power, identity, ­labor, and sexual pride, decision making and agency.35 ­Others may refer to other ­women as jezebels or hos to problematize the same.36 The work of theorizing and laying bare is imperative. However, laying bare the politics of interpretation is one t­hing. Theorizing space for shifting the social, po­liti­cal, and personal gaze away from pornotropic verbes, grammars, repre­sen­ta­tions, and privations, for transforming intraracial power dynamics and sexual politics, and for potentially divesting historical perversions, is another. The latter requires rethinking and displacing values, narratives, and positionalities. Not as rigid solution but as an opening t­oward other more collectively humanizing possibilities. Black survival and thriving depends on such movement.37 The discourse on black womanhood is platitudinous. Yet it is Amer­ic­ a that seems to need it, not the other way around. Likewise, it is the Black Church and black popu­lar culture that need jezebel, just as Brown “­T hese Hos ­A in ’ t Loyal ”  

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needs dancing girls and Bryant needs clapping ­women—to validate their place and praxis and to corroborate their heteropatriarchal bravado. And they are not alone. Ho discourse and theology are big business. Just ask Tyler Perry and T. D. Jakes, quite possibly the founding ­fathers of ho theology. Notwithstanding profitability, black ­women and girls do not need jezebel. Black humanity and thriving lies not in creating “­Others” or the calloused replay of the biblical or cultural figures’ fragmentation, suffering, or retooling but rather in their collective disorientation and dispossession. Moreover, ho discourse and theology are not just about meanings, how a person or t­ hing gets i­magined, or resisting the like. We have to look at what all ­these imaginings make ­people do and what happens to them. “Unhinging” means unearthing meaning and collective function as well as inciting dis­connection and assuaging communal trauma.

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CHAPTER 3

THEOLOGIZING JEZEBEL Womanist Cultural Criticism, a Divine Intervention

Although radical scholars question the viability of black churches and black religious attitudes, with so many black p­ eople involved in some kind of religious activity it is necessary to examine the historical evolution of their religious bonds rather than continually condemn them. —Jacqueline Bobo, Black W ­ omen as Cultural Readers

When d­ oing a critical reading of The Color Purple (1985) and ­Daughters of the Dust (1991) in Black ­Women as Cultural Readers (1995), black feminist Jacqueline Bobo argues that the merging between black religion and the Black Church in black cultural production requires a specialized critical cultural gaze. She writes, “It is impor­tant to understand how religion has been an integral part of black history, even though it is contested terrain for radical scholars. As Stuart Hall reminds us, religion has been used to maintain ideological control over many socie­ties in numerous epochs. However, research data shows that religion is very impor­tant in black ­people’s lives, with over sixty-­ five thousand black churches in the country with a collective membership of over twenty-­four million ­people.”1 Some might suggest that the easy fix to jezebel’s ubiquity is to fi­nally give the Black Church, the Christian Bible, and the black preacher their marching ­orders. Undoubtedly, many have taken this route, vowing never to step foot in a Christian church, or, more specifically, a Black Church, again. An American Religious Identification Survey released in 2009 and a Religious Landscape Study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2014 reflect an approximate 7 ­percent decrease in black adults who

identify as Christian.2 While some may have moved on to other faith traditions, ­others are unaffiliated with and quite simply “over” religion. Another course of action is to explore the bonds between the Black Church and black ­people, to note where value lies, to further examine contested terrain, and to pres­ent pos­si­ble ave­nues for more liberative experiences. If the Black Church is an integral part of black p­ eoples’ lives, and the 2014 Religious Landscape Study says it is, then it must also be an integral part of scholarship, and in par­tic­u­lar critical analyses of the lives of black ­women and girls.3 ­There already exists a brilliant and wide-­ranging critical discourse on the historical evolution of black religious bonds in the study of black religion, black theology, and womanist theology. However, the ways that black religion and the Black Church show up in black cultural production, and how the Black Church deploys racial and sexual narratives pervasive in popu­lar culture, and moreover, black popu­lar culture, pres­ents an opportunity for another kind of critical intervention. Though Bobo looks explic­itly at the operation of religion in film, cultural production includes the collective work of speech acts (talking and modes of writing and repre­sen­ta­tion) and new and old media, and creates an opening for critical reflection and analy­sis that not only examines film but also tele­vi­sion, books, images, politics, sermons, social media, and more. Cultural production notes mediated messaging, w ­ hether in the flesh, on YouTube, in print, or on the big screen. Bobo asserts that cultural production requires critical readers. She articulates the work of the cultural reader, one that moves beyond audience member to critical spectator, as a strategic intervention in the politics of interpretation. The work of the cultural reader in religion is unique in that it strategically intervenes on cultural production, to include the religious, while not only attending to how religious bonds may intervene on cultural production and vice versa but also taking religion seriously. The coalescing between the collective, jezebel “the African,” the Black Church, black w ­ omen and girls, and the mass mediation of pornotropia requires the critical gaze of womanist cultural readers. Womanist scholarship in religion occupies a decidedly rare space between academe, the Black Church, black w ­ omen, culture, and community. If the Black Church needs shaking up in terms of its epistemic, ideological, cultural, and theological gaze t­oward black w ­ omen and girls, womanist cultural criticism provides a necessary starting point. No critical discourse has taken the Black Church to task for its sexism like womanist scholars in religion have. And any discourse on jezebel must account for their readings on both the biblical figure and the 60 Chapter 3

trope, along with the moves they make in carving out critical space for black cultural criticism in theology. Womanist Hebrew Bible scholar Wil Gafney produced a thick and requisite critical reading of biblical Jezebel, providing urgent layering for interpreting her merger with the racial trope in the Black Church and black popu­lar culture. The correlations between Gafney’s reading of 1 and 2 Kings and Jamal H. Bryant and Chris Brown’s reading of “disloyal hos” provides an additional entry point for rich analyses beyond but including historical cultural discourses on race, sex, gender roles, ­labor, and femininity. Womanist scholarship in religion, specifically the works of womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas and womanist ethicist Emilie Townes, provides another opening. Each turns her critical lense ­toward culture and cultural images, producing a gateway for not solely critically reading but also responding to theological moves in the Black Church that reproduce, circulate, and maintain jezebelian ho theologies. Though Douglas and Townes do not directly critique the pornotropia of the black male preacher in their works, their interventions, with their emphases on black ­women, freedom, oppression, repre­sen­ta­tion, and religion, lend a distinctive politics of interpretation particularly insightful for engaging black churches and black churchwomen. This chapter explores what a womanist critical cultural intervention on the discourse on black womanhood might mean for black w ­ omen and the Black Church, and how t­ hese interventions might complicate cultural readings of jezebel. Womanist Cultural Criticism: A Distinctive and Necessary Critical Gaze Womanist scholarship in religion (hereafter, “womanists” or “womanism”) developed in the late 1980s in response to essentialist Christian theological claims of black liberation theologian James H. Cone and white feminist theologians such as Letty Russell, Mary Daly, and Rosemary Radford Ruether. ­These discourses—­significantly ­shaped by 1960s and 1970s civil rights, black power, and ­women’s liberation movements—­overdetermined expressions such as “black experience” and “­women’s experience,” respectively, in reductive categorical claims about race and gender in theological studies. To be sure, black liberation theology and feminist theology offered vital checkpoints within theological studies, which was chiefly white and male in content, gaze, and inquiry. Though each discourse occasioned indispensable critical disruption Theologizing Jezebel  

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within (white) theological studies, black liberation theology and feminist theology centered on black men and white ­women, respectively, totalizing “experience” along limited ontological lines and consequently paralleling sexist and racist moves previously noted in black and w ­ omen’s studies, thus excluding black ­women. Womanist scholarship in religion proceeded over a de­cade l­ater, displaying notable influences of both its black theological and black theoretical heritages, the latter of which unquestionably includes black feminism, critical race theory, and literary theory.4 As written elsewhere, Womanist scholars in religion such as Katie  G. Cannon, Jacquelyn Grant, and Delores Williams critiqued both the black liberationist and white feminist theological proj­ect for its essentialist claims on black and ­women’s experiences. The unique positionality of womanist criticism in religion lies in the synchronous urgency placed on intersectional politics, which center black w ­ omen’s experiences, and its significant position as a critical discourse between black spirituality, namely the Black Church, academia and world.5 However, Womanist thought in religion has errantly been confused with woman­ ism inaugurated by black diasporic ­women resistant of the terminology “feminist” in the late 1970s and early 80s, as identified in the works of Alice Walker (In Search of Our ­Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose), Patricia Hill Collins, (“The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought”), Clenora Hudson-­Weems (Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves), and Chik­wenye Okonjo Ogunyemi (“Womanism: The Dynamics of the Con­ temporary Black Female Novel in En­glish”). Though Walker is credited with coining the term, and womanism is sometimes used interchangeably with black feminism, womanism as a diverse yet distinctive critical gaze from womanist thought in religion, has evolved into a range of theories and movements, to include but not limited to African womanism and Africana womanism. Womanism, African womanism, Africana womanism, womanist thought in religion, and black feminism share several similarities but are ultimately dynamic and distinct.6 In White ­Women’s Christ and Black ­Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response (1989), womanist scholar Jacquelyn Grant posits the following ­after surveying black feminist lit­er­a­ture and concluding that “­these 62 Chapter 3

perspectives have not led to the resolution of tensions between Black w ­ omen and White ­Women”: “On the contrary, the pos­si­ble irreparable nature of ­these tensions is implied in [Alice] Walker’s suggestion that the experience of being a Black or a White ­woman is so dif­fer­ent that another word is required to describe the liberative efforts of Black w ­ omen. Her suggestion that the word ‘womanist’ is more appropriate for Black ­women is derived from the sense of the word as it is used in Black communities.”7 Grant continues, “Womanist theology begins with the experiences of Black w ­ omen as its point of departure. This experience includes not only Black ­women’s activities in the larger society but also in the churches and reveals that Black w ­ omen have often rejected the oppressive structure of the 8 church as well.” She argues, ­ ecause it is impor­tant to distinguish between Black and White ­women’s B experiences, it is also impor­tant to note ­these differences in theological and Christological reflection. To accent the difference between Black and White w ­ omen’s perspective in theology, I maintain that Black ­women scholars should follow Alice Walker by describing our theological activity as “womanist theology.” The term “womanist” refers to Black w ­ omen’s experiences. It accents, as Walker says, our being responsible, in charge, outrageous, courageous, and audacious enough to demand the right to think theologically and to do it in­de­pen­dently of both White and Black men and White ­women. Black ­women must do theology out of their tridimensional experience of racism/sexism/classism. To ignore any aspect of this experience is to deny the holistic and integrated real­ity of Black womanhood.9 Grant’s move to carve out special space between feminism and theology for black ­women is significant. She and other womanists, such as Cannon, Williams, Douglas, Townes, Marcia Riggs, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, and ­others,10 produced critical discourses in religion and theology that begin with black ­women as the initial point of departure; center on the operation of race, sex, and class (along with racism, sexism, and classism); underline the history and significance of and black ­women’s participation and re­sis­tance in the Black Church; and demand theological in­de­pen­dence and audaciousness while si­mul­ta­neously responding to social phenomena such as North American slavery, Jim Crow, and social movement. That is, while naming oppressions in religion and society, womanists turn an explicit eye ­toward black liberation, which seeks freedom from race, sex, gender, and class oppressions wherever they exist. Theologizing Jezebel  

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Concurrently, womanists constructed what I refer to as womanist cultural criticism in religion (hereafter, womanist cultural criticism). Womanist cultural criticism is a critical discourse that points a womanist gaze ­toward ­cultural production and myths about black womanhood and that notes the mass reproduction and promulgation of black female cultural images as a religious and theological prob­lem. Grant and o­ thers created space for engaging and examining black ­women as pivotal subjects of study, critical inquiry, writing, and teaching in religious and theological studies. Comparably, womanist cultural criticism fostered distinct space in religious and theological studies for black theological and religious scholars to become cultural readers, and for black religious ­women to become subjects of study in cultural production. Of par­tic­u­lar import are Douglas and Townes and their texts Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (1999) and Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (2006), respectively. White Power, Black Silence: Black Sexuality as Cultural Text In Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective, Douglas introduces black sexuality as a relevant and necessary topic of academic investigation in religious and theological discourse and as a pivotal text in cultural production. It is in fact the first theological text specifically on black sexuality and cultural images and thus provides a framework for exploring sex and sexual imagery in black churches. Douglas lends a critical reading of jezebel and how the image led to black sexual silence, vio­lence, and other forms of dehumani­zation. She pushes readers to refuse both the living narrative of cultural jezebel and the sadistic and fragmenting death of biblical Jezebel. Together, they tie black ­women’s bodies, sex, and reproductive abilities to unceasing notions of immorality, she posits. Ultimately, Douglas suggests restructuring normative gazing that attaches evil and wantonness to black bodies and urges the Black Church, in its quest for black humanity, to talk more openly and honestly about black sexual politics. Specifically, Douglas argues that white racism and white patriarchy, combined, created a white culture that deployed Christian dualisms that turn the (black) body and soul into diametrical oppositions meant to justify exploitive and manipulative be­hav­iors such as rape, breeding, and reencoding (e.g., jezebel).11 ­These vio­lences led to a white normative gaze that does two ­things: advances a politics of racial, cultural, and sexual difference where whiteness offers the standard, and maintains white patriarchal cultural hegemony while 64 Chapter 3

attempting to deteriorate black humanity. Both increase white power and black sexual silence concomitantly. In view of this, Douglas calls for an immediate and open discussion on black sexuality between black churches, black communities, and black religious scholars. She argues that negative cultural images, such as jezebel, sapphire, and mammy, and pejorative views of black sexuality made talking about black sexuality in black communal spaces taboo, giving rise to not only black sexual silence but an increase in hiv/aids, death, risky sexual practices, and sexual vio­lence. She turns to French phi­los­o­pher Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (1990) and proposes a “sexual discourse of re­sis­tance” that she hopes w ­ ill disentangle black sexuality from white cultural hegemony while si­mul­ta­neously fostering healthier sexual attitudes in black communities. Foucault posits that while discourse is a technology of power that produces knowledge and thus regulates social activity, it is at the same time a threat to power, rendering power fragile and undermining it as it exposes it, making it pos­si­ble to thwart it.12 Foucault’s discourse theory underpins the discourse on black womanhood pivotal to this text. Douglas’s sexual discourse of re­sis­tance is a significant influence throughout. However, it is her theory of body/soul splitting that is of par­tic­u­lar interest for reading and resisting jezebelian sexual theologies produced in religion and culture. Body/soul splitting produced a normative gaze for reading and treating black bodies and sexualities. For our purposes, it proffers a lens for reading history and thinking through how the Black Church and black communities construct their own normative gazes for interpreting black bodies and sexualities, and how such readings enable jezebel to flourish. Placing all the blame on white plantation Jesus, the Chris­tian­ity of white enslavers, and the conversion of black slaves into both a white racist Chris­tian­ity and white colonial culture, as many tend to do, is low-­hanging fruit. Such a reading invalidates the nuances of black Christians, black Chris­ tian­ity, the Black Church, jezebel, black sexual identity, black sexual agency, and cultural production, and ultimately does not hold. Critical discourses on black religion reveal North American black Chris­ tian­ity as an imaginative cross-­pollination between African religions and Western Chris­tian­ity—­a collection of knowledges and practices deployed to make sense of black life, if you w ­ ill. Many black slaves resisted the beliefs of the white owning class. Still o­ thers negotiated, appropriated, mediated, and sometimes reproduced them as well. Nevertheless, as Douglas posits, enslavers justified their participation in the barbaric plantation system by Theologizing Jezebel  

65

Christianizing the enslaved and reinterpreting them as bodies separated from their souls. The belief was that they ­were saving their souls (and therefore ­doing something supposedly good) while enslaving, violating, and brutalizing their bodies (therefore ­doing something undeniably bad). This kind of splitting was particularly significant for black enslaved w ­ omen and girls whose position and, as Douglas notes, “life situation” within slavery, specifically their forced physical and sexual l­abor, encouraged the idea that they ­were jezebels, “even as the Jezebel image served to justify the life situation [they w ­ ere] forced to endure.”13 Splitting—­drawing on fears, fascinations, and fragmented images of biblical Jezebel, jezebel the cultural trope, and Baartman—­cleared the enslavers’ conscience by dividing the body and soul in two, ostensibly caring for the latter while thingifying the former. Spillers refers to the thingification of black bodies as captive flesh.14 It is necessary to pause h­ ere and expound. Though Spillers is not a womanist scholar in religion, her discourse on captive and postcaptive flesh provides language for interpreting Douglas’s “body” as well as the work of body/soul splitting, particularly where the black body as thingified black flesh persists from the colonial state to the neo­co­lo­nial context. Spillers argues that the ­Middle Passage robbed Africans of much of what made up their subjectivity, for example, their body, cultural and familial context, and gender identity, turning differentiated African female and male subjects into undifferentiated degendered captured flesh—­­things for ­others. “Captive flesh” is a subversive expression intended to draw attention to the functionality of both psychological and physical captivity. Psychological captivity emphasizes the transporting of historical cultural ideas and images a­ fter slavery, causing what Spillers refers to as postcaptivity. “Postcaptivity” refers to the calcification, reproduction, maintenance, and projection of old texts/narratives in light of con­temporary contexts, events, and premises, all of which are enabled by pornotropia, for example, the conversion of black venus to the discourse on jezebel into ho discourse. I should mention however, postcaptivity notes the strategies of signification, projection, and repre­sen­ta­tion, not being. It is not meant to overdetermine. It is meant to name concerted efforts at projection and how such projections travel between borders, time, collectives, generations, and medias. It is this which Frantz Fanon argues ­there is no ontological re­sis­tance. That is, the proj­ect of eliminating the collective white supremacist gaze is unproductive. Production lies in complexifying and sharpening black diasporic gazing and 66 Chapter 3

changing oppressive meaning where pos­si­ble, not for white ­people but for collective black thriving and re­sis­tance. Physical captivity calls attention to literal captivity as well as captive practices such as regulation, market display, commodification, auctioning, naming, forced l­abor, torture, isolation, rape, and breeding. Though physical captivity in terms of the legalized North American physical enslavement of Africans is over, captive practices, such as pornotropia, commodification, policing, regulating, and terror, are alive and well.15 Captivity/thingification/ duality discloses how the black body—as severed/split from its soul—is “seen” and treated. It also notes how some black slaves survived vio­lences and how some black Christians make sense of consistent trauma, however. For example, it highlights the belief that the God of Chris­tian­ity ­will ultimately bring ­future justice, if not on earth then in heaven, or that the brutalization one experiences in body does not penetrate the spirit. Both are psychological tools for surviving and finding meaning in diasporic theft and plight. In this way, splitting may have both good, though temporal and relative, and bad qualities. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (2001), first published in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs, a slave, provides an insightful example ­here. Jacobs opens the text noting the Chris­tian­ity of the master class as the height of contradiction. She writes that though they taught their slaves religion, they saw them as no more than “breathing machines” valued no greater “than the cotton they plant, or the h­ orses they tend.”16 And though the master class taught the enslaved piety, religion failed to keep them from sexually violating their slaves. Si­mul­ta­neously, body/soul duality, though limited, was deployed by the slaves. It kept Jacobs from completely giving in to the slave system and giving up on life. She notes that sexual vio­lence ­toward girls often began by age twelve, producing conflict between Christian beliefs and lived experience. She writes, “The war of my life had begun; and though one of God’s most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.”17 She continues, “The slave girl is reared in licentiousness and fear. The lash and the foul talk of her master and his sons are her teachers. When she is fourteen or fifteen, her owner, or his sons, or the overseer, or perhaps all of them, begin to bribe her with pres­ents. If ­these fail to accomplish their purpose, she is whipped and starved into submission to their w ­ ill. She may have had religious princi­ ples inculcated by some pious ­mother or grand­mother . . . ​but re­sis­tance is hopeless.”18 Theologizing Jezebel  

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Yet Jacobs does resist. To forestall rape at the hands of her master she assents to a relationship with a white neighbor whom she hopes can protect her. She posits, For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure princi­ples inculcated by my grand­mother, and the good mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world. I knew what I did, and I did it with deliberate calculation. . . . ​I wanted to keep myself pure; and, u­ nder the most adverse circumstances, I tried hard to preserve my self-­respect.19 Jacobs’s internal belief system draws out the contradistinctions between black and white Christians. Furthermore, despite being born into a condition that “confuses all princi­ples of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible,” she distinguishes between the thingification, evil, brutality, and injustices of slavery and the interior princi­ples of purity, preservation, and self-­respect instilled by her grand­mother.20 However, “impossibility” notes not absolution but how such a corporeal context and condition requires an alternative set of morals and ethics. Jacobs interprets “purity” and “virtue” not in terms of chastity or cultural interpretations of femininity but in terms of self-­respect and choice, although ­under duress. Deliberately choosing an unmarried lover, who was at minimum kind and saw her as h­ uman, over rape by a married slave owner who saw her as property, gives voice to how black enslaved ­women and girls developed their own code of sexual morals and ethics and how, regardless of plantation sexual and repre­sen­ta­tional politics, they saw themselves as entitled to consent, choice, re­spect, and virtue. Jacobs eventually escapes to the North a­ fter suffering many hardships and hiding in her grand­mother’s attic for seven years. Not even her white lover could protect her from her master’s wrath. Yet it is her internal code that pushes her t­ oward freedom. Notwithstanding, the task of navigating between the Christian princi­ples of purity instilled by her grand­mother; the material realities of a perverted, immoral, and violent structure that used Christian scriptures to validate it; and sexual autonomy, recovery, and actualization as necessarily h­ uman and pivotal to the w ­ hole person was arduous. Body/soul splitting continues to underscore the Black Church’s eschatological response to trauma and redemption. Ultimately, black folk are so 68 Chapter 3

v­ iolated that the least one can do is keep the soul intact. This is not to say the black body does not ­matter. It is to say if the ultimate prize in the black Christian tradition is to get to heaven, then the state of the soul ­matters much. Saving, loving, affirming, and protecting ­whole black persons, body and soul in chorus, remains a critical proj­ect begging to happen. For example, splitting in the Black Church may also be deployed as an instrument of postcaptive projection and thingification. It enabled Bryant to split black churchwomen in two, preaching to their souls while reencoding them as hos with clear conscience. His quip about disloyal hos was not a critical reflection on personhood. It was, first, a signification on and chastisement of black w ­ omen’s bodies as objects—­fleshly ­things for o­ thers—­and, second, a theologizing of whoredom and how black w ­ omen and girls should avoid being jezebels. Splitting in this sense reflects traces of white gazing, a tool of hierarchy and signification rather than black survival. It is also this that undergirds the Black Church’s collective silence on ho theology. And it is what pushes the collective ­toward theologies of hypermoralism, aspirational or lived, over and against sexual discourses of re­sis­tance and complex discourses on ­wholeness and bodily autonomy. Douglas’s sexual discourse of re­sis­tance leads us in that direction. She is right to note the structuring of black sexual silence in structural racism, state-­ sanctioned vio­lence, patriarchy, white normative gazing, theories and images of sexual difference, and intraracial sexual vio­lence. A sexual discourse of re­ sis­tance compels us to rethink cultural texts and notions that divide the black body and black soul, misread black sexuality as a ­thing to exploit, and encourage black sexual shame and secrecy. It also, however, urges imaginings of black bodies, black life, black interiors, and black sexualities as complex, blended, sacred, and as existent outside of vio­lences, spiritual interpretations, and cultural projections. It pushes structural, institutional, and interpersonal vio­ lences harming all black life to come undone and resists the idea that black folk are inherently deviant, fragmented, thingified, or evil, or that black sex and sexuality are taboo or always already pursuant. Reagan’s Welfare Queen: Black ­Women’s ­Labor as Cultural Text Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil is the first text in womanist theological discourse to explic­itly emphasize popu­lar cultural production. In it, Townes turns to social policy and its interpretation of black ­women’s bodies, sex, and l­abor as a pivotal text in cultural production. She Theologizing Jezebel  

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argues that the mass production of ste­reo­types in popu­lar culture—­such as the welfare queen, the black matriarch, and Aunt Jemima, all of which have their roots in tropes such as mammy, jezebel, topsy, sapphire, and the tragic mulatta—­lead to specific forms of injustice and are thus a source of significant evil that cause black ­women to suffer. Townes’s specific emphasis on the welfare queen and welfare reform si­mul­ta­neously reveals how discourses on black womanhood often combine ste­reo­types such as jezebel, sapphire, and mammy, but also how racist and sexist ideology may be po­liti­cally and eco­nom­ically violent, and how Christian social ethics, such as the Protestant work ethic, which holds that hard work is linked to salvation, aids in influencing, overdetermining, exploiting, and causing what I call never-­enough-­ness among black w ­ omen. Specifically, Townes provides a complex framework for reading cultural imagery and for loosing black w ­ omen and girls from historical cultural texts that problematize their identities and value based upon ­labor. Just as l­abor distinguishes between white femininity and black femininity and white ladies and jezebels, it also distinguishes between jezebel and mammy and good and bad (evil) black ­women. Townes compels a dif­fer­ent reading of evil and urges an alternative set of ethics, necessary for unwinding black w ­ omen and girls and their sex, wombs, and reproductive abilities from American politics and the ­free market. She also encourages an additional politics for interpreting and responding to not only Bryant’s sermon but also, most importantly, the mass production, reproduction, circulation, and marketing of jezebelian/ho theologies discussed ­later in this book. Drawing on Africanist discourses, images, and grammars, Ronald Reagan reproduced the welfare queen during his presidential campaign in 1976. His welfare queen names a collective of immoral, disloyal, dishonorable, un­ husbanded, evil black w ­ omen delinquents requiring state control, captivity, and defeat. He declared, “She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve ­Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-­existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare ­under each of her names. Her tax-­free cash income is over $150,000.”21 What is in­ter­est­ ing is that while Reagan’s welfare queen is clearly mammy’s grand­child and jezebel’s artificially inseminated baby, welfare criminals had historically and overwhelmingly been white males.22 Yet his descriptor became scripture, effectively tying black ­women and girls to evil, perversion, and socioeconomic corruption. 70 Chapter 3

Townes asserts that welfare reform, grounded in the Protestant work ethic, was ­shaped through t­ hese biases and cultural images. She argues that the combination of ideology, repre­sen­ta­tion, and public policy constructed an oppressive context that nurtures the reproduction, maintenance, and circulation of myths on black womanhood. In addition to advancing the idea that black ­women are innately evil and perverted, welfare reform and the images it helps concretize further victimize large groups of black w ­ omen by placing the burden of social responsibility and the attainment of social goods for their families solely upon their shoulders. This depoliticizes economic and po­liti­cal injustices that shape black w ­ omen’s lives while si­mul­ta­neously restraining their ability to function fairly in a society that requires race and gender oppression. Townes turns to the Christian theo-ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr, author of Christ and Culture (1956) and The Responsible Self (1978), and calls for social solidarity. She argues that social solidarity, which depends on a collective of morally responsible selves who use their agency to respond to God and community through individual and collective acts of countermemory and counterhegemonic subversion, is necessary for dismantling systemic evil, for example, the production of negative female images.23 Countermemory functions as a corrective to the ste­reo­types produced through the biases of collective memory, while counterhegemony operates as the mass producer of reconfigured values and beliefs established by countermemory.24 Both advance through diverse nonnostalgic retellings of communal narratives by black communities, thus reconstituting history from multiple points of view while demolishing structural evil. Townes deploys po­liti­cal theorist Antonio Gramsci’s work on hegemony; Foucault’s theories on discourse, power, knowledge, imagination, and the fantastic; and black feminist literary theorist Toni Morrison’s work on memory and history to construct her framework for reading the “fantastic hegemonic imagination,” which holds the following in tension: (1) memory, which is selective; (2) imagination, which constructs images within the interior fantasy world in response to both conscious and unconscious desires; and (3) historical phenomenon. Townes argues that when parsed and critically examined, ­these categories reveal both the production and maintenance of myths in general and the “interior life” of public policy making that frames black femaleness as inherently bizarre and evil. She posits that mammy, jezebel, and sapphire are “conductors” of evil.25 And though meanings shift depending on the aims, needs, and fantasy life of ­those imagining, the misreading of black womanhood as innately problematized is the real evil. And evil is sin. Theologizing Jezebel  

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Townes’s analy­sis of cultural images and public policy from the vantage point of poor and working-­class black ­women, their sex lives, reproduction, and l­ abor is particularly impor­tant. One might argue that such a point of departure evokes the stories of black slave ­women and girls forced to breed. It also serves as a reminder of how the Protestant work ethic produced a cap­ i­tal­ist body that works ceaselessly for salvation. Meaning that the idea that hard work is linked to salvation takes on complex meaning for bondage and marginalized ­people whose value has historically been l­ abor driven, quantifiable by their ability to increase capital for l­ittle to no pay. As the womanist/ black feminist Christian ethicist Keri Day posits in Unfinished Business: Black ­Women, the Black Church, and the Strug­gle to Thrive in Amer­i­ca (2012), many black churchwomen are poor and working-­class. Townes’s emphasis on welfare reform encourages conversation on the politicization and class status of jezebel. The black feminist and l­ egal scholar Patricia J. Williams asserts that race in Amer­i­ca si­mul­ta­neously defines class—­because ­there is no lower class than being black. Pornotropia operates across class lines. Yet welfare reform serves as a reminder of how the pornographic seeing of black ­women and girls also has specific socioeconomic effects. It certainly incites further discourse on black poor and working-­class ­women’s sex, l­abor, and salvation, and how each seems to belong to someone ­else. Also, it compels discussion on black ­women’s l­ abor in the church. Much of the ­labor in black churches falls on the shoulders of black w ­ omen congregants. If hard work is seen as a virtue, one way that a poor or working-­class black churchwoman may attempt to shift the narrative about pathology and moral or economic failure is through her physical ­labor. And, unfortunately, church work is never done. Furthermore, hard work does not always deliver on its promises. Cultural narratives on black poverty centering on and pathologizing black ­women and girls are plentiful. The crooked line between the collective jezebel “the African,” the ho, and poor or working-­class black m ­ others calls to mind Townes’s argument about sin and evil, how both socioeconomic oppression and racist and sexist ideological projection are evil and thus sin. She posits that con­temporary repre­sen­ta­tions of historical cultural images are the result of an individualistic immoral society that intermingles myths with real­ity through a variety of means in order to capitalize on their value. This is sin. Pushed further and using the same line of thought, Townes might argue that ho discourse is sin. Extrapolated further, one could argue, then, that policing black w ­ omen’s sexual histories and decision making is also sin. Bryant 72 Chapter 3

may have avoided or even offered a critique of Brown’s lyr­ics had he interpreted ho discourse as sin, evil, immoral, or a source of suffering, or had he ­imagined the preaching moment as an opportunity for—­black collective—­ social responsibility. Sin, a social and spiritual transgression against the God of Chris­tian­ity, self, and community, within the Christian context requires reconciliation. Townes’s discourse on sin pushes us to consider what radical reconciliation among collectives of socially responsible selves in the Black Church might look like for black ­women and girls, particularly if beginning with the fundamental premise that they are already and always sacred. The parallels between the Black Church and Hip Hop culture in chapter 2 certainly could not stand. Radical reconciliation requires the Black Church to align its ethical and moral imagination with the narrative of Jesus’s life. And if Jesus is the ethical and moral barometer in the Black Church, jezebelian and ho discourse seem antithetical to the liberative work he does in the Gospels. In fact, when faced with the opportunity to problematize ­women’s sexual lives, Jesus takes another route, pointing to other lessons that transcend sex and gender.26 He never refers to them as whores or jezebels.27 A more complex discussion on sexual ethics in the Black Church is needed. Douglas examines sexuality and the Black Church. Black Church pornotropia notes a need for further discourse on sexuality in the Black Church. The latter might foreground choice, consent, plea­sure, and safety as opposed to promiscuity. And it may also distinguish between personal choice and communal code, delineating between where the community has a say (sexual vio­lence) and where it does not (sex between consenting adults). This is not a push for a libidinous free-­for-­all. Neither does it mean to suggest a strict binary between the personal and the communal. Nor does it mean to ignore bound­aries set by individual commitments such as committed relationships, marriages, and partnerships. Again, more work is needed ­here. Nevertheless, Douglas and Townes get us started. Womanist Cultural Criticism: Critiquing the Critique, Searching for Ugly Womanist cultural criticism provides what some might call a divine intervention. Douglas and Townes read culture, offering theo-­ethical frameworks constructive for theorizing and raising critical inquiries of jezebelian theologies in the Black Church. Si­mul­ta­neously, they produce additional layers of Theologizing Jezebel  

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meaning about black w ­ omen’s experiences and cultural images that require a more critical gaze. While t­ here are several distinctions between Douglas’s and Townes’s texts, this reading attends to the significant points where they overlap. I note four challenges in womanist thought in religion and womanist cultural criticism in general, and in Douglas’s and Townes’s texts specifically, that limit con­temporary critical cultural readings of jezebel, jezebelian discourse and theologies, and black sexual politics pervasive in the Black Church and black popu­lar culture. First, the internal logic of Douglas’s and Townes’s texts divulges a specific focus on the work of white ideological bias. Both posit that black female cultural repre­sen­ta­tions are informed, produced, maintained, and disseminated by white supremacist hegemonic biases that frame black womanhood within an economy of sexual difference that is difficult to escape. Douglas interprets this production as characteristic of whiteness and white culture, and as the “root” of black silence on black sexual ­matters. Second, and relatedly, while Douglas’s and Townes’s analyses are useful for critiquing black religio-­cultural production, they resist explic­itly critiquing or naming it as an additional site of evil as it relates to the reproduction, maintenance, and projection of cultural images such as jezebel, sapphire, and mammy. Douglas holds that cultural images are reproduced in black cultural contexts only insofar as black culture has been influenced by white cultural hegemony.28 Thus while black cultural producers appropriate black cultural images, the “root” of the prob­lem lies with white supremacy. Townes hints at black participation in the appropriation and production of cultural meanings in her discourse on hegemony. However, she and Douglas ultimately contend that black participation is realized only insofar as it is suffused by white ideological bias. Indubitably, white supremacist ideological bias is a decisive source of antiblack marginalization, evil, and vio­lence with influences needing undoing. The politics of difference advanced by the heteronormative imperialist white supremacist cap­i­tal­ist patriarchal gaze is real, significantly influential, and may lead to vio­lence. The intent of such bias is partisan and vile. It means to overdetermine and fix meanings and regulate bodies through discourses, systems of repre­sen­ta­tion, and structures of oppression. It functions without respite and it demands ceaseless response. However, Stuart Hall argues that while ideology claims to represent real­ity, what it ­really represents is “the ways we live and experience real­ity . . . ​[where we] strug­gle to define the systems of repre­sen­ta­tion through which . . . ​we live the ‘imaginary’ relations between ourselves and our real conditions of 74 Chapter 3

existence.”29 Thusly, notwithstanding force, “we are never a tabula rasa seduced into a ­simple ideological structure. The ideological field is always marked by contradictions and strug­gles.”30 Meaning “is always caught in the network of the chains of signification.”31 It is forceful but never fixed. To this end, the idea that black participation in cultural production and meaning making is realized only insofar as it is suffused by white ideological bias denotes social and cultural domination (both willful and unwillful)—­what ideology may do to us. For example, it categorically turns white p­ eople into racist sexist bigots while forcing black p­ eople into a permanent stance of oppression, re­sis­tance, and survival. This suggests false consciousness; that rational subjects may be so completely overdetermined by white supremacist ideology that they are incapable of acting critically and consciously on their own behalf. Ideological criticism as a tool of false consciousness and for totalizing experience and repre­sen­ta­tions can be circular and binding. In this context, it places black ­women and girls in constant misery, where the only way to escape is by dismantling the object of criticism: white supremacist ideology. That is not to say that criticism, re­sis­ tance, and protest are futile. It is to say that dismantling the mass-­mediated force of white supremacist ideology is an overwhelming and ongoing task, and that any sort of dismantlement requires also paying critical attention to how it may be negotiated. An alternative to ideological criticism is to consider how ideology forcefully constructs meanings that are produced, circulated, resisted, negotiated, appropriated, maintained, and realigned by vari­ous producers. The latter reading notes that although subjects are situated within ideological structures and while dominant ideologies may influence ideas and mobilize social relations, rational subjects who experience life both apart from and within a variety of interconnecting ideologies, negotiate and interpret them in light of experience, which is par­tic­u­lar and nuanced, notwithstanding force. This is the work I set out to do with “white perversions” (ideological bias and practices) and “black possessions” in the previous chapter. “Black possessions” considers how white supremacist biases and sexual politics are forceful yet negotiated in black communities and critical consciousnesses. I hold that this negotiation is contextual and value based. For example, ho discourse and theology maintain value in the Black Church not b­ ecause the Black Church is so overdetermined by white ideological bias and sexual politics but ­because ho discourse and theology have value within that context. Generally, ho discourse serves as a significant tool Theologizing Jezebel  

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for explaining away white racist discourses on alleged black sexual deviance. However, within the Black Church, black collectives, and black popu­lar culture, it may also serve to justify or disregard intraracial black sexual misrepre­ sen­ta­tion, conflict, assault, abandonment, antagonism, and vio­lence. Oddly, ho discourse and theology may also provide a pseudo moral line. The latter notes a socially constructed communally appropriated dividing line between good and evil and right and wrong, which constructs bound­aries and regiments bodies. For example, reimagining blackness as sacred and good as a ­counter to historical metanarratives equating blackness to sin, immorality, and evil32 not only locates blackness on the side of virtue but in some contexts, requires subjects to perform specific habits of virtue as outlined and regulated by the community. Reimagining blackness is not the prob­lem. The ways in which such imaginings discipline and problematize certain bodies over and against o­ thers, despite history, is. ­There is value in ho discourse and theology ­because it enables folk to look away from plantation sexual politics, black reappropriation of t­ hose politics, and white racist discourses on black sexual deviance, and it distinguishes between black men and w ­ omen, and, more specifically, bad and good or immoral and respectable black w ­ omen and girls through discourses on hos and ladies. The latter problematizes not history, racism, sexism, repre­sen­ta­tion, discourse, conflict, assault, abandonment, or vio­lence but rather personhood and perceived notions of innate deviance. Consequentially, ho discourse and theology provide a cover for white and intraracial vio­lence. It allows the signifier and the properly regimented body access to the moral line. Likewise, jezebelian discourse provided white rapists a cover and access to the moral line during slavery. Ho discourse functions similarly within black communal collectives and popu­lar culture. In addition to establishing bravado, it constructs good/bad, moral/immoral binaries. Interrogating jezebel and ho discourse and theology means destabilizing both the habits of language and t­ hese values in black spaces. As long as black ladyhood remains pivotal to the black “nuclear” ­family, and the black “nuclear” f­ amily a symbol of black normalcy, virtue, morality, and racial pro­ gress; and as long as black ladyhood remains the height of acceptable black femininity and sexuality; and, fi­nally, as long as ­these constructs are essential to the Black Church and differentiating between good and bad black p­ eople, ho discourse and theology ­will maintain value. And black ­women and girls ­will remain patsies for collective cultural perversions. ­There is value in maintaining the scapegoat. Removing values forces other kinds of articulations. 76 Chapter 3

Imagine, if you ­will, Brown not needing clingy dancing ­women to make him feel w ­ hole, or Bryant not needing black whipping girls to make sense of black male oppression. Ideological criticism does not allow for this kind of reading, where value may influence choosing one meaning or descriptor over another. Meaning making happens in context. It is not fixed by context. The third challenge in womanist thought is that Douglas and Townes do not make room for ugly readings.33 Exploring how ideology may be negotiated forges a discussion on how repre­sen­ta­tions such as jezebel may be projected in black cultural production as a source of evil and oppression but reappropriated by black w ­ omen and girls as a source of survival, self-­ empowerment, plea­sure, and meaning, notwithstanding how injurious or troubling it may be to some. Ugly readings are not black-­and-­white. They force the cultural reader to walk a crooked line. For example, I have argued that jezebel and other tropes must go. The challenge is in unwinding racist and sexist pornotropic projections from complex identity. As Townes argues about mammy’s transition into the welfare queen, cultural meanings fluctuate and evolve alongside the historical subject and may be read and appropriated differently. However, cultural meanings evolve throughout the entire social body, not just among white racists. And they are sometimes re­imagined and possessed by black ­people. Still, t­here are distinctions to be made. It is one ­thing for former President Reagan to deploy white ideological bias as a means for po­liti­cal currency over and against black w ­ omen, thus definitively affecting black thriving through social policy. This is racist and sexist pornotropic projection. It is another t­ hing for a black ­woman or girl to find power, substance, and fluidity in expressions that may be read alongside of jezebel, sapphire, mammy,34 angry black ­woman, ho, or bitch tropes. This notes complex self-­articulation. Similarly, it is one t­ hing for Bryant or Brown to frame black womanhood in promiscuity as a way of problematizing black ­women’s sexual agency. It is another for black w ­ omen and girls to locate freedom and plea­sure in their erotic life and frame that energy in “hoeism” (Zola). What I am pushing for is multifold: consistent critique of historical racist and sexist metanarratives projected onto ­others (how individuals or collectives interpret ­others), a complex reading of identity that holds space for individual appropriation and articulation of metanarratives (how one interprets self), and a complex reading of identity and experience outside of metanarratives. This is not to suggest that the discourse on black womanhood or jezebel has redeeming qualities.35 It is to keep in mind how the discourse on black Theologizing Jezebel  

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womanhood is historically grounded in misreading black ­women and girls as inherently problemed thus enabling vio­lence, while also attending to nuance. It is to take seriously how meanings that feel black-­and-­white may shift into gray space. And it is to recall how shifting is contextual. While the early twentieth ­century notes staunch respectability politics, it, along with our con­temporary context, also articulates play. Making space in our analyses for contending with play does not mean ignoring the force of postcaptive projection or how projected ideologies may be fragmenting or tools of postcaptive survival. Tropes such as jezebel, sapphire, and mammy are ideological descriptors used to categorize, problematize, and reimagine arrangements, events, and be­hav­iors. They also get screened in at times when other language cannot be found or when language is deemed insufficient. Howsoever they are deployed, they are incapable of grasping the totality of black ­women’s and girls’ identities, needs, desires, and experiences. Nevertheless, the po­liti­cal work of ideology, or, more specifically, tropes like “jezebel” and “ho,” and their ability to cause harm, as Townes and Douglas have argued, cannot be ignored. The potential for and intention of harm is what Townes articulates as sin. Sin discourse is significant h­ ere as it has value in the Black Church. I note that Townes’s discourse on sin inevitably includes ho discourse ­because ho discourse is an extension of jezebelian discourse and images. As logic goes, the insertion of “sin” might extend to t­ hose deploying ho discourse to self-­define. I hold that it does not. Ho discourse as a harmful ideological projection (Reagan, Bryant, Brown) and ho discourse as a personal reflection (Zola) must be held in tension, and the politics of appropriation and interpretation, audience, force, context, intentionality, effects, and potential to cause individual or collective injury must be taken into account. This calls to mind Erin Aubrey Kaplan’s article “First Lady Got Back” and Rev. Dr. Jasmin Sculark sermonic articulation, “He picked a ho by the name of Rahab . . . ​so ­he’ll pick you too!” at the “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” conference, mentioned previously. Both may be read as some form of projection and/or cele­bration. However, while Kaplan locates her reading of Obama’s body over and against problematic racist and sexist standards of beauty that harm black ­women and girls, Sculark locates hers in “hos” “getting chose” to an audience of black ­women historically located in sexual pathology. She problematizes sex work and differentiates between ­women in order to celebrate them without ever offering a critique of how heteronormative imperialist white supremacist cap­i­tal­ist patriarchal socie­ties devalue w ­ omen and girls and demand a constant flow of sex workers, or how the sex trade, prior 78 Chapter 3

to its professionalization, industrialization, and commerciali­zation, historically defined sexual relations between the ­free and enslaved. Sooner, rather than l­ater, black folk w ­ ill need to imagine and breathe life into new language and tools for reading experience. That is, jezebel and ho discourse and theology still need unhinging. Not ­because black ­women like Zola who self-­define as hos are bad or that their appropriations might fall ­under what Townes refers to as sin, but b­ ecause she and o­ thers deserve better language for articulating sexual power, agency, identity, and plea­sure. ­Because overdetermining ­others need a more principled way of claiming their insecurities and fears, fascinations and fantasies, about black ­women’s bodies, sex life, and identities—­w ithout projecting them onto others. And ­because black folk need a moral line based on the liberative values and needs of entire communities. Fi­nally, the fourth challenge in womanist thought in religion, and thus in womanist cultural criticism categorically, is that it locates black w ­ omen’s experiences in suffering, re­sis­tance, and survival. Womanist theologian Delores S. Williams captures this idea in ­Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-­Talk (1993) when she writes about black ­women’s experience being grounded in the “wilderness,” where they strug­gle, resist, and survive, “making a way out of no way.”36 This framework for reading black ­women’s experiences has liberatory aims, however it makes oppression categorically characteristic of black w ­ omen’s experience and white supremacist ideology ­unequivocally descriptive of black w ­ omen’s oppression. Oppression and trauma, then, get mistaken for “being,” collapsing multipositionality, ­negotiations, and particularities, which shape experiences, for example, identities, contexts, ideas, desires, and needs. This leaves ­little room for ­transcendence, differences, intraracial vio­lence, and critical interests, such as the right to self-­define and find meaning on the spectrum between and beyond suffering, re­sis­tance, survival, and thriving. The question is not if oppression and trauma are real and/or experienced or if cultural narratives may be oppressive, traumatic, or violent. The challenge lies in the ways oppression and trauma may be overdetermining of experience and cultural texts, on one hand, and how experience and cultural texts may be intellectualized to screen out the messy, the gray, and the ugly, on the other. Black w ­ omen and girls navigate traumatic and oppressive constructs. However, they also move about beyond them. But this movement cannot be categorically defined by re­sis­tance and survival. What is needed is more complex readings of black w ­ omen’s and girls’ encounters and how Theologizing Jezebel  

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they make sense of them as well as how t­ hose moments shape how they may make sense of or read cultural texts. This kind of reading includes a simultaneous discourse on not only multipositionality but complicity and plea­sure as well. Black ­women and girls encounter myriad and sometimes contradicting experiences. Yet it is the continued manifestation of vio­lence and the threat of vio­lence against black ­women and girls through a wide range of structural, institutional, interpersonal, physical, repre­sen­ta­tional, epistemic, and ideological forces that makes this kind of oppression/trauma–­resistance/survival discourse appealing. Nevertheless, the hermeneutic demand for strategic essentializing is counterproductive and insufficient. It offers a straight path on a crooked road, muting the sometimes ugly nature of nuance, complexity, and complicity. What of black ­women and girls who find joy, plea­sure, and power in #BlackGirlMagic while navigating thoughts of suicide, or t­ hose like Harriet Jacobs, who found joy in her ­children’s freedom while confined to her grand­mother’s attic and who chose a white male sexual partner not for love or even plea­sure but as a liberative act, or t­ hose like Zola whose sexual plea­ sure and ­labor are defined as “hoeism,” or ­those like my college girls and I, who created liberative space while dancing to heteropatriarchal sexist texts? It is up to the cultural reader to make room for the silenced areas to speak. In the essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak writes, Reporting on, or better still, participating in, antisexist work among ­women of color or w ­ omen in class oppression in the First World or the Third World is undeniably on the agenda. We should also welcome all the information retrieval in ­these silenced areas that is taking place in anthropology, po­liti­cal science, history and sociology. Yet the assumption and construction of a consciousness or subject sustains such work and ­will, in the long run, cohere with the work of imperialist subject-constitution, mingling epistemic vio­lence with the advancement of learning and civilization. And the subaltern ­woman ­will be as mute as ever.37 The silenced areas refuse neat boxes. They highlight a plurality of ­human experiences as encountered and interpreted through situated knowledges, including yet irreducible to moments of oppression. They shine a light on the operation and power of individual and collective critical consciousness, which negotiate with, yet may exist apart from, ideological bias. They force us to rethink binaries, the functionality of the moral line, racial pro­gress, and black thriving. And most of all, they demand that we listen. 80 Chapter 3

Womanist cultural criticism responds to some silences while creating ­others. And though jezebelian texts in the Black Church markedly benefit from their critical insight, the mass mediation of and coalescing between jezebel the racial trope, Jezebel the biblical character, jezebelian ho theology, black ­women and girls, and black sexual politics require more. And to be explic­itly clear, context ­matters. It necessitates theorizing conversational space between womanists and black feminists, the Black Church and black popu­lar culture, and yes, the respectable and the ratchet.38 Womanists and black feminists offer unique critical gazes that the other needs. Moreover, both offer tools for unsettling verbes, grammars, repre­sen­ta­tions, and privations invested in reproducing and repackaging discourses on jezebel and unoriginal ideas about natu­ral hierarchy, female deviance, and phallic power. To put it simply, no one can chin check the Black Church like womanists can, and no one works messy gray space like black feminists.

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CHAPTER 4

“CHANGING THE LETTER” ­Toward a Black Feminist Study of Religion

In short, I needed a feminism brave enough to fuck with the grays. And this was not my foremother’s feminism. —Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-­Hop Feminist Breaks It Down

In his essay “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popu­lar Culture?” (2009), Stuart Hall, a Jamaican-­born British scholar and founding figure of the Birmingham Centre for Con­temporary Cultural Studies, asks the question, “What sort of moment is this?”1 Hall’s “moment” reflects a strug­gle over cultural hegemony in which interpretations of blackness ­were limited by North American history and racial politics. He argues that although strategic essentialisms in black popu­lar culture may have once been useful, particularly in making space for the black in popu­lar culture, they si­mul­ta­neously remove historical, cultural, po­liti­cal, and contextual differences, making it appear as if “the black” and “the black experience” is universal, thus reinforcing policing and racist strategies, which construct mythical bound­aries around what black is and what black ­ain’t. But if part of the work of black cultural studies is to combat alienation, provide a counter-­voice, and help defeat racism in the black diaspora, then blackness can be read as neither biologically nor epistemologically fixed. It can be predetermined by neither white supremacist bias nor black American strug­gle. Hall’s moment marks a need for new strategies. He turns to Cornel West’s essay “The New Cultural Politics of Difference”2 and deploys his genealogy of black cultural politics to interpret the moment, to posit a more fluid way

of interpreting blackness in black popu­lar culture, to open more spaces for contestation over meanings, and make room for other appropriations. The moment, Hall notes, is a postmodern moment marked by the centralization of popu­lar culture, which inevitably includes black American popu­lar culture vernacular traditions, the United States as a world power and center of global cultural production, and the decolonization of the Third World. At the same time, it marks a shift away from previous Arnoldsian ideas of culture as exclusively high culture (the best that had been thought and said) and cultural studies as a minor pursuit, ­toward heightened interests in “everyday” mass-­ mediated popu­lar cultural forms and their entwining with history, power, politics, lit­er­a­ture, language, identity, anthropology, law, science, art, and technology. Concurrently, the moment marks conjuncturalism—­a coexistence between new and old moments, worlds, histories, media, fascinations, experiences, traditions, vio­lences, voyeurisms, and obsessions with difference (cultural, sexual, racial, gender, ethnic), the vulgar, order, and deviance. In short, Hall’s moment reflects both a transnational force and centralization of black cultural production affected by old and new worlds. Concomitantly, it reveals an urgent need to redesign its consequential black cultural studies. The force and centralization of black cultural production note a manifestation of a range of reflexive, lived, and integrated signifying systems, technologies, explorations, negotiations, re­sis­tances, and activities. “Black cultural studies” denotes not only critical inquiry and theorizing but oppositionality. Black cultural production and black cultural studies work hand in hand, and both require a more dialogic strategy in defining blackness, as blackness—as a racial construct and identity—is a historical category with numerous histories and positions. Inspired by Hall’s question, this cultural reader asks, what sort of moment is this? This moment notes a continuing practice of strategic essentializing—­ political, intellectual, interpersonal, institutional, and other­wise—as a response to cultural hegemony and preoccupations with establishing racial difference and hierarchy through discourses on white civilization and black primitivity to which defining black womanhood ­under and against other racial and ethnic groups, other ­women, and black men is essential. And though previous architects of mass-­mediated storytelling on race, gender, and sexual deviance w ­ ere predominantly white/Eu­ro­pean, and though racist and sexist metanarratives populating travelogues, philosophy, art, science, theology, poetry, science, and medicine could be neatly framed in discourses on white “ Changing the Letter ”  

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supremacy and contact/conquest, the current moment reveals not only black possession of gendered racial narratives but black production and mass mediation as well. The moment discloses sustained cultural obsessions over black ­women’s and girls’ bodies, femininity, and sexual politics, and thus urges the cultural reader to also ask, who is this “­woman” in the discourse on black womanhood taking up space between good and bad, moral and immoral, purity and promiscuity, respectable and ratchet, and black ladies and hos in black American cultural vernacular traditions, namely the Black Church and black popu­lar culture but other arenas as well, informing “a thousand details, anecdotes, stories” interpersonally, locally, nationally, and transnationally? Jamal H. Bryant’s and Chris Brown’s reflexive oration on disloyalty and hos is an elegy for the absence of desired ladydom in black cultures and communities. Likewise, popu­lar cultural texts such as t­hose produced by Steve Harvey, Bishop T. D. Jakes, Tyler Perry, and ­others emphasizing the black lady typically do so over and against the jezebel/ho/promiscuous trope. While this may seem inconsequential, black religio-­cultural producers, such as Jakes and Perry specifically, are quite possibly two of the most power­ful religio-­cultural producers of the ho/lady narrative, which for them extends far beyond Sunday morning sermons, YouTube videos, or a rap song. If the moment reflects the United States as a world power and center of global cultural production, with black American popu­lar culture as a decisive point of creation and meaning making, then Jakes and Perry and their use of “everyday” media—­which coils together not only history, power, and politics but also race, gender, religion, and culture—­should be of critical interest. Both helped reinvigorate racist and sexist strategies invested in policing black ­women’s and girls’ identities and bodies, which black ­women and girls may support and/or resist. And as with Hall’s moment, this moment demands a more sufficient strategy for reading ­these texts. Ho/lady binaries are an inadequate response to jezebel and other historical vio­lences. The challenge at hand is in finding a way to let her go altogether—to definitively cut off her circulation and to unnail her from the Christian cross. To be sure, jezebel prospers in other cultural places. However, her thriving so that black ladies can live—as symbols of racial normalcy, black pro­gress, and Christian virtue—is a widespread theology in the black Christian tradition, which informs black popu­lar culture and vice versa. To this end, unhinging jezebel requires rethinking her fraternal twin: the black lady. Both necessitate new politics of interpretation. It only makes sense to turn to womanist scholars in religion for such a task. Their work on black ­women and the Black 84 Chapter 4

Church is an unrivaled asset to any study on black w ­ omen in Amer­i­ca. In fact, any study on black diasporic w ­ omen that overlooks their religion, and, more specifically, that turns a deaf ear to the significance of the Black Church to black diasporic w ­ omen and girls in Amer­i­ca, is deficient. Yet womanist peripheralization of the ugly, messy, ratchet, gray, and inconclusive not only calls to mind early efforts of the black ­middle class and the Black Church to ­counter historical racist and sexist metanarratives but subsequently represses the intricacies, complexities, and convolutedness of h­ uman history, identity, be­hav­ior, and navigation in the complicated lifeworld. Though ­counter efforts are necessary and hoped to uplift and empower black ­women and girls, womanists’ suffering heroic survivor whose steady re­sis­tance invariably makes a way out of no way, which has some overlapping with the black m ­ iddle class’s and the Black Church’s black lady, lays claim to a more sanitized oppositional narrative on race, gender, sexuality, and identity that silences other experiences.3 Moreover, this silencing ultimately leaves the ho/lady binary unimpaired and cogent. The black ­middle class’s and Black Church’s ho/lady binary meant and means to offer access to black respectability and morality, yet it possesses and reappropriates white supremacist ideology on primitivity and black sexual difference, turning so-­called hos and ladies into intraracial and intracommunal rivalries—­bodies of inherent dispute, competition, and ongoing hostility. Further, it places jezebelian-­identified ­women and girls at the feet of potential trauma. Strategic essentializing, ­whether pop cultural, religious or intellectual, or w ­ hether hos, ladies, or heroic survivalist geniuses, and w ­ hether well intentioned or not, is in­effec­tive. Its mass production requires new critical insight and strategic moves. The moment, which produces culture that shapes what and how we read, petitions us to expand our points of entry and analyses. It calls forth additional methodologies, intentional play in gray space, and greater specificity to the cultural-­historical moments that contextualize the con­temporary repre­ sen­ta­tional force of the pornotropic gaze on black w ­ omen’s and girls’ bodies. It necessitates a turn t­oward black feminism. This shift is neither exhaustive nor flawless. Nor is black feminism some kind of theoretical talisman. ­There are no magical wands. The insertion is constructive for building space for shades of gray between womanists and black feminists and for disorienting racist and sexist metanarratives seminal to mass-­mediated religio-­cultural ho/ lady binaries. Such building is premature without new lenses. Si­mul­ta­neously, new lenses are futile without the right diagnosis and prescription. In the pages to follow, black feminist theory and cultural criticism respond to some of the “ Changing the Letter ”  

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s­ ilent areas in womanist cultural criticism, eliciting a discourse on beginnings, lineages, overlappings, divergences, and shortcomings. Th ­ ese moves work to both delineate between discourses and survey what parts prove most helpful for calling to consciousness a black feminist study of religion. The significance ­here is not in merely comparing and contrasting, presenting a new theory or study, or reading a text more efficiently but in exploring how one and many may read religio-­cultural texts differently ­going forward. Like Jacquelyn Grant’s White ­Women’s Christ and Black ­Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response (1989) and Joan Morgan’s When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-­Hop Feminist Breaks It Down (1999), this turn breaks new ground by kneading, combining, and re­orienting old strategies and interpretations. Grant introduced us to womanist theology. Morgan inaugurated Hip Hop feminism. This chapter distinguishes between its theological and theoretical foremothers and constructs dialogic ground for a black feminist study of religion, which necessarily includes black feminist religious thought, an intentional and alternative space of contestation and for reading the magical intersections where black ­women and girls, religion, and culture merge. Black Feminism and Womanism: Archives, Similitudes, Departures, and Hindrances Black feminism is a critical social theory, discourse, and collective body of knowledges; po­liti­cal ideology; and social movement invested in naming, critiquing, and resisting the range of intersections where black individuals and collectives may encounter personal, interpersonal, institutional, and structural exploitation and oppression. Concomitantly, it seeks to celebrate ­those points of departure where black ­people in general, and black ­women and girls in par­tic­u­lar, may experience joy and plea­sure. It locates its roots in the creative and re­sis­tance ­labor of the likes of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells-­Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Frances E. W. Harper, late-­nineteenth-­century “washerwomen,”4 Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Nella Larsen, Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and countless ­others. Though ­these ­women did not name themselves or refer to their re­sis­tances as “black feminist,” they represent lived womanish exemplars of “first-­wave” black feminist praxis and movement. Second-­wave black feminism is marked by black diasporic feminist activism in 1960s and 1970s social movements, as well as the rise of w ­ omen’s 86 Chapter 4

studies programs and courses on North American college and university campuses, and an increase in intellectual and artistic black diasporic feminist “texts.” Second-­wavers such as the Combahee River Collective, Frances M. Beale, Angela Y. Davis, Florynce Kennedy, Toni Cade Bambara, Nikki Giovanni, Patricia Hill Collins, Beverly Guy-­Sheftall, Michele Wallace, bell hooks, Hortense Spillers, and ­others built upon first-­wave strategies of re­sis­ tance and the bedrock put in place by ­those such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and Septima Poinsette Clark by arguing that black diasporic ­women face multiple oppressions, are differently situated, and encounter dif­fer­ent kinds of experiences. Their works proffer instructive epistemological categories such as identity politics and interlocking oppressions while also brazenly confronting black ­women’s and girls’ historical-­socio-­political contexts, Amer­i­ca’s grammar book on race and gender, multiple jeopardies, the judicial system, and Amer­ic­ a’s ­labor practices. Concurrently, black feminists such as Davis, Hill Collins, Wallace, hooks, Spillers, Hazel V. Carby, Jacqueline Bobo, Valerie Smith, Wahneema H. Lubiano, Toni Morrison, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Williams, T.  Denean Sharpley-­W hiting, Gwendolyn D. Pough, and Joan Morgan produced a robust critical discourse on black ­women and black culture as an expansive and negotiated site of meaning making. I articulate this optic as black feminist cultural criticism, a combination of black feminist and black cultural studies. Black feminist cultural criticism and womanist cultural criticism are both distinct and similar. Constructing space for new contestation requires navigating ­those variances through a dialogic examination of womanist thought in religion and black feminist thought. First, both explic­itly model an epistemology that centralizes and validates sex, gender, black w ­ omen, and their histories and experiences. Second, both are concerned with the liberation and consciousness-­raising of black ­women and girls and black communities in general. Third, both are interested in how we arrive at “truth” and aim to confuse the ground upon which harmful social structures, systems, and ideas, such as sexism and white supremacy, limit black female thriving. Fourth, both find value in black aesthetics and resist the idea that oppressed ­people are less h­ uman than their oppressors. Fifth, both take interest in cultural myth as a source of meaning making. Sixth, both have under­lying concerns about the operation of power and ethics and how each guides be­hav­ior. Seventh, both argue that oppressed ­peoples are most capable of articulating their own oppressions and thus demand the right to interpret their own stories5 and emancipatory vision as “ Changing the Letter ”  

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a community as well as individuals for themselves—­apart from masculinist situated knowledges. Eighth, both conclude that North American black diasporic ­women’s historicity affects pres­ent experiences. Ninth, both hold that a credible community as defined by the collective must evaluate theologies and/or theorizations for them to function as truths. Tenth, both note justice as pivotal to liberation. Eleventh, both are invested in maintaining a critical counter-­voice. Twelfth, and relatedly, both reveal an investment in literary criticism, notably the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Anna Julia Cooper, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison. This deserves parsing, as it also notes departure. In Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics (2006), womanist theo-­ethicist Stacey Floyd-­Thomas argues that womanist methods traditionally fall ­under three rubrics: literary analy­sis, social analy­sis, or historiography. Floyd-­ Thomas posits that literary analyses are particularly impor­tant b­ ecause black ­women’s texts such as Their Eyes W ­ ere Watching God (1937), The Color Purple (1982), Beloved (1987), and o­ thers locate black w ­ omen’s experiences within the context of suffering often characterized by par­tic­u­lar experiences in the nineteenth and mid-­twentieth centuries. That is, while so­cio­log­i­cal and historical research is imperative, particularly analyses on paradigms of injustice such as racism, sexism, and classism, black ­women’s literary work speaks to the intricacies of lived experiences often absent from data sets, questionnaires, and history books. The primacy Floyd-­Thomas places on literary analyses as seminal textual sources for reading aspects of black ­women’s complex lived experience is particularly instructive, especially if we interpret “text” as being more than printed m ­ atter. A significant distinction between womanists and black feminists is their engagement with “texts,” however. Culture produces a variety of “texts” in which discursive and nondiscursive messages get constructed—to include the written, oral, visual, aural, and embodied—­and read on conscious and subconscious levels. Apart from Douglas, Townes, Floyd-­Thomas and few ­others, womanists’ accent on black ­women’s texts places prominence on written texts by black ­women as well as repre­sen­ta­tional texts produced by white culture such as black female ste­reo­types.6 Yet black ­women and girls si­mul­ta­neously live outside of texts. Though they are textualized and often texts themselves, they are living, breathing, and walking subjects with complex lives, much of which has yet to be recorded. But some of which, in the age of new media, is in fact self and other­wise recorded via film, tele­vi­sion, m ­ usic, social media, iPhones, 88 Chapter 4

cameras, laptops, and other tools for our viewing. Additionally, and as previously mentioned, repre­sen­ta­tional texts, good and bad, also thrive outside of white culture. This moment incites intentional and strategic engagement with the popu­lar and resists intellectual urges to dismiss or disengage the popu­lar sphere as irrelevant or low culture. It concedes the stuff of “everyday” as epistemological space for learning, thinking about, and questioning the world in which we live. A second and corresponding distinction is black feminist engagement with the vulgar, messy, or inconclusive. A primary tenet in womanist thought in religion is that God is on the side of the oppressed and in solidarity with the strug­gles of ­those on the underside of humanity. With this in mind, womanist scholarship discloses a theological commitment to not only showing God’s existence but also God’s nature, divinity, and omnipotence. ­There is a theo-­ethical urgency in bringing “good news” in contexts of over­determining oppression. For example, in Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (1999), religious phi­los­o­ pher and theo-­ethicist Victor Anderson argues that a common response to tragedy in womanist texts is the insertion of black w ­ omen’s heroic genius. Heroicism serves as a framework for reimagining black ­women and for interpreting God’s power. We see this culminate and compound in Grant’s inaugural text where she argues that Jesus is a black w ­ oman. She is not the first to do so. Whereas the Nation of Islam and the Five-­Percent Nation interpreted black men as Gods as opposed to evil, black feminists such as Nikki Giovanni and Ntozake Shange located the divine within black womanhood in the early 1970s. Giovanni writes the following in “Ego-­Tripping (­there may be a reason)” (1973), My son Noah built New/Ark and I stood proudly at the helm As we sailed on a soft summer day I turned myself into myself and was Jesus Men intone my loving name All praises All praises I am the one who would save.7 In the poem, Giovanni breezes between the Old and New Testament and subsequently God/dess and Jesus, locating the deity, who men worship and “ Changing the Letter ”  

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who owns the task of saving, in black w ­ omen’s bodies. Shange, in her choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1975), posits, “i found god in myself and i loved her loved her fiercely.”8 A perhaps unintended consequence of Grant’s black w ­ oman([ist] Jesus) is that black w ­ omen’s bodies become the heroic site and force for dismantling the tragic—­the one who brings “good news” and demolishes oppression—­ intimating pos­si­ble resolve rather than constructing explicit space for the ambiguous and monstrous. The crevice where Grant’s black w ­ oman, Giovanni’s beautiful ­woman, and Shange’s colored girl overlaps is in how black ­women are articulated as divine. It departs as this imagining lends itself to not only an entire discourse but certain kinds of social-­cultural l­ abor as well. Giovanni notes a deity who has created so much and is so ­great that she is trying not to trip over her own ego. Shange notes a deity of fierce and mutual exchange in the game of love in a troubled world. Each articulates black w ­ omen’s sacred and even super humanity. Yet whereas Giovanni’s deity is unconfined to this world, and Shange’s deity moves from strug­gle to fierce and collective black love, Grant’s deity ­labors on—­fighting on the side of the oppressed in womanist discourse. The latter notes Jesus’s mission in Luke 4:18 as well as black ­women’s historical presence in justice movements. But what does it mean to suggest that Luke 4:18 is si­mul­ta­neously black ­women’s mission? Does one ever get to exist beyond an oppression/trauma–resistance/survival paradigm? Such a real­ity is unsustainable and ­counters the larger historical narrative. Furthermore, such a gaze makes it difficult to explore power relations, vio­lences, appropriations, and self-­signification in intraracial black cultural production as well as the grotesqueries and complexities of life, which are unstable, complicit, and messy. Further, if Jesus is a black w ­ oman and is indeed fighting on behalf of the oppressed, then black cis and trans rape, murder, kidnapping, and sexual trafficking statistical data may suggest an impoverishment of power and/or misogynoir. What­ever the case, the latter is “bad news,” and bad news cannot be neatly packaged. It is oftentimes messy and inconclusive. The point h­ ere is not to diminish belief or interpretations of Luke 4:18. It is to complicate them. Liberative ethics and imaginings do not always translate into experience. A third distinction has to do with critical reading tools. For example, Spillers’s essay “Changing the Letter: The Yokes, The Jokes of Discourse, or, Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Reed” and ­others, including “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” “ ‘All the ­Things You Could Be by Now, If 90 Chapter 4

Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your M ­ other’: Psychoanalysis and Race,” and “Peter’s Pans: Eating in the Diaspora,” specifically emphasize reading strategies essential to black cultural criticism, such as the examination of cultural meanings through the exploration of the habits of language, discourse, repre­ sen­ta­tional strategy (the politics and moves of meaning making), encoding, and decoding. Critically reading con­temporary jezebelian texts requires analyzing what they are and where they work, but also how they work, how they survive, how they circulate, and how they get transported. A fourth and likely the most debated distinction notes why a black feminist study of religion and black feminist religious thought are necessary. Contrary to popu­lar belief, the most obvious distinction between womanists and black feminists is not a lack of focus on the religious or the spiritual but more specifically a scarcity of scholarship on the Black Church in black feminism. A circulating argument within womanist thought in religion is that “black feminists ­don’t ‘do’ religion.” This interpretation, however, limits what may be grasped as religious or spiritual and ignores how black w ­ omen’s social conditions, rights, religion, and spiritual needs have historically been bound up together. Depending on how “religion” is being defined, it could be argued that black feminists have been “­doing” religion ever since they have been speaking and writing about black ­women, love, community, spirituality, and self-­care. Yet ­there is a distinction between what is noted as first-­wave black feminism and the second wave that should be identified. For example, the writings and speeches of abolitionist and ­women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth in par­tic­u­lar display cross-­pollination between critiques of race, gender, and religion in ways that second-­wave black feminism does not. In her speech “­Woman’s Rights,” Truth exclaims, Den dat ­little man in black dar, he say ­women c­ an’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wan’t a ­woman! Whar did your Christ come from? Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a w ­ oman! Man had nothin’ to do wid Him! If de fust ­woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese ­women togedder . . . ​­ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do it, de men better let ’em.9 Second-­wave black feminist lit­er­a­ture notes a much less explicit religiosity. Notwithstanding what appears to be a decrease, a less explicit religiosity or spirituality10 in lit­er­a­ture should not be read as absence. Second-­wave black feminist activism reveals some participation in the religious ele­ments of “ Changing the Letter ”  

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1960s and 1970s social movements as well as a range of personal belief systems.11 Though not a central strand of critical inquiry, it is impor­tant to note that second-­wave black feminists such as Giovanni and Shange took up Jesus, and o­ thers such as Toni Cade Bambara, Hortense Spillers, Johnnetta B. Cole, Beverly Guy-­Sheftall, Bettye Collier-­Thomas, and Patricia Hill Collins have taken up the Black Church. And ­there are also few scholars situated in religion and theology who self-­ identify as or navigate between womanism and black feminism and do work on the Black Church, for example Traci C. West, Monica Coleman, and Keri Day. Additionally, it is noteworthy that Brittney Cooper, a third-­wave black feminist scholar outside of religion and theology, not only critically engages the Black Church but coined the term “black feminist theology,” noting the divinity of Guy-­Sheftall’s Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-­American Feminist Thought and Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought. Equally significant are emerging black w ­ omen scholars in religion and theology who are turning ­toward black feminism as a lens for “­doing” theology and engaging the Black Church, for example, Candice Benbow, a PhD student at Prince­ton Theological Seminary, who is using black feminist theology to construct a doctrine of (good) creation and sexual autonomy. Still, the bounty of black w ­ omen and girls deeply rooted within the Black Church and Black Church ideologies requires more from black feminists. Black feminist interests in black sexual politics and cultural images such as jezebel compel serious engagement with the Black Church, particularly as it largely stipulates black ­women’s and girls’ sex life through dualistic discourses on purity and promiscuity. Douglas and Hill Collins certainly begin this conversation in Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (1999) and Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (2004), respectively. Hill Collins, a black feminist sociologist, argues that black ­women and girls carry a par­tic­u­lar sexual shame due to black Americans’ sexual history and exploitation and consequential concerns about image. She asserts that this yielded “an overcompensation and assimilation of puritan ideals” in black communities, where the Black Church played a particularly significant role. To this end, ho/lady politics and theologies are not new. They are revived. What is distinct is their mass mediation in black popu­lar media. A fifth distinction is that while black feminists “do” religion, ­there is a strand of feminist thought, outside of religious and theological studies, that generally interprets or­ga­nized religion as sexist and patriarchal and thus 92 Chapter 4

worthy of dismissal. This is not a typical gaze in black feminism, but unfortunately feminists—­white, black, and other­wise—­sometimes get lumped together. Correspondingly, black feminism is often read with suspicion in black communities as it is commonly interpreted as out of touch, inaccessible, elitist, and pro–­black ­woman only, and therefore against black males, “the black ­family,” black community building, and the Black Church. ­These reservations should not be mistaken to mean that black religious ­women are impervious to, disconnected from, or inactive in feminist or womanist activism and politics, however. Nevertheless, while ­there are sects of feminism that have been historically antimale, antimotherhood, and antireligion, black feminism has long established itself as pro–­black male, profamily, procommunity, and prospirit in deed and theory. It resists sexism, patriarchy, and second-­class citizenship, not black men, boys, families, communities, or religion. And it notes all black thrivings and strug­gles as priority, linked, and intersubjective. This distinction is crucial for theorizing on the Black Church and black popu­lar culture, where a critique of jezebel or sexist theology could be mistaken as hating or as an attack on black men. Likewise, ­there is an admitted vulnerability in deploying a feminist gaze on beloved black cultural products, institutions, texts, and icons. Yet nothing within culture is too sacred for cultural critique. That is not to say that cultural critiques are strictly objective. It is to distinguish between jealousy/hating and critical analy­sis, all of which are “positioned” in light of politics, conscious and subconscious. ­There is a distinction between personal aversion and po­liti­cal ethics that must be made, however, even though our analyses may at times include both. But most times t­ hese shades of gray represent complex liberative efforts over basic loathing. One day we ­will sift through t­ hese differences. And one day we ­will deal honestly with how such a reading (hating) is gendered in the first place. The notion of hate is most often directed ­toward black w ­ omen cultural readers audacious enough to critique sexist and other­wise harmful texts. Black Feminist (Popu­lar) Cultural Criticism: On Theorizing Gray Space Black feminists largely miss the mark on making the Black Church a pivotal site of critical inquiry, yet the gray is significant space for black feminist analytical play, for example, Spillers’s work on black incest in black lit­er­a­ture, bell hooks’s essay “ ‘whose pussy is this?’ a feminist comment” (1989), and Joan Morgan’s When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-­Hop Feminist “ Changing the Letter ”  

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Breaks It Down. ­These texts give voice to some of the ­silent areas in womanist cultural criticism. Each places emphasis on both the pleasures and perils of black cultural production and relationships, and on how black w ­ omen may even find satisfaction in what hooks posits as “patriarchal texts.” However, hooks and Morgan, in par­tic­ul­ar, not only solicit play in the gray but also mark a distinctive romp in black popu­lar culture, where nuanced readings are insisted, trashing is dishonest, avoidance is unproductive, sexism is pos­si­ble, and ugly critiques are necessary. In her essay “ ‘whose pussy is this?’ a feminist comment,” a response to Spike Lee’s film She’s Gotta Have It (1986), hooks argues that it is pos­si­ble to find plea­sure in patriarchal texts. However, pleasures cannot conceal radical critique. In Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (1996), hooks posits that cultural texts such as movies make up their own culture/magic, sometimes commodifying, appropriating, and marketing limited notions of “blackness” as “truth” while also appealing to historically colonizing and essentialist racial and gender imagery. Producers pres­ent essentialist black storylines as “fictive ethnography,” turning blackness into what hooks refers to as a “new style of primitivism” and a commodity—­the packaging of black female authenticity as something to be bought and sold and thus exploited for big bucks. Even so, ­people still buy in. The layers of analyses ­here are impor­tant. Th ­ ere is the text (black movies). ­There is the audience. ­There is the producer of the text. And t­ here is the cultural reader. While hooks specifically examines movies, she is theorizing how cultural texts more generally work, what they convey (discourse), how they work on us, and how we may critique them even while appreciating them. I offer two examples h­ ere: Waiting to Exhale (1995) and Hoop Dreams (1994). When examining Waiting to Exhale, hooks posits that the desire to see black ­women on film telling their stories and the marketing of this as feminist is seductive. Yet while black ­women’s desire for love and partnership and the complexities therein should be taken seriously, a story about the ­trials and tribulations of four professional heterosexual black ­women “willing to do anything” to get and keep a man is anything but feminist. Hoop Dreams, a documentary tale about two black boys from working-­ class and poor inner-­city backgrounds desiring to play professional basketball, lures the audience through its emphasis on despair and triumph. Pushing for distinction between the story and the story under­neath the story, hooks argues that the film highlights the attainability of the American dream while at the same time ignoring the real­ity of institutionalized racism, white su94 Chapter 4

premacy, and limited interpretations of black masculinity, which make basket­ ball the only option for success, recognition, and material rewards for black boys in inner cities. To be clear, sports are not inherently bad. The culture that produces a context in which predominantly black bodies are placed on display for viewing plea­sure and sold to the highest bidding white owner is bad. Not telling this side of the story turns black life into cheap entertainment, regardless of the filmmakers’ intent. What is produced is a discourse on blackness that enables o­ thers to take voy­eur­is­tic plea­sure in observing commoditized blackness from a distance without ever having to relate to the ­people in real life. She posits that we get to enter poor black “jungles” and see how dark “­others” survive.12 As opposed to simply trashing the work for possessing tropes complicit in the marketing and consumption of black otherness, hooks urges cultural readers to think about what audiences might find compelling—­while still critically engaging it, holding black cultural producers accountable, demanding more progressive imagery, and encouraging artistic integrity. The latter is not a quest for the romantic or heroic. It is the pursuit, as Joan Morgan would argue, of keeping it real with more complex and responsible cultural texts, repre­sen­ta­tions, and meanings, and with more honest interpretive readings. This is what Morgan means when she writes about needing “a feminism brave enough to fuck with the grays” in When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost. The intent is not to shock the reader for shock’s sake h­ ere. “Fuck[ing] with the grays” is an ode to the language of her cultural text, Hip Hop, but also the need for integrity in both the creative and intellectual pro­cess. Morgan’s use of the f-­bomb, along with my use of it h­ ere, is sure to ruffle some feathers. But what is the superimposed under­lying activity of so-­called hos and jezebels? It is certainly not lovemaking or even rape. It is in­ter­est­ing how ­human activity and quotidian paralleling language may be deemed vulgar and inexcusable, while racist, sexist, and anti- and phobic-­black projections too often are not. The f-­bomb, w ­ hether verb or noun, tends to send even the most liberal into a hissy fit. Meanwhile the h(o)-­bomb and j(ezebel)-­bomb live life abundantly as if they are supposed to be ­here, as if they are unequivocal truths. Morgan’s statement means to grab our attention, the same way Hip Hop does, the same way ho discourse and theology should. It notes her own complex space as a black feminist who loves Hip Hop ­music, which she asserts at times feels like a congested lyrical battleground on chickenheads, bitches, hos, gold diggers, baby momma’s, pimps, mack d­ addy’s, niggas, and baby daddies. “ Changing the Letter ”  

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“Fuck[ing] with the grays” draws attention to the ugly messy space between black cultural production, sexism, patriarchy, black w ­ omen, and plea­sure. It shines a light on black ­women’s and girls’ collaboration with patriarchal culture, for example, their consumption of harmful texts, love for black men who so clearly betray feminist dictums, and longings for heteropatriarchal black “nuclear” families while claiming feminist in­de­pen­dence. But most of all, it means to abruptly pivot from the sea of black and white in our readings of culture. She writes, Love for us is like raw sushi, served up on sex platters from R. Kelly and Jodeci. Even our existences ­can’t be defined in the past’s s­ imple terms: ­house nigga vs. field nigga, ghetto vs. bourgie, bap vs. boho ­because our lives are usually some complicated combination of all of the above. . . . ​More than any other generation before us, we need a feminism committed to “keeping it real.” We need a voice like our m ­ usic—­one that samples and layers many voices, injects its sensibilities into the old and flips it into something new, provocative, and power­ful. And one whose occasional hy­poc­risy, contradictions, and trifeness [trifling] guarantee us at least a few trips to the terror-­dome, forcing us to fi­nally confront what we’d all rather hide from. . . . ​The keys that unlock the riches of con­temporary black female identity lie not in choosing Latifah over Lil’ Kim. . . . ​They lie at the magical intersection where ­those contrary voices meet—­the juncture where “truth” is no longer black and white but subtle, intriguing shades of gray.13 The magical intersection is not without critique, however. Morgan posits, “Yeah, sistas are hurt when we hear ­brothers calling us bitches and hos. But the real crime ­isn’t the name-­calling, it’s their failure to love us—to be our ­brothers in the way that we commit ourselves to being their sistas. But recognize: Any man who d­ oesn’t truly love himself is incapable of loving us in the healthy way we need to be loved. It’s extremely telling that men who can only refer to us as ‘bitches’ and ‘hos’ refer to themselves only as ‘niggas.’ ”14 Morgan and I diverge on “the real crime.” A study on discourse, verbes, and grammars necessarily holds that language ­matters. Yet, as Morgan suggests, culture produces complex meanings that work on, for, and against us. And perhaps more often than not, the ugly and/or messiness of culture draws us in, shedding light not on cultural distance but rather on cultural reflection and interiority. This should be cause for critical self-­reflection, not denial. It is in­ter­est­ing that Morgan notes the impulse to compare and contrast and thus choose between Queen Latifah and Lil’ Kim, with one being good 96 Chapter 4

and/or representative of the good parts of black cultural life and production, and the other landing on the opposite end. While Kim takes a more “hard core” artistic route, she concurrently invites the audience to keep it real about black ­women’s and girls’ sexual autonomy, agency, vivaciousness, contradictions, pleasures, and urgings. When Kim first came on the scene in the 1990s, she unmuted a range of silences, much like ­those who came before her, for example, blues singer Bessie Smith and soul singer Millie Jackson. It is also impor­tant to note that Kim was just twenty-­one years old when her first ­album, Hard Core, was released, and only nineteen years old when she began touring with Ju­nior M.A.F.I.A. The a­ lbum Hard Core, notable for its explicit sexual content and Kim’s brilliant hardline delivery, debuted at number three on Billboard’s “Top r&b ­Albums” and sold eighty thousand copies in its first week. Hard Core not only “fuck[s] with the grays,” it engages, quite literally, what Morgan notes in her essay “Why We Get Off: Moving ­Towards a Black Feminist Politics of Plea­sure” (2016), “an erotic that demands space be made for honest bodies that like to . . . ​fuck.”15 This, at minimum, calls us to engage black ­women’s and girls’ sexual play beyond the guidelines of religion, marriage, plantation sexual politics, and black respectability, and to consider black girls as sexual subjects. Though an admittedly difficult conversation, given imagery, discourse, and rape and molestation statistics, it is one that needs careful tending, one that explic­itly delineates between sexual subjectivity and sexualization. Kim was at least eigh­teen years old, if not younger, when she began her musical trajectory. Hard Core was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of Amer­i­ca and remains a cult classic over twenty years ­later. And not ­because it fails to resonate with black ­women’s and girls’ experiences, longings, and complexities, but ­because it does. Similarly, Latifah, though artistically distinguishable from Kim in many ways, is more complex than she is given credit for. In her song “U.N.I.T.Y.” we see her wax and wane about meanings and identity, calling attention to how each shifts based on context. She raps, Instinct leads me to another flow ­Every time I hear a ­brother call a girl a bitch or a ho Trying to make a ­sister feel low You know all of that gots to go Now every­body knows ­there’s exceptions to this rule “ Changing the Letter ”  

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Now I ­don’t be getting mad when we playing, it’s cool But ­don’t you be calling me out my name I bring wrath to ­those who disrespect me like a dame The chorus goes, U.N.I.T.Y., U.N.I.T.Y. that’s a unity (You gotta let him know) U.N.I.T.Y., Love a black ­woman from (You got to let him know) Infinity to infinity (You ­ain’t a bitch or a ho) U.N.I.T.Y., U.N.I.T.Y. that’s a unity (You gotta let him know) U.N.I.T.Y., Love a black man from (You got to let him know) Infinity to infinity (You ­ain’t a bitch or a ho) ­ ere is a thin gray line between “when we playing, it’s cool” and “But d­ on’t Th you be calling me out my name” and “Love a black man from (You got to let him know) infinity to infinity” and the opening question: “Who you calling a bitch?” and between “You a­ in’t a bitch or a ho.” This is instructive for thinking about the complicated ways black ­women and girls negotiate community, love, dis/respect, play, sexuality, and sexualization, often si­mul­ta­neously. Latifah calls to mind my college friends and I who danced freely to raunchy patriarchal texts in private, called them out in public, and, truth be told, if you ­were close enough to hear, might be heard on any given day deploying any range of “bitch,” “beotch,” “ho,” or “heaux.” The gray space, which, again, is not immune to critique, between “when we playing” and “calling me out my name” is paramount. As Morgan notes, this sort of reading makes it difficult to see Latifah and Kim as opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. It forges a reading on how black cultural texts that fail to feel like love may still draw black ­women and girls in and the complex ways they negotiate their relationships within and t­oward t­ hose texts. Still, keeping it real is not license for keeping it oppressive. It notes a distinction between play and vio­lence. And it calls on cultural readers to hold white ideological bias, black possessions of repre­sen­ta­tions, and black appropriations and self-­presentations in tension. Morgan and hooks provide a framework for reading black cultural production. However, though skillful at playing in the gray, messy, vulgar, inconclusive, and ugly; presenting nuanced methodological and reading tools that respond to pertinacious cultural shifts; deploying and critically reading a range of cultural texts while, in unison, surveying the complexities, compli­ cities, and re­sis­tances of honest bodies, which evolve alongside history, 98 Chapter 4

s­ ocial arrangements, and intricate intersubjective interiorities; and constructing theory that elucidates not only cultural difference but also that which is located in politics rather than ontology,16 black feminist cultural criticism significantly benefits from a concomitant foregrounded critical discourse on religion. Bobo argues that cultural analyses must attend to how the cultural is intricately interwoven with other aspects in the lives of the audience. Black lives are made up of many points of interest, yet Bobo specifically names black religion and the Black Church as significant sites of cultural production and meanings needing further study in black feminist and black cultural studies. In chorus, the Black Church, specifically, is ripe for ugly critique. As a foremost site of interpretation and contestation, where contrary voices meet and where intersections—­magical and not—­collide, the Black Church’s theological refrain of healing and ­wholeness, and “trifeness” and ho-­ness needs immediate attention.17 The moment requires a gaze brave enough to center on the silences and unease of gray space while also “­doing” rather than dismissing religion, and in par­tic­u­lar the Black Church. A gaze that keeps it real and “like our m ­ usic . . . ​ samples and layers many voices, injects its sensibilities into the old and flips it into something new, provocative, and power­ful.” A gaze that takes the ugly and throws it back to us. A gaze that understands that a reading of black popu­lar culture that excludes the black religious is negligent, that an examination of black ­women’s and girls’ lives and sexual politics that negates black popu­lar culture and the Black Church is reckless, and that a study on black ­women and girls, black religion, black popu­lar culture, and sexual politics that silences the ugly gray areas is ineffectual. A black feminist study of religion takes its cue from womanists and black feminists. And though black feminism is the controlling critical gaze, a black feminist study of religion notes a significant break. It prioritizes black religion, which includes the Black Church, and takes seriously the ways in which black religio-­cultural texts “make magic” in black ­women’s and girls’ lives. Changing the Letter and Loosing the Yoke: Introducing a Black Feminist Study of Religion “If you have the luxury of writing about a phenomenon and are thus situated ­toward it in a par­tic­u­lar manner, words can be manipulated in a variety of ways to tell a story that may be e­ ither liberative or oppressive.” Spillers offered ­these words in the summer of 2010 when discussing her essay “Changing the “ Changing the Letter ”  

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Letter: The Yokes, The Jokes of Discourse, or, Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Reed.” This essay is a comparative reading of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ­Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada (1976). Inspired by Ralph Ellison’s essay “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke” (1958), Spillers argues that cultural meanings, regardless of how pervasive or routinized, can be changed. Specifically, words (“letters”) can be manipulated (“changed”) to tell a story differently, ­whether liberatingly or oppressively (“yoke”). The argument is not novel. Douglas and Townes make similar moves with calls for a sexual discourse of re­sis­tance, moral responsibility, social solidarity, countermemory, and counterhegemony. The import of Spiller’s essay, however, is multifold. It articulates both a theory of reading and a strategy for telling a new story thus enabling the possibility for imagining an alternative moral order. Further, it offers strategies for destabilizing the values and habits of language, its internal signals, inferred ideologies, and encodings. In the essay Spillers critiques the discourse on slaves and its circumscription to the yokes and jokes of discursive slavery, particularly in the literary imagination. She posits that discursive slavery is necessary for explaining what happened historically as well as for interpreting the recurring manifestation of neoenslavement, often sustained through white supremacist social-­ cultural-­economic-­political practices and ideas. However, Spillers posits that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ­Uncle Tom’s Cabin reinvented slavery through a manipulation of signs (letters, words, and ideas), thus reencoding the phenomenon in a way that ultimately yielded a radically dif­fer­ent reading. For example, Stowe’s “Tom,” a sweet-­tempered, Bible-­toting “­uncle,” estranged from his own sexuality, rendered both exotic and unspeakable, robbed of complex subjectivity, and captured in a script whose outcome had already been determined, evokes Morrison’s “African” and Frantz Fanon’s “negro.” Yet the basis for Tom, Josiah Henson, was a real person whose biography was eclipsed by Stowe’s “negro.”18 Ishmael Reed’s iconoclastic satire Flight to Canada, inspired by a letter written by Martin Delaney to Frederick Douglass “complaining that Mrs. Stowe had not only ripped off Josiah Henson but some other black writers as well [and thus] demanded that she pay Henson, five thousand dollars,”19 parodies Stowe’s caricatures, exposing the human-­made character of her “slavery”20 and thus lessening the yoke of its interpretations. In addition to providing an alternative reading, Reed gives voice to Henson and o­ thers. The yokes and crucifixion in Stowe’s work become the jokes and liberation in Reed’s. The symbolic and material assassination of particularity, complexity, and inter100 Chapter 4

subjectivity in Stowe’s book are made pres­ent in Reed’s. Si­mul­ta­neously, Stowe’s interpretation of civilization and the white master class become the outrageous and perverse in Reed’s. A black feminist study of religion takes Ellison’s idea by way of Spillers and repurposes it. This critical gaze changes the letter to tell a more liberative story, proffer new critical space for interpretation and contestation, and explore alternative theories and frameworks for ­those interested in critically engaging the significant force of religion in culture, and vice versa. It is explic­itly invested in the liberation of black diasporic p­ eople, and in par­ tic­u­lar black w ­ omen and girls. It critically engages how black diasporic folk come to terms with their ultimate real­ity in the world, and how religion—as cultural force, plural, movement, motivation, articulation, inspiration, and signification—­affects their lives. This is not to appraise origins or God’s par­ tic­u­lar situatedness but to explore religion as a legitimate cultural phenomenon, to draw out its operation, meanings, hermeneutics, and prob­lems, and to examine its consequent ­human be­hav­iors affecting the black diaspora and in par­tic­u­lar black ­women and girls. As a study of ­people, signs, symbols, significations, repre­sen­ta­tions, and meanings, a black feminist study of religion challenges the production of knowledge and raises critical questions of a priori—­taken for granted—­axioms produced in religion and culture, particularly ­those vested in defining and partitioning race, sex, gender, and sexuality. And as a black feminist proj­ect, this study draws upon a collection of black w ­ oman–­centered oppositional knowledges; destabilizes the values and habits of language harmful to black w ­ omen and girls; reclaims black flesh as ­whole, autonomous, intersubjective, messy, and historical; and navigates in gray space. A black feminist study of religion is composed of multiple entry points and approaches. Significant for this study is black feminist religious thought and black feminist religio-­cultural criticism, outgrowths of womanist thought, black feminism, black cultural criticism, and religious criticism. ­These lenses understand that meaning making is strategic, po­liti­cal, human-­made, and “positioned” ­toward certain ends. Yet meanings are not always true. They extend from stocks of knowledge and experiences that are influenced by repre­ sen­ta­tion: the interpretation of one’s own constitution, which includes the way one represents and imagines oneself and the ways that one may be represented and ­imagined by ­others. Experiences and repre­sen­ta­tions are put into language, where they become cultural truths, or true per cultural beliefs. However, truths (meanings) can be changed. “Changing the letter” “ Changing the Letter ”  

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within this context means to disorient “truths” that enable oppressions—­ through caricaturing, totalizations, misrepre­sen­ta­tions, reduction, erasure, and other­wise—­and to create space for truths that allow movement ­toward ­wholeness, transparency, complexity, and flourishing. Black feminist religious thought is a system of ideas for framing, reading, and theorizing discourses on race, gender, sex, and sexuality, including the discourse on black womanhood. Its primary task is to illumine religious practices and media impor­tant to black p­ eople, and in par­tic­ul­ar black w ­ omen and girls, and to intervene on taken-­for-­granted ideas, ideologies, and repre­ sen­ta­tions. Its aim is not only to critically read religio-­cultural texts but also to provide a reading of cultural producers, make space for complex consciousness, and unwind black w ­ omen and girls from racist, sexist, classist, heterosexist, homoantagonistic, imperialist, and transantagonistic metanarratives. Black feminist religious thought contends the following: It holds that black religion is a primary text and source of meaning making in black w ­ omen’s and girls’ lives. It maintains that black w ­ omen and girls are choice-­making agents who make decisions within context. It takes seriously w ­ omen’s right to define identity, plea­sure, and pain for themselves. It understands that politics and desires are messy and that black w ­ omen and girls live beyond and sometimes contradict feminist theorizations. It also understands that beauty and plea­sure are sometimes found in what may be defined as antifeminist spaces. Regardless, it holds cultural critiques in tension with pos­si­ble plea­ sure princi­ples. It recognizes that politics that block or limit the satisfaction of goods or ends that ­humans, especially the most vulnerable, minimally require, are death dealing and unjust, and that the right to live f­ ree of structural vio­lence is a h­ uman right. Black feminist religious thought interprets white supremacy as a significant point of oppression that black ­women and girls face. It also understands intraracial and intracommunal sex- and gender-­based politics, hierarchy, and vio­lence to be as oppressive as race-­based structural biases. It acknowledges that our pres­ent society deploys a gender binary system that presumes cis-­gender heterosexuality and heteropatriarchy to be social norms. It recognizes that this ideology is operative beyond and within black social worlds, black religion, and the Black Church, and that it is this omnipresence that makes social hierarchy seem natu­ral, and therefore must be aggressively resisted. It holds that black ­women and girls are inherently valuable and exist in community with valuable ­others who identify as transgender, gender conforming, gender nonconforming, gender nonbinary, and cis-­gender. 102 Chapter 4

Black feminist religious thought centralizes and validates all black ­women’s and girls’ experiences. It understands that black cis-­gender and/or heterosexual ­women and girls cannot totalize the category “­woman” or “experience,” and that transgender w ­ omen and girls and nonbinary and nonconforming kinfolk share in the experience of naming, claiming, and making sense of womanhood, experiences, history, and repre­sen­ta­tion. It understands that the circulating discourse on black womanhood affects complex black subjectivities across sex, gender, sexuality, class, and identity lines, and that sexism, heterosexism, racism, classism, and patriarchy affect every­one, although differently. Nevertheless, it compels discourse and inquiries based on politics, critical interests, and sites of contestation, not biological designation. That is, participation in a black feminist study of religion, deployment of black feminist religious thought or religio-­cultural criticism, and/or self-­ designation as a black feminist religio-­cultural theorist (or black feminist religious theorist or black feminist theologian) aligns with politics rather than ontological essentialisms. Black feminist religio-­cultural criticism provides the theoretical moves of black feminist religious thought.21 Significantly informed by the methodological moves in black feminist theory and cultural criticism—­namely ­those that hooks makes in “ ‘whose pussy is this?’ a feminist comment,” that Morgan makes in When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, and that Spillers makes in “Changing the Letter”—­black feminist religio-­cultural criticism attends to the gray as well as the habits, properties, and strategies of language, which include repre­sen­ta­tion, while also emphasizing other values, meanings, and readings. It examines how meanings are contrived, on both conscious and subconscious levels, through the consistency of signification on signs and pre­sen­ta­tions. And it investigates how cultural meanings get manipulated, reinvented, transmitted, stabilized, and circulated again and again to inscribe individuals and collectives with preferred meanings that are sometimes dehumanizing in character. However, ­because meaning is not fixed, it exposes how discursive signs, theories, schemes, and backdrops are also inextricably linked to lived social-­cultural-­historical-­political conditions. Black feminist religio-­cultural criticism is grounded in the histories of black diasporic ­peoples. In addition to critically exploring how black ­people, and in par­tic­u­lar black w ­ omen and girls, have been placed into discourse and how this reading has been both homogenized and commodified through the work of repre­sen­ta­tion, to include but go beyond the linguistic, discursive, and visual, black feminist religio-­cultural criticism examines the politics and “ Changing the Letter ”  

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investments in ­doing this kind of work. Discourse and meanings do not simply live in our heads. They produce structures of thought, ideologies, policies, attitudes, traditions, and institutions that have consequences. They can literally lead to hurt and broken bones. The adage regarding sticks and stones is deceiving. While black feminism provides the po­liti­cal gaze for reading religion and culture, and black cultural criticism offers methodological and theoretical frameworks for interrogating interpretative moves, religious criticism notes a distinctive critical intervention. Black feminist religio-­cultural criticism is a form of black religious criticism that has an emancipatory agenda that proceeds iconoclastically. ­Because black feminist religious thought and religio-­ cultural criticism is concerned with the operation of religion in culture and its production of meanings, it may at times engage theology. Black feminist religio-­cultural criticism reads culture that happens to be religious or religiously themed (a YouTube sermon or a Tyler Perry film) and religious ideas, practices, and messaging that may have theological under­pinnings (“­These hos ­ain’t loyal” or “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed”). As articulated by religious phi­los­o­phers William  D. Hart and Victor Anderson, religious criticism is an analytical gaze with liberative aims that radically critiques social phenomena “that block the road of inquiry, enforce conformity, and subjugate w ­ hole populations through the violent passions that they produce,” for example, “dogmatism, illiberalism, scapegoating, arbitrary power, antidemo­cratic authority, and the propensity to dissemble and lie.”22 Strategies that limit advancement ­toward ­human fulfillment—­the fulfillment of categorical ends and goods necessary for maintaining a biological life; for example, safety, work, play, pay, autonomy, self-­designation, plea­sure, empowered choice, knowledge, friendship, piece of mind, integrity of conscience, spiritual meaning, movement without fear or harm, partnering without undue constrictions, and so on—­are the ultimate object of criticism. Affiliations, beliefs, faith claims, religious statements of truth, or “good news” do not legitimate the religious critic. She is justified by her critique of practices that disable ­human fulfillment. Though womanist cultural critics are cultural readers, too, their under­lying commitment is theological. Yet womanist theology and womanist cultural criticism are vital for interpreting and responding to theological moves in religio-­cultural texts. They provide a model for critiquing the Black Church’s sexual ethics while honoring black w ­ omen’s and girls’ religious bonds, and for pushing cultural readers as well as cultural producers to imagine possibil104 Chapter 4

ities for theological accountability, religious integrity, moral responsibility, and constructing more progressive religious imagery. For example, Townes’s idea of sin and evil is useful for exploring how jezebelian/ho theologies stifle black ­women’s and girls’ sexual identities and decision making while enabling a culture of sexual vio­lence. This also invites further discourse on Douglas’s notion of body/soul, particularly when thinking about black ­women’s complex sex lives and cultures of dissemblance,23 as well as modes of articulation. Both construct the groundwork for impor­tant engagements on sex, gender, and sexuality in the Black Church and for disentangling black ­women’s sex, ­labor, and wombs from black sexual politics that foreground black ­women’s and girls’ bodies as sites of sin. At the same time, black feminist religious thought and religio-­cultural criticism pushes the gaze ­toward choice, consent, satisfaction, safety, and the ugly and messy. Such a discourse may find theological re­sis­tance and begs for Morgan’s critical work on black feminist sexuality, which demands engagement with black w ­ omen’s repre­sen­ta­tion, interiority, history, and plea­sure. The latter, “the complex, messy, sticky, and even joyous negotiations of agency and desire that are irrevocably twinned with our pain,” refuses the overdetermining designation of a “damaged sexuality” and prioritizes interiority—­“the broad range of feelings, desires, yearning, (erotic and other­wise) that w ­ ere once deemed necessarily private by the ‘politics of silence.’ ”24 Though t­here is a debate around what constitutes sexual silence and speaking, Morgan’s dictate for the prioritizing, articulation, and experience of plea­sure as not only “messy, sticky, and . . . ​joyous” but a h­ uman right pushes against theories and theologies that suppress, bifurcate, shame, or erase black w ­ omen’s sexual identities, expressions, motivations, and decision making. Si­mul­ta­neously, she notes the pervasive double-­edged ­labor of cultures of sexual silence and sexual silencing as a po­liti­cal strategy. Morgan turns to black feminist Evelyn  M. Hammonds and her essay “­Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence” (1997). Hammonds posits that sexual discourses around black w ­ omen are often totalized in white/black oppositions and late-­nineteenth-­century articulations that hoped to produce a “normal” black female sexuality—as a ­counter to and protection from ste­reo­types, sexual exploitation, and vio­lence—­ through a politics of silence and hypermoralism that enabled misinterpretation, reification, and a displacement of sexual expressions and histories. Hammonds writes, “The appropriation of respectability and the denial of sexuality was, therefore, a nobler path to emphasizing that the story of black “ Changing the Letter ”  

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­ omen’s immorality was a lie.”25 She notes that such appropriations, particuw larly between historians, literary critics, and feminists, w ­ ere reductive and heteronormative. In view if this, Hammonds calls for a politics of enunciation. Morgan requires ­these politics to centralize plea­sure, agency, and desire as well as history; make room for the totality of experiences; and problematize narratives that paint black w ­ omen’s and girls’ sexuality as absence, anticipating signification, unspeakable, colonized, secretive, or unrealized. ­These stories should be told, but not at the expense of silencing, underanalyzing, or sanitizing sexual desire, autonomy, and exploration. Black feminist religious thought and religio-­cultural criticism challenge black sexual politics that deny black w ­ omen and girls the right to choice, consent, plea­sure, safety, and ­human fulfillment. Reclaiming black ­women’s and girls’ flesh as sacred and autonomous requires imagining a more responsible, accountable, and inclusive black sexual ethics. Black w ­ omen’s and girls’ interiorities are not beholden to our politics. Plea­sure is not confined to men and boys. And sexual identity can no longer remain hedged between tropes delineating between promiscuity and virtue or hos and ladies. Black feminist religious thought hopes to help push this discourse forward.26 Yet such a push ultimately requires ongoing collective differently positioned articulations, some of which may lean ­toward not only the messy and sticky but the messy and ugly as well. Still, this work, reclaiming black ­women’s and girls’ flesh and imaging a more liberative, autonomous, and inclusive black sexual politics, happens within history and context. This work requires examining and disrupting communicative signals, encodings, and ideologies in our everyday language while keeping it real (and critical) about hidden values. The latter tells us something about ourselves, while the former tells us something about the politics of enunciation, cultural repre­sen­ta­tion and production, structures of dominance, and social-­political arrangements. To be clear, all of this ­matters. It ­matters for disorienting the prevailing discourse on black womanhood, which reinvents black w ­ omen and girls through a manipulation of signs, symbols, significations, and repre­sen­ta­tions. And it ­matters for resisting the production of knowledge and pornotropic gazing in the Black Church and black popu­lar culture—­and moreover, for telling a more liberative story. While interiorities are not controlled by politics, they are informed by them. Critical consciousness develops in honest bodies that are in unison historical subjects. Black feminist religious thought and religio-­cultural criticism notes the significant influence of the Black Church in black ­women’s and girls’ lives and 106 Chapter 4

thus the ways in which repre­sen­ta­tions and interiority, or historical-­cultural-­ political-­social projection and intersubjective identification, while distinct, are less black-­and-­white and more shades of gray. Black w ­ omen and girls negotiate their identities alongside politics, faith, beliefs, histories, and encounters. Reclaiming black flesh and imagining a more liberative sexual politics compels a rereading of history and significant con­temporary texts that may influence interiors. And in this context, it requires pushing ­toward sexual ethics and plea­sure politics against a backdrop that first grounds black w ­ omen’s and girls’ identities and sexuality in sin,27 between good and bad and ho-­dom and lady-­dom. Such a backdrop thrives not b­ ecause black w ­ omen and girls categorically oppose it but rather ­because many are committed to supporting it, particularly in the Black Church, and through attendance, ­labor, and finances. Make no ­mistake about it, this backdrop needs black ­women to work, and black ­women and girls seem to deploy it to make sense of their lives. That said, the quest for complex enunciation among honest bodies summons further investigation.

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CHAPTER 5

THE BLACK CHURCH, THE BLACK LADY, AND JEZEBEL The Cultural Production of Feminine-­ism

You ­can’t turn a hoe into a ­house­wife. —Pastor Chris Hill, Twitter

The collaborative editing of black ­women and girls—as quintessentially sexually dif­fer­ent, primal, hyper, and immoral—­through vari­ous Old and New World discourses, institutions, relations, texts, and media produced a context of social crisis for black Americans postslavery. At the turn of the twentieth ­century, with the hope of subduing the dehumanizing efforts caused by plantation sexual politics, resetting intracommunal breaches, and, moreover, debunking racist mythologies surrounding black sexual depravity and providing an appearance of racial pro­gress, black collectives i­magined and cultivated a hegemonic black sexual politics and black gender ideology.1 That is, black Americans, previously pornotroped into sexualized “breathing machines” “put together” for the sake of plantation capital, gross plantation product, and lechery, strug­gled against slavery’s vile afterlife by claiming their humanity, recovering black flesh, restoring chosen kinships, refashioning sexual ethics, and rethinking gender ideals. Yet this quest to retrieve black identity and ideate a new moral order, particularly through sex and gender conceptions, ultimately resituated historical phenomena and came at black w ­ omen’s and girls’ expense. Rather than unthreading demonic sexual politics or the broken sociopo­liti­cal structure, black ­women and girls became the t­ hing needing mending and thus the site of crisis. And despite the beauty, resilience, heterodoxy, and complexities of the familial ties early twentieth-­century black folk assembled, the black “nuclear my-

theme,”2 equipped with a black patriarch,3 a black lady,4 and respectable black ­children, became the solution: the quin­tes­sen­tial symbol of and access point to pro­gress. However, undergirding interests in the black “nuclear” proj­ect ­were not only concerns about history, broken kinships, or conjunctural metanarratives on black sexual pathology but also fears about the black matriarchate—­ the myth that matriarchal homes, allegedly led by lascivious and immoral black ­women, threaten racial uplift and lead to racial regress. The Black Church played a significant role in framing the new moral order. As opposed to dispossessing tropes such as jezebel and the black matriarchate, it helped mediate and institutionalize a counternarrative that distinguished between who and what was virtuous and not, enabling a culture of gender hierarchy, sexual secrecy, closeting, and policing. Subsequently, in order to disprove myths of inherent promiscuity, reclaim black femininity, and achieve racial uplift, black ­women ­were expected to personify the highest virtues of the race through Christian piety, earnestness, helpfulness, intelligence, submission, wifedom, motherhood, and sexual dissemblance. The counternarrative produced a new picture and alternative power structure. It did ­little to lessen the yoke of previous racist and sexist politics, epistemes, and ideologies, however. If the cis-­gender heterosexual black lady was essential to participating in or performing the black “nuclear” proj­ect, the crest of black morality, order, pro­gress, and uplift, then vital to making that narrative stick in neo­co­lo­nial Amer­ic­ a, at least among black ­people, was upholding the jezebel/ho/promiscuous trope. ­Today ho/lady pornotropia is successfully packaged, marketed, and sold in the Black Church and black popu­lar culture, effectively calling into question black con­temporary use of old metanarratives as well as womanist and black feminist assumptions about what black ­women and girls want, need, and feel, and how they may identify. Its pervasive nature, particularly among black Christians, demands the cultural reader strug­gle with its presence as opposed to dismiss it while also destabilizing black Amer­i­ca’s paragon of black pro­gress.5 The golden goose holding ho/lady pornotropia together is black feminine-­ism. One might argue that the marginal status of the Black Church in black feminist discourse and lit­er­a­ture and/or black feminisms’ reputation for being antiblack male, antiblack f­amily, and antiblack community helped create an opening for black feminine-­ism.6 ­Others might suggest that it was the limited play in gray space that defines parts of womanist discourse. Another reading is that the silences in black feminism and womanism produced not black feminine-­ism but a necessary epistemological opening for The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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specialized black feminist religio-­cultural critical analyses. In any case, black feminine-­ism produced patriarchal space between black w ­ omen and girls and black feminism and womanism that requires immediate investigation. Black feminine-­ism is not to be mistaken with black feminism. The latter is a critical social theory, politics, theoretical discourse, and po­liti­cal movement aimed at ending sexist, heterosexist, transantagonistic, racist, classist, imperialist, and cap­i­tal­ist exploitation and oppression. Black feminine-­ism notes a sublimation of oppositional feminist texts, knowledges, and critiques into feminine ideals. It is a mass-­mediated atavistic discourse, repre­sen­ta­tion, and belief grounded in natu­ral hierarchy, heteronormative-­patriarchy, hypermoralism, sexual dissemblance, wifedom, motherhood, beautification for ­others, erotophobia, phallic power, and racial loyalty that reproduces, maintains, holds together, and justifies jezebelian ho discourse and theology, the discourse on black ladyhood, the myth of the black matriarchate, and the black “nuclear” proj­ect in the name of black normalcy and racial pro­gress. Si­mul­ta­neously, it is black ­woman–­centered, attends to what some black w ­ omen seem to want, and prioritizes black heteropatriarchal families, black men, black communities, and the Black Church. Furthermore, it laboriously maintains con­temporary black gender ideology and sexual politics and is the substance of Bishop T. D. Jakes’s and Tyler Perry’s mass-­mediated black w ­ omen–­centered religio-­ cultural productions. And it is definitively a cash cow. Two points: One, jezebel cannot be unhinged while holding on to the black “nuclear” proj­ect, the symbolic black lady, or black patriarchy. Two, unhinging cannot occur without first locating, examining, and mining value in the aforementioned. B ­ ecause if ­there ­were a competition between black feminism, womanism, and Jakes’s and Perry’s black feminine-­ism based on “followers,” black feminine-­ism would take the trophy ­every time, hands down. And no, black ­women are not inveigled. They are complex cultural readers who take what they need and discard the rest. At the same time, black feminine-­ism is so omnipresent it may also be appropriated and possessed. Yet even if internalized it may also be negotiated and resisted. Black feminine-­ism is messy but picture-­perfect. It pres­ents an image of pro­gress against a backdrop of racial crisis, and it does so by mass mediating unprogressive imagistic racial narratives, ideologies, and repre­sen­ta­tions. That is to say, the picture presented is both seductive and scant. Black feminine-­ism produced in the Black Church constructs what I call black feminine theology, the c­ ounter to jezebelian ho theology. Each makes up the yin and yang of black feminine-­ism, which pressures black ­women and 110 Chapter 5

girls to participate in and choose between ho and lady metanarratives that not so ironically attempt to divide their complex multipositioned identities in two and imagines black female sexual decision making as a response to patriarchal needs confined within the black “nuclear” proj­ect. An example of this is when Chris Hill (@PastorChrisHill), se­nior pastor of The Potter’s House of Denver, an expansion of The Potter’s House of Dallas founded and led by Bishop T. D. Jakes, tweeted to his 88.4 thousand followers on November 1, 2015, “You c­ an’t turn a hoe into a h­ ouse­wife.” Elisabeth @elisabethepps retorted, “When mega church Pastor tweets misogyny, patriarchy, & sexism all at once. (You ­ain’t Pac or Short, Sir.)”7 Damita Jo @kiaspeaks responded, “Hoeism is the one ­thing more power­ful than the blood of Jesus according to @PastorChrisHill.” She continued, “And what about husbands? Can you turn a hoe into a husband? Or are hoes just ­women? Define hoe? @PastorChrisHill.” Hill declined further definition about men and w ­ omen, perhaps ­because ho discourse and theology, though sometimes used to reference men, is explic­itly racialized and gendered. Instead he replied by deleting the tweet and including a note stating that his “new media team” manages his Twitter. The defense “It ­wasn’t me” might have proved efficacious if Hill’s audience had been smaller, if said feminine/ho theologies ­were not already part and parcel of The Potter’s House/T. D. Jakes’s franchise, and if the cultural reader was inclined to believe that neither Hill nor his “media team” had already been influenced by said theologies. Earlier that day Hill had tweeted, “One of the g­ reat t­hings about Chris­tian­ity is that it esteems w ­ omen so highly!” and “Jesus is always holding ­women up as power­ful and necessary for the Kingdom.” One might argue that ­these distinctive messages provide proof of foul play or theological misguidance in Twitterland. An alternative argument is that Hill’s earlier and ­later tweets reveal the ho/lady logic pivotal to black feminine-­ism and black feminine theology pervasive in T. D. Jakes’s colossal ministry and media enterprise. Seminal to black feminine-­ism and black feminine theology is the Jezebelian (biblical) question noted in chapter 2: “Where is the Prince?” a.k.a. where is your husband? As Wilda Gafney asserts, Jezebel, or Izevel in Hebrew, literally means “Where is the prince?” For biblical Jezebel, the question articulated both gender trou­ble and unscrupulousness, what happens when the husband, a “real man” is not in charge. Thus the contrasting between hos and ­house­wives,8 often interchanged with the black lady, meaning t­ hose without and with husbands, is not coincidental. Gafney argues that the question notes a lack of nobility. Ultimately it proffers its own answer: ­jezebels The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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are immoral and thus do not have “true” husbands and therefore c­annot be “turned” into ­house­w ives. House­w ives are not only noble (ladies) but understand their role in the patriarchy. A task of this chapter is disturbing the straight line between Pastor Hill’s “hoe” and “house­wife,” or, ­really, ­jezebel and the black lady (­because based on Hill’s logic, it takes a black lady to become a h­ ouse­wife). This endeavor invites first walking, again, along a crooked line—­keeping it real and ­doing the messy work of critically reading black ­women’s investment in black feminine-­ism, black feminine theology, and ho theology. Bottom line: Hill, Bryant, Harvey, Jakes, Perry, and ­others cannot exist without the support of black ­women. True enough, the Black Church has been obsessed with controlling sex, gender identity, and order. But cultural texts work along the lines of power and recognition. Black folk are not being cudgeled into reproducing, ­appropriating, or accepting the hegemonic black gender ideology or black sexual politics of black feminine-­ism. The questions then become, What is the power structure? What are the points of recognition guiding and maintaining feminine-­ism and feminine theology among black folk? How are they implicated, both positively and negatively? And what kinds of investments are revealed in the meanings derived? If the saying is true, that “the church is the ­people,” then further examining histories, ­people, relations, and points of investment and recognition seems to be in order. This chapter explores the primary cultural texts holding feminine-­ism together in the Black Church: the black “nuclear” proj­ect, the myth of the black matriarchate, black patriarchy, and the black lady. It concludes with a brief turn ­toward Jakes and Perry, two preeminent pop cultural preacher-­theologian-­producers who help frame, mass mediate, market, and sustain not only black feminine-­ism but its internal nuclei: feminine theology and ho theology, in which the promises and appeal of the former camouflages the vulgarity and fury of the latter. Crucial to reading Jakes’s and Perry’s cultural productions is grasping their interior logic and why w ­ omen love them. Black feminist religious thought and religio-­cultural criticism refuses the narratives that black churchwomen have been hoodwinked, bamboozled, filled with Kool-­Aid, or lost in opiates.9 Jakes and Perry pres­ent an orientation and expression of black cultural life that speaks to certain rhythms, longings, motivations, and experiences, and they draw on cultural narratives of value, good or bad. Again, if you can figure out how a ­thing is woven together, you may then be able to unravel the ­thing and ­either put it back together again, or, better yet, make a dif­fer­ent t­ hing. Loosing black w ­ omen and girls from the jezebel trope and the circulating dis112 Chapter 5

course on black womanhood requires a new t­ hing. It entails not creating a new jezebel, another Other, a subaltern, or a respectable opposite but rather upholding black w ­ omen’s and girls’ bodies as inherently h­ uman, w ­ hole, valuable, autonomous, sacred, complex, multipositioned, and enough, and rethinking Old and New World verbes, grammars, mythologies, and relations igniting further oppression. Picture-­Perfect: The Negro ­Family and the Prob­lem of the Black Matriarchate In Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Th ­ ings (1995), historian and anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler posits that the work of empire was constructed through depictions of Eu­ro­ pe­anness and respectability codes defined against the colonized. Many of t­ hese depictions involved sexual, marital, and ­house­hold management as well as clear distinctions between employer-­servant relations. ­Women w ­ ere expected to safeguard morals and prestige, as men ­were deemed more susceptible to moral turpitude. Stoler notes that it was the work of widely disseminated photo­graphs and postcards that made ­these arrangements appear effortless and natu­ral, particularly as Eu­ro­pe­ans ­were often situated occupying position and privilege, as servants awaited ­orders from their masters. Stoler argues that the assertion of Eu­ro­pean supremacy in terms of patriotic manhood and racial virility was not only an expression of imperial domination but a defining feature of it. In her essay “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking ­Women of Color Organ­izing” (2005), feminist scholar Andrea Smith argues that the heteropatriarchal f­ amily, which includes state-­ sanctioned marriage between a (white) wife and (white) husband, and the production of (white) ­children, is pivotal to (white supremacist cap­i­tal­ist) United States empire b­ ecause it institutionalizes patriarchy as a civic duty, and requires a (cis) gender binary system in which only two genders exist, with one dominating the other.10 Si­mul­ta­neously, it naturalizes heteropatriarchy, and more specifically white male domination, as a natu­ral moral order within the nation-­state, institutions, local communities, and interpersonally. Within this context the well-­being and strength of the heteropatriarchal white f­ amily becomes code for white/Eu­ro­pean dominance in general and the well-­being of United States empire in particular—­with the health and power of each sanctioned, maintained, and governed by both the church and state. That is, The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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if the heteropatriarchal white f­amily is in crisis, so is the state and so is the moral order. To put it another way, if white heteropatriarchal men are not in charge and in a dominant social position then the entire social structure must be in a state of emergency. The latter demands white w ­ omen and all o­ thers know their place. Similarly, black access to normalcy and ultimately empire requires the construction of a black heteropatriarchal f­amily as well as an “Other.” And ­because the state of anti- and phobic-­blackness in Amer­i­ca is unexampled, intraracial otherness is defined against sex, gender, sexuality, appropriateness, and respectability. Whereas white Victorian wives in Amer­i­ca ­were ­imagined as safeguarding proper femininity, true womanhood, morals, and prestige for white families and black enslaved ­women represented ultimate perversion and pursuance, black ladies w ­ ere envisaged to typify the black moral order and as a response to black crisis. Black crisis during North American slavery was marked by both the lack of freedom and the lack of distinction. The slave system, which rearticulated Africans as quantities quantifiable by the value of their l­abor, saw no difference between black enslaved or f­ ree ­women and men. If ­there was any distinction at all it was black ­women’s and girls’ capacity to birth, breastfeed, and care for ­children.11 Establishing what it meant to be f­ree and gendered subjects became the proj­ect of the negro ­family. Spillers posits that the conflation of diasporic subjectivities that occurred ­under colonial rule marked the construction of the neo­co­lo­nial “negro ­family” as not only a metonymic site for the captive community and its history of social arrangements, renaming, disposing, and po­liti­cal maneuvering but also a “mythically revered privilege of a ­free and freed community” in the West and thus a site of transgressive meaning.12 While black folk created their own networks of meaning and continuity through blood and chosen kinships, the state narrowly realized ­family as an institution concerned with “the vertical transfer of a bloodline, of a patronymic, of titles and entitlements, of real estate and the prerogatives of ‘cold cash,’ from ­fathers to sons and in the supposedly f­ ree exchange of affectional ties between a male and female of his choice.”13 Captive families, with male/female conflation and no patronymic, law, entitlements, property, or parental rights, served as a negation. The quantitative inclusion of black life in the “nuclear” f­amily was as property and entitlements, not as subjects of liberty, patriarchs, wives, or ladies. The “nuclear” ­family historically meant to make black families void, specifically as ­free white ­fathers came to represent empire and domination, while enslaved 114 Chapter 5

black ­fathers w ­ ere made absent from black communities and familial structures. In view of this, many neo­co­lo­nial discourses on the “negro f­ amily,” insisting upon the integrity of Western ideals of f­amily and its investment in patriarchal sex and gender per­for­mances and relations, re­imagined captive identities, kinships, and arrangements, and made the black ­father, w ­ hether absent or pres­ent, representative of the black Western ­family. Si­mul­ta­neously, some of t­ hese discourses made pathology less so the fault and territory of heteronormative imperialist white supremacist cap­i­tal­ist patriarchal terrorism and control, and more so a defect rooted in matrifocal families, m ­ others, and ­daughters, thus participating in previously constructed colonialist discourses on black ­women and girls. For example, the Moynihan Report (1965) asserts that matrifocal families, resulting from centuries of slavery, broken kinships, harsh treatment, and unstable fatherless ­house­holds, led to a “tangle of pathology” and the socioeconomic disenfranchisement of black families in the United States. Unfortunately, Moynihan’s theory did not stop ­there. In their essay “Searching for Climax: Black Erotic Lives in Slavery and Freedom” (2014), black feminists Treva B. Lindsey and Jessica M. Johnson argue that Moynihan’s report provoked “fresh historical writing on slave ­family life” by historians such as John Blassingame, Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman, and ­others. Undergirding many of ­these works was the concerted fear of further black dehumanization and emasculation evidenced earlier in E. Franklin Frazier’s so­cio­log­i­cal work, and the maintenance of Moynihan’s under­lying argument that matrifocal families cause racial regress and thus that racial pro­gress demands heteropatriarchal homes. Lindsey and Johnson write, Scholars w ­ ere preoccupied with what they perceived as the threat of black matriarchy and lascivious morals of black ­women. . . . ​Black feminist thinkers, including scholars like Angela Davis, Deborah Gray White, and Darlene Clark Hine, deconstructed the concern with matriarchy by attacking ste­reo­types and posing new methodologies for studying black ­women’s lives. A landmark study exposed the illicit sex at the heart of the “myth of the matriarchate.” According to the myth, enslaved ­women emasculated enslaved men by denying them their sexual, reproductive, and physical ­labor and engaging in illicit sex with slaveowners for easy workloads. Far from emasculating black men, Davis argued, the gender dynamics of skilled enslaved ­labor afforded men more opportunities for mobility off plantations, higher income, and special f­ avor within plantation The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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hierarchies. As w ­ omen, enslaved ­women could not occupy similar positions, leaving them more likely to engage in grueling field ­labor, and they did not have the protection of their femininity when l­ abor was demanded. Enslaved w ­ omen also continued to perform the bulk of domestic ­labor within slave families. For Davis, far from emasculating black men, enslaved w ­ omen suffered ­under multiple tiers of oppression unique to their gender and status, including rape by ­owners.14 The myth of the black matriarchate hoped to make sense of the real­ity that rendered black p­ eople enslavable as flesh to be occupied and exercised, while attempting to reimagine an alternative power structure and ­future. Meaning that it made promises of black humanity, distinction, order, pro­gress, and virtue by enabling a false hierarchy of oppression that misrecognized black ­women and black matrifocal homes as the site of crisis and the Western proj­ ect of heteronormative imperialist white supremacist cap­i­tal­ist patriarchy as inclusive. Yet the white “nuclear” proj­ect was never meant to be problack. It was first and foremost in ser­vice to white middle- and upper-­class aspirants and ­people. The illicit sex at the center of the myth of the black matriarchate requires pause. It calls attention to what Spillers articulates as black female “sexuality-­ to-be,” or the “mythic event that never happened.”15 In her essay “Interstices: A Small Drama of Words” (2003), written b­ ecause of her frustrations with the continued slippage in feminist discourses on sexuality, which distinguished black female sexuality as ­either dif­fer­ent or absent altogether, she posits that the sexuality concept in feminist discourse problematically echoed the prob­ lems of the broader social-­cultural-­historical landscape. Neither attended to black w ­ omen’s historicity, which literally located them within a context of sexual prohibition and freewheeling entrée at the same time. Sexuality in white feminist discourses, which is often read in one of two ways—­either in reference to a set of practices or “as a class bound narrative firmly situated in the mythemes of the ‘nuclear ­family,’ ” ­really refers to “feminine sexuality,” the latter serving as code for a “more or less smooth transition between public and private moments of a po­liti­cal economy.”16 The prob­lem h­ ere is not that black female sexuality does not exist or never happened. It is that the black “nuclear” proj­ect demands a privatized domesticated black feminine sexuality in response to narratives around black ­women’s and girls’ alleged illicit sex. Yet black female sexuality has neither been private nor neutral since contact/conquest. The shift from subjectivity 116 Chapter 5

to captivity re­imagined and screened out complex intersubjective sexual identities while screening in a hyper/illegible binary. Resultantly, black ­women and girls came to represent a terrain of contradictions, the ultimate canvas for mythologies such as “black-­female-­as-­w(ho)re” and her opposite, “black-­female-­ as-­virtuous-­saint,” and every­thing e­ lse in between. The myth of the black matriarchate compels a deepened examination of the “black-­female-­as-­w(ho)re” and how this figure has been read in black critical discourse. Lindsey and Johnson begin this conversation by offering a critical reading of the video “The Harriet Tubman Sextape” (2013) posted on the YouTube channel All Def Digital. The reading does two t­hings: it acknowledges the historicity and repre­sen­ta­tion of black w ­ omen’s sex as illicit, and it urges additional layers of analyses that make black ­women’s sexuality pres­ent beyond cultural preoccupations with lasciviousness and black trauma. They posit that though the sex tape video proffered an offensive execution of misogynoirist ste­reo­types, it concurrently urges a careful excavation of black ­women’s erotic lives that contends with the erotophobia entrenched in the collective historicization of US slavery. Furthermore, the historical narratives on the black “nuclear” ­family limit our ability to think about Tubman as an erotic subject with desires and intimate needs ­because discourses on the black “nuclear” ­family underline a po­liti­cal proj­ect si­mul­ta­ neously invested in asserting two-­parent male-­female patriarchal ­house­holds as a necessity for racial pro­gress. This established both black female sexuality as an enterprise of said ­house­holds and black female sexuality as further stigmatized, ­whether contained in said ­house­hold or not. Lindsey and Johnson write, Visceral reactions to cultural narratives suggesting enslaved w ­ omen took ­plea­sure in or initiated sexual intimacy stem in part from ways in which United States histories of slavery, emancipation, and black po­liti­cal ­consciousness have invested in circumscribing black female sexuality to heterosexual ­family units. In history and memory, the enslaved black ­family is abused but resilient, ­violated but transcendent, heteropatriarchal but ­content to be so. Visualizing an enslaved black ­woman choosing to engage in sex acts outside of a committed u­ nion with a black man, even if for an emancipatory purpose, betrays the supposedly inviolate slave f­ amily.17 Critiques on the myth of the black matriarchate, black w ­ omen’s and girls’ supposed illicit sex or the “black-­female-­as-­w(ho)re” trope should not avail themselves by sacrificing black ­women’s and girls’ erotic lives. Critical readings of The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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t­ hese signifiers demand that we hold tightly to the premise that black ­women and girls are w ­ hole sexual persons and that whore/ho tropes, what­ever version, are social constructions intent on blocking that. Lindsey and Johnson assert that the interweaving of a politicized and naturalized construction of a “nuclear” black f­ amily by black p­ eople in response to ste­reo­types around illicit sex and emasculation during and a­ fter slavery led to a discourse on black womanhood that interprets black w ­ omen’s and girls’ complex subjectivity and sexual decision making as antithetical to the politicized and aspirational black “nuclear” proj­ect. And as Stuart Hall argues, what­ever is taboo denotes crisis and therefore must be stigmatized as bad and impure and driven out.18 Evelyn M. Hammonds and Joan Morgan argue that black w ­ omen’s sexuality faced erasure in not only white and black patriarchal discourses or among historians and white feminists but within some black feminist lit­er­a­ture as well. In fact, Hammonds, Morgan, Lindsey, and Johnson make a similar case for balancing historicity (vio­lence, signification, and erasure) and sexuality (interiority and plea­sure). The former, though significant, they argue, cannot serve as a source of denial for the latter. The latter, Morgan argues, is unbound by black “nuclear” aspirations or politics. Hammonds notes a significant f­ actor that should not be overlooked when critiquing black feminist (and womanist) discourses on black sexual politics, and that is the tensions between reclaiming the black female body as a sexual historical subject while also being a black female body within academe. The fear of sexualization and thus not being taken seriously is real. The myths of the black matriarchate and the “black-­female-­as-­w(ho)re” benefit from the collective interpretations of Hammonds, Morgan, Lindsey, Johnson, Spillers, and ­others. But whereas Spillers notes a mythic black female sexuality awaiting inscription, Hammonds, Morgan, Lindsey, and Johnson, invite a reading and exploration not of absence or disappearance but instead a history of erotic presence, despite, beyond, and in the face of trauma. At the heart of the myth of the black matriarchate (the “black-­female-­as-­w(ho) re”) and the push ­toward the black “nuclear” proj­ect as the solution to racial regress is a strangling, purging, and rewriting of black ­women’s erotic lives. Yet neither the black “nuclear” ­family proj­ect nor narratives on black sexual pathology are innate to black diasporic p­ eople or communities. They are consequences of colonialism. And, to be clear, the colonial picture is tattered. The response to Moynihan’s “tangle of pathology” resisted and appropriated colonialist interpretations of black life and families. The construction of black familial units was in and of itself radical. However, the institution118 Chapter 5

alization of a black heteropatriarchal home as the premier access point to pro­gress and black ­women’s domesticized sexuality as a defining line of the new black moral order was anything but liberative. Although it notes a quest for black normalcy and full humanity, it also articulates buying into the status quo and a desire for access to empire. However, empire thrives off black oppression, possession, repossession, and prepossession. It demands that black ­people make themselves over and requires that black survival and black pro­ gress ground themselves in false sex and gender hierarchies. And b­ ecause it demands an Other, empire w ­ ill never be a source of black diasporic thriving. The prob­lem is not black families. It is the concerted iterations and efforts to make the black “nuclear” ­family and hegemonic black sex and gender politics the only option for seeing black humanity. It is that ­these uses of the master’s tools leave no room for healthy distinctions or nuances within and between black folk or black w ­ omen’s erotic lives. Individuals or familial makeups uncommitted to the black “nuclear” proj­ect represent a threat to the moral order and natu­ral hierarchy, and limited access to empire. And this affects more than black ­women and girls. Smith argues that the construction of ­family in cap­i­tal­ist and heteropatriarchal terms is the bulwark of the nationalist proj­ect and leads to “increased homophobia, with lesbian and gay community members construed as ‘threats’ to the ­family.”19 To this end, she urges that the concept of ­family be challenged: Perhaps, instead, we can reconstitute alternative ways of living together in which “families” are not seen as islands on their own. Certainly, indigenous communities ­were not ordered on the basis of a nuclear f­ amily structure. This structure is the result of colonialism, not the antidote to it. In proposing this model, I am speaking from my par­tic­ul­ar position in indigenous strug­gles. Other p­ eoples might flesh out t­ hese logics more fully from dif­fer­ent vantage points. ­Others might also argue that t­ here are other logics of white supremacy . . . ​missing. Still o­ thers might complicate how they relate to each other.20 The nuclear model needs rethinking, especially as it demonizes not only matrifocal families but also black ­women and girls and lgbtqia ­people’s sexual lives. Yet part of the reason it and feminine theology thrive is ­because they provide clear sex, gender, and familial lines. Puritanical hypermorality, phallic power, and respectability aside, some black ­women long for ­these kinds of ties. The reasons for such longings abound, to include the pursuit of being seen, protections, interpretations of pro­gress, and, as Clark Hine suggests, dissemblance. The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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This is impor­tant to consider when critiquing the black “nuclear” proj­ect and the myth of the black matriarchate, and how each requires both a black lady and a black patriarch. I am particularly reminded of how Morgan wrote that she found patriarchy kind of sexy. And though patriarchy is no more salvific than matriarchy is demonic, what­ever black w ­ omen find attractive must be held in tension with the work that it does. Perhaps that balance w ­ ill enable further and necessary discourse on thinking of f­amily not as “nuclear” (as in explosive or deadly) but as interconnected, interrelational, communal, autonomous, mutual, and egalitarian. In Ar’n’t I a ­Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1999), black feminist Deborah Gray White supports this notion when she argues that most slave marriages and relations had no choice but to be egalitarian. Still, the black “nuclear” ­family, the myth of the black matriarchate, black feminine-­ism, and black patriarchy stand in as permissible responses to very real fears and concerns around safety, dehumanization, and access. Yet each reveals an investment in black pro­gress and black trauma. The challenge is in critiquing and resisting the latter while imagining alternative routes ­toward the former. For example, black patriarchy is critical to narratives of racial pro­gress, and, more specifically, black feminine-­ism, ­because it perhaps even beyond the black lady stands as the panacea to black folks’ supposed tangle of pathology. If any film brought this narrative to life it was John Singleton’s cult classic Boyz n the Hood (1991). I am still convinced that Singleton wrote his complex script with Moynihan’s report in one hand and E. Franklin Frazier’s compilation The Negro F ­ amily in the other. The myth of the black matriarchate is fierce and unyielding in the film, as is the myth of the black heteropatriarchal superman. However, while myth of the black matriarchate is scripture for all that is wrong with black Amer­i­ca, the black heteropatriarchal superman gets to play god, saving black sons from social calamity one day at a time. Yet patriarchy is a social construct and ideology, with black patriarchy differing from white patriarchy in that it lacks the power of whiteness and functions within antiblack racialization. Notwithstanding, it operates out of the limited guarantees of male domination. Si­mul­ta­neously, it has numerous challenges. This leads to not only unrest but further rupture—­between men and boys and w ­ omen and girls as well as ­those not seen as “real men.” Chief among ­these challenges is the undergirding ideology that masculinity is always potent, courageous, and super, and invariably antiweakness, antisoft, or any other socially constructed feminine attribute drawn from Old World notions of female deviance and insufficiency. In The W ­ ill to Change: 120 Chapter 5

Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004) bell hooks posits that patriarchy is the single most life-­threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation b­ ecause it denies full humanity and insists that men and boys are innately dominating and superior to every­thing and every­one deemed weak, especially w ­ omen and girls.21 She refers to this as patriarchal masculinity, which she defines as both terrorism and a racist prison. In We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2003) hooks argues that black men historically seen as animals, natu­ral born rapists, murderers, and brutes—­untamed, uncivilized, unthinking, and unfeeling, did not initially see themselves as sharing white men’s masculinity or what she refers to as “plantation patriarchy.”22 The idea that maleness had a higher power and dominion over ­women and that it was acceptable to use vio­lence to establish patriarchal power was taught. hooks notes, eventually patriarchal masculinity became a standard for mea­sur­ing black pro­gress. When slavery ended black men used vio­lence to dominate black ­women thus repeating white slavers strategies of control. Many believed to be recognized “as men” they needed to be recognized as patriarchs, and for black families to be legitimate they needed to be heteropatriarchal. Yet black patriarchy, a system that requires institutionalization and adherence to black gender ideology and black sexual politics, was disrupted by racism. Black men ­were not allowed full access to entry points that defined white patriarchy such as po­liti­cal control, institutional power, employment, breadwinning, security, safety, and financial stability. Access to empire via heteronormative patriarchy was largely denied. Black patriarchy notes a masculinity constantly called into question and always on proving ground. Notwithstanding limitations of race and empty promises, black patriarchal masculinity still enjoys the privilege of being men due to inherited constructions of gender in a patriarchal culture. It draws from, informs and organizes social structures, institutions, and relations, insisting upon natu­ral order and enjoining control of and access to black female identity, sex, and sexuality. And as with white heteropatriarchy, it demands black ­people know their place and their role. Still, black pro­gress needs black men, boys, and f­athers. Like black ­mothers, black ­fathers can be sources of power, beauty, guidance, and wisdom. We need more work on how black men and w ­ omen healthily, collectively, and autonomously relate within familial structures as partners, f­ athers, m ­ others, siblings, lovers, friends, c­ hildren, and so on, and within social structures such as local communities, schools, places of employment, entertainment, religious spaces, politics, movements, and the cyber world. We also need work on the breaches between black ­women and men. What cannot be ignored The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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is how the black “nuclear” proj­ect, the myth of the black matriarchate, black patriarchy, and the black lady structure t­hese relationships in sexism, how patriarchy and sexism go hand in hand, how many black w ­ omen and girls too often have just as many life-­giving experiences with black men and boys as they do t­ hose that are cruel, violent, and death-­dealing, and how some black ­women and girls participate in t­ hese antagonisms (to include sexism and patriarchy) against both black men and ­women. Patricia Hill Collins argues that justice is doomed to fail if ­either men or ­women are subordinated and if intraracial analyses are not constructed to confront how black gender ideology informs black sexuality.23 Dichotomous scripts between patriarchs and matriarchs, men and ­women, masculine and feminine, and hetero- and same-­gender-­loving families may be useful for interpreting histories and experiences, but they are neither mutually exclusive nor a magical cure all for black crisis. ­These distinctions can neither remake nor erase the captive story. More specifically, the black patriarch, the black “nuclear” f­ amily, phallic power, and patriarchal domination are not code for black well-­being or moral order. Si­mul­ta­neously, constructing an “Other” ­will not enable black thriving. Yet the relentless force of terror and signifying acts undergirding American history, culture, society, and identity, and, more specifically, the literal writing of black life and particularly black ­women and girls as the site of crisis, the t­ hing needing fixing, constructed a picture that makes the black “nuclear” ­family and black patriarchy not only kind of sexy but, for many, necessary. This is the real crisis: that the neo­co­lo­nial structuring of race, sex, gender, sexuality, and class demands black p­ eople imagine well-­being and transgressive meaning in structures of dominance that fundamentally problematize their humanity. The Crooked Moral Line: Black Victoria, Black Ladies, and Black House­wives Black enslaved ­women, the most unguarded in slave communities, coerced to ­labor both physically and sexually without consent, pay, safety, or protections, ­were often forced to care for families, pay for food, and diminish the severity of inhumane treatment or increase safety for ­children, and so on, using their bodies. And despite how much they may have hoped to claim notions of true womanhood, they had no tangible claims to the logic that holds it together: (white) purity. Yet black slave ­women reappropriated purity. Recall that Jacobs reinterpreted purity to mean self-­respect, safety, and her right to choose and 122 Chapter 5

consent to an unmarried lover over rape by her master. For black ­women, purity is not necessarily a quest for or signification of perfection but rather the right to live and be thought of as something other than immoral, reckless, or villainous. It is the desire to be perceived as good, principled, and worthy of bodily autonomy and safety. It is a state of empowered decision making. In “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics” (1989), black feminist critical race theorist and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw argues that black ­women’s race, sex, and class positionality require them to fend for themselves, particularly as they are left unprotected by both the state and the l­ egal system. When examining how the courts frame and interpret the stories of black w ­ omen plaintiffs, Crenshaw asserts that black ­women are protected only to the extent that their experiences coincide with ­either white ­women or black men. That is, while discrimination against a white female is the standard sex discrimination claim, sex discrimination claims by black ­women pres­ent a hybrid claim. ­These claims are unrepresentative of “pure” claims ­because race obscures the entire notion of purity. Historically, laws w ­ ere put in place to protect white female sexuality/​ chastity and white-­owned property, not black w ­ omen. Crenshaw posits that the protection of white female sexuality was often the pretext for terrorizing the black community. However, “sexist expectations of chastity and racist assumptions of sexual promiscuity combined to create a distinct set of issues confronting black ­women.”24 When black ­women are raped they are not raped as w ­ omen but as black w ­ omen: “their femaleness [makes] them sexually vulnerable to racist domination, while their blackness effectively [denies] them any protection.”25 Some courts went as far as to instruct juries that black ­women ­were not to be presumed chaste. Yet it was this way of racist and sexist “seeing” that enabled sexual violation in the first place. Black ladyhood aspired to c­ ounter this. It hoped to offset rape, the threat of rape, lack of protections, and narratives around contamination, availability, lasciviousness, and pursuance. One might propose that the black lady is nothing more than a carbon copy of Victorian/true womanhood ambitions. Not exactly. In addition to socioeconomic class distinctions, black ladydom reflects a desire for recognizable humanity and pres­ents a possibility for existing outside of racial otherness. This was not the plight of the Victorian ­woman. While she may have been a second-­class citizen, her dilemma was distinguishing herself from other white ­women and sordid gendered medical claims about w ­ omen’s sexual pathology. Of course, white w ­ omen had valid The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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strug­gles of their own. However, they ­were not ­shaped by anti- or phobic-­ blackness. Gender and sometimes class, not nonbeing or primitivity, ­shaped their experiences. And though second-­class, they ­were still seen as ­human. In Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American ­Middle Class (2012), black feminist Lisa B. Thompson asserts that early black American writers constructed middle-­class characters as the embodiment of racial uplift ideology, the idea that an educated “talented tenth” was responsible not only for black welfare but for changing the repre­sen­ta­tional value of blackness for the race, which insisted upon concretizing on black ­women’s bodies. An example of this can be found in Black Victoria. In an essay titled “Black Ideals of Womanhood in the Late Victorian Era” (1992), historian Shirley Carlson argues that some post-­Emancipation black ­women constructed the Black Victoria ideal in opposition to the image of enslaved black ­women breeders.26 They did not want to be seen as captive, jezebels, bedfellows, emasculating, illicit, or in ser­vice to men, the slave system, or gross plantation production, and thus produced an alternative portraiture that black middle-­ class aspirants might achieve through forms of governmentality—­the practices, rationalities, princi­ples, guidelines, beliefs, and strategies by which a group is not only governable but self-­regulating, for example, respectability, Christian piety, or marriage. Using rec­ords such as black newspapers, memoirs, personal papers, and rec­ords of churches, benevolent and fraternal socie­ties and sororities, ­women’s clubs, and schools left by middle-­class ­women and men in Illinois during the late Victorian era, Carlson posits that Black Victoria was a central figure within the community—­a preeminent black ­woman committed to personal virtue, the home, wifedom, motherhood, education, economic resourcefulness and achievement, personal development, her community, racial uplift, activism, religious morality, personal modesty, impeccable grooming, and being a true “lady.” It should be noted that t­ hese commitments underline both community and kinships, which enabled and encouraged forms of safeguarding, even if limited. The promises of bodily integrity in contexts of cultural vio­lence where citizenship, subjectivity, and rights remain in a state of interrogation and where black female bodies perfect postures between imagination/play and defense, should not be taken lightly. The West produced an economy that made Black Victoria attractive as well as a mode of survival. As with racial uplift and Du Bois’s talented tenth, the black “nuclear” f­amily, and black patriarchy, the black lady and Black Victoria enable the display and spectacle of civility and the reinvention of 124 Chapter 5

the subject, the race, communities, and histories. The black lady re­imagined black womanhood as having dignity and access to a race, gender, and class rewards system for per­for­mances of respectability and hard work, providing an imperfect response to jezebelian and black matriarchate myths.27 Nevertheless, black ­women and girls ­were still defined by race, sex, gender, class, and ­labor. Governmentality, marriage, or religion did not completely make them over or shield them from physical or sexual vio­lence. They did offer space to hope, play, and to imagine alternative possibilities, despite how challenging, muting, rigid, and exclusionary. Black ­women’s and girls’ historicity ­matters. It tells us a lot about why the black “nuclear” proj­ect and black patriarchy may be deemed “sexy” and why some black ­women and girls may reappropriate black feminine-­ism, which demands a certain brand of ladydom. It also tells us something about the applause—­why many in Bryant’s audience stood and cheered, why pastor Hill has over ninety thousand followers and counting, why Harvey has a successful tele­vi­sion show, and why Jakes and Perry can sell out football stadiums. First, black feminine-­ism, feminine theology, and jezebelian discourse are central to not only the black “nuclear” proj­ect but also the Black Church. And pivotal to black Chris­tian­ity, ­after Jesus, is the moral place, role, and repre­sen­ ta­tion of the black “nuclear” ­family. Second, the ho/lady (or ho/house­wife) dichotomy pivotal to black feminine-­ism and the Black Church offers vindication, rewards, dignity, love, partnership, and promises of God’s and patriarchal protections, though while problematizing black ­women’s erotic lives and their right to choose to engage in sex outside of heteropatriarchal marriage. Additionally, as Hill Collins argues, though the Black Church needs critiquing for maintaining and reproducing rigid sexual bound­aries, we should keep in mind that it historically preached respectability due to the ways in which claims of promiscuity and immorality fueled racism and vio­lence.28 The materiality of the latter cannot get lost. Concurrently, respectability, specifically the push for black ladyhood, meant to posit a moral line through the stabilizing of the photo­graph of the black “nuclear” f­ amily, which obliges male domination and ­women’s subjugation, both demonstrating the well-­ being and strength of the black collective and thus the success rate of pro­ gress. To be sure, black ­women and girls decide their level of agreement with ­these messages based upon histories, needs, and/or feelings, which may reflect power­ful decision making and/or emotional manipulation. I am reminded of The Real House­wives franchise, particularly Potomac and Atlanta, which have all-­black casts. Clearly the tele­vi­sion shows contradict the The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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i­magined ste­reo­type of the black lady/wife. Yet ­there is a distinct desire and push on behalf of the casts to be “true” ladies, which comes by way of hetero­ patriarchal marriage and relationships and maintaining the moral line. The actresses strug­gle to not only find and keep love but to temper their sexual identities and urges. The husbands, if they exist, are held to (or hold themselves to) no such standard. They have more freedom to play and offer no excuses for their complex histories. What is in­ter­est­ing is that neither show is religious nor centered upon the Black Church, yet Black Church sex and gender politics are prevalent. On any given episode, you can find the very accomplished cast members distinguishing between themselves (ladies) and hos, and shaming ­those whose sexual histories surpass the limits of heteropatriarchal respectability. One of the most vocal cast members in season nine is Kandi Burruss, a gifted songwriter and former member of the popu­lar 1990s R&B group Xscape, who touts a robust sex life and product line, Bedroom Kandi, while si­mul­ta­neously showing contempt for the erotic freedoms, expressions, and experiences of her castmates. It would be in­ter­est­ing to compare Burruss’s sexual discourse on the show pre- and postmarriage. While Bedroom Kandi defies ideas around sexual suppression and domesticity, it also seems to be Burruss’s Sasha Fierce. (Thank goodness Beyoncé no longer needs a cover or marriage to be comfortable in her sexual identity.) The castmates of the Atlanta franchise dress to the nines in full theater makeup and “everyday” formal dress appropriate for no city other than Atlanta. Often dress reveals the gorgeous contours of their fleshly bodies. While the entire cast wears revealing garb, it is mostly ­those who are unmarried, unpartnered, or in questionable partnerships who get judged for dressing too thot-­ish (thot = that ho over t­ here). The moral line has a thick contour. Pro­gress is established by not crossing too far over the farthest parts of the line. This calls to mind a Valentine’s Day video conversation on love and faith between actress Meagan Good, her husband DeVon Franklin, and pastor Touré Roberts at One Church in Los Angeles, California, in 2016. Good and Franklin visited One Church to discuss their new book, The Wait: A Power­ ful Practice for Finding the Love of Your Life and the Life You Love (2016). The book, which celebrates their journey to love and marriage through celibacy then marital sexual bliss, deserves its own critical treatment. Nevertheless, during the question-­and-­answer period, Good was chastised for dressing too provocative (read: too slutty, thot-­like, un-­Christian-­like, and unbecoming of a wife) now that she is married—­and to a minister at that. Franklin stepped in and defended his wife’s right to not cover up and to wear what she wants to 126 Chapter 5

wear (sexy patriarchal black feminist moment alert) while Good wiped away tears. She has been slut shamed before for her dress, and mostly in the name of Jesus and black respectability. Black ladyhood and wifedom are supposed to secure the black moral line, but only if t­here is a straight line between the lady and her opposite. And clearly, Good represents a crooked path to some. Though Burruss seems to openly defy sexual rigidity within marriage for married w ­ omen (and within the limits defined by husband and wife), Good was censured for dressing too sexy—­even though she and Franklin waited u­ ntil a­ fter marriage to have sex. Ultimately, the moral line “as is” is a fickle and slippery slope. What is too much and not enough, or thot-­like and feminine-­lite, changes with the wind. What remains steady is the policing of black ­women’s and girls’ bodies, identities, pleasures, desires, repre­sen­ta­tions, meanings, and value. They in fact remain the site of black cultural crisis. Yet ste­reo­types, purity myths, patriarchy, racism, sexism, and misogynoir are what need fixing. Notwithstanding intentions, the black lady trope w ­ ill never be able to give life like it claims to, as she cannot uphold the moral line on her bare and fragile shoulders. Rather, the moral line must align itself with a collective system of ethics grounded in the histories and thrivings of entire black communities. The moral line is incommensurate with ho/lady ste­reo­types. It is not either/or. And it is more than a new power structure in ser­vice to the status quo, the personal achievements of governmentality, or taking a page out of the House Keeping Monthly “Good Wife’s Guide” of 1955. The moral line, if it is to exist at all, calls for pushback against what­ever is causing crisis, to include the Black Church and the black “nuclear” ­family. It requires grasping how black ladyhood and wifery do not foreclose sexual subjectivity, expressiveness, possibility, or plea­sure, and vice versa. Moreover, controlling black w ­ omen’s erotic lives, identities, families, and pre­sen­ta­tions has never loosed black folk from debilitating social conditions, discourses, or repre­sen­ta­tions. Neither has black patriarchy. Black wellness, strength, and thriving are legitimate and necessary goals. But they cannot be achieved in black prisons or on the backs of black w ­ omen and girls. Ideological Distortion: Preaching Feminine-­ism, Teaching Jezebel In his essay “Marking: Race, Race-­making, and the Writing of History” (1995), critical race theorist Thomas C. Holt argues that racial ideologies established more than circulating ideas about racial hierarchy. They produced ideological distortion that led to the construction of racial knowledge that The Black Church, the Black Lady  

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often climaxed in material fury, such as the lynching and burning of black bodies. Photo­graphs of t­ hese vio­lences served as monuments of white value and black worthlessness, and, moreover, white power and black impotence. The socio-­political-­economic-­historical landscape, with its denial of full citizenship, privacy, due pro­cess, safety, reproductive rights, and equal opportunity, institutionalized and maintained ­these relations. Anti- and phobic-­black ideological bias turned material fury affects every­ one. Most agree that Amer­i­ca has a history of using religious interpretation to justify racial vio­lence. Yet many would likely deny that the Black Church has a history of producing gendered knowledge that may also justify or enable vio­lence. Dissimilar to white Chris­tian­ity, slavery, and lynching, the Black Church may not directly cause death, yet its messages and images about sex, gender, and sexuality may lead to it. The picture of the black “nuclear” f­ amily that the Black Church helped to cultivate and institutionalize makes t­hose arrangements seem not only natu­ral but divine—­and all e­ lse obscene and taboo, and therefore an impediment to pro­gress, moral strength, and racial well-­being. Surely the Black Church is not the only black religious culture culpable for such trauma. Nevertheless, recent murders of black trans-­and cis-­ gender w ­ omen, intraracial domestic vio­lence, and the culture of sexual secrecy and assault, call our attention to troubling points of connection between the Black Church and its commitments to black hegemonic gender ideology and sexual politics. For example, Bryant locates black crisis in white supremacy, gays and lesbians, and “side chicks.” He makes it seem as if black ­women’s and lgbtqia sexual decision making works in tandem with white supremacy to suppress racial pro­gress while ­women’s natu­ral rights are revealed through moralism, ­labor, and hyperloyalty to the black “nuclear” proj­ect, black heteropatriarchy, and black communities. And Bryant is not alone in his thinking. Most urgent is the racial and gendered knowledge produced by Jakes and Perry. Each create transcendent spaces for spiritual and moral awakening, healing, hope, community, triumph, laughter, truth telling, and romance for black w ­ omen, while si­mul­ta­neously deploying a pornotropic optic that draws upon and repackages racist and sexist epistemes and ideologies of high modernity. Their productions not only keep jezebel, the myth of the black matriarchate (and her tangle of pathology), the black lady, and the omnipotence of black patriarchy and the negro ­family at the fore; they widely disseminate feminine media and theology, making it appear as if ­these ideas are effortless. 128 Chapter 5

Distinct from early depictions of Eu­ro­pe­anness, Jakes’s and Perry’s technologies thrive well beyond photo­graphs and postcards. Yet the message regarding gender difference, hierarchy, and otherness is the same. Questions abound. Do Jakes and Perry love or hate black w ­ omen?29 How are we to interpret the extensive ho/lady schemata in their works? What is at stake? Why is the framing and governance of black ­women’s erotic lives and identities so impor­tant? How then are we to read this binary? ­There have been several works on televangelism and Jakes. Between Sundays: Black W ­ omen and Every­day Strug­gles of Faith (2003) by Marla F. Frederick, Righ­teous Riches: The Word of Faith Movement in Con­temporary African American Religion (2005) by Milmon F. Harrison, T. D. Jakes: Amer­i­ca’s New Preacher (2005) by Shayne Lee, Name It and Claim It?: Prosperity Preaching in the Black Church (2007) by Stephanie Mitchem, and Watch This!: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism (2009) by Jonathan L. Walton all offer necessary analyses on race, gender, religion, media, and the passageway that led to the star power and phenomena now known as Bishop T. D. Jakes. Si­mul­ta­neously, t­here are few published critical works on Perry. Two edited volumes in par­tic­ul­ar should be noted. They are the first and largest critical bodies of work on Perry’s productions: Interpreting Tyler Perry: Perspectives on Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality (2013), edited by Ronald Jackson and Samuel Santa Cruze Bell, and Womanist/Black Feminist Responses to Tyler Perry’s Cultural Productions (2014), edited by LeRhonda S. Manigault-­ Bryant, Carol B. Duncan, and me. However, none of ­these publications explores ­these questions. The discourse on black womanhood circulates within and between Jakes’s and Perry’s productions, providing an adhesive while preaching feminine-­ism but ­really teaching jezebel. Their success depends on black ­women’s support. This in mind, Jakes and Perry call on us to not only offer them a close critical reading but also to make space for the ugly places where black w ­ omen and girls may find meaning, where interiority may contradict politics and po­liti­cal correctness.

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CHAPTER 6

WHOSE “­W OMAN” IS THIS? Reading Bishop T. D. Jakes’s ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed!

While I would emphatically assert that aesthetic judgments should not rest solely on ideological or po­liti­cal criteria, this does not mean that such criteria cannot be used in conjunction with other critical strategies to assess the overall value of a given work. It does not imply a devaluation to engage in critical discussion of t­ hose criteria. To deny the validity of an aesthetic critique that encompasses the ideological or po­liti­cal is to mask the truth that ­every aesthetic work embodies the po­liti­cal, the ideological as a part of its fundamental structure. No aesthetic work transcends politics or ideology. —bell hooks, “ ‘whose pussy is this?’ a feminist comment”

Bishop  T.  D. Jakes, once hailed by Time Magazine as the next Billy Graham, shook the foundations of American religious and cultural history with “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed,” a Sunday school lesson for ­women in his small congregation turned nonpareil multimedia franchise, including a sermon series, stage play, cookbook, Bible, annual conferences, books, musical recordings, two feature films based on the same name, and tdj Enterprises—­a savvy media conglomerate specializing in publishing, multiple big- and small-­ screen productions, live events, m ­ usic, and investments. The mission is twofold: “Educate. Empower. Entertain.” and “To transform the worlds of media and entertainment through innovative, faith-­rich, family-­oriented content.”1 The strategic marketing and mass production of a Christian-­centered message for and about w ­ omen in general and black w ­ omen in par­tic­u­lar in multiple retail industries reveals a stroke of genius. Jakes ushered in an auxiliary market that specifically drew attention to the following for black w ­ omen: the

culture of vio­lence that significantly impacts them, the tensions between economic growth and economic hardship, and the overarching narrative of black pro­gress and regress. For many, Jakes was possibly the first man to ever acknowledge their trauma, and, moreover, to prophesy their triumph. He encouraged ­women and girls to exercise individual agency to “loose” themselves from the stresses of their pasts and prob­lems, and to live more abundantly in the pres­ent. “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” became a marketplace of optimism to ­women across the globe investing thousands of dollars annually in Jakes’s products. Yet Jakes produced an impor­tant context for uniting ­women and talking about their prob­lems that si­mul­ta­neously humanized and further problematized them. “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” undeniably appeals to certain personal and collective yearnings, sensibilities, tribulations, cadences, motivations, and experiences. Concomitantly, it produces feminine theology and technology that on the surface empowers ­women to heal from previous injuries caused by the memorialization of unresolved emotional, physical, sexual, and psychological trauma; embrace self-­sufficiency through creativity and industry; and prepare themselves for their knight in shining armor. Under­neath the surface it remixes the discourse on black womanhood, producing new and old talking points on proper and improper womanly ways of being. Specifically, notwithstanding intention, a critical look at Jakes’s repre­sen­ ta­tional strategies reveals a pornotropic optic that commodifies a new style of primitivism through fictive ethnographic work on black ­women. Namely, the “­woman” of “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” functions not only as a universal “­woman” but as a social fiction reminiscent of Morrison’s “African.” This is not to say ­there are no points of interest or recognition between Jakes’s “­woman” and ­women. It is to say “­woman” presupposes a voy­eur­is­tic view into the life of ­women in general and black w ­ omen and girls in par­tic­u­lar, but is in actuality an artifactual arrangement of signs, symbols, significations, and repre­sen­ta­tions strategically placed against a schematic backdrop. “­Woman” is a piece of merchandise, a material and symbolic concept—to be bought and sold—of what Jakes believes w ­ omen are and who he intends for them not to be. She is non­ ideal. Yet she is the gateway t­ oward Jakes’s ideals: namely, his ideal “­woman,” a key component of his black “nuclear” paragon, his ideal repre­sen­ta­tion of self as the mouthpiece of God, and his ideal religio-­cultural empire, which profits significantly off the nonideal remaining captive to his imagination. That “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” offers psychic space for imagining women-­centered power is commendable. Nevertheless, as bell hooks notes, Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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“No aesthetic work transcends politics or ideology.”2 “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” is a religio-­cultural phenomenon that makes fundamental claims about ­women that are not only ideologically informed but po­liti­cal. And just as Jakes demands “­woman” exist, hooks insists on a critical cultural reading. Clearly ­there is value in “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed.” As hooks posits, critical analy­sis does not mean devaluation, oversimplification, or dismissal. It means investigating the story beneath the story and drawing out meanings that may be both seductive and objectionable. Jakes laid new audacious gravel for the likes of Jamal H. Bryant and Chris Hill back in the 1990s when “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” burst onto the religio-­cultural scene. Back then Bryant was a college student finding his way, and Hill was something like Jakes’s hype man. Without Jakes, ­there are likely no mass-­mediated sermonic moments charging “­These hos a­ in’t loyal” or “You c­ an’t turn a hoe into a h­ ouse­wife.” Of course, Jakes is not directly responsible for t­ hese appropriations. He did design the religio-­cultural blueprint for mass mediating black feminine-­ism pivotal to each, and said model does have broad ranging social, po­liti­cal, and economic implications and unpre­ce­dented reach, however. Jakes brings this text full circle. He is the ne plus ultra of black preaching in the Black Church. And though “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” construes itself as an international success that transcends sex, race, ethnic, and national borders, its force is best understood against the backdrop from which it emerged: The Black Church. In making an argument for a universal church in his book ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! (1993), Jakes goes as far as to deny the Black Church’s existence.3 However, his messaging, theology, appeal to black ­women, cadence, and ecstasy are not only framed by the Black Church, they are black. Rebuffing black culture, history, and particularity likely led to his global attraction. To be sure, he is not the first black cultural producer to walk a tightrope between too much and too ­little blackness in hopes of accessing just the right mixture for success. Yet without the Black Church and black churchwomen, t­ here is no Bishop T. D. Jakes or “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed.” But it is Jakes’s use of the sermonic and religious discourse—­where he fashions, literally, “a thousand details, anecdotes, stories” about difference and respectability, defined against jezebel (his nonideal type) and the black lady (his ideal type)—­and his large following of black w ­ omen that makes him the quin­tes­sen­tial case study. Jakes’s discourse on black womanhood constructs a nonideal ­woman trope that draws upon modern race and sex epistemes, which undergird structural, po­liti­cal, and interpersonal vio­lence and ideological bias. But how is it that one can perform such a dance between 132 Chapter 6

black religion and black popu­lar culture and remain unequivocally beloved? Is it b­ ecause he constructs both the prob­lem and the solution? Jakes’s discourse on loosing stands as solution. However, it reveals double meaning, drawing our attention to how w ­ omen need healing from the emotional and psychological scarring from the trauma of vio­lence on one end, and underlining previous notions of black womanhood as a site of deviance, hypersexuality, and crisis on the other. And it is this move that Bryant, Hill, and so many ­others attempt to emulate. Further, it is this strategy and layering of meanings to which this text responds: the idea that black ­women’s and girls’ collective trauma may be healed by loosing them from themselves, that they are bound by trifling and promiscuous ways of being, and that they need to be made over. The under­ lying premise of loosing throughout this text, the work that it hopes to do, differs from the work Jakes does in “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed.” I deploy loosing as a critique of Jakes, Hill, Bryant, Brown, Perry, Harvey, Jefferson, Kant, Bernier, Benjamin, Abelard, Cuvier, and countless o­ thers. It names a religio-­cultural epistemological, ideological, and repre­sen­ta­tional prob­lem of editing flesh and projecting imagery, from which black w ­ omen and girls need freeing—­that they have, as Frantz Fanon would argue, been taken apart and put back together again into another self from without. And that “other” self, that projection, though not innate, is pervasive and needs undoing and unhinging. ­Going forward, I provide a brief biography of Jakes to situate his ministerial empire, followed by my initial point of entry to “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” (the conference), a descriptive reading of the text, ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! (the book), both of which launched and maintain Jakes’s ­career, and lastly, a black feminist religio-­cultural critique. The Master Salesman and Compassionate Preacher: Thomas Dexter Jakes Thomas Dexter Jakes, the youn­gest son of Ernest and Odith Jakes, both working-­class individuals doubling as local entrepreneurs, grew up in Vandalia Hill, a small coal mining community in Charleston, West ­Virginia. In Amer­i­ca’s New Preacher: T. D. Jakes (2015), sociologist Shayne Lee posits that by the age of sixteen young Jakes began perfecting three roles that would prepare him for an unimaginable lifelong journey: salesmanship, compassion, and preaching. Lee argues that before graduating from high school Jakes had a fierce entrepreneurial spirit, matching that of his parents; an uncanny sense Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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of empathy for the ­human condition, resulting from his f­ ather’s debilitating kidney disease and subsequent death in 1972; and a tenacious dedication to the preaching ministry. But like many courageous ­people in history, he also had an Achilles’ heel: low self-­esteem resulting from a distressing lisp, a discomfiting weight prob­lem, and years of dispiriting poverty.4 ­After years of strug­gle marked by unemployment, car repossession, interrupted utility ser­vices, backbreaking l­abor, government assistance, and seemingly unrewarding cir­cuit preaching, Jakes located a win­dow of opportunity. In 1992, Jakes, a young impressionable unknown Pentecostal “country preacher” from West ­Virginia, journeyed to the azusa Fellowship conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma,5 led by Carlton Pearson and changed his life forever. Lee notes that Pearson, a gifted singer and preacher, is credited with converging black neo-­Pentecostalism, media, and white neo-­Pentecostalism, which surged in tele­vi­sion broadcasting and network owner­ship from the late 1970s onward, with networks such as the Christian Broadcasting Network (cbn), the Trinity Broadcasting Network (tbn), Praise the Lord Network (ptl), and the Daystar Tele­vi­sion Network (dtn).6 He writes that Pearson, “the first African American to regularly host a Christian program on national tele­vi­sion,”7 deployed his connections with ­these networks to situate himself as the religio-­cultural point person between black preachers and power­ful media moguls such as Oral Roberts and ­others. The azusa Fellowship conference, which showcased the preaching, teaching, and entertainment gifts of only the most talented or internally connected, served as a launching pad for ministerial ­careers in media. This connection yielded rewards such as increased speaking engagements and fees (from an additional $100,000 upward in annual income) and international exposure. Lee asserts that in the 1990s, thousands of azusa participants attended annually, thus cashing in their vacation days and drawing from what­ever savings they had to attend seminars, experience power­ful preaching, encounter fancy worship, hear exceptional m ­ usic, explore high-­tech commercialism, and network. And while ­there ­were many networking opportunities at the conference, a meeting with Pearson was the most coveted. Jakes and Pearson shared a mutual friend, Sarah Jordan Powell, a noted gospel singer, whom Jakes had met prior while networking at other local conferences. Powell made the introduction between Jakes and Pearson and the rest is history. Jakes’s introduction to Pearson reaped immediate rewards, for example, his preaching was showcased on tbn, thus granting him multinational exposure. However, the highest honor was bestowed in 1993 when 134 Chapter 6

Jakes returned to azusa as the star of the show. His message titled, “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed,” was an instant hit. With over twelve thousand in attendance and over twenty thousand dollars in tapes, books, and videos sold immediately following the ser­vice, Jakes’s star power soared. His woman-­centered Sunday school lesson turned sermon was inspired by early counseling sessions with ­women struggling with traumatic experiences, for example, vio­ lence, rape, incest, child abuse, molestation, abandonment, incarceration, illness, poverty, and so on. Lee writes that one of Jakes’s perhaps most profound counseling experiences was with his ­mother Odith, who labored to raise her ­family mostly alone due to an overworked and l­ ater deathly ill husband when Jakes was just a young boy. That same year, Jakes self-­published ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed!, a New York Times bestseller, influencing a bounty of cultural items and asserting its place as a masterfully mass-­mediated religio-­cultural communiqué. In 1996, Jakes moved his small congregation in West V ­ irginia, which began with approximately ten p­ eople, to Dallas, Texas, where he founded The Potter’s House. His first ser­vice drew over two thousand ­people. ­Today it is one of the largest congregations in the United States, with over thirty thousand members, many of which are black w ­ omen. ­Later in 1996 Jakes held his first “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” annual conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. ­Today the attendance ranges between 80,000 and 100,000.8 Attendees can expect to pay $600 to $1000 and up for the three days between registration, travel, food, lodging, and Jakes’s very own marketplace, where he sells inspirational sermon and ­music CDs, T-­shirts, books, upcoming conference tickets, cruises, and more. And for ­those unable to visit The Potter’s House or the “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” conference, you may be able to catch Jakes on The Word Network, The Impact Network, dtn, or tbn. You can also visit The Potter’s House online, where you ­will find Jakes’s live stream tele­vi­sion broadcast and store, which provides video content on demand and sells many of his books (thirty and counting); cds, including Sacred Love Songs, named a top gospel ­album by Billboard Magazine in 1999; and even candles, courtesy of Serita Jakes’s Home Collection. You can also visit tdjakes​.­com, a multimedia website for news, entertainment, and the T. D. Jakes Show, which comes on Sunday mornings on own, the Oprah Winfrey Network. Or, you can toggle over to Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes and rent one of Jakes’s feature films. He has had his hand in producing at least nine. ­Woman Thou Art Loosed the screenplay was released in 2004, opening at number six at the box office. It grossed $2.3 million opening weekend and $6.8 million overall, was nominated for two Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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naacp Image Awards that year, and won Best American Film at the 2004 Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2004 American Black Film Festival. It was also named one of the ten best films of 2004 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office for Film and Broadcasting. Jakes followed up with ­Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th  Day in 2012. It grossed $642 thousand opening weekend and $1.1 million overall. While ­Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day failed to match the success of the original film, the “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” franchise experienced continued financial success. Bishop, Who Dis “­Woman”? (Seizing the Moment) Sitting in the Georgia Dome surrounded mostly by black w ­ omen dressed in anything from T-­shirts and jeans to elaborate eve­ning wear, I was immediately bemused by the ­music, the cloud of colorful scarves billowing from raised hands, and the strategically placed religious products throughout the arena. I had visited the Georgia Dome several times before and never was the energy this fierce or the stadium this full. The previous time I was ­there was for an Atlanta Falcons football game. Prior to that, I was t­here for my undergraduate graduation. And many times before, I visited for ­Battle of the Bands and countless Atlanta University Center sports and homecoming events. But this visit was dif­fer­ent. As opposed to the band playing George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” or “­Ain’t no party like a [insert college, university or band ­here] party ’cause a [insert college, university or band ­here] party ­don’t stop,” my mom, aunts, and I ­were met with an ebullient “­Ain’t no party like a holy-­ghost party cause a holy-­ghost party ­don’t stop!” This rendering of the preacher, the m ­ usic, and the frenzy, mingled with jumbotrons, dimmed lights, hype men, songs like “Stomp” and “The Storm Is Over Now,” and messages such as “God’s got the last word,” “loosed from the dev­il . . . ​crazy about Jesus . . . ​ready to receive a blessing” and “Get ready ­because God is about to come in your living room” not only energized the audience waiting to hear Jakes preach “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” but presented a popu­lar cultural spiritual environment that I immediately found intriguing. This moment si­mul­ta­neously marked a high time in my personal life. I was six months’ pregnant with my first child—­the first grand­child on my side of the f­ amily. My mom and aunts traveled into town from all over the country and as far away as California and New York to spend this time with me—­and Jakes. And for my aunts and I, this was our first in person reunion 136 Chapter 6

in over three years. The last time that we w ­ ere all together was at my wedding. “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” brought us all back together again. Yet I felt both drawn in and disconnected from the message and the context. I was admittedly appreciative of and fascinated by Jakes’s emphasis on ­women. And though I had spent countless hours on a range of Black Church pews growing up as a pk (a.k.a. preacher’s kid), I never experienced such a phenomenon. I have heard numerous sermons that included short stories about ­women as parts of larger narratives, but outside of traditional “­Women’s Day” ser­vices, black ­women and their prob­lems ­were seldom central to the occasion. The readiness and excitement around such foci that day in the Georgia Dome were undeniable. However, instead of fully submitting myself to the euphoric ethos, I sat listening, watching, and journaling attentively. Something special was surely happening. But despite the magic, Rae Dawn Chong’s legendary line from The Color Purple (1985) kept coming to mind: “[Bishop!] Who dis ­woman?!” Not only did the “­woman” Jakes came to loose seem foreign to me, I had not yet fully bought into the idea that I was “bound” or in need of this kind of spiritual “loosing.” Admittedly, this is a strange claim in a text on loosing the black female body in black religion and black popu­lar culture. Something about Jakes’s loosing suggested not only a need for spiritual intervention but a biological prob­lem. Loosing for Jakes ultimately meant being more of a “lady” and all ­else falling into place—­because becoming a black lady solved a host of prob­lems. To be clear, I had experienced forceful projections growing up and t­hose projections raised questions for and troubled me, but, as Joan Morgan notes, t­here is always the sacred space of interiority. Or, as I argue, t­ here is space beyond or prior to knowledge of signification as well as intervening space between repre­sen­ta­tion and the interior, despite how forceful or cross-­pollinating the projection. Jakes’s version of loosing was grounded in a biblical text, which he used to pres­ent a new way of talking about ­women’s experiences—­between loosed and bound. His language was si­mul­ta­neously binding, however, and I mostly resisted that. I was a recent and proud gradu­ate of a local hbcu. Three preeminent values one receives from attending a historically black college or university are a heightened sense of self, a clear notion of black importance, and a deepened social consciousness. One of my fondest memories of undergraduate studies was how my math professor brilliantly entwined numeric formulations with social criticism, black religion, and black pride. What­ever significations I experienced in adolescence had been challenged in this context. I was neither Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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the lecherous monkey my high school friends ­imagined nor the fragmented libidinous body the church elder projected. I had come to know myself as a complex and full subject of value, not innately bound or in need of Jakes’s loosing. And not ­because the ancient tropes ­were not hovering about in the air or in memory, willing, waiting, and ready to affix me, but b­ ecause on that day at least I had found that intervening space. Gray space, not unmarked, yet unbound. Jakes’s “­woman” was not the sole point of disharmony. The context presented further alienation. The Georgia Dome felt more like Jakes’s stage production we viewed earlier than what I had come to imagine as “the Black Church.” I do not intend to suggest that one is better than the other or that ­there is only a singular profile for the Black Church. I am simply acknowledging that the aesthetics w ­ ere noticeably dif­fer­ent from anything that I had experienced at that point. That “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” presented a space that remixed black religion with the popu­lar was exciting. The Black Church has always been a microcosm of black culture, religiosity, the popu­lar, dexterity, and per­for­mance. Yet something was dif­fer­ent about this space, and I could not yet put my fin­ger on it. It was church. And, it was black. But it was also more and dif­fer­ent. Notwithstanding my discomfort, ­there was a deep sense of enrapture throughout the arena. ­Either Jakes was superhuman or had g­ reat timing. Perhaps a l­ ittle bit of both. Jakes is unquestionably magical at what he does. But the year was 2000, and the timing was also opportune. First, third-­wave feminism, with its emphasis on inclusivity, technology, ­human rights, poverty, vio­lence, and ­women, was a developing critical discourse and movement with strong ele­ments pervasive in society. It is no coincidence that we saw an explicit and heightened infiltration of w ­ omen in leadership and “­women’s issues” represented in media and society at large during this time. Third wavers made it clear that they w ­ ere “not our m ­ other’s” feminists. With voting rights in the bag and significant strides in reproductive and l­abor rights, third wavers set their eyes on other goals and means of protest and imaging. They ­were new millennium cool, had liberal leanings, acknowledged their contradictions, w ­ ere willing to work in gray theoretical spaces, had a way of talking about feminism without explic­itly talking about it, worked the airwaves and cyber world to mangle their piece of the socio­ po­liti­cal pie, and most of all, made feminism by way of “­women’s issues” not only accessible but en vogue. Second, Jakes offered an alternative voice to sociopo­liti­cal messages presented in politics, real­ity tele­vi­sion, gangsta rap, and elsewhere, and took ad138 Chapter 6

vantage of popu­lar cultural notions of “girl power.”9 In Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done (2010), feminist Susan J. Douglas argues that the 1990s ushered in a period of superficial “girl power,” with ­women in media and international girl groups such as the Spice Girls, who in essence communicated that w ­ omen could in fact have it all by being “girly” and ultrafeminine. Mass media saw this as an opportunity and began highlighting the idea that girl power is achieved by catering to male desire as opposed to feminist politics. Douglas refers to this as enlightened sexism, a subtle yet underhanded form of sexism that superficially celebrates female achievements while invalidating feminism and thus keeping ­women in their place. “Enlightened sexism” is similar to Sarojini Nadar and Cheryl Potgieter’s “formenism.” Both critiques disrupt interpretations of “girl power” that fundamentally believe that men are superior to w ­ omen and liberation is realized through heteropatriarchal phallic power and achieving popu­lar notions of beauty and gender ideals. Black feminine-­ism is distinct ­because it is specifically located in black history and hegemonic black gender ideals and sexual politics pervasive in the Black Church, black cultures, and black communities. In this text, it particularly notes a theological discourse in media. Yet t­here is also similarity. Both “girl power” and feminine-­ism are locked between the par­ameters of Protestant work ethics and personal responsibility. That is, you get what you work for. Each produces a template for celebrating female-­ centered power that pseudocritiques the social conditions of w ­ omen on the surface while glossing over the real ways that social conditions are ­shaped by and grounded in ideological and structural biases and vio­lences that affect ­women’s and girls’ daily lives. Nevertheless, for many black ­women, messaging about girl power or feminine-­ism, radical or not, was preferable to Reagan’s welfare queen, which necessarily included ho discourse, and repre­sen­ta­tions of bitches and hos seeping through tele­vi­sion and ­music in the 1990s. Third, the economic boom and increased black purchasing power of the midto late 1990s are significant. Clearly not every­one benefitted from the economic surplus during Bill Clinton’s presidency, but many did. ­People—­namely middle- and upper-­class aspirants and ­those unscathed by Clinton’s racist drug and welfare policies—­were amendable to spending and banks w ­ ere willing to invest. Si­mul­ta­neously and relatedly, megachurches w ­ ere on the rise, and Jakes was the ascending prince. Furthermore, black w ­ omen, the bedrock of the Black Church, ­were agreeable to investing in both their personal and spiritual lives, with in­de­pen­dent and discretionary bud­gets or not. And athletic arenas doubling as religious spaces w ­ ere bringing all kinds of p­ eople Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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and cultural forms together. “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” did not pres­ent the first time that tens of thousands of ­people gathered in a sports arena for a religious experience. It was, however, the first time for the production to be both black-­led and woman-­centered. Black ­women, previously misrecognized in general and unrecognized as a significant audience worthy of acknowledgement, care, and spiritual attention, w ­ ere ready for it. Had “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” emerged in the 1970s or 1980s it would have been in­ter­est­ing but not likely as explosive. By the 1990s ­there was a mutual need. ­Women needed Jakes, to be seen and heard, as much as he needed them. And Jakes seized the moment. Yet for ­every cultural high, t­ here was a mirroring cultural low. The economic upswing of the 1990s in the United States was countered by simultaneous steady poverty in all parts of the globe, especially among ­women. ­Women’s global leadership and vio­lence against w ­ omen increased concurrently. Accessible points for speaking feminist truths to power r­ose in unison with mass-­mediated stereotypic racist and sexist tropes in technology. And while third-­wave feminism produced space for w ­ omen and girls to deconstruct and reimagine power, “girl power” communicated that feminine power was more suitable than feminist politics and po­liti­cal power, thus producing space for other kinds of feminine media and discourses. “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” sprung forth between ­these tensions. The theme for the “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” conference in 2000 was “seize the moment.” Jakes placed emphasis on incarcerated ­women that year. Prior to his arrival onstage we w ­ ere introduced to “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” incarcerated participants in select w ­ omen’s prisons via jumbotrons that panned to Pulaski State Prison in Hawkinsville, Georgia; Alfred D. Hughes Unit in Gatesville, Texas; and Washington Corrections Center for W ­ omen in Gig Harbor, Washington. At each stop we w ­ ere greeted by husband-­and-­ wife ministerial teams backed by predominantly black and brown ­women inmates whose status was explic­itly marked by the prison stripe aesthetic. Some cheered. Some smiled. Some lifted their hands. And some frowned and turned away from the camera. What did loosing mean within the context of literal bondage? And what did it mean for t­ hose of us who stood outside the penal system yet within postcaptive neo­co­lo­niality? In ­either case, t­ here was never any mention of justice for “­woman.” My unease intensified. I think the same went for my m ­ other. It seems a simultaneous discourse on justice would be particularly impor­ tant for incarcerated ­women. One in eigh­teen black ­women are imprisoned, 140 Chapter 6

versus one in 111 white w ­ omen. Black w ­ omen are not more inclined t­oward criminality than other groups. They disproportionately experience heightened levels of vulnerability to social risk ­factors such as broken kinships; state, local, and interpersonal vio­lence; rape; incest; child abuse; molestation; abandonment; inequitable access to quality education, healthcare, and childcare; mass incarceration; employment discrimination and low wages; simultaneous degendering, hypersexualization, and pornotroping; heightened levels of punishment in social, l­egal, and academic contexts; racial profiling and brutality; illness; and cyclical poverty, that in turn lead to desperate methods of survival such as drug dealing, prostitution, addiction, stealing, selling blood, murder, and even returning to violent partners and h­ ouse­holds.10 Not to mention, black w ­ omen are particularly affected by unfair drug sentencing laws and policies. This also contributes to a significant risk ­factor in the f­ uture incarceration of their ­children. The Sentencing Proj­ect reports, Sentencing policies of the War on Drugs era resulted in dramatic growth in incarceration for drug offenses. Since its official beginning in 1982, the number of Americans incarcerated for drug offenses has skyrocketed from 41,000 in 1980 to half a million in 2011. . . . ​The number of w ­ omen in prison, many of whom are incarcerated for drug offenses, has been increasing at a rate 50 ­percent higher than men since 1980. ­Women in prison often have significant histories of physical and sexual abuse, high rates of hiv, and substance abuse prob­lems. ­Women’s imprisonment in female-­headed ­house­holds leads to ­children who suffer from their ­mother’s absence and breaks in ­family ties.11 Reporting for the Center for American Pro­gress, Julie Ajinkya writes, The real travesty, however, is that the incarceration of w ­ omen often masks the fact that some w ­ omen are disproportionately vulnerable to a host of risk ­factors that increase the likelihood of their becoming involved in the criminal justice system. The vast majority of ­women in prison—85 ­percent to 90 ­percent—­have a history of being victims of vio­lence prior to their incarceration, including domestic vio­lence, rape, sexual assault, and child abuse. And racial disparities strike ­here too: Girls of color who are victims of abuse are more likely to be pro­cessed by the criminal justice system and labeled as offenders than white girls, who have a better chance of being treated as victims and referred to child welfare and ­mental health systems.12 Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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Furthermore, ­ omen’s incarceration also contributes to a significant risk f­actor in the W ­future incarceration of their c­ hildren. Two out of ­every three ­women in state prison have at least one ­family member who has been incarcerated and ­there are 1.5 million c­ hildren who currently have a parent in state or federal prison. ­These ­children are at a heightened risk for ­future incarceration and ­children of color are disproportionately represented in this group as well,. . . . ​The devastating impact of w ­ omen’s incarceration ­doesn’t end when ­women are released. That’s b­ ecause w ­ omen also face significant obstacles to effectively reentering society and providing for themselves and their c­ hildren. Once released, w ­ omen find themselves restricted from governmental assistance programs such as housing, employment, education, and subsistence benefits.13 Within this climate, messages about loosing and t­ hings getting better may be all one can give or enough for one to hear. However, the very real challenges faced by black ­women and girls (the latest fastest-­growing incarcerated population), including historical abandonment by the state and the complex web of prob­lems that w ­ omen’s and girls’ incarceration produces for them and their families, requires more than the message the ­women at “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” received that day. Between the screening out of black incarceration statistics, black w ­ omen’s and girls’ vulnerability to social risks, mechanisms for protest and/or legal-­council, and the screening in of written and video messages from then vice president Al Gore and then governor George Bush, respectively (both of whom emphasized hard work and personal responsibility); male speakers “speaking to” the audience of ­women about how ­things ­will “turn around” and how we all came in “bound” but w ­ ill all leave “loosed”; and Jakes’s sermon, which emphasized being “blessed,” God’s deliverance, and becoming a virtuous w ­ oman, I was spent. Not b­ ecause I failed to see the exceptional meaning and value in “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” but ­because I did, and I understood ­there ­were significant prob­lems with such an intervention. I packed up my journal and scribbled notes, and my m ­ other and I left the conference early. My aunts stayed ­behind. It was a full day of back-­to-­back events, speakers, and preachers. But both the baby and Jakes had made me tired. I thought a lot about the incarcerated ­women on our way home. I also recalled the excited f­ aces of ­those I left b­ ehind in the arena. They w ­ ere t­ here for something extraordinary. Perhaps I missed it querying about justice and 142 Chapter 6

incarceration statistics. Perhaps they found additional intervening interior space. Jakes praised ­women and problematized the abuses they experienced while also criminalizing their survival tactics and sidestepping the work of racist, sexist, classist, imperialist, and patriarchal power relations and structures that enable and undergird the condition and hardships they experience. Nevertheless, ­people require dif­fer­ent points of recognition and negotiation for survival. Still and all, I had grown up in the black Baptist church and was accustomed to po­liti­cal messaging ­every now and then. I wanted Jakes to make the politics of this plain. “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” is celebrated for its overarching emphasis on vio­lence against w ­ omen. That Jakes names this and builds a platform around it is a big deal. ­Women’s trauma has since become a huge moneymaker in the Black Church. But what cannot be missed is that Jakes did something many black pastors still avoid ­doing, and that is explic­itly articulate vio­lence against black ­women as a theological and social prob­lem. So then how could Jakes miss ­these other connections between race, gender, class, and incarceration? He came to seize the moment and implored the audience to do the same. And he did. Jakes’s “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” franchise became larger than life a­ fter 2000. The moment was auspicious, but Jakes’s product was undeniably well chosen. ­Women needed to know that someone cared. And while Jakes ignored the structures of dominance black folk navigate, he cared enough to at least bring attention to parts of their plight. I still wanted more and was not alone. I wanted Jakes to account for the rise of mass incarceration, the double meaning of “loosing,” and the “­woman” he was claiming to set ­free. Perhaps Jakes was drawing on the dualism Douglas names: incarcerated in body yet f­ ree in spirit, or postcaptive in signification yet ­free in psyche. Perchance he was calling to consciousness the space in between. Or maybe he just had knowledge my twenty-­something self had yet to learn. What­ever the case, ­after arriving home with my ­mother I committed to unraveling Jakes’s “­woman” and the ­women in the audience. While ­there may be some overlapping, the ­women who love Jakes and the “­woman” of “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” are not synonymous. ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed: A Descriptive Reading The success of Jakes’s book ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! may be largely mea­ sured at the point of sale. Yet success can be totalized by neither popularity nor profit. Most generally, success denotes the outcome of an undertaking Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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based upon a set of aims. Central to Jakes’s mission is his desire to “empower.” Success, then, is si­mul­ta­neously contingent upon not only education and entertainment but the ways in which Jakes’s repre­sen­ta­tional strategies—­the politics and moves of meaning making and how we come to know what we know—­function to empower or disempower t­ hose in his audience. Grasping this requires critically reading ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! and drawing out the ideological and po­liti­cal criteria fundamental to its structure. I place emphasis on Jakes’s best-­selling book, the basis for his growing empire. I also attend to corresponding cinematic productions and sermons that bear the same name, as well as other select texts. My reading screens in Jakes’s repre­sen­ta­tional strategies, placing par­tic­ u­lar emphasis on his linguistic and visual depictions of “­woman.” It screens out the potential spiritual value of Jakes’s texts. This is not to invalidate the felt qualities experienced by his audience that give rise to emotional, psychological, and physical transcendence, nor is it to dismiss, by way of extraction, Jakes’s spiritual intentions. My emphasis on Jakes’s repre­sen­ta­tional strategies as opposed to the potential spiritual benefits of his message aims to explore the ideological and po­liti­cal values therein and to demonstrate how the discourse on black womanhood is sometimes reproduced, circulated, and consumed by black folk, and how the myths therein often get maintained and even further developed in mundane or unexpected spaces, for example, the Black Church. Pivotal to ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! is not only Jakes’s early counseling experiences with his ­mother and female congregants but also his interpretation of self, ­women, and Luke 13:11–12: “And, behold, t­ here was a w ­ oman which had a spirit of infirmity eigh­teen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. / And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, ­Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” Jakes’s interpretation of Luke 13:11–12 is foundational for understanding the discourse on black womanhood pervasive in his productions. The import lies in the work that discourses do in terms of producing cultural products, meanings, and relations. Stuart Hall argues that language is the most privileged media in which meaning is produced and circulated. It is a signifying practice that constructs and transmits meanings, concepts, ideas, and feelings via shared cultural codes, which are not always written or spoken, and can include visual images, sounds, body language, facial expressions, gestures, clothing, and so on. Language becomes constructed knowledge, what we refer to as discourse, as it connects clusters of ideas, images, and practices that provide 144 Chapter 6

ways of talking about ­things, for example, racial discourse, religious discourse, gender discourse, feminist discourse, or feminine discourse. Discursive formations define what is and is not appropriate in our formulation of practices in relation to a subject or site of social activity. Jakes constructs a nonideal ­woman trope as truth, joining a chorus of ­others mass mediating repre­sen­ta­tional vio­lence in popu­lar culture, law, and policies, and thus, though seeking to demarginalize and empower ­women, lends a hand in heightening vulnerability to social risks. His message about ­women, which problematizes as it intends to loose, has sociopo­liti­cal implications in terms of how black w ­ omen and girls get read and treated in the Black Church and the culture at large. At minimum, Jakes’s “­woman” in ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! affirms the metanarrative, which makes it pos­si­ble to enact, maintain, and justify structural, systemic, and institutional forms of oppression hurled against black female thriving. He makes the following moves: Jakes rereads Luke 13:11–12 as exemplar of w ­ omen’s status. He screens in the ­woman’s “infirmed” status in verse 11, which he interprets as an ailment resulting from a past event outside of her control, while shifting the healing power of Jesus presented in verse 12 ­toward a prescriptive backdrop to which he returns to l­ater. Aware of the power of acknowledging w ­ omen’s 14 pain and suffering, Jakes takes the ­woman’s infirmed status and parallels it to w ­ omen’s con­temporary status as victims of vio­lence. This was a significant point of interest and recognition, particularly for black ­women who share histories of suffering and vio­lence caused by any number of social risks. Jakes’s attention to female suffering articulated both empathy and the possibility of liberation, at minimum, from the constraints of the memory of violation. He tells his readers that they are loosed, that they have agency to escape the ­mental prisons of their past experiences caused by child abuse, molestation, incest, and rape, and that individual value cannot be taken (by an abuser or anyone ­else) but is instead encountered once ­women find purpose.15 This was and is a quite power­ful message. ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! sold out in less than one month a­ fter its first printing. Th ­ ere is something liberating about being oppressed by the weight and trauma of social and interpersonal risks that at times seem ungraspable and/or unsolvable and choosing to take owner­ship for that which one can actually change. Still, though the most con­spic­uo­ us message highlights an impor­tant break between the subject and the prob­lem (“­woman, thou art loosed” [ . . . ​from what­ever prob­lem she is facing]), ­there are several other simultaneous messages produced within the text that require further attention. ­Woman, Thou Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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Art Loosed! can be broken down into three categories: the person, the prob­ lem, and the prescription. Jakes spends most of his time on the prob­lem. I ­will follow suit. For clarification purposes, “the person” symbolizes both the ­woman in the biblical narrative and ­women in general. “The prescription” highlights what Jakes notes as a turn t­oward Jesus’s healing power, demonstrated through a w ­ oman’s trust in Jesus’s ability to heal and sanctification—­ the regimenting of ­women’s be­hav­iors within hypermoralism and hegemonic sex and gender ideals. “The prob­lem” represents the ­woman’s infirmity noted in verse 11, which Jakes proj­ects onto w ­ omen in general. Jakes initially notes that the ­woman is “infirmed” by “something that attacked her 18 years earlier.” L ­ ater Jakes posits that she is “infirmed” by a “spirit that has gripped her life.” While this seems like an innocuous reference to Luke 13:11a, Jakes’s articulation reveals a significant interpretive move that first constructs the ­woman as a victim of someone or something out of her control then reconstructs her as an agent “gripped” by a “spirit.” When translating “infirmity” in terms of the con­temporary context, Jakes articulates it as hurting, desperate, manipulative, destructive, abusive, obsessive, clingy, selfish, insecure, gullible, weak, and promiscuous.16 Thus, while the infirmity that “grips” the ­woman in the biblical narrative is a “bowed” back, Jakes’s con­ temporary reading is altogether dif­fer­ent. He provides a repre­sen­ta­tional shift that suggests that w ­ omen, starting with Eve, are prob­lems that need changing (read: loosing) in and of themselves. In the opening paragraph Jakes posits, “This w ­ oman’s dilemma is her own, but perhaps you ­will find relativity between her case history and your own.”17 This reading indicates that the w ­ oman’s infirmity is not only possessed by her but is also in some way her fault. ­After making this claim, he then shifts t­oward the notion of “deliverance” from “past trauma.”18 ­These moves spiritualize and blame w ­ omen for the afterlife of trauma, which may be more fairly read as a phenomenon or a web of events or social risks that notes the very real long-­lasting affects of injury on victims. Also, ­these moves shift the meaning of “infirmity” as presented in the biblical narrative away from a literal illness t­ oward con­temporary verbes that pejoratively describe womanhood. Fi­nally, ­these moves put the onus on ­women who have been traumatized to get “delivered.” It is impor­tant to note that Jakes’s reference to “deliverance” is twofold. On one hand, it means being set f­ ree from the emotional and psychological stresses that accompany past traumas so that one may live life unbound by the restraints of previous pain. This is a positive deployment. On the other 146 Chapter 6

hand, it refers to “deliverance” from essentialist “­women’s ways of being,” for example, promiscuity. This is an injurious usage. Yet a close reading of the biblical text highlights healing from a physical and possibly a social ailment. The narrator in Luke 13:11b states that the ­woman was “bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.” This notes a disability. Luke 13:11a posits that the w ­ oman had “a spirit of infirmity.” Luke 13:15–16 suggests freedom from a dif­fer­ent kind of bondage. The text reads, “The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? / And o­ ught not this ­woman, a ­daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eigh­teen long years, be set ­free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” The words “loose,” “set f­ ree,” and “bound” reference Luke 4:18 and 7:18– 23, the first of which reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, b­ ecause he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go ­free,” and that latter of which reads, The disciples of John reported all ­these ­things to him. So John summoned two of his disciples / and sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” / When the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ ” / Jesus had just then cured many ­people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who ­were blind. / And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. / And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” ­ ese two passages are critical to Luke’s account of Jesus’s ministry. They Th frame Jesus as the Christ and his mission as liberation. Thus, Luke 13:11–16 might be read alongside of ­these texts, both of which suggest Jesus may have been freeing the ­woman from both her disability and some kind of socio­ cultural bondage. The shifts in language make it difficult to tell ­whether or not the w ­ oman was also healed from a social ailment. Both are plausible, given both the narrator’s and Jesus’s language. The truth of the Christian message is for Jakes’s audience to figure out. The role of the religio-­cultural critic is to lay bare the contradictions and prob­lems. Jakes’s text is not about healing from disability. Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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He argues for “deliverance” from a par­tic­u­lar kind of female-­centric “way of being” or self-­imposed personal dilemma. This should raise questions. When utilizing this argument to frame con­temporary ­women’s “infirmity,” he writes, Jesus said, “­Woman, thou art loosed.” He did not call her by name. He ­wasn’t speaking to her just as a person. He spoke to her femininity. He spoke to the song in her. He spoke to the lace in her. Like a crumbling r­ ose, Jesus spoke to what she could, and would, have been. I believe the Lord spoke to the twinkle that existed in her eye when she was a child; to the girlish glow that makeup can never seem to recapture. He spoke to her God-­given uniqueness. He spoke to her gender.19 We are looking at a ­woman who had a personal war ­going on inside her. ­These strug­gles must have tainted many other areas of her life. The infirmity that attacked her was physical. However, many ­women also wrestle with infirmities in emotional traumas . . . ​an emotional handicap can create de­pen­ dency on many dif­fer­ent levels.20 Jakes makes several gender-­specific essentialist claims, for example, comparing womanhood to “lace” and a “crumbling ­rose,” positing that gender is both natu­ral and “unique” as opposed to socially and interpersonally constructed, and circumscribing adult female life to the romantic era of “girlhood.” ­These moves elevate ­women while also problematizing them by suggesting they possess some kind of special yet disorienting innate quality. They also set the stage for the transition from the ­woman in the biblical narrative to Jakes’s universal “­woman” in con­temporary culture—­a w ­ oman marked by past trauma, which “taint[s] many other areas of her life.” He ironically marks this “tainting” as ­women’s “handicap,” not the trauma itself. And it is the handicap—­women’s tainted areas of life—­that Jakes articulates as the prob­lem and that frames the rest of the text. Ableism problematized and bracketed, Jakes highlights four “handicaps”21 that ­women need to be loosed from: their tendency to make bad choices, have bad attitudes, make excuses, and forsake their God-­given femininity. I give attention to the first “handicap,” ­women’s tendency to make bad choices. Jakes argues that ­women are “wounded” (“infirmed”), and that “woundedness” is the gateway to “bad” be­hav­ior, for example, promiscuity and adulterous affairs (“infirmed” be­hav­ iors). He writes, Many times . . . ​emotional handicaps ­will spawn a series of unhealthy relationships. 148 Chapter 6

For thou has had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly. John 4:18. Healing cannot come to a desperate person rummaging through other ­people’s lives. One of the first t­ hings that a hurting person needs to do is break the habit of using other p­ eople as a narcotic to numb the dull aching of an inner void. The more you medicate your symptoms, the less chance you have allowing God to heal you. The other destructive tendency that can exist with any abuse is the person must keep increasing the dosage.22 This quote implies a state of unscrupulous hypersexuality caused by ­women’s “bad” choices. As a prescription, Jakes suggests that w ­ omen sanctify their spirits. He asserts, “However, ­there is a sanctity of your spirit that comes through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and sanctifies the innermost part of your being. Certainly, once you get cleaned up in your spirit, it w ­ ill be reflected in your character and conduct. You w ­ on’t be like Mary the m ­ other of Jesus and dress like Mary Magdalene did before she met the master. The Spirit of the Lord w ­ ill give you bound­aries.”23 However, sanctification does not always work. Jakes notes, “Yes, w ­ e’ve got hurting p­ eople. Sometimes they break the bound­aries and they become lascivious and out of control and we have to readmit them into the hospital and allow them to be treated again.”24 Jakes’s emphasis on w ­ omen’s promiscuity is ongoing. He uses it to mark ­women’s past choices, thus shifting the discourse away from ­women as victims of vio­lence, sexual and other­wise, to ­women as choice-­making agents who allow past violations to hinder pres­ent decision making, particularly in terms of sexual activity. Ultimately, w ­ omen’s current status has much to do with “bad” choices that ­were within their control, for example, ­women’s tendency to attract men who do not treat them well, have affairs with other ­women’s husbands, and have ­children outside of the social contract of marriage.25 Jakes furthers this idea by interweaving the narrative of the “infirmed” ­woman with that of Rahab, a w ­ oman who is said to have been both a “harlot” 26 and an ancestor of Jesus, and the Samaritan ­woman at the well that had five husbands and a lover who was not her husband,27 thus interlacing infirmity/ sickness/disability with victimization, victimization with bad choices, and bad choices with sexual immorality, which circles back to infirmity. This entwinement of women-­as-­problems with innate “infirmities,” for example, uncontrolled sexual desire, and women-­as-­victims who lack moral bound­aries is brought to life in Jakes’s corresponding film, ­Woman Thou Art Loosed (2004). Akin to the written text, t­ hese themes are articulated in the Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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opening scene, which opens with a large, state-­of-­the-­art, predominantly Black Church ser­vice with ­women in white clothing and hats and a racially mixed choir of ­women and men wearing traditional robes and singing “­There’s room at the cross.” While the familiar sounds of the Hammond B3 organ plays against the backdrop, Jakes preaches the following, “I believe that God can make you w ­ hole. . . . ​I believe he can deliver . . . ​in spite of every­thing [­you’ve] done. . . . ​Come on down! God wants to turn your life around. . . . ​ He’s able to deliver you . . . ​­there’s room at the cross . . . ​backslider! I’m talking to you . . . ​you need this word.”28 At the very moment Jakes yells “backslider!” Michelle, the main protagonist, a frantic young w ­ oman, enters, framed by Jakes’s assertion on backsliding; based upon the timing of her dramatic entrance, it is clear that Michelle needs God’s deliverance. As the camera zooms in to highlight Michelle’s chiseled facial features, the power­ful vibration of Jakes’s voice, juxtaposed against the lowered musical tempo in the backdrop, signifies that Jakes, not God, is both the judge and the healer—­the one that grants deliverance. Si­mul­ta­neously, Michelle is marked as a prob­lem: a mad black ­woman. As her story unfolds, we learn that she is not simply a prob­lem but a victim of child molestation whose life has spun out of control. Michelle was raped when she was twelve years old by her ­mother’s boyfriend, Reggie. During the rape scene, which blacks out, Reggie grabs her and chides her for “teasing [him] with t­ hose tight jeans.” This is a curious signification b­ ecause, as a child, the film depicts Michelle most often dressed in ultrafeminine clothing such as soft yellow and pink dresses and matching oversized hair bows. It is difficult to tell if Reggie’s projection is an oversight or an intended reflection of Jakes’s imagination. While he does not explic­itly make the rape Michelle’s fault, Jakes characterizes her as a girl-­child longing to be a “star,” the center of attention. This is a troubling characterization, given the work that Jakes does in ­Daddy Loves His Girls (2006) and God’s Leading Lady (2003). The former opens up to an explicit account of the birth of Jakes’s d­ aughter, who glides through her ­mother’s legs, which are “gapped like the curtains to a Broadway play,” and makes her initial g­ rand per­for­mance on Earth’s “stage” for Jakes. The latter, God’s Leading Lady (2003), makes the stage its central theme. Jakes argues that “the lady in red” becomes a “lady in waiting” once she takes her rightful place center stage, which is strategically defined and confined by Jakes.29 It is clear Jakes has an interest in w ­ omen being on stage. However, he proj­ ects this fascination onto w ­ omen and girls by suggesting that they have an 150 Chapter 6

inherent desire to be “stars,” center stage, and performing for their “daddies.” The par­tic­ul­ar kinds of stages that ­women take up in Jakes’s imagination depend on both sanctity and positive male direction. For example, Jakes’s “leading lady”—­his ideal “­woman”—­embodies in­de­pen­dence as defined by Jakes that pushes her center stage in vari­ous areas of her life, for example, work, play, church, and so on. Jakes notes her as a l­awyer, doctor, preacher, and business owner who debunks certain oppressive social structures while remaining a “lady.” However, ­those who, like Michelle, lack sanctity and positive male direction take up other kinds of stages. Throughout the film we see Michelle beaten, raped, and neglected. ­These images are tempered with her shaking her hips for her young male playmate, stripping for adult male suitors, and “acting out” by murdering her rapist as he kneels at the church altar, a religious “stage” that Jakes dominates and Michelle violates. Michelle epitomizes Jakes’s “infirmed” “­woman,” the nonideal. Jakes depicts her as a lascivious madwoman who has made numerous poor choices due to her inability to face and move beyond her past, which includes a host of violations by Reggie, as well as by her pimp, her drug pusher, and her m ­ other. It is in­ter­est­ing that Kimberly Elise plays the role of Tyler Perry’s “mad black ­woman” one year ­later. As I wrote elsewhere, When examining Diary of a Mad Black ­Woman, I could not help but to imagine Elise packing up her t­hings, discarding all t­hings Michelle, her character in ­Woman Thou Art Loosed (2004), exiting stage left, and cutting across the street to the production set of Diary of a Mad Black ­Woman where a team of stage hands clothed her in the fancy garb of Helen, all the while carefully maintaining the “crazy” that so deeply marked Michelle. Both narratives tell the story of a young black ­woman who has “gone crazy” due to par­tic­u­lar acts of male violation.30 Michelle’s ultimate sin seems to be her inability or unwillingness to forgive her rapist. According to the storyline, Reggie was never tried in the court of law. In fact, he never admitted to raping twelve-­year-­old Michelle. It could be said that justice was served through his murder. Yet Jakes problematizes this act of agency throughout the film. Reggie’s murder is represented as hateful and unscrupulous as opposed to long-­suffering rage or uncalculated defense. Michelle shoots and kills Reggie as he unexpectedly approaches her at the church altar. The film depicts her walking to the church altar in response to Jakes’s sermon. It seems she is attempting to “loose” herself from ­things that “gripped” her from her past. Instead, while trembling and holding a blood-­stained dress she wore Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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when raped as a child, she meets Reggie. In her purse is a gun given to her by a friend as a source of protection against the daily vio­lence she experienced. Reggie’s positioning at the altar, as well as his subjection to what Jakes pres­ents as cold-­blooded murder, makes Reggie out to be a partial victim. Akin to the perpetrators of vio­lence in Jakes’s book ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed!, Reggie escapes accountability. Michelle, however, is marred by victimization and poor choices, to include sexual vio­lence that doubles as sexual immorality. She pays for “improper” decision making via varying “prisons” and “death sentences.” At one point in the film Jakes suggests that w ­ omen have agency to make “proper” choices, however, they decide to open their lives (and legs) to men like Reggie. He preaches, “­These ­people call you . . . ​ but you ­don’t have to answer!” Perhaps Michelle could have made dif­fer­ ent decisions. However, this is a film with a larger cultural script already in place. Dif­fer­ent choices would necessitate a change in Jakes’s storyline. Per the film, and for the rec­ord, none of her abusers ever called Michelle. They in fact forced themselves into her presence. In addition to poor decision making, Michelle also embodies the other “handicaps” outlined in Jakes’s text: w ­ omen’s tendency to have bad attitudes, make excuses, and forsake their God-­given femininity. Jakes holds that ­women become accustomed to having prob­lems as a result of “improper” decision making.31 This leads to bad attitudes that function as security blankets, stress o­ thers out, limit deliverance, enable self-­destruction, and result in making excuses.32 However, ­because Jesus loosed ­women from their “infirmity,” excuses ( Jakes notes excuses are “emotional handicaps” that require “special needs”) are tools of “wounded” ­women who do not desire to be or believe that they can be healed by the “­Great Physician.”33 Throughout the film, Jakes depicts Michelle as hardened, full of excuses (which he appears to empathize with), and estranged from her God-­given femininity. The latter is a significant prob­lem for Jakes. In his book ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! he argues that the “proper” appropriation of gender identity is critical to “deliverance.” Jakes devotes an entire chapter to “femininity.” Perhaps borrowing a page from Freud’s essay bearing the same name, he maintains that girls, who are born to be in relation, as evidenced in their love for playing dress up and h­ ouse with dolls, have a God-­given “uniqueness” that makes them “open receivers” or “receptacles” that are diametrically opposed to boys, who Jakes articulates as “power plugs” or “givers.”34 Thus, ­women need to be “covered”35 by men so that they may experience “­wholeness,” which is encountered when a man, who functions like a “power saw,” plugs into a 152 Chapter 6

­ oman’s receptacle.36 Though married ­women are “covered” by their husbands w according to Jakes, single w ­ omen are “covered” by their chastity and morality.37 He holds that “spiritual warfare”—­for example, male shortage, rape, child abuse, sexual discrimination, and enmity between ­women—­will ensue if ­these relations are not taken seriously.38 Specifically, ­women ­will face sorrow and miss their blessings (for example, deliverance from the suffering that plagues them) if they do not act like “ladies,” which demands certain kinds of bound­aries (or, “openings,” if married), roles, and subjugations. We witness this theory firsthand with Michelle, who is marked by both her personal and her m ­ other’s “indiscretions.” Both lack bound­aries and “covers,” thus, each ­faces an im­mense amount of trou­ble. In response, Michelle, who is neither a d­ aughter (to a pres­ent ­father) nor a wife—­both of which highlight social positions that humanize, albeit problematically, ­women and girls in patriarchal socie­ties—is given a make­over by a surrogate ­mother figure, Twana. Twana is a single ­woman and beautician who loves men, makeup, wigs, and animal prints. Twana helps Michelle appear more “lady-­like,” and we see her literally transform from a hardened “street thug” prototype, dressed in denim with backward flowing cornrows, to a “lady” with soft, cascading curls, a chiffon flower-­printed dress, painted nails, and exquisite face paint. The hope is to impress Todd, a good guy whom Michelle needs to “cover” her and make her “­whole.” However, unlike most fairy­tales, she does not get to live happily ever ­after. The film ends with Michelle in jail on death row for murdering Reggie. She never gets “covered” by a f­ather or a husband. Her only option is to become chaste or moral. Jakes’s depiction of her as a “mad ­woman” usurps ­these possibilities, however. What Michelle does have in the end is Jakes. Perhaps, he w ­ ill be her “cover.” At the very least, Jakes can introduce her to the Jesus figure articulated in his books. Si­mul­ta­neously, Michelle can help grow both his empire and his ego. ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed: A Black Feminist Religio-­Cultural Reading ­ oman, Thou Art Loosed! creates a context for ­women to transcend their preW dicaments while si­mul­ta­neously constructing, mass producing, and marketing an ideology that subverts ­human fulfillment, or, more specifically, that denies critical interests within the biblical narrative and among black ­women and girls. Ultimately, Jakes participates in oppression politics while si­mul­ta­ neously attempting to generate liberative space with feminine theology. He Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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interprets Luke 13:11–12 in the following way: Jesus commands the ­woman who had a “bowed” back for eigh­teen years—­from ­either some kind of outside attack or the “gripping” of a “spirit”—to straighten up, thus releasing her from her infirmity. This reading suggests that while she may have been disabled, sick, victimized, or traumatized, she eventually began operating ­under a “spirit” that ­either maintained or furthered her condition. Jakes posits that the latter was her dilemma.39 Jesus’s healing power releases the “spirit,” thus transforming the ­woman’s status from that of victim, w ­ hether externally or internally induced or both, to victor. Jesus’s identity as the Christ, which is proven by his healing power, is central to Luke’s account. Similarly, it is critical to Jakes’s ministry, although it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between Jakes and Jesus. However, Jakes’s framing of the prob­lem differs from that of Jesus. Jakes represents the ­woman (and ultimately w ­ omen in general) as needing straightening up by Jesus for personal reasons within her control. Yet neither the narrator nor Jesus pres­ents her in this way. The narrator refers to a “spirit of infirmity” in Luke 13:11a, a physical infirmity in Luke 13:11b, and a pos­si­ble social infirmity in Luke 13:16. Jesus does not problematize womanhood in this reading. If read within the context of Luke 4:18 and 7:18–23, one might read Luke 13:11–12 in terms of restorative justice rather than a par­tic­u­lar gendered way of being, individual decision making, or attitude—­the attitude Jakes marks as hurting, desperate, manipulative, destructive, abusive, obsessive, clingy, selfish, insecure, gullible, weak, and promiscuous, all resulting from a “gripping” by a “spirit.” While the narrator in Luke refers to a “spirit”—­for example, a “spirit of infirmity”—­the kind of spirit is unknown. “Spirits,” good, bad, and indifferent, are common in Luke, and they are no respecter of persons. They fall on every­one, from Jesus to Paul. They have nothing to do with sex or gender. However, when “good” or “bad,” the source is often identified as such, for example, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (italics mine). Jakes’s reference to a “spirit” that “gripped” the ­woman and his subsequent analy­sis of w ­ omen in general, also “gripped by spirits,” suggests a pejorative rather than a liberative reading. A close reading of Luke trou­bles this interpretive move. Jakes’s translation of the “spirit” may come from a literal reading of Luke 13:16 in which Jesus rhetorically asks if the ­woman “whom Satan bound” might be set ­free from “bondage” on the Sabbath. However, the narrator explicates neither demon possession nor demon exorcism. A repre­sen­ta­tional analy­sis of verses 12–16 suggests that Jesus’s reference to Satan is less an indication of an 154 Chapter 6

individual binding, for example, a negative “spiritual gripping” that leads to bad attitudes and poor choices, and more an indication of his mission, which he articulates as social and po­liti­cal. Jakes misses the shift in language between verse 12, where the w ­ oman is freed from illness/disability, and verse 16, where she is freed from bondage. Instead, he turns the w ­ oman and ­women in general into prob­lems, as opposed to p­ eople with prob­lems. He acknowledges that many w ­ omen have been hurt by something outside of their control while si­mul­ta­neously positing that w ­ omen, at some point in their life, maintain or further their condition on their own. This leads to a life of poor choices, which needs Jakes’s/ Jesus’s straightening. With Jakes’s emphasis on ­women and his aim to empower audiences, why not make Jesus’s mission outlined in Luke 4:18 the starting point for ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed!? Why not complicate Jesus’s mission considering social real­ity? Why not provide social critiques on forms of oppression that hold ­women captive, such as sexism, patriarchy, racism, heterosexism, classism, and capitalism, which limit black ­women’s and girls’ thriving in specific ways? One reason may be that social criticism is not as profitable. At the same time, critiques of w ­ omen that draw on racist and sexist epistemes are gainful but not empowering. The hazards of Jakes’s reading are numerous. When translating the ­woman’s “infirmity” in the biblical narrative in light of our con­temporary context, he circumscribes it within a context of immorality and insatiable promiscuity. This reading highlights movement away from the w ­ oman in the Bible ­toward Jakes’s nonideal “­woman.” The under­lying command is the same: straighten up! Throughout ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed!, Jakes commands w ­ omen to turn ­toward Jesus’s healing power and transform their ways. However, per Jakes, Jesus’s healing power is obsessed with controlling ­women’s illicit sexual choices. The under­lying prob­lem beneath the prob­lem for Jakes: ­women are too loose. That is, many ­women who are victims of trauma demonstrate poor sexual ethics that cause their lives to spiral out of control. This is their dilemma. Jakes’s emphasis on sexual ethics and decision making as opposed to the trauma itself calls three concerns to mind: how social risks are heightened through practices of seeing, reading, speaking, and writing; how ­these practices limit justice; and how they not only attempt to stabilize black female myths over time through the consistency of signification and repre­ sen­ta­tion but are brought to life and realigned again and again, constructing hyperpostrepre­sen­ta­tional legibility. The last-­mentioned notes the energetic afterworld of black female myths once possessed in black collectives and how Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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myths about difference and illegibility get reappropriated, prioritized, and made legible in dif­fer­ent contexts. This mythological way of “seeing” black ­women and girls can invoke a range of emotions, such as fear, curiosity, hatred, desire, repulsion, and fascination, therefore affecting how they are treated. In Michelle, we see a girl born into a context of daily physical, psychological, sexual, and emotional trauma, without recourse. Hyperpostrepre­sen­ta­tional legibility works both within and outside of Jakes’s text. It enables Michelle to be v­ iolated by her ­mother, Reggie, her pimp, her pusher, her jury, and Jakes. Yet when Michelle murders Reggie she is sentenced to death. As opposed to examining her crime within the scope of the plethora of social risks she experienced, Jakes constructs Michelle’s narrative akin to how society might read her: as a victim of trauma who ultimately exemplifies poor decision making, including unchaste sexual ethics, and is thus undeserving of ­either compassion or justice, or worse, as a jezebelian angry black murderer. She is marked by race, sex, class, and gender. The idea that justice stands outside of the repre­sen­ ta­tional pro­cess is naïve. Who receives and who gets denied justice in the United States is based on who gets to be interpreted as a proper citizen. And citizenry, established through discourses on freedom and unfreedom, produced dueling contexts for white innocence/due pro­cess/justice -­and -­black criminality/state-­sanctioned vio­lence sans due pro­cess/discrimination. Concomitantly, the United States historically ­imagined black female subjectivity/flesh and sexuality as property of the state and local community. The denial of safety, sexual rights, and justice for Michelle mirrors challenges faced by black w ­ omen and girls in real life. What should not be overlooked is Jakes’s tendency to ignore structural and interpersonal vio­lence and victim blame, particularly given his real-­life interests in incarcerated ­women. In Jakes’s framework ­women are encouraged to forgive and forget as opposed to demand accountability and justice. Not forgiving and forgetting while seeking accountability and justice suggests a lack of faith in Jesus’s healing power. Yet Jesus’s healing power as outlined in the Gospels is accountable, gender inclusive, and justice-­seeking, though not always realized. Jakes’s spiritualizing of lived vio­lence contradicts Jesus’s mission foregrounded in Luke 4:18 and puts the onus on ­women to change their predicaments by merely making better decisions and having better attitudes. While ­there is value in self-­ help, the structural and interpersonal vio­lences that black w ­ omen and girls face are neither personal nor spiritual prob­lems. They require deepened social critique backed by strategic and collective sociopo­liti­cal organ­izing and 156 Chapter 6

a­ ctionable re­sis­tance. This includes holding men and social systems accountable for their part in reproducing and maintaining a culture of vio­lence that systemically harms ­women and girls. My intention ­here is not to make men and boys or social structures a catchall for all oppressions that w ­ omen and girls may face, nor is it to let ­women and girls off the hook for how they may participate in systems or activities that oppress self or o­ thers. I am, however, drawing attention to the radical notion that black w ­ omen and girls, who have historically faced violation from both the state and community, deserve to live violence-­free lives, and that discourses on freedom or loosing concerned with empowering w ­ omen and centralizing their experiences must acknowledge the ­history and presences of patriarchal and institutional power and vio­lence.40 ­Women like Michelle do not simply end up in prison due to trauma-­ infused poor choice making and their inability to get over it. So, while it is ­great that Jakes acknowledges trauma, the recognition of trauma within a context of victim blaming is not a liberative ethic. Choices are made within and informed by context. And sometimes the privilege of options, particularly ­those that are life-­giving, is non­ex­is­tent. Black w ­ omen’s and girls’ vulnerability to sexual, domestic, childhood, and other vio­lence increases the likelihood of constructing alternative and sometimes illegal forms of survival and thriving. This may lead to participation in the criminal justice system. That white ­women and girls get the privilege of victim status and black ­women and girls often do not but are instead held captive to raced and gendered scripts on criminality early on, despite the presence or absence of ­actual delinquent activity, requires a more critical reading and engagement with social phenomena affecting w ­ omen and girls like Michelle. And that white ­women and girls are cloaked in mythologies on purity while black ­women and girls are not should compel us to engage in a deepened discussion on black ­women’s and girls’ autonomy and sexual rights. The law was never meant to protect black ­women’s and girls’ bodies, sex, or sexuality. Instead it was constructed in a way to affirm and support violation as a normative form of engagement. At minimum Michelle’s rape should have been brought to justice via the l­egal system. How much more power­ful might the film had been if viewers ­were offered a glimpse of young Michelle’s sexual autonomy being protected and her rape narrative being believed. As the film ­Woman Thou Art Loosed ends with Michelle sitting on death row, we are left to sit with not a ­woman loosed but another narrative and depiction of justice denied. The story that gets told is that vio­lence leads to hurting ­women, who go on to hurt themselves and o­ thers through desperate, manipulative, destructive, and Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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obsessive acts, and that w ­ omen need deliverance from t­ hese ways of being, other­wise they face the ultimate discipline and punishment: death. The film ­Woman Thou Art Loosed was produced four years ­after the “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” conference that I attended in Atlanta. In both instances, Jakes ironically used the penal system as a site of divine punishment. The guiding texts at the conference in 2000 w ­ ere Proverbs 31 and Mark 5:25–30. Jakes’s sermon paralleled the themes in his book: God ­will bless you and deliver you from yourself once you seize the moment and stop making unvirtuous choices. At one point in the sermon at the conference Jakes preaches that when ­women change themselves they become “radical ­women,” and becoming “radical” brings tangible blessings, such as the h­ ouse, car, and husband ­women have always wanted. Becoming “radical” meant becoming a w ­ oman of virtue: a w ­ oman who is faithful, sought ­after, moral, strong, self-­sustaining and thus having her own means to pay her own bills and build her own wealth, and committed to her ­family. She is a ­woman who embraces her natu­ral self, makes her ­house a home, works while ­others are sleeping, and has “feminine self-­esteem” and therefore embraces intimacy and courage but resists forceful aggression, disruption, tearing down ­others with her tongue by way of snapping, yelling, arguing, and poor decision making, such as marrying a man for the wrong reasons (for example, his job, the car he drives, or hopes that he ­will get her out of debt). Jakes’s w ­ oman of virtue, a feminine ideal, parallels the virtuous ­woman, Black Victoria, and the black lady. She is pious, beautiful, industrious, loyal, and secure, yet knows her place. Jakes preaches, “You’d make better decisions if you ­were more secure.” And ­women would be more secure and have fewer prob­lems if they ­were more virtuous. In fact, every­one would be better off if w ­ omen ­were more virtuous. Jakes posits that it is the ­mother’s job to pray for her ­children and steer them away from poor decision making, such as drugs and promiscuity (keeping the moral line). Virtuous m ­ others equate to ­children of virtue, and c­ hildren of virtue become virtuous adults who make good choices in the world. It is well known that Jakes’s d­ aughter Sarah got pregnant at fourteen, the year ­after the conference, and that his son Jermaine was arrested and charged with indecent exposure a­ fter approaching male officers in a park in Dallas, Texas, in 2009. It is unclear if Jakes blames his wife, Serita, for any of this. What has been well documented is Sarah’s interpretation of herself ­after getting pregnant as lost, broken, insecure, bound, and responsible for her own actions. Now an author, public speaker, former leader of the w ­ omen’s 158 Chapter 6

ministry at her ­father’s church, the face of tdj Enterprise’s next generation, and first lady and copastor of One Church in Los Angeles, along with her husband, Touré, Sarah can be found telling her story in the cyberworld and on a range of stages. In Lost and Found: Finding Hope in the Detours of Life (2014), Sarah chronicles getting married at nineteen with hopes of removing the guilt and shame of early pregnancy. A ­ fter divorcing four years l­ater, Sarah sought work as a waitress in a strip club to make ends meet. In one webisode online in which she gives inspirational talks on Lost and Found, she notes this experience as “­doing every­thing to be bound,” while her dad, a staunch advocate of abstinence, was “out ­here telling ­women to be loosed.” Young Jakes is clearly following in her f­ather’s footsteps. Though troubling at points, her straight shooting and unadulterated message regarding grace, love, m ­ istakes, and overcoming is infectious and inviting. I am not sure if thirteen-­year-­old Sarah was in the audience at the “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” conference in Atlanta in 2000. Nevertheless, Bishop Jakes’s theological leanings are ever pres­ent in her productions: w ­ omen get loosed by changing themselves, b­ ecause ­women alone—­not systems, structures, or perpetrators—­need changing. But perhaps what Sarah was d­ oing to “be bound” and what her dad was ­doing to loose w ­ omen ­were not so far apart. Jakes advocated for abstinence while putting forth a feminine theology dependent on jezebelian sexual narratives. Sarah notes the difficulty of waiting for sex u­ ntil marriage but ultimately sides with her ­father. Chastity is best—­for ­women. What is questionable is how Jakes’s theologies on sex and gender may have affected Sarah’s decision making. Nevertheless, it is likely the space in which she performs feminine-­ism that made her an attractive young leader in Jakes’s ministry. She does not preach sermons on the conventional hos versus ladies, or, as Jakes posits, Mary Magdalene versus Mary the ­mother of Jesus or the lady in red versus God’s lady in waiting. In fact, she does not preach like her ­father. She talks. Moreover, Sarah tries to avoid such sharp turns, noting how life is full of nuances, such as being d­ addy’s girl while working in the strip club. Still, she pushes her audience to find God and chart a new path, a path that still mostly aligns with her f­ ather’s. Jakes’s w ­ oman of virtue conglomerate shows up again and again in his productions, including ­later works such as Winnie Mandela (2014), where the operative ideology is, again, that ­women are prob­lem ­people who need changing and proper male direction. It should be noted that when talking to predominantly male audiences Jakes takes a much dif­fer­ent tone and apWhose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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proach. Though he does construct a “proper masculinity” within a cis-­gender-­ hetero-­patriarchal-­sexist-­homophobic frame, Jakes abstains from problematizing men and instead complicates their being, desires, and needs. In a sermon titled “Money, Sex and Power,” Jakes talks to an audience full of men about imagining sex as a worship experience and breaking into the ­woman’s hymen with their power. Sexist and heterosexist assumptions aside regarding male desire, ­women’s virginity, phallic power, and sexual occupation, Jakes makes room for men to participate in pseudohonest talk about sex, desire, and plea­sure. When insinuating the glory of man-­woman oral sex, he posits that the “church needs to stay out of the marital bed—we have the right to regulate what goes on.”41 Jakes also mentions male brokenness, but only in the context of molestation and same-­gender relations. Si­mul­ta­neously, he offers a critique of male-­ on-­female rape, however he does so within the context of men finding a partner with whom they are sexually “equally yoked.” In other words, men do not need to rape ­women that are sexually accessible. Jakes returns to a discussion on rape in the twentieth-­anniversary expanded edition of ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! (2012) and in Healing, Blessings, and Freedom: 365-­Day Devotional & Journal (2009). He explic­itly names rape as a personal and social offense, then posits how sometimes ­women play a part in their own demise, particularly when confused about bound­aries or desperate for male attention, both owing to absent f­ athers. Jakes misses the part about how some black male rapists are also ­fathers. And, as Spillers reminds us, sometimes they are the ­father. I do won­der if Jakes truly understands rape and consent. Many elders in black communities, and especially in the Black Church, have narrow definitions of rape and ­little concept of consent. This is partially why ­there is such a divide over the rape accusations against R. Kelly and Bill Cosby. Th ­ ere is a tendency to find fault with black ­women and girl rape survivors and to negate their right to consent. Jakes goes further to argue that consensual sex without commitment is rape as well—­because ­women ultimately expect to become wives. Jakes adds that both the man and the ­woman are riding into a “blazing inferno” where “anything can happen when the victim has had enough.” Perhaps he is recalling the scene in which Michelle kills Reggie. In any instance, ­people should not rape b­ ecause they do not have consent and b­ ecause rape is bad, not ­because they are unsure how their victim may retaliate. Additionally, with this framing Jakes undermines and conflates rape and consent. W ­ omen most times consent to sex solely for the purpose of plea­sure. This seems es160 Chapter 6

pecially difficult for Jakes to grasp. It might be in­ter­est­ing to see Jakes sound off with Morgan. ­Women “get off,” too. In his sermon “Money, Sex and Power,” Jakes preaches that ­women are loosed, maintain their virtue, and can properly express their sexuality when in respectable relationships with men. This is the black “nuclear” ­family’s erotophobic depiction of the Black Lady 2.0. Th ­ ere is nothing liberative about the control Jakes or the church attempts to exert over ­women’s sex life, or the dichotomy they attempt to create between w ­ omen and desire. And except for gay men, ­there is no male equivalent. We live in a society where sexual choices are judged differently based on sex, gender, sexuality, class, and other ­factors; where the church problematically regulates sexual choices; where male domination enables men to regulate what goes on in the marital bed and beyond it; and where ­women’s and girls’ value is reduced to sex and appearance, on one hand—­making sex and beauty the only way recognition or material rewards might be attained in many instances—­and such reductions are punished, on the other. Jakes’s contrasting between black ­women’s promiscuity as a handicap or infirmity and their “feminine nature” as God-­given (in ser­vice to men and God), chaste, virtuous, and moral, places black ­women in a ho/lady binary and underlines a set of politics around improper/nonideal and proper/ideal womanhood. While Jakes is no Bryant and would likely resist preaching explic­itly about hos in his sermons,42 his framing of w ­ omen’s sexual choices as promiscuous and evidence of infirmity and bad decision making, and men’s sexual choices as natu­ral and complex, does the same kind of existential, rhetorical, and epistemic vio­lence.43 In fact, without Jakes’s groundwork for black feminine-­ism and thus feminine theology and its ­counter, ho theology, Bryant is less likely to preach “­These hos ­ain’t loyal.” Perhaps Jakes is trying to make space to talk about sex but does not know how to beyond the par­ameters of Christian piety and the black “nuclear” f­ amily. Regardless, the hard truth is this: black w ­ omen (inclusive of ­those who prefer the designation “lady”) love sex, and sexually expressive w ­ omen may also self-­define as ladies. The straight line between hos and ladies is a black “nuclear” fantasy. Also at work in Jakes’s sex talk is an in­ter­est­ing play between ­fathers and ­daughters, calling to mind Spillers’s “ ‘The Permanent Obliquity of an In(pha) llibly Straight’: In the Time of the ­Daughters and the ­Fathers.” We see this relationship in The Lady, Her Lover, and Her Lord (2000), ­Daddy Loves His Girls (2006), and God’s Leading Lady (2003), the latter of which demonstrates Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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a continuous interweaving between Jakes as spiritual guide, Jakes as f­ather, Jakes as lover, and Jakes as God/puppeteer. Perhaps the most intriguing display of Jakes/father/lover/God is seen beyond the text, in his relationship with Rev. Dr. Juanita Bynum. Bynum was introduced to us as Jakes’s “­daughter” in ministry. Her rise to fame came through her sermon series, “No More Sheets,” initially presented at “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed.”44 Akin to “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed,” “No More Sheets” became a cultural phenomenon, accompanied by videos, books, ­music, and so on. However, dissimilar to Jakes, the ­father who functions as an in­de­pen­dent, Bynum entered the market through Jakes’s brand. Bynum’s product was the public display of her private sexual conflicts, literally. Part of the initial display included bedsheets and dimmed lights. Audience members ­were invited into Bynum’s bedroom to imagine the unspeakable. In one of her earliest sermons, Bynum thanks Jakes for telling her to publicly reveal the complexities of her sexual past. The moment reads like a h­ umble ­daughter thanking her approving ­father for “showing her the way.” However, as she ­later individuates from him, what appeared to be an endearing father-­daughter relationship between them becomes spite-­filled, with Jakes blocking Bynum from preaching events u­ ntil she renders a public apology for her “bad” be­hav­ior—on her knees.45 While their current relationship is unknown, we do know this: Jakes can be found on his talk show on own, among other places, and we can catch Bynum on Facebook dropping sermonettes on hos and holiness in her ­hotel room in front of her laptop. Still, both have enormous followings. The last time I checked, Bynum’s Facebook video on hoing and holiness had 1.4 million views, 94,000 comments, and 35,527 shares. Uncovering Jakes: On Neoliberalism and Feminist Politics Though Jakes spends a lot of time reminding ­women how trifling and petty they can be, he also highlights the availability of a clean slate and a new narrative through dispatches on seizing the moment, personal responsibility, forgiveness, freedom, letting go, virtue, fortitude, strength, in­de­pen­dence, love, grace, respectability, and what he refers to as “radical feminine power.” This simultaneous emphasis on anguish and promise is impor­tant when thinking about his audience. It also begs the question: is Jakes trying to “change the letter” of the already existing omnipresent discourse on black womanhood, a discourse so pervasive it has for some become truth, or is he simply re162 Chapter 6

producing the metanarrative that exists ­because he realizes it is a gold mine? Perhaps the answer is both. I can attest to the power of his message. Jakes comes across as electrifying, sincere, connected, reproving, and signifying—­ all at once. He has mastered how to let ­women know I see you, I care, the wait is over, it is your time, God is ­going to heal you, and you ­ain’t shit, in chorus. The latter sentiment h­ ere does not mean the message is not heartfelt. Jakes very well means all the above. The question is, do t­ hose messages cancel each other out in Jakes’s mind? My guess is he is working through a range of messages for ­women, although sometimes at ­women’s expense. Perhaps the points of recognition Jakes creates between him and his audience outweighs his more troubling spots. Visit any arena where he is preaching and witness a packed h­ ouse and an enthusiastic, deep-­feeling audience that profoundly connects with his message. In his “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” sermon in 2000 he preached, Is ­there anybody in h­ ere that ever just got tired? Tired of dealing with trou­ble. Tired of dealing with stress. Tired of dealing with liars. And tired of dealing with false p­ eople. Tired of p­ eople who grin in your face and stab you in the back. Tired of false promises. Tired of poor commitments. Tired of being alone. Tired of being lonely. . . . ​I came to preach to somebody who’s been u­ nder pressure a long time. I’m not talking about a ­little bad news. I’m not talking about a few days of bad news. But I’m talking about who’s been through pressure a long time . . . ​and you spent your strength fighting back. You had to fight your way to work. You had to fight to get out of bed in the morning. You had to fight to comb your hair. You had to fight not to lose your mind. You had to fight not to have a ner­vous breakdown. You had to fight to endure harder. You had to fight to encourage yourself. Some of you had to fight, you had to be your own husband. You had to be your boyfriend. You had to be your date. You had to be your lover. You had to get dressed and look in the mirror and say ’o girl ­you’re looking good ­today. . . . ​You had to take your car to the shop and you d­ idn’t even know what you w ­ ere talking about and you had to deal with liars and schemers and tricksters and you wish you had some help and ­you’re spending your strength . . . ​spending your virtue ­because you ­don’t have nobody to speak up for you. . . . ​Turn to your neighbor and say I got some issues.46 Jakes tells w ­ omen he understands and that despite every­thing, ­things w ­ ill get better. In another sermon with the same title he passionately preaches, Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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­ ere are some w Th ­ omen in this room who have been through so much and ­you’ve dealt with so many sick ­things and so many dead ­things that a spirit of death and suicide has fallen on you. . . . ​God said . . . ​to­night he ­will deliver you if you have the courage to come . . . ​the devil is trying to kill you before you get your promise. . . . ​Even while ­you’re coming demonic powers are being broken . . . ​spirits of depression are falling off of you ­because you had the courage to step out. . . . ​God is ­doing something awesome in your life!47 As Jakes is preaching, hundreds of w ­ omen approach the altar where Jakes is standing. They are wailing and shouting. And as the w ­ omen come in droves, he posits, “­These are all the funerals the devil was planning . . . ​but that devil is a liar!”48 The shifts seen h­ ere between t­hese sermons where he moves between empathy (where ­women are acknowledged as tired, stressed, and lied to), self-­affirmation and hope (­things w ­ ill get better), being needy and needing to change (where w ­ omen need a man b­ ecause they do not know anything about manly t­ hings like cars yet are in the emotional and material bind they are in ­because they have spent their virtue [read: done something wrong] and are thus alone, lonely, and searching for love), and possibility (God is ­going to do something awesome), underline Jakes’s ­recipe for preaching. Notwithstanding politics and ideological prob­lems, Jakes’s message encourages ­women to face their prob­lems, reposition themselves, find ways to transcend the t­ hings that make them tired or hurt them, and locate internal value and worth within themselves. And, as my beautician noted, w ­ omen need to hear that. Jakes’s neoliberal reposition-­yourself-­take-­ownership-­the-­ sky-­is-­the-­limit leanings communicate: if you ­don’t like the life you have, redesign it. In fact, this is exactly what he posits in Reposition Yourself: Living Life without Limits (2007). Jakes holds that social conditions and experiences rest on the individual’s ability to reimagine herself and her circumstances, take personal responsibility for making changes, and never give up. Success is the direct consequence of good hard work and responsibility. The idea of simply redesigning your life as one redesigns a living space or piece of clothing is provocative and exciting. Yet redesignation in any form takes ­labor, time, resources, materials, know-­how, access, and ability. It is not something that one can simply ­will into place, nor is it always a job that one can do on one’s own. I imagine that Jakes’s “rags to riches” personal narrative significantly informs his thinking. In this framework, p­ eople tend to think of self and o­ thers 164 Chapter 6

as individual units, as opposed to intersubjectivities in community affected by historical, personal, interpersonal, structural, and institutional choices and beliefs. Th ­ ose with the latter perspective are often seen as excuse-­making complainers who have simply not taken advantage of f­ ree ­w ill or the f­ ree market. This line of thinking problematizes and criminalizes disenfranchised groups within the population, for example, unwed ­mothers, the poor, and the incarcerated.49 Jakes’s reposition-­yourself-­take-­ownership-­the-­sky-­is-­the-­ limit framework aligns with the conservative po­liti­cal proj­ect of dismantling the welfare state50 and the idea that hard work based on faith ­will lead to and signify success, virtue, and Americanness. Furthermore, it pays. With this in mind, Jakes’s “­woman” cannot suddenly start calling for justice and making radical critiques of structural vio­lence. Refusal to take individual responsibility for sociopo­liti­cal risks equals failure, isolation, and punishment. Black w ­ omen and girls do not want to be interpreted as prob­lem ­people or moral failures, or further isolated or punished any more than they already have been. For many, repositioning and personal responsibility are forms of survival. It also makes sense that Gore and Bush both emphasized hard work and personal responsibility at the “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” conference in 2000. “Seizing the moment”—­for the unincarcerated and the incarcerated—­ meant turning ­things around through individual works and governmentality. This sort of messaging ignores black ­women’s and girls’ vulnerabilities to white supremacist cap­it­ al­ist relations while also creating space for Jakes’s and ­others’ individual cap­it­ al­ist gain. Si­mul­ta­neously, it negates how patriarchy, sexism, heterosexism, and transantagonism operate in black communities, families, and institutions to limit thriving and to construct normative sex and gender identities. Further, it sidesteps how black hegemonic gender binaries privilege certain bodies over ­others and how such privileging unfairly locates some bodies above the moral line and ­others beneath it. And ­those under­ neath are often cut off from opportunity. Establishing w ­ omen, “­woman,” or certain kinds of w ­ omen as prob­lem ­people is significant for creating a black male normative body. And constructing a black male normative body that is acceptable, hardworking, responsible, and moral is vital to participating in global capitalism and the neoliberal proj­ ect. The perfect picture of black pro­gress demands not only a black lady but a strong black patriarchy, an Other, and clear bound­aries around appropriateness. “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” draws on the black “nuclear” ­family’s black patriarch and constructs a simultaneous discourse on black manhood where Jakes himself comes to represent a kind of “true” manhood. Repre­sen­ta­tion is Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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always both strategic and po­liti­cal. It aims to reveal a certain kind of truth—­ about self and ­others. For example, Jakes’s repre­sen­ta­tion pres­ents him as a power­ful producer of knowledge with divine rights over his audience whom he subjects to puritanical sex and gender ideals through his diagnosing of “prob­lems” and prescribing of “solutions.” In this way, he is the penultimate “daddy/doctor.” While he is neither God nor Jesus, his repre­sen­ta­tional strategies place him nearby. They unveil who it seems Jakes hopes to be: the masculine ideal with divine power and authority. However, repre­sen­ta­tion also reveals what one hopes to conceal. While Jakes is undoubtedly a twenty-­first-­century religio-­cultural power­house, his youthful insecurities and experiences, which quite possibly frame his adult desire for strict gender roles, hypermoral sexual norms, power, empire, and “­woman” convey pos­si­ble strug­gle.51 Nevertheless, “­woman,” a pos­si­ble instrument of deflection, corroborates Jakes’s story and keeps him center stage. She is the opposite of his work and sexual ethics, and she is necessarily depoliticized. Neoliberalist emphases on piety, hard work, personal responsibility, ­free market, prosperity, and accountability or punishment depoliticize history, sociopo­liti­cal risks, interpersonal relations, and personal dangers. Scapegoating history by privatizing responsibility encourages some of the most vulnerable in society to own and find solutions for harmful social phenomena that are out of their control. Individual dismantlement of structural and institutionalized sexism, heterosexism, heteropatriarchy, racism, imperialism, and classism is impossible, regardless how vigilant or hardworking one may be. Still, Jakes champions ­women to keep chipping away—at themselves. Their faith, good Christian standing, participation in the neoliberal proj­ ect, and finding the right kind of black male partner depend on it. “Success” within Jakes’s paradigm, then, is defined by w ­ omen’s and girls’ ability to experience favorable outcomes within impossible contexts. It requires a reimagining of social plight as not social, po­liti­cal, or ideological but personal and/ or spiritual. This reading does not intend to diminish the #BlackGirlMagic black ­women and girls experience in contexts of impossibility or the power individuals in Jakes’s audience may experience regarding personal responsibility. The ability to press forth regardless of difficulty is empowering and necessary, especially when black. Yet the pressure for black w ­ omen and girls to thrive in nonviable contexts and the spiritualizing of the like dangerously calls the strong black ­woman trope to mind. It seeks to normalize violent conditions and back- and spirit-breaking ­labor while making it appear as if re­sis­tance to such is anti-­Christian and immoral. 166 Chapter 6

Personal responsibility is not innately bad. Jakes’s reimagining of social crises as personal prob­lems, the ways in which he represents himself as the moral authority on black w ­ omen’s prob­lems, and his use of black religious space and authority to articulate feminine-­ism and a pornotropic seeing of black ­women and girls are the prob­lem. ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! reads as one part inspirational devotional and one part primitivist media. Jakes’s pornotropia is troubling at best. The entwining of his t­ riple emphasis on femininity, promiscuity (jezebel), and personal responsibility needs more attention. The interplay between the welfare state, personal responsibility, black ­women, and welfare/jezebel tropes, reads as Reaganesque. And when reading Jakes’s take on femininity in par­tic­ul­ar, I could not help but think of Édouard Manet’s Olympia, Baudelaire’s Venus Noir, Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Pro­gress, Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero’s La donna delinquente, Reagan’s welfare queen, and ­others. The troubled singer R. Kelly also came to mind. Jakes’s power plugs and power saws sound a lot like Kelly’s ignition and keys from the song “Ignition.” What ­these texts have in common are the consumption, problematizing, and commodification of black female subjectivity through iconic imagery informed by notions of innate difference and sexual deviance. What makes Jakes dif­fer­ent is location. Black w ­ omen and girls should be able to expect more from the church, black pastors, and black religio-­cultural products. Jakes’s way of seeing spotlights not a collective or individual false consciousness but the contemporaneous pervasiveness of and negotiation with the pornotropic gaze. His script commoditizes black ­women’s prob­lems and black ­women as prob­lems, thus generating capital alongside crisis. Synchronously, crises concerning black w ­ omen’s and girls’ limited access to safety, equal personhood, reproductive rights, the ­free market, equal education, self-­expression without recourse, fair l­ abor practices, healthcare, and equal protection u­ nder the law are left out. Contrary to some readings articulating that Jakes is a feminist,52 talking about ­women’s prob­lems does not equate to having feminist politics. In Feminism Is for Every­body (2000), bell hooks argues that feminism is about rights. It is an intersectional theoretical lens and a po­liti­cal movement aimed at explaining, critiquing, and eradicating gender inequalities such as sexism, sexist exploitation, and patriarchy, and the ways in which each functions in tandem with racism, classism, imperialism, power/knowledge, and other oppressions. The absence of ­these kinds of critiques undermines progressive potential and reinforces old norms. A close reading reveals that feminism Whose “­W oman ” Is This? 

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and feminist politics are distinct from Jakes’s feminine-­ism, which grounds not only his notions of feminine power, feminine nature, and radical womanhood but his discourses on femininity, promiscuity, black ­father’s, the black “nuclear” f­amily, and, most of all, “­woman.” And, notably, though Jakes put in work that o­ thers had not, have not, and likely ­will not ever, he marks his “­woman” as static and codependent. “She” needs him and his texts to heal. ­There is nothing feminist about that. Yet Jakes’s “­woman” ­frees as she imprisons. As Judith Weisenfeld argues in Hollywood Be Thy Name (2007), despite its prob­lems, black religion has long functioned as a site of power in the absence of power that exposes black folk to alternative repre­sen­ta­tional, economic, and spiritual liberties not typically available. To this end, ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! empowers as it disempowers. It aims to “loose” while grounding black w ­ omen’s existence in difference and pathology. Townes may refer to this as sin. Black ­women’s empowerment requires foregrounding black w ­ omen’s history, social risks, texts, needs, voices, justice works, imagination, creativity, self-­naming, and thriving. It necessitates individual and communal critical reflection, accountability, social responsibility, and activism aimed t­oward individual and collective flourishing. Yet and still, the beauty of aesthetic works is that audiences construct their own meanings, taking what they need and leaving what they do not. Black w ­ omen and girls have been ­doing this for themselves for a long time, especially in the Black Church. The work ahead lies in taking seriously the meanings and nuances that ­women and girls derive from t­ hese kinds of cultural products and loosening the yoke of t­ hose that may cause harm. Douglas was right. A sexual discourse of re­sis­tance in the Black Church is in order. It stands in need of an immediate and open discussion on black sex, sexuality, gender, identity, repre­sen­ta­tion, vio­lence, and power. This discussion, however, names white supremacist bias as well as black complicity and complexity. Furthermore, it critiques, problematizes, and discards the operating discourse on black womanhood that names black w ­ omen and girls as sites of sin and evil needing fixing. And as for Jakes, it requires relinquishing “­woman,” changing the message, and perhaps even finding a new wellspring. A conference on how t­ here is no essential black womanhood and how womanhood is fluid, vari­ous, and eludes the grasp of our hegemonic articulations sounds noble. A critical series on the harms of patriarchy and emotionality of black men that explores not only history and sexuality but the need for gender oppression and oppressive repre­sen­ta­tions of black manhood and womanhood sounds even better. Nevertheless, play in racist and sexist tropes remains much more profitable. 168 Chapter 6

CHAPTER 7

TYLER PERRY’S NEW REVIVAL Black Sexual Politics, Black Popu­lar Religion, and an American Icon

I’d heard about Tyler—­obviously, he’d been on Oprah, but I kept hearing about Tyler Perry, Tyler Perry, Tyler Perry and his shows. The very first one of his shows I went to see was Madea Goes to Jail. It was a theater play, and I remember thinking, Oh, I get it. This is the new revival. Back in the day we used to have revivals where all ­these ­great ministers would come together. Tyler’s plays w ­ ere like that—­a community gathering, not just for the purpose of seeing a play but for inspiration, for spiritual healing, for coming together in a way that unifies p­ eople the way revivals used to. —Oprah Winfrey on meeting Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry is arguably one of the most power­ful and influential producers of black popu­lar culture of the early twenty-­first ­century. Perry’s use of the live stage, silver screen, virtual world, and tele­v i­sion situates him as one of the most magisterial ringmasters of our time. No one knows how to juggle the sacred and profane like he does. In just u­ nder twenty years Perry built a pop cultural empire, writing, producing, directing, and/or acting in twenty-­six successful feature films, twenty stage plays, and eight tv shows, and counting. In 2011 Forbes reported that Perry was the highest-­paid man in Hollywood.1 He earned $130 million between May 2010 and 2011, surpassing Jerry Bruckheimer, best known for the tele­vi­sion series csi and the United States version of The Amazing Race, and films such as Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Top Gun (1986), Bad Boys (1995), Armageddon (1998), ­Enemy of the State (1998), Black Hawk Down (2001), Pearl Harbor (2001), and Pirates of the Ca­rib­be­an (2003, 2004, 2007, and 2011). Perry also outsold Steven

Spielberg that year, best known for Jaws (1975), The Blues ­Brothers (1980), E. T. the Extra-­Terrestrial (1982), Poltergeist (1982), Indiana Jones and the T ­ emple of Doom (1984), Back the F ­ uture (1985), The Color Purple (1985), Jurassic Park (1993), Men in Black (1997), Amistad (1997), Minority Report (2002), Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), Monster House (2006), Transformers (2007), War Horse (2011), and more. Perry’s films, many of which ­were first stage plays and a few of which have been subsequently adapted for tele­vi­sion, typically gross between $20 million and $60 million. By the end of 2011 his films had grossed over $400 million worldwide.2 And it is no secret that Perry’s audience is predominantly black churchwomen. Black w ­ omen flock to his productions like black Christians go to church on the first Sunday of the new year—­largely in search of hope, restoration, the familiar, spiritual awakening, community, healing, affirmation, laughter, and possibility. Yet Perry’s productions appeal to certain interpersonal and cultural needs—­while denying ­others. Th ­ ere are numerous critiques of his consumption of conventional black images and how they align with some of the repre­sen­ta­tional strategies of early twentieth-­century race films, the Chitlin’ Cir­cuit, and tele­vi­sion shows such as Amos ’n’ Andy. However, cultural critics racing to dismiss Perry solely on the basis of his use of black ste­reo­types pluck low-­hanging fruit. To put it simply, ­there’s something about Perry. Black feminists such as Hazel V. Carby, Michele Wallace, bell hooks, Jacqueline Bobo, Valerie Smith, Angela Y. Davis, and Patricia Hill Collins have written about the use and politics of black female tropes in culture. At the center of their work are questions of power. Discourses on cultural production and meaning making encourage us to ask who has the power to circulate which meanings where and to whom, and in what ways are ­these meanings consumed, resisted, or appropriated? Obviously, Perry is not alone in marketing white supremacist cap­i­tal­ist patriarchal ideas for mass consumption. Neither is his audience the first to negotiate patriarchal texts. Unfortunately, the “success” and mass mediation of black cultural products (through production support and ticket sales) too often require possessing and/or negotiating white supremacist cap­it­ al­ist patriarchal ideas on race and gender. Yet, though cultural producers produce products with certain meanings and intent, cultural meanings work only insofar as audiences recognize or identify with what is being presented, good and/or bad.3 This chapter contextualizes and takes seriously Perry’s draw among black religious ­women despite racist and sexist messaging; provides critical insight into the work of cultural production and meaning making, how meanings 170 Chapter 7

shift between the producer and audience, and how audiences use and weave together vari­ous cultural sources in order to make sense of their lives; explores what Perry’s audience might hold dear and what they may discard; and articulates why black cultural productions that serve up neo­co­lo­nial pornotropic platters of au­then­tic blackness seething with faux feminism and moralistic scripts for racial and individual uplift are not helpful, could potentially lead to harm, and thus require black feminist religio-­cultural analyses. ­Going forward, I offer a reading of Perry’s unique appeal among black churchwomen, a close reading of select texts,4 and a black feminist religio-­ cultural analy­sis. I place emphasis on Perry’s films and his revival of heteronormative black gender ideals and puritanical black sexual politics. “Rev. Perry Must Preach”: Perry’s Appeal to the Spiritual Realm Consumer marketing strategists concerned with black American consumption patterns construct survey questions that emphasize what consumers watch and purchase to help small and big businesses grow their market shares. However, emphases on demographics and attributes such as race, address, age, ­house­hold structure, income, job, technological use, education, and consumption habits fail to grasp black w ­ omen’s complex relationship with religion and culture. Black w ­ omen are more than consumer marketing opportunities with insatiable appetites for robotic consumption of all t­ hings signifying essential blackness. Hiring black w ­ omen to be in your film or the face of your product is simply not enough to hook black w ­ omen consumers. Indicators for Perry’s star power lie in the ways black ­women identify with his work, how ­these points of recognition implicate black w ­ omen, and what kinds of investment black ­women have in the meanings derived. It is not happenstance that Oprah Winfrey christened Perry Amer­i­ca’s pop cultural preacher in an Essence Magazine interview in 2013. Winfrey previously legitimated his position as the black American cultural producer and raconteur of black w ­ omen’s experiences through his numerous visits on the Oprah Winfrey Show and elsewhere. However, her baptism of Perry in the river of black American revivalism and the posturing of this positionality as the means for his success requires intervention. Perry’s ubiquity hinges upon the intricate webbing between black ­women, the Black Church, and the black male preacher. I have read and participated in numerous social media discussions on Perry’s value to self-­identified black ­women Christians. Many see his work as “real,” “good,” “meaningful,” and “less exploitative” than other Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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cultural productions. Some hold that black cultural critics are “out of touch” and should spend more time on “blatant exploiters” of black w ­ omen and culture and less time on Perry, who some believe is on a “special mission.” As one ­woman on Facebook notes, Perry’s films cover topics that significantly affect black w ­ omen and that “hardly anyone e­ lse is touching even though [­these stories are] rampant in our community.” She posits, “He’s ­going for the stories that ‘preach’ ­because we are in crisis . . . ​he’s ­going for the stories about overcoming . . . ​or surviving suffering or creating suffering for ­others needlessly.” On a Facebook thread that reposted the essay “Tyler Perry, Stop Vilifying Black Success,” one w ­ oman referred to Why Did I Get Married? (2007) and Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor (2013) as a form of homiletics. She argued that the plotlines around real-­life events, honor, loyalty, sin, and marriage align with her ministerial work, and, further, highlight par­tic­u­lar challenges in black communities. She continued, 65% of new hiv cases are black w ­ omen; 1 out of 2 w ­ omen are survivors of incest and rape or attempted rape; 1 in 9 black men in prison; 1 in 4 ­women w ­ ill experience domestic vio­lence in her lifetime. ­These stats are of epidemic proportions. Add to that we are being hunted in the War on Drugs. Perry must preach, must get our attention with dramatic, comedic moralizing [messaging]. I referred to Perry as Rev. Perry long before his comments at Whitney’s [Houston] funeral. It is clear that he is on a mission to help us save our lives.5 Black feminists and cultural critics operating outside of religious and theological studies have primarily offered critiques of Perry’s use of historical ste­ reo­types while leaving the religious aspect alone. ­Either p­ eople do not know what to do with his gospel, or they conclude that ­there is nothing to do with it. Yet, unlike most other black American popu­lar cultural producers, Perry and his work are explic­itly Christian. His scripts are underpinned by Christian themes, he claims his productions are divinely inspired, and he believes his successes are God-­ordained.6 And many in his audience seem to agree. The idea that faith and hard work yield tangible results undergirds not only the Protestant work ethic and the neoliberal proj­ect, but also Perry’s productions. ­There is simply no way around the Christian character of his repertoire when engaging Perry’s success. When analyzing black ­women’s responses to The Color Purple (1985), Jacqueline Bobo warns against sidestepping religious ele­ments of film: “With groups who have been ignored in any analy­sis of media responses ­there is a tendency for outsiders to rush into 172 Chapter 7

judgment rather than consider the groups’ background, histories, and social and cultural experiences. Thus when the w ­ omen respond in unexpected ways their statements are dismissed rather than considered within the specifics of their lives. This is illustrated especially in the w ­ omen’s comments about the religious ele­ments of the film.”7 Often religion is interpreted in terms of its ideological prob­lems, the ways that it generally upholds and reproduces sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, and transantagonism. Where analyses fall short is in not exploring religion in terms of its va­ri­e­ties and nuances, disregarding the functionality of religion in racialized histories and communities, ignoring the existing critical discourses invested in examining the religious, or turning a blind eye to the ways that religion operates as an aspect of culture while si­mul­ta­neously informing culture in both good and bad normative ways. Cracking Perry’s code means acknowledging the histories and significance of black ­women’s religious and spiritual practices, needs, and beliefs, and how each inform and are informed by culture. The interweaving of religion and culture is pivotal to the financial success of Perry’s productions. As I argue in Womanist and Black Feminist Responses to Tyler Perry’s Productions (2014), most of his films use the following template: familiar Christian themes, such as forgiveness, faith, and redemption; American ideals, such as cis-­gender heterosexual marriage and/or patriarchal fairy­tale endings; an overuse of black female ste­reo­types, for example, the black-­woman-­as-­bitch or the black-­woman-­as-­w(ho)re; storylines about basic h­ uman needs, wants, and expressions, such as love, safety, f­ amily, laughter, protection, companionship, success, romance, revenge, lust, and anger; and everyday tales of despair (e.g., adultery, violent abuse, betrayal, and abandonment) and triumph in which Perry’s ideas of justice eventually prevail. Perry’s weaving together of vari­ous forms of non-­Christian inclinations, vio­lence, and familiar Christian dogma enable black w ­ omen to si­mul­ta­neously affirm their complex humanity, experiences, and Christian character. That is, one can view a Perry film and witness the messiness, contradictions, temptations, and t­ rials of life while still holding firm to one’s faith. And though faithfulness and good be­hav­ior ultimately prevail in his productions, viewers can identify with the ebbs and flows of the character’s journey. Additionally, the idea that good works eventually pay off provides hope and clearly aligns with the Christian message. Perry began his c­ areer in urban theater, formerly identified as the “Chitlin’ Cir­cuit” due to Jim Crow segregation laws. The merging of everyday h­ uman Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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needs, lived experiences, spirituality, and American ideals with the comical and the absurd is pivotal to urban theaters’ multi-­million-­dollar industry. Perry’s big break came when he turned Bishop T. D. Jakes’s ­Woman, Thou Art Loosed! (1993) book into a celebrated theater production in the urban market. Subsequently, he took Jakes’s woman-­centered platform and the urban theater concept and mass produced them on the big and small screen, constructing neoblack popu­lar religio-­cultural texts. Th ­ ese productions created transcendent possibilities for interpersonal, spiritual, and moral awakening that significantly appeal to black ­women. Concomitantly, Perry’s texts, like Jakes’s, draw attention to a gender- and race-­specific culture of vio­lence in which black ­women and girls are largely unprotected. ­These works, the hope and care they proffer, and the interpretation of them and Perry as “divinely inspired” position him as a pop cultural pastor. Even before Oprah christened Perry as the g­ reat revivalist, he was known to show up in vari­ous predominantly black Christian churches, sometimes even participating.8 Two such significant occasions ­were singer Whitney Houston’s funeral and a widely publicized Sunday morning visit to T. D. Jakes’s church, The Potter’s House, where Perry could be seen on stage exhorting, praying for, speaking in tongues, and “laying hands” on Jakes. It is in ­these moments that Perry’s place as black Amer­ic­ a’s pop cultural preacher/pastor is solidified—­because his presence in ­these spaces is as a cultural producer, not a reverend or pastor in the traditional sense, and ­because it is believed that he is on a divine mission to spread a certain kind of gospel. It is also in t­hese moments that Perry’s messaging about black womanhood is congealed as vital and “truth.” The questions that immediately come to mind are: If Perry is functioning as a pop cultural pastor and his productions are divinely inspired and his successes God-­ordained, what of the tropes he uses to convey his message? And if Perry is functioning as a pop cultural pastor and his productions are the “new revival,” what exactly is he reviving? Jakes and Perry pres­ent us with mass-­mediated speech acts that articulate feminine-­ism. Their feminine theologies are propitious—­not flawless. Just as they create narratives of hope, survival, and triumph, they revive hegemonic heteropatriarchal gender ideals and puritanical black sexual politics that invigorate and maintain the circulating religio-­cultural discourse on black womanhood. Each constructs black female sexuality as a social prob­lem on one hand, and a commodity on the other, thus deviant yet useful. This interpretation is a necessary facet for structuring and maintaining Western knowledge on 174 Chapter 7

civilization, difference, and natu­ral order. Perry’s films function as a similar kind of black religio-­cultural education. They attempt to establish black normalcy and pro­gress by demonstrating black female sexual difference through the concretizing of pathology and restoration of black hegemonic gender ideals pivotal to black access to Western empire. It could be argued that both the corroboration of difference and renovation of black sexual order in Perry’s productions are an annex to Jakes’s loosing proj­ect, and that both of their productions in many ways operate as a continuance of Amer­i­ca’s racial proj­ect. Understanding Perry’s prominence requires thinking seriously about the Black Church and how his location as a pop cultural pastor (and, to some degree, Jakes’s understudy) yields a considerable amount of power, particularly in the conceptualizing of black femininity and black female sexuality in ho/lady discourse and theology. This binary draws on previous grammars, yet enables simultaneous discourse on black w ­ omen, sex, and sexual choices. The centering of black w ­ omen’s sex in Perry and Jakes’s productions calls to mind Stuart Hall’s work on difference in which he argues that that which is “out of place” may be concurrently a site of obsession, making what is dif­ fer­ent strangely attractive and centered ­because it is seen as taboo or threatening to the social order.9 It is not a bad ­thing that Jakes and Perry discuss sex. As Kelly Brown Douglas reminds us, healthy and straightforward sex talk in black communities has long been underserved, restricted, painful, inimical, and too often hushed, particularly narratives of plea­sure and vio­lence. At least Jakes and Perry are talking. They certainly have our attention. The question is, what are they saying and why? The quest for social order leads not only to obsession but also demands that that which is considered “out of place” be purged. Hos and Ladies: Perry’s Black Sexual Politics (A Descriptive Reading) In Perry’s cinematic book ladies are marital material and cis-­gender heteronormative marriage is what true black ladies strive for. It is the ultimate reward for faith and hard work. Perry’s black lady first appears in film in Diary of a Mad Black ­Woman (2005) in the character of Helen. Diary of a Mad Black ­Woman is a story of love, romance, and betrayal. Prior to morph­ing into Perry’s prototype madwoman, Helen epitomizes black ladyhood. She is a respectable, educated, affluent, meticulous wife who exists in ser­v ice Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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to her husband Charles. Helen is si­mul­ta­neously a sex-­deprived emotionally and physically abused ­woman. Perry suggests that she willingly accepts ­these abuses as perhaps unintended consequences of ladydom. We do not see Helen resist her predicament ­until Charles moves his mistress and their ­children into the home he shares with Helen and violently drags her outside, where a U-­Haul filled with all of her belongings awaits. And though being a lady was neither enough to keep Charles faithful nor enough to avoid disposability and antagonism, he demands that Helen “Be a lady and leave quietly.” It is at her point of refusal, where she responds “No,” that Helen becomes unladylike, and where Perry marks her as not only “mad” but punishable. ­After spiraling downward into a sea of “madness,” Helen finds love and the potential for revived ladydom in Orlando, a working-­class “good black man” recently abandoned by his ex-­girlfriend for another man with more money. This is impor­tant ­because it articulates what true black ladies are not: mad, disloyal, or gold diggers. To avoid any ambiguity in terms of gender roles, Helen and Orlando’s first romantic encounter occurs where she is literally in ser­vice to him. A ­ fter being put out by Charles, Helen takes a job as a waitress in a restaurant to support herself, a far cry from the lavish lifestyle she once shared with her abusive husband. This scene occurs on the heels of her ­mother telling her to “use the strength God gave [her] to survive” and a simultaneous camera panning to a church sign that reads “Men’s Day Cele­bration.” In chorus, we hear the celebratory message “Take it to Jesus . . . ​­he’ll work it out” in the backdrop. What is worked out, however, is the restoration of patriarchal order and puritanical black female sexual politics. ­After serving Orlando his meal, the two extend their encounter to a date at a local jazz club. As Helen and Orlando slow dance in their respective work clothes, we learn that Helen’s first and only sexual experiences, though limited and at his behest, ­were with Charles ­after they married. Neither Charles nor Orlando provides an explicit account of their sexual histories at any point in the film. As Helen and Orlando seductively sway, we witness a budding patriarchal courtship—­where men create space for G-­rated romance; where men are needed for even the most minute t­ hings, such as undoing seatbelts; where intimacy is typified in Orlando’s imagery of purchasing feminine products for his lover; and where Orlando demands to be Helen’s knight in shining armor, despite her expressed desire to take ­things slow, work through her pain, and make decisions on her own terms. Ultimately, Helen is punished for not moving the relationship at Orlando’s pace and for l­ater mistreating 176 Chapter 7

Charles who needed her to return to their home and care for him ­after getting shot during a bad business deal, suffering paralysis, and his mistress soon ­after leaving him. Helen’s ladyhood is reestablished once she reconciles with Charles and apologizes for treating him poorly while in her care and once she fi­nally submits to marrying Orlando. The film ends with a Black Church scene in which several characters experience redemption for poor be­hav­ior, including Helen and Charles. In this scene, it appears that Helen and Charles ­will restore their marriage. In a twist of events, Helen chooses Orlando instead. She runs into his place of work and asks him to ask her to marry him again. A ­ fter complying, Helen responds affirmatively. Orlando then carries her off into the sunlight as “I’m telling you . . . ​I want to be f­ ree” plays in the background. The message is clear: freedom for black ­women occurs within the institution of marriage, strict gender ideals, and good works. Nonadherence to t­ hese ideals enables discipline and punishment. Perry spends the rest of his cinematic trajectory strategically establishing black ladyhood by demonstrating what black ladies are not: hos. Black ladies do not share the black patriarchs’ rite of (hetero)sexual passage, decision making, and erotic agency. As Jakes theologizes, black ­women’s erotic lives are social dilemmas needing systemic, institutional, and interpersonal regulation. Similarly, “hos” in Perry’s films need governing, too. A w ­ oman that manages her own erotic desires is interpreted as dangerous, immoral, primitive, taboo, threatening to the social order, and thus unworthy of safety or civility; she is to be consumed and then discarded, with impunity. Perry never mentions jezebel in his productions, yet she, both the trope and the biblical figure, are so clearly ­there. And not just in terms of narratives on promiscuity but also ­those establishing ideal roles, place, and power. Dissimilar to Jakes, Perry’s ho references are numerous and without equivocation. Diary of a Mad Black W ­ oman uses ho language broadly. In one scene in which Madea (Helen’s pistol-­packing and irreverent grand­mother) and Helen visit the home she once shared with Charles, Madea refers to Brenda, Charles’s mistress, as a ho when Brenda demands that Madea and Helen leave the h­ ouse. When Brenda threatens to call the police, Madea retorts, “Call the po-po ho.” And in an earlier scene, when wreaking havoc on what is now Brenda’s closet, Madea refers to her as a “label ho.” Brenda gets categorized as a ho due to her relationship with Charles. It is impor­tant to note that Charles is never called a ho due to his relationship with Brenda. In fact, Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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during an argument with Charles, Helen discloses that Brenda is not the first “other w ­ oman” in his life. She exclaims, “I wanted ­children, Charles! And had you not been with ­those whores we would have them!” Madea’s b­ rother Joe also refers to his daughter-­in-­law Debra as a ho. Debra is married to Brian, Madea’s nephew and Joe’s son. She is a drug addict and still deeply loved by Brian. Despite Brian’s deep affection for Debra, Joe offers him some fatherly advice, “You c­ an’t turn no ho into no h­ ouse­wife. I tried it with yo momma.” Brian’s wife and m ­ other are deemed hos. It is worth noting that Perry plays Brian, Madea, and Joe. Though we never see Brenda or Debra express themselves sexually, they are still considered hos. Yet Joe is explic­itly sexual. He reads pornographic magazines out in the open, watches Helen’s rear, and makes jokes about his great-­niece jerking him off. While gazing at her body, he tells her, “Oh I got a job for you. Soon as I get some more Vaseline.” Clearly, Perry finds incest and discourse on black ­women’s alleged sexual immorality funny. Joe takes on a similar character in several Perry productions. He is never called a ho, nor are his sexual inclinations problematized. Madea’s ­Family Reunion (2006) further establishes the ho/lady binary. The film explores themes such as love, romance, intimate partner vio­lence, incest, rape, and teen pregnancy. The plot centers on Madea and her two nieces, Lisa and Vanessa. Lisa is engaged to Carlos, a successful yet abusive businessman. Vanessa is a single ­mother of two, also an incest survivor, who finds love with Frankie, a bus driver. Perry’s ho/lady binary is revealed in the characters of Lisa and Vanessa. Though Vanessa is an incest survivor, it is both single motherhood and socioeconomic class that predominantly trou­ ble her sexual narrative. In short, she has made the wrong choices in men. The prevailing logic in black sexual politics and black hegemonic gender ideals is that the absence of strong fathers/husbands equates to too strong women/ mothers (myth of the black matriarchate) who fail to teach their c­ hildren proper gender be­hav­ior and thus set in motion cycles of inappropriateness (tangles of pathology). Lisa and Vanessa’s ­mother, Victoria, was married to Lisa’s ­father but never­ theless manages to still embody impropriety. She is typecast as a negligent gold digger who looked the other way to maintain her financial standing while her husband sexually abused her d­ aughter Vanessa. We never see Vanessa’s abuser, thus leaving us to turn the bulk of our dis­plea­sure ­toward her ­mother, Victoria. Even Carlos, Lisa’s abusive fiancé, makes out better than Victoria. The sins of the ­mother who allows her ­daughters to be abused are 178 Chapter 7

far worse than t­ hose of the a­ ctual abusers in Perry’s book. Luckily, Vanessa is not like her m ­ other. She is protective of her c­ hildren, which Perry makes appear overbearing and crazy. Though a “good” ­mother, or at least a better ­mother than her own, Vanessa’s singleness and working-­class femininity, framed by bitchiness, promiscuity, and abundant fertility, provides significant text on be­hav­iors true ladies should avoid. Patricia Hill Collins asserts that controlling images of poor and working-­ class ­women become texts of what not to be. Working-­class black w ­ omen are seen as bitchy and aggressive when they refuse to accept the terms of subordination, exploitation, or abuse. Bitchiness, then, becomes a way of stigmatizing poor and working-­class black ­women who decline to accept their oppressions and/or perform middle-­class respectability. Vanessa’s singleness and class status do not inhibit her from procuring a knight in shining armor of her own, but they do leave her vulnerable to Perry’s ho/lady binary. When Frankie comes to Madea’s ­house to take Vanessa on a date, Joe leans in to tell him, “Dinner means ­you’re ­going to get some . . . ​you know she coming back ­here pregnant.” Vanessa is to be interpreted then as desperate, hypersexual, accessible, and fertile. Frankie marries Vanessa at the end of the film. It is unclear if he “turns a ho into a ­house­wife.” What is clear, however, is that marriage allows for alternative experiences. It may not make black ­women over completely or safeguard them entirely from pornotropic jezebelian interpretations, but it does offer the possibility for a new narrative. As Vanessa walks down the aisle to meet her groom, her path is lined with beautiful angelic ­women hanging from the ceiling, softly playing musical instruments. The bridalway to Brian is divine and sterile. And as if Joe’s previous quips about Vanessa ­were not enough, ­there is a scene during the ­family reunion in which a group of male elders sexualize younger female relatives who look to be teen­agers. One teen is asked to bend over to get the men a drink out of a barrel. When she does, they make explicit comments about her body and joke about Viagra. Looking for more exploitative incestuous pedophilic excitement, they ask her to bend over again and get more drinks. This time the camera zooms in on her buttocks, breasts, and bare waist. She speaks only to say ­there are no more drinks. ­Later in the scene the teens are slut shamed for their clothing and assumptive correlating be­hav­ior. Myrtle, a ­family matriarch, delivers a moralizing sermonette, which is essential to Perry productions and typically provided during a culminating point. She admonishes, “­Women with no clothes on gyrating all over on this land . . . ​soiled the soil. . . . ​No more pride, dignity love and re­spect.” Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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“What happened to us?” she asks. Myrtle’s next line seems to provide the answer. “Young black men . . . ​take your place! Young black ­women you are more than your thighs and your hips . . . ​take your place. . . . ​I want more from you.” Prob­lem solved. Strong black heterosexual cis-­gender men allow black ­women and girls to take up appropriate space, enabling each to produce proper black bodies, families, and communities. Black patriarchy and ladydom are once again set in motion. Never mind how patriarchal relations in the private sphere may hinder liberating efforts in the public sphere, how male dominance undergirds patriarchal vio­lence,10 or how patriarchy may at times reduce ­women and girls to sex and beauty objects that do ­little more than bend over. The ho/lady trope shows up again and again throughout Perry’s productions. We see it in ­Daddy’s ­Little Girls (2007) between Jennifer and Julia, the ex- and f­ uture girlfriends of Monty, the lead character, respectively. Monty is an ambitious mechanic and ­father of three girls who fights to gain custody of his ­daughters a­ fter their maternal grand­mother and caregiver dies. Jennifer, the girls’ m ­ other, sues Monty for custody. She is the opposite of a lady. Jennifer is loud, aggressive, negligent, and vulgar. We first encounter her at her ­mother’s funeral. In addition to showing up late, Jennifer is incognizant of the details surrounding her own ­mother’s death. As every­one leaves the burial, a ­family friend scolds her, “You out ­here ho-­ing with ­these thugs.” That is, she would know the circumstances surrounding her m ­ others’ death and funeral and perhaps her m ­ other might even be alive had Jennifer maintained a dif­ fer­ent set of sexual politics and gender identity, both of which would have enabled better decision making. At minimum, she would have prioritized her and her ­mother’s role as ­mother—­and all that that is ­imagined to be, including nurturer, teacher of morals, and the embodiment of racial pro­gress. Jennifer is juxtaposed against Julia, a high-­powered attorney looking for love that ultimately hires Monty to be her driver, becomes his attorney, and falls in love with him. Prior to falling in love with Monty, Julia teeters between being an in­de­pen­dent black ­woman and a controlling black bitch. Hill Collins argues that w ­ omen who fail to negotiate this slippery border find themselves ridiculed, isolated, abandoned, and often in physical danger.11 The bitch trope functions differently for Julia than it does for Vanessa (Madea’s ­Family Reunion) or for Jennifer, however. Vanessa and Jennifer are further stigmatized for their single motherhood and socioeconomic class. Julia is vilified for her success and her failure to adhere to acceptable black gender ideology. While serving as Julia’s temporary driver, Monty chides her, “I am 180 Chapter 7

so tired of your stuck-up ass giving me a hard time . . . ​do me a ­favor and sit back and r­ ide.” “Sit [in the] back and r­ ide” can be read in a variety of gender-­ specific ways. It disorients the power dynamic between them as employer and employee, but it is also sexually suggestive. ­Either way, Julia is demanded to play her role: to let Monty do the driving, shut up, play nice, and take a back seat—or r­ ide, depending on how you read it. Julia resists Monty’s o­ rders but ultimately gives in. She is looking for love. And lived relational politics, needs, and goals do not always match theoretical ideas. Throughout the film, prior to being won over by Monty, Julia’s friends set her up on a series of blind dates. She is ridiculed for not having a man in her life and for not getting laid. In fact, her bitchiness is blamed on her success and absent sex life. However, Julia does not simply need “a” man, she needs a man with husband potential. This requires Julia to lower her dating standards, not ­because the men in her current dating pool are beneath her expectations but b­ ecause she thinks too much of herself. On several occasions Julia is told that her dating standards are too high and that not even the Pope could meet them. Yet the men she goes on blind dates with are outrageous and crude. One man even talks uninvitedly about oral sex on their first date over dinner. Though Perry stages this and other be­hav­iors as troublesome, ­these blind dates are used to frame Julia as difficult and sexually repressed rather than her male counter­parts as hideous. It is only ­after a date and too many drinks with Monty that Julia loosens up ­toward him. They go back to her apartment, where t­hings quickly heat up. Just before getting undressed, Monty uses Julia’s bathroom and finds her vibrator. Her self-­pleasure humanizes her yet also suggests her need for a “real dick.” As ­things advance between them in the bedroom, Julia gets sick from having had too much to drink. The possibility for wild unconsented drunken sex is no more. Upper-­class respectability provides special potential for ladydom for Julia. Ladyhood in Perry’s texts requires a patriarch, however. Though Julia is never disparaged for her drunken sexual encounter or erotic desires, Monty is needed to reinstate proper gender politics. Other­ wise Julia ­will likely remain isolated. When Monty visits Julia at work the next day, she apologizes to him for her near drunken sexual episode the night before. He responds, “You ­were being yourself . . . ​and like my mom used to say, ‘A drunk man never tell no tales.’ ” Perry’s point h­ ere seems to be that inebriation may at times befuddle po­ liti­cal correctness. However, Perry both ignores and gives license to date rape and rape u­ nder the influence, where ­women and girls are taken advantage of Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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due to their inability to offer sexual consent. History suggests that had Monty date raped Julia while u­ nder the influence, it is pos­si­ble that some in his community may have supported him rather than her, particularly given Monty’s local heroic status and previously falsified rape charge from his teen years. To be clear, false rape accusations are a part of the black historical narrative. I am not concerned that Perry included this storyline. It is curious, however, that he does a lot of work explaining Monty’s innocence yet fails to hold the real rapists in his collage of films accountable with the same rigor. In the end Monty is victorious. Jennifer and her drug-­dealing boyfriend get arrested for a range of crimes. And Monty and Julia live happily ever ­after. Jennifer is punished with communal and state-­sanctioned isolation, and Julia gets rewarded with love, pos­si­ble marriage, and maybe even consensual sex and a baby carriage. Proper gendering pays off. Perry’s obsession with slut shaming is further revealed in Why Did I Get Married? (2007), Meet the Browns (2008), The F ­ amily That Preys (2008), Madea Goes to Jail (2009), Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010), For Colored Girls (2010), Madea’s Big Happy ­Family (2011), and Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor (2013). Why Did I Get Married? and Why Did I Get Married Too? are about four unhappily married cis-­gender heterosexual c­ ouples who go away for a ­couple’s retreat. Their challenges range from infidelity to lovelessness to lack of intimacy to joblessness to weight gain and shame to disorderly gender politics. None of the wives are referred to as hos. However, Angela repeatedly uses the term to refer to other unmarried w ­ omen. She and her husband Marcus both admit to extramarital affairs. Marcus is a repeat offender. When he confides in Terry, a husband played by Perry, about an std he contracted in an extramarital affair, Terry tells him he needs to use protection next time, as another male confidante exhorts, “What your wife ­don’t know ­won’t hurt her.” “It’s a law. You can cheat if your wife ­ain’t giving it up.” They all laugh. In Perry’s rulebook, sex, extramarital or other­wise, is normative for men. They can initiate and experience plea­sure. However, the ­women they experience plea­sure with, if not their wives, are considered hos. Th ­ ese male exploits are justified ­because the wives fail to live up to patriarchal demands. Terry is urged to have an affair ­because he feels his wife Sharon neglects him in pursuit of her ­career. However, Terry wants more than sex. He desires another baby. Sharon does not. Though we learn that Sharon is having an affair in the sequel, it is Terry’s intimate, sexual, and familial needs that m ­ atter, not Sharon’s. Yet it is not that she does not want to have sex. Sharon does 182 Chapter 7

not want to have sex with Terry. The reasons are not made clear. Perhaps he no longer pleases her. What­ever the rationale, we are left to imagine for ourselves. Unlike the storylines Perry offers the men in his films, in which they explic­itly complain about their partners failing to meet their erotic needs, he chooses not to explore the option of sexual dissatisfaction for w ­ omen. Ultimately men cheat b­ ecause their needs are not met. W ­ omen cheat ­because they are selfish. In her essay “Good Girls Look the Other Way,” bell hooks, in analyzing Spike Lee’s movie Girl 6 (1996), posits that black ­women must make themselves over—to disidentify with their bodies—at the feet of the patriarchal altar, which requires submission to patriarchal needs, desires, and fantasies. As such, patriarchal fantasies require that female desirability be constructed in the space of self-­negation—­of lack—­and that w ­ omen die to their longings and be willing to act as mirrors reflecting male desire.12 ­Women are supposed to “look the other way,” away from realizing their own sexual agency and away from their own sexual identities. They are expected to be accommodating, other­w ise their sexuality may be connected to shame, which in some cases creates a context of secrecy and concealment. hooks posits that this is profoundly disempowering and ultimately leads to isolation. For example, in Why Did I Get Married Too? Sharon ends up alone. Her relationship with Terry is restored only when black sexual politics and gender hegemony are reestablished. In the first film, Terry admonishes, “How about ­doing something that a wife does and screwing me on the regular?” Sharon eventually complies. The second film opens with Terry attending to their new baby. ­After all, married sex is for procreation, and wives comply on demand, w ­ hether it is enjoyable or not. It is their duty. Why Did I Get Married Too? takes several turns in terms of sexual and gender politics. Sex between the ­couples is suggested but never witnessed. It is bizarre that the wives never gather and talk among themselves about their erotic needs and desires. Perhaps Perry is unaware that w ­ omen talk about sex, too. His intent in terms of this silencing and erasure is unknown. The outcome leads to speculation, especially since Perry puts so much energy into presenting the wives as undesirable. Their unattractiveness is predominantly framed by the attitudes he proj­ects into his storylines. Undesirability also works by way of slut shaming, projections of the “crazy,” fat phobia, and literal covering of the body. In the first film, Sheila’s storyline centers on her weight gain and thus supposed hideousness. Her husband is mean and disgusted by her size. She finds love and marries again Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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by the second film. Though her second husband does not have a prob­lem with her body, personal insecurities surrounding his lack of employment make him distant and cold. Yet Sheila desires to be wanted and to have intimacy. According to Perry, she must wait u­ ntil her husband lands a job first, meaning that ­women “screw” their husbands “on the regular,” despite their work. However, men provide sex only when they are happy with their work. Though the c­ ouples are at a beach resort in the second film, we do not get to see the wives’ bodies on the beach or in the bedroom. Yet we see the husbands’ bare chests throughout the film. Sheila is even covered in bed. This may be the wives’ choosing, which could be a statement of re­sis­tance ­toward the omnipresence of black female sexual images in cultural production. What is clear is that well-­endowed bare-­chested men and mostly clothed ­women pres­ent a pattern for Perry. Meet the Browns centers around Brenda, a single ­mother of two, who not only finds her long-­lost ­family on her f­ather’s side but love as well. In some ways, the film is similar to Madea Goes to Jail in that it entails a story of love and romance in which ­women get second chances. In Madea Goes to Jail, Candy, a young prostitute, finds love and restoration in Josh, the assistant district attorney and old childhood friend who left Candy at a college party at which she was gang raped. In Meet the Browns, Brenda gets a fresh start once she submits to being in a relationship with Harry, a local basketball recruiter. In true Perry fashion, Brenda must be contextualized prior to gaining love. When Brenda’s ­father, Pop Brown, dies, she is called to Georgia to learn about the details of his last w ­ ill and testament. Upon meeting her half-­ siblings for the first time, one of her ­sisters announces, “I ­don’t know what’s wrong with all you young girls having all t­ hese babies.” Brenda replies, “I know what I done.” Unlike men, once ­women become pregnant they cannot hide their sexual pasts. And sexual histories shape ­futures. Brenda’s ­mother is referred to as a ho. In fact, Pop Brown was a pimp with a range of hos. His sexual politics are almost celebrated as his eldest son lists off his ho reservoir: “Freckle face ho . . . ​black ho . . . ​back do’ ho . . . ​city ho . . . ​nasty ho.” How Brenda is seen and treated by her ­sister is a result of both her m ­ other’s and her own perceived sexual decision making. In Madea Goes to Jail Madea becomes the ho, and her b­ rother Joe, the pimp. We learn that Madea was previously a stripper, escort, and exotic dancer. While t­ hese jobs tell us nothing about her personal sexual politics or desires, and in fact may have excluded sex, Joe refers to Madea as a ho. He tells Cora, Madea’s ­daughter, “Yo momma is a po-po ho.” The ­Family That Preys is significantly 184 Chapter 7

familiar. It is a story about two families—­one black, one white; one working-­ class, the other wealthy. The families connect through ­labor, friendship, and sex. The two matriarchs, Alice and Charlotte, are friends. Their ­children, Andrea and Cole, are having an extramarital affair. Andrea is black. Cole is white. Andrea is married to Chris, a working-­class construction worker with big dreams. Cole is married to Jillian, a white Southern belle (a true ­woman). Chris wants intimacy with Andrea. Andrea wants a man with power. Cole wants Andrea sexually. Jillian wants her mantle as a white wealthy Southern lady revitalized. While Cole is predominantly left alone to have his affairs with Andrea, she is not so lucky. Andrea is rebuked by Abigail, her new boss at Cole’s f­amily business, for having an affair and for giving black w ­ omen “a bad name” by “screwing [her] way to the top.” Cole’s sexual choices are excused ­because “Cartwrights are the kind of men that wander.” Andrea is punished the most severely in the end. She loses her job and her husband. Cole is replaced by Abigail and thus loses his job, too. However, all e­ lse remains in place for him. He keeps his wife, his wealth, and his social capital. Cole ­will likely restart his life rather quickly and relatively seamlessly, if he has to restart at all. Andrea ­will likely strug­gle against the scarlet letter (or the sable letter “B”) she now carries alone—­forever. For Colored Girls is a far cry from the original text by black feminist Ntozake Shange. In her text, Shange aims to give voice to black ­women’s pain and resilience, concomitantly. Perry falls back on trite black gender and sexual politics. Of par­tic­u­lar interest is his reading of the lady in orange, Tangie. Tangie “likes to fuck.” However, the shaping of her sexuality in light of her own erotic needs, as opposed to in response to what hooks refers to as the eroticism of the patriarchal phallic imaginary, is interpreted as pathology. In addition to being called a “heffa,” “tramp,” and “crazy-­ass bitch,” Gilda, her neighbor, believes Tangie is “sick.” Her disease is autonomous engagements with plea­sure, “the complex, messy, sticky, and . . . ​joyous negotiation of agency and desire” that Morgan talks about. Perry affixes the latter to sexual vio­lence and victimhood. Gilda, who does not represent a color in Shange’s original text, is Perry’s creation, and serves as the “colored lady.” She is the film’s respectable moral voice who reproves Tangie, “It ­ain’t just sex honey. It all has a root. And you gotta find that root to pluck it.” It is in­ter­est­ing that Tangie’s body is not interpreted as an honest body, as are the men in Perry’s films, who also like to fuck, but rather as a site of reoccurring trauma, exploitation, and damaged sexuality that must be shamed, fixed, strummed, and then saved. Yet it is the Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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sexual politics in Perry’s productions that need saving and plucking. To be sure, the cast of For Colored Girls is brilliant. However, the vio­lence that Perry does to Shange’s choreopoem makes it difficult to truly “sing a black girl’s song.” The original text offered a site of truth telling and power, not shaming and victimhood. Shange’s text did not provide any male saviors or desperate, controlling, bitchy ladies. Nor was it homophobic. Perry’s treatment of Jo, the lady in red, and her husband, Carl, is troubling but not incongruous. Jo epitomizes his “mad black bitch” trope.13 Carl’s storyline parallels Tangie’s in some ways. He likes sleeping with other men. However, the patriarchal phallic imaginary requires a female body as play space. Men sleeping with other men disrupt hegemonic ideas of black masculinity. Perry frames Carl’s erotic desire in victimhood and punishment. Carl suffers from Jo’s bitching ways, but he is also hiv-­positive. Jo’s concern with “bottoms” and “tops” in terms of sexual positions is meant to humiliate Carl. To be sure, Jo has a right to express anger. She was betrayed twice over. Carl slept around b­ ehind Jo’s back, and he also made her sick. However, Jo’s line about who is “bending” whom in Carl’s sexual encounters highlights historical anxiety around black male emasculation. The logic goes: it is one ­thing to have sex with other men; it is wholly another to be a “bottom” participant in terms of sexual positioning, b­ ecause being a “bottom” suggests gay femininity, double cause for panic. The source of this anxiety is sexism and misogyny. It is imperative to name this ­because Jo’s inquiries about who is bending who is layered. It extends beyond negative attitudes about cheating or same-­gender love and/or sex. This is not the first time that Perry expresses homophobia in film. In Why Did I Get Married Too?, Angela refers to Mike as a “queen” when he is being mean and difficult. And Patricia, a successful writer, refers to her husband Gavin as a bitch and hires a femme gay man to jump out of a cake at his job. Patricia and Gavin are g­ oing through a difficult divorce, and Gavin wants a portion of Patricia’s book earnings. Gavin’s request is interpreted as feminine, something gold-­digging w ­ omen do. When presenting him with the cake, she censures, “If you gone be a bitch h­ ere’s your man.” This was meant to shame and punish Gavin. It works. Gavin storms off from his place of business and is struck by an oncoming car as he aggressively pulls out of the parking lot. He ­later dies. Patricia’s opprobrium ­causes Gavin’s death. Her deployment of the ultimate insult—­femininity—­symbolically and literally kills him. Perry also intends to problematize homo­sexuality in this scene, just as he does between Jo and Carl. Hill Collins writes that sexuality, not to be con186 Chapter 7

flated with sex or gender, is a social construct connected to both identity and gender scripts/behaviors, attitudes, desires, and emotions that a culture deems appropriate or ideal for a man or ­woman as well as what one deems appropriate for oneself. However, sexuality does not always include the ­actual act of sex. One can have a sexual identity and not be or have ever been sexually active. And someone can have a sexual identity and participate in sexual acts that deny a­ ctual desire. Perry does not allow for this kind of complexity. Yet it is the lack of nuance that ignites punishment in his productions. Perhaps Perry’s religious base makes this sort of complexity difficult. Perry both represses and expresses erotic desire in his films. Cis-­gender heterosexual male-­initiated coupling within marriage is ideal. Most anything outside of that is a prob­lem needing fixing, or a ho awaiting punishment. Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor (2013), a story about Judith and Brice, two childhood sweethearts from a country town who marry and move to a big city for work and new beginnings, makes this point more explicit. Judith utilizes her counseling skills at a local matchmaking agency, where she meets Harley, a successful Internet entrepreneur. The two appear destined for an extramarital affair, as Brice is predictable, inattentive, and committed to routinized sex and gender ideals. One eve­ning Judith tries to seduce Brice in the kitchen. He rejects her and chastises, “Bedrooms are for sex. That’s the right way.” ­Later, when Harley needs to go on a business trip to New Orleans, Judith’s boss, Janice, con­ve­niently offers Judith up as a business escort, a commodity. While on the trip, Harley romances and ultimately rapes Judith while on his private jet. She strug­gles and explic­itly tells him no and that she is married. However, Judith is trapped on the plane and appears to eventually give in. Harley intrigued her prior to the rape. However, rape-­sex on the plane that day with him was not desired. This is not to say Judith did not find Harley desirable the day she was raped. It is to make clear that desire is not consent, and consent cannot occur ­under force or duress. Judith is distraught, angry, and uncomfortable ­after the rape. However, Perry acts as if the rape scene is not ­there for our viewing. It is never addressed as a rape. Instead, Harley refers to Judith’s onscreen re­sis­tance as a ploy to maintain respectability. He ignores her once they return home. Instead of telling Brice and calling the police to report the rape, Judith falls in love with Harley. She ­later tells him, “I ­don’t think anyone makes love better than you.” Judith leaves Brice and begins a sex-­, drug-­, and violence-­filled courtship with Harley. In the end, Judith is a good girl gone bad. Brice saves her from Harley, but not from hiv. Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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Judith ends up sick and alone. Brice remarries and gets the wife and ­children he always wanted. Judith returns to her religious roots and continues working as a counselor. She and her life are no longer sexy. Heterosexual men that have affairs in Perry’s films often get the support of a community. We see this in Diary of a Mad Black ­Woman, The ­Family That Preys, Why Did I Get Married? and Why Did I Get Married Too?. W ­ omen and gay men are punished and lose every­thing. Perry disciplines Judith with disease, just as he did Carl. Harley is hiv-­positive but still seems to be thriving. His ex-­ girlfriend prior to Judith, Melinda, contracts hiv from him as well. She posits this is partially her fault, however. We do not know what happens to Harley beyond the testosterone-­fueled patriarchal takedown between him and Brice. We do know that Brice saves the day and that Harley loses the girl. We also know that Harley is a millionaire and ­will likely soon find another mate. But we do not know if he goes to jail for intimate partner vio­lence, ­faces consequences for knowingly spreading hiv, or eventually loses his wealth or income for bad be­ hav­ior. The message in the end is ­simple: no does not mean no, rape can be the gateway to the best sex ever, hiv is a form of punishment for wrongdoing, and the gift of love and marriage requires faithfulness, good works, and scrupulous decision making, despite boring and miserable bedroom etiquette. While faithfulness may reward black ­women with marriage, it does not protect them from the myth of sexual promiscuity. Judith was a virgin before her marriage to Brice. By all accounts she was a respectable lady. Yet this did not stop random street thugs from calling her a “common whore” while on a date with Brice early in their marriage and prior to Harley. Judith’s sexed-up coworker Ava, played by Kim Kardashian, is never called a ho/whore. Neither is the white ­woman Judith counsels at the beginning and end of the film who is also cheating on her husband. Perry seems to save the ho/whore language for black ­women and ­women of color.14 He uses the term in Madea’s Witness Protection, a film about a wealthy white f­amily—­George and Kate and their ­children, Cindy and Howie, and their grand­mother, Barbara—­caught up in a Ponzi scheme run by the mob and placed in a witness protection program, which sends them to live with Madea and Joe. However, Perry is unsurprisingly selective in his deployment of ho discourse. In the film, Joe’s son Brian orchestrates the move. Joe and Madea need the money. Madea jokingly mentions ­going back to her old stripping or hooking job. And Joe yells out to Brian, “I be ­running them hos dog,” when requesting funds to manage his nightlife. Sex work such as stripping or prostitution should be held in tension with what­ever Perry means by “ho-­ing.” Many 188 Chapter 7

­ omen choose sex work as an ave­nue to express sexual agency. O w ­ thers are forced into the line of work due to social contexts where choice and control over subsistence is limited. Perry’s sexual and gender politics frame black ­women’s sexual autonomy as “ho-­ing,” regardless. Thus, Madea’s mentioning of sex work is meant to signify herself as a ho, which she ­later articulates more explic­itly. The casualness with which black ­women refer to themselves15 and ­others as hos in Perry’s films underlines centuries of scientific, artistic, religious, and repre­sen­ta­tional l­abor put into affixing blackness to pathology and black femaleness to promiscuity. The white ­women in the film talk about sexual desire and experience but avoid misnaming and shaming. Madea mentions her sex work again in A Madea Christmas and Madea Goes to Jail. It is pos­si­ble that Perry sees Madea’s body as a site of contestation—of black female sexual agency—to challenge the status quo. Another possibility is that Perry lends Madea more sexual freedom b­ ecause under­ neath the makeup and bodysuit she is a man, and (heterosexual-­identifying) cis-­gender men are entitled to express themselves sexually (with w ­ omen) as they see fit, and without punishment. ­Others might suggest that it is not that deep, and Perry simply finds ho language funny. Perhaps. But Perry ­favors sexual agency when attached to ­women beyond the age of sexual desirability, according to ageist standards of beauty. Barbara, the grand­mother in Madea’s Witness Protection, sexually desires Joe. He resists b­ ecause Barbara is white, highlighting not only the consequences of racism and interracial sexual relations but also how white w ­ omen are off-­limits. And though Barbara throws herself at Joe sexually, he refrains from cata­loging her as a ho. Barbara and Joe’s pos­si­ble previous affair when they ­were younger lends comedic fodder. Ultimately Barbara stifles Joe’s sexuality, making way for her to express her own erotic desires without repercussion. Madea’s Big Happy F ­ amily, a story about death, love, secrets, forgiveness, and ­family, pres­ents a similar character in Aunt Bam, an el­derly w ­ oman who goes with her niece Shirley to visit her doctor, Dr. Evans, about her cancer. While ­there, Aunt Bam explic­itly propositions Dr. Evans for sex. She tells him, “You mess with me Doc, I’ll have you somewhere sucking on your thumb calling for your mama! Standing on your left leg bowing down on your right wondering what I’m gonna do to you to­night.” Dr. Evans shyly laughs. Curious, Aunt Bam asks, “You married, Doc? No? You straight?” She then touches Dr.  Evans sexually and turns her back ­toward him while pressing her buttocks against his groin sans consent. “He straight,” she exclaims. Meanwhile, Shirley learns that her cancer has progressed. She is ­dying. Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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Aunt Bam is not characterized as a ho. Ho language is reserved for Renee, Byron’s girlfriend. Byron is Shirley’s youn­gest son, who we ­later learn is actually her grand­son. Byron has a small child with Sabrina. Renee is self-­ absorbed and disinterested in caring for Byron and Sabrina’s child. Sabrina is the consummate black ghetto baby momma imaginary. While at a ­family gathering, Aunt Bam zeros in on Renee with a remixed lullaby when she refuses to change Byron’s baby’s diaper, calling her a trick and a ho, “Row, row, row your ho up and down the street, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, she’s just a piece of meat.” Renee’s refusal to live up to the gendered ideal, in ser­vice to Byron and motherhood, casts her within the shadows of ho-­dom. Perry’s typical sexual and gender scripts follow. All the ­women are prob­lems and/or problemed, and all the men gather together to stand as judge and jury. Shirley has three ­children: Byron, Tammy, and Kimberly. Tammy and Kimberly are married. They are both presented as difficult ­women. Byron is a previously troubled teen on the upswing. The men, including Byron and Tammy’s and Kimberly’s husbands, gather about as they typically do in Perry films, to discuss the ­women in their lives. During their powwow, the husbands ask Byron what is wrong with his s­ isters. Byron responds by asking, “What’s wrong with ­women period?” His “baby momma misuses [his] child support,” and Renee wants him to return to drug dealing so that they can have more money. In addition, his baby momma Sabrina is “crazy,” another one of Perry’s “mad black bitches.” Both Renee and Sabrina lack respectable ethics. Tammy and Kimberly are also plucked from Perry’s canon of “mad black bitches.” Tammy’s anger is due to jealousy. She is a short, stocky, loud-­talking, emasculating brown ­woman. Colorist insinuations between the s­ isters aside, Tammy’s backstory is largely underdeveloped. Kimberly, a commercial beauty who appears to have it all, is bitchy ­because she was raped and impregnated (with Byron) by her ­uncle at thirteen. Kimberly is miserable and makes every­ one around her miserable ­because of this. Perry takes a cue from Jakes in linking female misery to men, some sort of sexual sin, and lack of forgiveness ­toward their victimizers. We hear the stories of rapists and abusers in Perry’s productions, but they are typically left without a face or a body. Perry proffers merely an imprint instead, pressing the audience to develop both animosity and empathy ­toward the survivors and placing the burden of absolution and healing fully on their shoulders, despite the absence of accountability or justice. Perry’s and Jakes’s demand for pardoning leaves no room for black female righ­teous rage, a legitimate response to vio­lence. Yet black ­women and girls have a dotted history of sexual 190 Chapter 7

assault. While it is impor­tant for Perry to tell ­these narratives, it is imperative to distinguish between the transgressions of the rapist and the many consequences of such vio­lence experienced in the life of the survivor. This includes problematizing and holding accountable not the survivor but the assailant. And this requires a face, name, and body. It is also impor­tant to note that not all w ­ omen are miserable or miserable due to male action. This is quite narcissistic of Perry. Black w ­ omen have a history of strug­gle not only against sexual vio­lence but also against a range of state-­sanctioned social risks. At the same time, black ­women’s lives are irreducible to strug­gle and vio­lence. Further, sex and sexuality are sites of both plea­sure and  frustration. As sites of frustration, individuals, local communities, and the state attempt to regulate sexual identity and activity in terms of sexual politics. History reveals that controlling one’s sexuality and sex also means controlling one’s life. As sites of plea­sure, sex and sexuality can be a liberating force when expressive and mutually fulfilling and responsible without consequence. Ironically, Perry’s films mostly exclude sex. The few sex scenes offered within his canon are predominantly within the context of assault, for example, Candy in Madea Goes to Jail, Judith in Temptation, and Yasmine in For Colored Girls. Street justice is served in Yasmine’s narrative. Judith’s rape scene goes unacknowledged. And Candy’s rapists get away. The erasure of pleas­ur­able, consented sex and nakedness is intriguing given Perry’s emphasis on relationships, love, marriage, and romance. ­Women rarely initiate sex in his productions, and apart from Natalie from Good Deeds and Judith from Temptation, we scarcely get a glimpse of them having it. Natalie and her fiancé, Wesley Deeds, engage in steamy sex in the win­dow of their high-­rise—­fully clothed. This is Perry’s first plea­sure sex scene. The second is between Judith and Harley, postrape. While they are unclothed, Perry provides only fragments of sweaty black flesh. Newsflash: not only do black ­women have pleas­ur­able consented sex, but black churchwomen have hot naked sex, married or not, too. The urgent, pervasive, and determined reconstructing of black ­women’s sexuality pivotal to racial uplift, which developed a dangerous blend of policing, shaming, vio­lence, secrecy, repression, contradiction, and scandal, created a context in which black ­women’s and girls’ sex and sexual identities became both hidden and paraded, and respectable and licentious, at once. In a likely unintentional appeal to colonialist white supremacist cap­i­tal­ist heterosexist patriarchal gender politics, Perry reappropriates the madonna/ whore dichotomy, historically meant to police white w ­ omen’s sexuality, in Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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his films. However, white w ­ omen, who are affected by sexism, are hardly seen as inherently promiscuous due to race and thus, as evidenced in Perry’s films, have freedom to explore a range of erotic expressions while remaining socially respectable. To this end, the supposed inherent ho-­dom of black ­women and girls means locating redemption in dissemblance for some. The absence of erotica in Perry’s films could be read against this backdrop. Still, he both resists and plays with black ­women’s supposed hypersexuality and his own erotophobia. That is, Perry screens out agency, nudity, and titillating sex but screens in a discourse on jezebelian pathology that requires stifling through proper sex and gender conduct. Perry’s Repre­sen­ta­tional Strategies: A Black Feminist Religio-­Cultural Reading Perry’s films articulate that w ­ omen and men have special roles and ways of being in the universe, both of which define proper identities, relations, and choices. Within this paradigm w ­ omen should aspire to cis-­gender heteronormative ladydom, and men to cis-­gender heteropatriarchy. Perry’s ho/lady binary urges a discussion on the practice of repre­sen­ta­tion and how it functions like a “visual language” to produce a framework of interpretation and shared meanings that structure how we “look” at and relate to black ­women and girls. Working along multiple dimensions, such as race, sex, and class, and in conjunction with other tropes, Perry’s binary draws from and accumulates meanings across texts. It tells a par­tic­ul­ar story about black ­women that significantly parallels Jakes’s “­woman,” providing flesh to his hurting, desperate, manipulative, destructive, abusive, obsessive, clingy, selfish, insecure, gullible, weak, poor-­decision-­making, and promiscuous interpretations. This brings us back to Hall’s argument on difference and that which is deemed out of place. It may also be disavowed—­the practice of indulging and denying the taboo or the fetishized at the same time. What is declared dif­fer­ent or problemed may be si­mul­ta­neously enjoyed and lingered over ­because it is dif­f er­ent. The ho/lady trope performs similarly for Perry. It serves as indisputable evidence of dishonor/nobility. Both commodities to be enjoyed, and both a ser­vice to the race. Perry’s black lady functions similarly to Black Victoria. She is ­imagined but underdeveloped; pres­ent but absent; invoked but not quite lived. In Perry’s texts, she is a deeply held conviction. We know she is t­ here by her carefully constructed opposite. However, she is 192 Chapter 7

the goal, not the real­ity. It is unsurprising that, except for Helen in Diary of a Mad Black ­Woman, and brief appearances by Cicely Tyson in Madea’s ­Family Reunion and Why Did I Get Married Too?, we never r­ eally see Perry’s black lady. Perhaps he knows that tropes fail to represent real life or that his par­tic­ u­lar expectations of this figure are actually unlivable and limiting. Yet Perry’s script on ladydom lacks the complexity of Black Victoria. Nevertheless, the trope likely appeals to similar sensibilities and needs. Both emerge from civilized/primitive dialectics that demand binary opposites. Each responds to racial ste­reo­types regarding black female promiscuity and immorality and thus constructs sexual politics, gender identity, and heteropatriarchal marriage as ave­nues for safeguarding and racial pro­gress. It is in­ter­est­ing that Tyson also shows up in Madea’s ­Family Reunion as the black matriarch who slut shames black ­women and girls, telling them to straighten up and “take up [their] place,” and again in Why Did I Get Married Too? as a rare repre­sen­ta­tion of Perry’s black lady. She is also in Diary of a Mad Black ­Woman as Helen’s m ­ other, Myrtle. However, her place as the black lady, though pres­ent, is not as explic­itly defined as in the other films. Perhaps Tyson represents Perry’s arche, a mythical story of origins in which black w ­ omen and girls readily took on roles as ladies and commitments to virtue, wifedom, motherhood, black “nuclear” families, black communities, and black patriarchy. Though both Why Did I Get Married? films center upon the miseries of cis-­gender heteropatriarchal marriage, Tyson and her husband offer a quick look at the beauty and joy of marriage—­when performed “properly” and when spouses take up conventional roles. In this way, Tyson serves as a corrective. She is all that the young teens in Madea’s ­Family Reunion and the wives in Why Did I Get Married Too? are not. The centrality of marriage in Perry’s productions is significant. It could be argued that Perry, like early black American writers, hopes to reimagine and affirm black humanity through images of the black “nuclear” ­family, black patriarchy, and the black lady, even as he reproduces images of jezebel, the black matriarchate, and the angry black w ­ oman. Despite intent, Perry’s emphasis on marriage is attractive. While marriage does not necessarily provide automatic access to love, love and marriage are often conflated in cultural memory, and particularly in Perry’s knight-­in-­shining-­armor motif. Love is humanizing, and black love is radical, especially in the face of dehumanizing histories and presences. And black ­women unequivocally love, love to love, and long to be loved. Part of the success of Perry’s productions and films Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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such as Think Like A Man (2012), Django Unchained (2012), and The Best Man Holiday (2013) is the rare sighting of black ­women in love and being pursued for love. As Spillers once argued, black marriage was historically interpreted as a privilege of the ­free and thus a site of transgressive meaning. Although Perry’s love stories are conflicting, they beat out historical narratives about forced plantation marriages, ruptures, and con­temporary ideas about black female undesirability and unloveability. Not all black ­women desire men, marriage, or even partnership. Yet Perry’s success suggests that many black w ­ omen are implicated and invested in his lady/uplift/marriage/love/patriarchy/knight-­in-­shining-­armor leitmotif. In an essay titled “Feminist Masculinity,” hooks argues that antimale feminists historically refused to look at the caring bonds w ­ omen shared with men or the economic and emotional ties (positive or negative) that bind ­women to men, including ­those that may be sexist and patriarchal. Similarly, feminists typically resist exploring or giving any credence to how w ­ omen are implicated in maintaining heteropatriarchal partnerships, within and beyond the institution of marriage. The knight-­in-­shining-­armor trope is significant to ­these relations. Perry’s use of it should be explored against black ­women’s and girl’s historical narrative. This is the part where I, as a black feminist, am supposed to argue that black ­women and girls do not need saving or protecting, particularly by a male savior figure. I mostly agree with this in theory and praxis. However, as I argued previously when discussing Django Unchained, in par­tic­u­lar the scene in which Django saves Broomhilda, ­ ere are moments in life where the rhe­toric and/or real­ity of protection Th are needed, I think. When thinking about the rhe­toric of protection and the male savior trope in this film, it’s imperative to think about each in terms of the experiences of captive flesh within patriarchal structures. And I get the exceptionalism argument. However, it’s also historically appropriate to suggest the desire or need for a savior figure or hero in this instance. The quest for male (and sometimes female) savior figures w ­ eren’t uncommon to the enslaved. Truth be told, t­ hey’re not uncommon now. This is why Tyler Perry is so popu­lar. He’s mastered the w ­ hole Christian-­Christ-­male-­ savior concept, however you read it.  Patriarchal, heterosexist prob­lems aside, heroes are sometimes needed, especially when surrounded by a sea of villains. Why not the love of Broomhilda’s life? The fact that Django risks every­thing to ­free his beloved is nothing short of intoxicating. And

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the moment where he, instead of a rapist-­murderer, enters the cabin to take Broomhilda away is beyond potent, and not ­because she w ­ asn’t a fighter, but b­ ecause she needed help making an exit route. Survivors of vio­lence can only wish for such a moment—­for love to arrive before vio­ lence takes hold. It’s also impor­tant to note that Broomhilda is an ex-­slave ­woman who’s been ­violated, and ­faces the threat of continued violation, not a w ­ oman born into a context of choice, rights and privilege. We typically understand and problematize the rhe­toric of protection, chivalry, ­etc., in light of the latter, where savior tropes function more so as ­middle class patriarchal controls.  However, Broomhilda’s captivity, and that of ­others, pushes us to reimagine Django not as a knight in shining armor male savior trope, but a repre­sen­ta­tion of fugitive justice. This is a source of hope for the racialized, both captive and post-­captive.16 Black feminist analyses must make room for and consider the moments in life when black ­women and girls need or desire saving or protection. Critical analyses should lean ­toward disorienting the intersectionality of sexism, racism, and classism that make saving and protection desirable in the first place. We should also keep in mind black ­women’s and girls’ history of death and being left unprotected, while holding in tension exceptionalist strong black superwoman tropes and how they have not worked ­either. I am not suggesting that knights in shining armor are black w ­ omen’s and girls’ ultimate source of liberation, ­either. Black ­women and girls have always participated in realizing black liberation and thriving. I am asserting, however, the complex significance of black male savior tropes to some black ­women and girls, and how they may operate in contexts not only of vulnerability and vio­lence but also of desire, despite also functioning as a controlling device. While Perry’s lady/uplift/marriage/love/patriarchy/knight-­in-­ shining-­armor leitmotif encourages much criticism, it is impor­tant to also consider what his audience may find attractive. It is plausible that black ­women and girls are implicated and invested in this schema of interpretations and relations ­because it holds cultural value, particularly as it imagines love, creates protective space, ideates a liberative economy, stands in opposition to already existing texts on black female promiscuity and degeneracy, and works against histories of abandonment and antagonism between black ­women and men. Work is still needed in terms of disentangling marriage, patriarchy, love, partnerships, and knights in shining armor. Morgan reminds us how seductive ­these texts can be. Yet it is too easy to dismiss the narrative Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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as patriarchal and humanity as needy and fragile. The more difficult task is grappling with the complexities between ­human desire and theory. But what of Perry’s affinity for ho discourse? As with Angela in Why Did I Get Married? and Jennifer in ­Daddy’s ­Little Girls, is it pos­si­ble that black ­women may be implicated ­there as well? Perry’s ho discourse constructs a theater for summoning black ladyhood ­because the mere invocation of black female unmitigated licentiousness allows his audience to create distance between the “Otherness” commodified in Perry’s script and the normalcy they hope to embody. But something about Angela reminds me of Zola (prolegomenon). Angela’s projections mean to harm. And she never refers to herself as a ho. Yet she does affirm her right to sexual pleasure—­beyond her unfaithful husband Marcus. This is not the story Perry intends to tell, however. He is disinterested in black ­women’s sexual autonomy and complex identity. Instead Perry’s story swings between Freud’s penis power, Aristotle’s deficiency, Moynihan’s pathology, Jakes’s feminine-­ism, and the black “nuclear” proj­ect. Perry deserves praise for constructing significant points of recognition between his productions and his audience and thus bringing meaningful narratives that “preach” and that “hardly anyone e­ lse was touching” to the silver screen, particularly ­those examining sensitive topics such as abandonment, adultery, rape, incest, vio­lence, betrayal, singleness, single motherhood, incarceration, sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse, sex, prostitution, molestation, love, and teen pregnancy. Yet we cannot overlook the limitations of his work, and particularly his tendency to re/present black ­women and girls as “hos,” “mad,” or prob­lems. And we cannot ignore how ­these tropes get punished into submission, how submission demands adherence to Perry’s ideas of proper ladydom, or how both the latter and heteropatriarchal marriage serve as the only acceptable options for success for black ­women and girls. Perry disregards how ladydom and heterosexual marriage may construct contexts for hierarchy and competition wherein value is tied to policing, fulfilling the male gaze, beauty ideals, hypermorality, and sexual closeting, and how both ladydom and marriage are oftentimes the only route for experiencing re­spect, recognition, protection, and mobility. Sometimes it is the fear of ho discourse and its numerous penalties that makes ladydom and hetero marriage appealing in the first place (Sarah Jakes). The narrative under­neath Perry’s narratives, then, is that sexual shaming leads many black w ­ omen and girls (and men and boys) to believe that hegemonic gender ideals and puri196 Chapter 7

tanical sexual politics, which place significant value on proper ladyhood and hetero marriage, are the only sufficient ave­nues for black thriving. Constructing alternative points of refusal in response to pervasive ste­reo­types such as inherent black female promiscuity and immorality is not bad. The ways that the achievement of proper ladyhood may stifle agency and other ways of being, require black ­women to uplift black communities on their backs, domesticize sexuality, and romanticize hegemonic gender ideals is just not productive. Black ­women’s and girls’ complex subjectivity and spectrum of needs, wants, and ways of being should not have to make themselves over or disidentify with their full selves to encounter meaningful and life-­giving experiences and expressions. Similarly, marriage is not bad. That w ­ omen are expected to marry a man, have c­ hildren, provide sex on demand, manage the first and second shifts, and rearrange their sexual histories and needs around male ego and the belief that pro­gress is tied to concealing black ­women’s sexuality within the cloak of respectability and the private sphere is illiberal. That ­women and girls are socialized to believe that their personhood and value are dependent upon their invitation to and participation in hetero marriage is bad. That black ladydom seems to be the ticket to black female thriving and that black female thriving stands in opposition to black ­women’s sexual autonomy and pleasure—­ because to be a black lady is to not be “that ho over t­ here”—is bad. That black ­women’s sex, identities, wombs, and reproductive rights continue to serve as commodities is bad. That commitments to the black “nuclear” f­ amily are conflated with commitments to black men and that ­these expectations are often one-­sided is bad. Furthermore, that the beauty and possibilities of chosen love and partnerships have been overdetermined by hegemonic sex and gender politics is bad. On Class, Black Feminist ­Futures, and Alternatives: A Few Final Thoughts Not telling the story under­neath the story turns black life into cheap entertainment and voy­eur­is­tic jungles, hooks argues. This is especially impor­tant to note in terms of how Perry re/presents the black working class, often the reverse image of his black upper class. The latter has its share of prob­lems yet predominantly dodges Perry’s buffoonish lampooning. Perry’s selective refashioning of both classes creates social distinctions conveyed through dress, speech, work, leisure, be­hav­iors, and living quarters but also a caricaturing Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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of comportment and experiences. Perry’s caricaturing of black working-­class ­women is particularly troubling ­because it raises questions of not only appropriateness but also reason. Black working-­class w ­ omen in his films are often angry, “crazy,” or “mad,” with ­little, if any, explanation. Most often it is ­because they “fell on hard times,” however we never know the source, only the solution: a good man. We see ­women struggling to make ends meet, losing their jobs, falling from grace, and ­going through b­ itter divorces, yet we never get a full picture of how impoverished and working-­class statuses are gendered, structural, cyclical, may indeed cause real madness, and are difficult to break—­beyond “marrying up” or acts of God. Perry and Jakes share a diverse audience, many of which make up the black working class. That Perry’s depictions of class allow entrée into other socioeconomic classes without any sort of real encounter could be attractive. His repre­sen­ta­tions envisage escape via social ladder climbing and individualism, and they support the Protestant work ethic that hard work plus faith equals rewards. It is impor­tant not to make light of this but instead think critically about what it means to be born into and/or living in a marginalized socioeconomic position. Perry’s formula allows the p­ eople in his audience to dream about financial and other possibilities, however, while sometimes making fun of others. Perry’s formulas need interference. His revival of working-­class imagery and his dichotomized black female subaltern, which imagines black womanhood as innately problemed and out of control, necessitates disrupting. Of primary import is untwining the Protestant work ethic from interpretations of race and socioeconomic class and Black Church politics from sex and gender ideals. Perry’s repre­sen­ta­tional strategies are exploitative in that they capitalize on speech acts and cultural codes that misrecognize black ­women and girls as sites of trou­ble and in so d­ oing maintain the status quo. Intentional or not, Perry’s ho/lady binary links black ­women and girls to the (slave) market, as for sale and always sexually available and pursuant on one hand, and as seeking superficial cover from the same on the other. Th ­ ere is a way to tell black w ­ omen’s and girls’ stories while also honoring histories and f­ utures, and allowing creative space for reimaging historical realities and complex alternatives. Yet though Perry is no Maya Angelou, Julie Dash, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Kasi Lemmons, Cheryl Dunye, Ava DuVernay, Shonda Rhimes, Mara Brock Akil, Dee Rees, Issa Rae, or Lena Waithe—­black w ­ omen cultural producers whose productions center upon the opacities and nuances of black 198 Chapter 7

­ omen’s and girls’ lives in incredibly dif­fer­ent yet necessary and wonderful w ways—he is an impor­tant storyteller. As a survivor of vio­lence and socioeconomic hardship, Perry brings a unique lens to black popu­lar cultural production. ­After braving a childhood replete with physical, sexual, and emotional vio­lence, he became homeless. And despite considering suicide, Perry found respite in his faith and writing. His victim-­to-­victor terror-­to-­triumph personal narrative makes his collective storylines both attractive and sanguine. The structuring of Perry’s personal history in class strug­gle and vari­ous forms of vio­lence may grant him a slight pass for some. They pres­ent significant points of recognition between Perry and the audience and the audience and his productions. Perry’s framing of his journey as a faith walk and his success as the reward ­will likely grant him a lifetime of devotion. The Black Church has historically been a place where the disenfranchised could at minimum temporarily escape the pain of their abuses and construct alternative realities, loving kinships, support networks, and ­futures. Perry’s productions create space to do the same. Reading Perry through a black feminist religio-­cultural gaze requires a lot of push and pull. Jacqueline Bobo’s urging to consider black ­women’s support of certain cultural productions within the totality of their lives and within the full range of their past, and to provide critical analyses that take seriously the critical consciousness and subversive capabilities of the audience is particularly insightful. Yet while Perry’s productions may proffer numerous points of recognition, meanings shift from producer to audience, and thus projection and appropriation in meaning making should remain in tension. Perry’s discourse on black womanhood uplifts and problematizes ­women. Black audience members negotiate ­these repre­sen­ta­tions in their own way. Clearly, ­there are many that find plea­sure in Perry’s work. Experiencing plea­sure or even granting a pass on some ­things does not equate to lack of criticism. Black cultural readers choose when and when not to consume critically. Conversely, the work of the black feminist religio-­cultural theorist is to provide critical readings of culture that examine how some cultural forms, despite pleasures experienced, may be harmful to not only individuals but collective communities as well. Perry’s application of religious ideology and theology (feminine-­ism) on sex and gender to enforce notions of true womanhood while disciplining ­women and girls that fall outside of its bound­aries is dangerous. History shows us that the institutionalizing and normalizing of ideological biases on interpersonal, communal, and structural levels, specifically racist and sexist Tyler Perry ’ s New Revival 

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ideas and imagery, do more than produce ideas of hierarchy and hatred. They lead to ideological distortions about h­ uman subjects and ultimately vio­lence. It is debatable if Perry gets how this impacts black ­women and girls, how fictive ethnographies about supposed innate promiscuity, immorality, or bitchiness has led to and justified vio­lence—state, local, religious, and other­w ise—in real life. Still, black ­women and girls must be left to decide for themselves what should be held dear. The ­thing about Perry is that he produces texts that are in their own way si­mul­ta­neously empowering and empathetic to black ­women’s distresses, pleasures, and spirituality. And while ­these texts pres­ent paths ­toward female empowerment that lack structural analy­sis17 and are at times sexist, heterosexist, heteropatriarchal, classist, homophobic, and erotophobic, Perry’s audience finds value in them. Not b­ ecause they do not know what is best for them, but b­ ecause black w ­ omen live in gray space, are nuanced, and have to pick and choose which ­battles are worth fighting. The road between being an “out of touch” black cultural critic and applicable black cultural criticism is not an easy one. Th ­ ere are no perfect pictures, only crooked views.

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EPILOGUE

DANGEROUS MACHINATIONS Black Feminists Taught Us

We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our pres­ent. We do not have to suffer the waste of amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding. We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how impor­tant it is not to lie to ourselves. We are power­ful b­ ecause we have survived, and that is what it is all about—­survival and growth. Within each one of us t­ here is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine, which orchestrates crisis ­after crisis and is grinding all our ­futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against ­women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. —Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s”

I returned to “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” in fall 2014. It was back in Atlanta, Georgia, but this time at Phillips Arena. The weather was comfortable, just above seventy degrees, sunny with a cool breeze and ideal for walking downtown Atlanta. I arrived midday. ­There ­were busloads of ­women arriving si­ mul­ta­neously. Some ­were made up of local church groups, and ­others ­were from out of town. Several ­people parked in local garages and trekked over to Phillips in small clusters on foot, some meeting in the garage for the first time. Many ­women appeared to be coming directly from work, as some ­were still in uniform and ­others had yet to remove their employment badges. The

excitement was high, much like fourteen years earlier. ­After maneuvering past security, guests w ­ ere ushered to the “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” supercenter equipped with not only red carpets, photo booths, and vip sections filled with bedazzled T-­shirts, gift bags, and ­water ­bottles, but also makeshift bookstores replete with Jakes’s latest cds, books, and other merchandise and a plethora of docking stations and travel hosts for easy-­access registration for Mega Fest Dallas 2015. Walking through the “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” emporium was mandatory for participating in the main event. All entrances to the stadium w ­ ere located ­behind the shopping area. Once I was inside my eyes immediately rested on a circulating ticker tape that framed the main stage. It read, “text tdjm to 28950.” I sat in the gold section, just above platinum and two sections above vip. I was sandwiched between two large distinct groups of friends, both of which w ­ ere largely working-­class black w ­ omen between the ages of forty and sixty-­five. Prior to Jakes’s arrival onstage t­ here was a cooking show; Girl Talk, an intimate talk show-­like engagement between w ­ omen about love, self-­worth, attraction, pursuance, wifedom, and ladydom; and a sermonette specifically for raising money for the offering. The latter felt more like an auction. The minister charged with this task started off with a bidding of $1,000. Audience members w ­ ere urged to give with cash, check, or credit card in person, online, or by text­ing tdjm to 28950. ­Those who gave ­were asked to stand based on the dollar amount they contributed. As large sacklike offering bags ­were passed through the rows circling the arena, Dr. E. Dewey Smith reminded audience members that giving is a sign of faith and is linked to their blessing. In chorus, the praise team softly sang, “I believe, it’s already done” in the background. Smith posited, “This is my expression of faith . . . ​this is my expression of worship . . . ​in the spirit of Mary . . .” Black ­women proudly dug deep in their purses, pulling out what­ ever they planned to give. The mood was set: To give one must be a believer, and to be a believer one must have faith. Faith is exhibited through worship and thanksgiving. An expression of each is a tangible and noteworthy offering. The offering one gives influences what­ever she hopes to receive. She who decides not to give or chooses to give an offering that is insufficient ­will not be blessed. In fact, not giving the best offering one can possibly muster may be why her life is bound by multiple challenges in the first place. Though this would be the first of many offerings for the night, the routine and the logic stayed the same. 202 Epilogue

Just before Jakes hit the stage to preach his “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” sermon, a fiery preacher named Rev. Dr. Jasmin Sculark preached a minisermon about God’s ­favor. Working the crowd like a Hip Hop “hype-(wo)man” she preached, “He picked a ho by the name of Rahab . . . ​so h­ e’ll pick you too!” Like when Jamal H. Bryant preached, “­These hos ­ain’t loyal,” the crowd of predominantly w ­ omen went wild. For Sculark, being “picked” was exemplified in vip treatment, finding a good man, queendom, and taking “your rightful seat of power . . . ​and position” b­ ecause “it’s your turn.” She exhorted, “Every­body in your row is getting a blessing to­night. . . . ​With all t­ hese men, ­ain’t no need for a ­woman to touch another ­woman!” Sculark’s reference to “getting a blessing to­night” due to the presence of all the men at the conference aside, her spasmodic blending of religion, faith-­based material rewards, power, and feminine-­ism, which naturally includes feminine and ho theologies, patriarchy, and homophobia, was unsurprising. It underlines a structural, institutional, and theological crisis pervasive in Jakes’s ministry and, moreover, in the Black Church. Even if Jakes chooses to no longer explic­itly engage the discourse on black womanhood and/or jezebel, ideologies on proper gender roles, sexuality, hard work, and personal responsibility are already systematically configured, normalized, and legitimized as sources of truth throughout his organ­ization and throughout the Black Church. Lurking under­neath Sculark’s statements was the same message Jakes has been preaching for years: any ­woman that is faithful to both the church and the black “nuclear” po­liti­cal proj­ect can be blessed through hard work and personal responsibility—­despite previous ho-­ing. They ­will not be completely made over, but they ­will experience a blessing in the pro­cess. This line of thinking conveys to black w ­ omen that not only are they prob­lems but also that “­things w ­ ill work out fine as soon as you fix your own issues.” And if you are not blessed—­with money, status, and/ or a husband—or continue to have prob­lems, it is ­because something is still wrong with you. You are not working hard enough, are not faithful enough, have not given enough, are not pious enough, are not ladylike enough, are not loosed enough, are not committed to the church or “nuclear” proj­ect enough, or are just overall fundamentally flawed. The ­thing we must grapple with is that this messaging has worked in Jakes’s ­favor. Black w ­ omen return to “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” year ­after year hoping to get loosed from their challenges. The conference theme for this year was “The Wait Is Over,” inspired by Habakkuk 2:3: “For the vision Dangerous Machinations  

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is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it s­ hall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; ­because it ­will surely come, it ­will not tarry.” As Jakes arrived on stage, the audience cheered. He preached, “Total deliverance is up to you! It’s not up to the dev­il. . . . ​Sometimes I’m just surviving . . . ​but I’m still h­ ere. . . . ​I been to hell and back but I survived. . . . ​Survivors make some noise!” ­Little had changed in fourteen years. The “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” market, conference fees, and income gap between Jakes and his followers had grown, however. The underpinning theology of “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” had not. ­Women ­were still prob­lems needing fixing. Female empowerment remained obscure at best. The d/evil (outside of ­women) went unnamed. Social risks and structural and interpersonal vio­lences ­were left unchallenged. Black female strug­gle and survival w ­ ere celebrated as thriving. Loosing continued to look for its legs. The work of black pro­gress was left squarely on the shoulders of black w ­ omen. Black patriarchy stood as the immediate beneficiary of said work. And feminine-­ism was still the unspoken yet verbose code for jezebelian/true womanhood, or rather, ho/feminine fragmentation and theology. This is the point where some may outright dismiss Jakes as merely selling dreams, and his audience as drunk on special spirits. I would like to posit a ­counter position: “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed,” despite intentionality and toxic theology, creates a marketplace for creative imagination. Black w ­ omen give their time, money, and l­ abor to Jakes’s and other ministries and religions with hopes that their investments w ­ ill one day pay off. History tells us why ­women, including ­those with limited income, might be moved to give their last dollar or share their entire paycheck upon hearing the lyr­ics, “I believe, it’s already done.” “It” can mean a lot of ­things when you are a black ­woman or girl in Amer­i­ca. Many are optimistic that the promise is true. Moreover, ­there are not many public institutions or cultural spaces that black ­women can count on to speak to or meet at least half of their needs. “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” is one. The Black Church is another. Each pres­ent a complex and unique opportunity for imagining possibility, fulfilled or not. To be sure, “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” and the Black Church are not homogeneous. They are congruent and cognate. And though kindred, “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” cannot stand in for the entirety of the Black Church. Yet “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” does provide a historical marker for the cultural production of mass-­mediated religio-­cultural texts centering not only black Christian ­women but also the discourse on black woman­hood, which includes as a pivotal ideology a discourse and theology on jezebel, 204 Epilogue

however. “­Woman, Thou Art Loosed” serves as a significant connector between the Black Church, black religion, and black popu­lar culture. To this end, it discloses an opportunity for the following: critically reading black religio-­cultural texts significant to black churchwomen; holding up a mirror to the Black Church, the black preacher, and the black cultural producer, urging each to examine and rethink their discursive and nondiscursive practices apropos black ­women and girls; and envisaging and implementing more liberative and restorative theological promises. Black w ­ omen and girls support the Black Church and its institutional and cultural productions ­because they believe it w ­ ill aid them in making sense of their lives and that it is a site of healing. Yet the Black Church is guilty of vio­ lence against black w ­ omen and girls, including silence, looking away, toxicity, and reappropriating harmful cultural narratives that limit thriving. As black feminist poet Audre Lorde reminds us, our past seeds our pres­ent. “Amnesia . . . ​robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit[ting] us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding.”1 The pride is not in the act of vio­lence but in the rejection of it and in the resolve to grow and live in truth. To be clear, t­ here is no pride in producing further crisis. “Any attack against Blacks, any attack against w ­ omen, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support.”2 Deploying the machinations of colonization is a disser­vice at best. A false hierarchy of oppression ­will save nary a one of us. The Black Church is beautiful, particularly the space it creates for liberative imagination and expression, but it is also sick. A conversation around wellness is in order. In black feminist Toni Cade Bambara’s novel The Salt Eaters (1980), Minnie, the healer, asks Velma, “Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?” The Salt Eaters is a text about a small southern community of black faith healers, black ­women, black spirituality, crisis, and restoration. Bambara posits that wellness is a right, but healing is not ­free. The cost, Bambara posits, is not ticket sales or platinum, gold, or silver conference registration but instead laying oppressions bare; critical self-­reflection; socio-­ political-­spiritual struggling through “deep and murky w ­ aters”; inner, communal, and po­liti­cal transformation; and ­doing the painful work of “dumping the shit.” It is impor­tant to note that Velma gets healed at the hands of black ­women, not in the capitalistic supply and demand of the marketplace. Nor is her person determined as problemed. Healing is in internal and communal work—­opaque socio-­political-­spiritual struggling, transformation, and dumping. It is collective. It is revolutionary. It is ongoing and inconclusive. Dangerous Machinations  

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It is messy. And it is ­human, not super heroic. The reward is neither deconstruction of the white supremacist superstructure once and for all nor a husband but rather wellness; progression t­oward and in the good a­ fter having dumped the “shit”; the muck; excreta; that which we do not or no longer need, which is necessary for black thriving. While black ­women and girls are fully capable of sifting through the good and bad and dumping what they do not need in the Black Church, they should not have to. The writing, imagining, and cultural production of their sex and gender sustained in the Black Church, which maintains civilized/ primitive distinctions between proper and improper bodies, jezebels and true ­women, and hos and ladies, reminds us how much work is yet to be done and how white perversions have survived even in black cultural spaces. And just to make it crystal clear, white perversions, what­ever edition and however limited or appropriated, have never left anyone ­whole. Nor ­were they meant to. White perversions require ceaseless oppositional rhetorical and practical refusal—­changing the letter and be­hav­iors—­and making room not for racist and sexist projections, cover-­ups, or romantic nostalgia but for the numerous and complex ways of being, experiencing, and identifying. Black w ­ omen and girls deserve to live unyoked by jezebelian projections, remixes, or replays. If the Black Church wants to be well, it has to do the revolutionary work of healing. Bambara provides a clue. First, in laying its oppressions bare, it must rethink and repurpose its deployment of “sin,” and in par­tic­u­lar “original sin.” Sin is not located in black ­women’s and girls’ bodies. It is not biological. It is in the ways we cause harm, the ways we deploy the machine against o­ thers, the ways we grind o­ thers to dust, the ways we limit and halt thriving. Second, in ­doing the painful work of dumping, it must participate in the writing of new texts—­the investigation, breaking up, and reconfiguring of not only the habits of language but also the values therein and within social arrangements. The black “nuclear” ­family, patriarchy, heterosexism, ho/lady discourse and theology, hegemonic sex and gender ideals, puritanical sexual politics, and the discourse on black womanhood ­will not humanize black collectives or individuals or loosen the yoke of pornotropic gazing. Black flesh must be seen in terms of its collective humanity. It must be unwound from the slave market and structures, ideologies, and power relations meant to dehumanize and cause harm. Black diasporic wellness requires that all black flesh be interpreted as alive, as autonomous, as distinct, as spoken, as embodied, as feeling, as always already ­free, as inclusive, as in community, as preceding and exceeding contact/conquest, as self-­ 206 Epilogue

determining, as power, as having survived, and as having a right to thrive—­ individually and collectively. Third, Jakes preached that black w ­ omen’s liberation and survival are entirely up to them, yet black survival and thriving require individual and collective liberative acts of po­liti­cal warfare, socio-­political-­spiritual struggling through “deep and murky ­waters,” and critical self-­reflection. It may be helpful for Jakes, Perry, Bryant, Brown, Hill, and ­others to have some honest talk about the sex- and gender-­specific theologies they support. Hill Collins argues that most men see gender equality with ­women as defeat. It affects their relationships with ­women and with one another and leads to vio­lence ­because gender equity makes them feel disempowered and unentitled. To be sure, black men and boys need healing, too. The fear of emasculation, devaluation, stigma, lost kinships, death, abandonment, disability by vio­lence, communal shunning, and ranking in what Saidiya Hartman refers to as the afterlife of slavery is real. It ­matters that black men and boys ­were castrated, raped, and prostituted during slavery and that we never r­ eally talk about it. It m ­ atters that heteropatriarchal masculinity is predominantly defined by ­labor; money; owner­ship; physical, social, and po­liti­cal power; and sexual prowess and that many black men and boys learn early on that, with the exception of physical and sexual dominance, much of this equates to empty promises. Certainly, this affects black sexual politics, black gender ideologies, and relations. Or perhaps Jakes and o­ thers in the Black Church and black popu­lar culture may be better served by interrogating black male fear of being left alone, unloved, disrespected, ignored, and ridiculed. The rupture between black ­women and men, within and beyond the Black Church, needs immediate and careful attending. Too many black men continue to blame black w ­ omen and girls for their oppression, and too often noting illicit sex and myths of black single motherhood. Th ­ ese ideas are rooted in slavery. We have to let them go and start over with the truth. The bottom line is this: ­there can be no black pro­gress without black love, and black love cannot thrive without a foundation of truth. I resist the notion that black men and boys just blindly and willingly possess and proj­ect slavery’s residuals b­ ecause they want access to power and patriarchy. Some of this may be true for some. Having access to a kernel of power is attractive. But it is also true that the collective communal break was never fully healed. And at the heart of that break are not only harmful ways of “seeing” but also harmful ways of being and ­doing. The latter leads to not only present-­day misogynoir but homophobia and transantagonism as well. All of this is carried with us, from picture to picture and from generation to Dangerous Machinations  

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generation. And, like it or not, the Black Church has exacerbated the breach. This is not to say black folk do not have loving intersectional connections. It is to say that t­ hings have not been all the way right since contact/conquest. It could be insightful for Jakes, Perry, the Black Church, and o­ thers to turn their attention to the ways in which black men and boys are affected by neo­ co­lo­nial technologies of power. Perhaps Jakes, Perry, and o­ thers fear loss of profits in telling men’s stories. Or maybe they fear facing their own challenges and insecurities or being exposed. What­ever the case, black wellness, healing, and thriving are contingent upon actively and radically loosing all yokes and unbinding all black bodies from the systems meant to knock black folk dead. This circles us back to love. Black men and boys must do the work of exploring a love ethic that enables emotional and po­liti­cal liberation unbound by conquest or vio­lence but, on the contrary, grounded in self-­affirmation and deep-­feeling connectivity with other cis and trans black men and boys and ­women and girls and gender-nonconforming kin. Notwithstanding how many black w ­ omen and girls love themselves a strong, superfine, chiseled, and power­ful black patriarch or knight in shining armor, extreme masculine scripts limit vulnerability. They also disengage black men and boys from their own erotic identity, power, wellness, and healing ­because they construct dependencies on black ­women and girls for emotional needs, security, and recognition while also enabling communal ruptures due to competition and desire for hierarchy. Fourth, the Black Church must do the work of untethering black ­women and girls from simultaneous demonization/fetishization and black regress/ black pro­gress. This too is what Bambara means by laying the oppressions bare and what Lorde means by suffering “the waste of amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past.” The Black Church has lied to itself for far too long. ­There is no liberation in lying about the past, and no freedom in replicating structures, logics, or tools of hierarchy and oppression. Specifically, the simultaneous erotophobia and hypermoralism in the Black Church is death-­ dealing. I strug­gled im­mensely with the scene in Madea’s ­Family Reunion in which the black teenaged girls are sexualized by the male elders then chastised by Myrtle, where Perry so clearly gives a nod to erotophobia, hypermoralism, hypersexualization, incest, rape, molestation, and patriarchy, at once. As Myrtle tells the ­women and girls to take their place, she underlines the place of the black lady (and her sex) within the black “nuclear” proj­ect. It is as if such a place and such a proper body cancels out sexual vio­lence, as if husbands pres­ent the silver bullet. Being “covered” by a husband does no 208 Epilogue

such ­thing. As bell hooks argues, if patriarchy was our healer, we would all be well. Fifth, the Black Church must rethink its interpretation, deployment of, and response to trauma. It has a history of attending to certain kinds of trauma. For example, when Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner, and Mike Brown w ­ ere brutally murdered by white police the Black Church cried out. Yet when twenty-­seven-­year-­old Janay Rice was knocked unconscious by her football star husband; when nineteen-­year-­old Renisha McBride was gunned down in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, while seeking help a­ fter being in a car accident; when thirty-­three-­year-­old Yazmin Vash Payne was stabbed to death; when twenty-­one-­year-­old Penny Proud was shot to death; when twenty-­five-­year-­old India Clarke was shot to death; when twenty-­two-­year-­ old Keisha Jenkins was beaten and shot to death; when twenty-­one-­year-­ old Zella Ziona was shot to death; when twenty-­six-­year-­old Tarika Wilson, seven-­year-­old Aiyana Jones, twenty-­three-­year-­old Shantel Davis, twenty-­ two-­year-­old Rekia Boyd, and nineteen-­year-­old Tyisha Miller ­were gunned down by police; when nineteen-­year-­old Angela Mangum and eighteen-­year-­ old Tjhisha Bell ­were found hogtied and murdered in Jacksonville, Florida; when the Onion called nine-­year-­old Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt; when R. Kelly was charged with raping fourteen-­year-­old black girls; when the fifty-­eight-­ year-­old associate pastor of Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church, Tyrone Banks Sr., was arrested for raping a thirteen-­year-­old girl; when the now former pastor of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, Juan Demetrius McFarland, confessed to having sex with numerous church members; when the story of the sixteen-­year-­old Houston native named Jada went viral; or when black ­women and girls everywhere began exclaiming #MeToo, #TimesUp, #NO, and #SayHerName, hashtags and movements meant to call attention to and undo the silence around sexual and other vio­lences they face, the Black Church was nowhere to be found. Given Jakes’s and Perry’s vested interest in loosing ­women from histories of vio­lence, one would think they would be front and center of such movements, calling the church to get on board. Or would they? Two ­things: The torture and tribulations of black ­women and girls is not a gimmick and white attacks on black male bodies can no longer serve as the exemplar for black trauma. In closing, the Black Church must imagine a new picture. One that is truth-­telling, messy, gray, and sometimes ugly. One that is inclusive and plural. One that centers on a radical black love ethic. Some might proffer that this is the work Jakes and Perry set out to do. They defied false binaries between Dangerous Machinations  

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black religion and culture and told black stories typically left unspoken. Perhaps. They also problematized w ­ omen and presented a cele­bration of toxic masculinity and theology. The moment requires more. We need a collective undoing of the masters’ grammar. We need the Black Church to preach this undoing rather than jezebels, hos, and ladies. We need the black preacher to be like Jesus and act against the tradition of the Pharisees; to hear and pay heed to the liberative works black feminists have been calling to consciousness for over a ­century. Th ­ ese are ugly times. The ground is shifting. ­People appeal to a variety of sources in order to make sense of their lives. Yet the majority of black folk in Amer­ic­ a are still Christians and still heavi­ly dependent on the Black Church for answers. What ­will you say? What ­will we say? Black ­people are surely in crisis. But that is ­because the American empire itself is a site of crisis, not black bodies.

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NOTES

Prolegomenon 1. I recognize the hyperawareness, politics, concern, and debate around “black” versus “Black” when writing about African diasporic ­people. I also understand how situating a lowercase “black” before a capitalized “American” anticipates questions about personhood and hierarchy. The intention is not about pecking order or social place but instead consistency, clarity, and editorial decision making. I strug­gled with using a lowercase “black” rather than an uppercase “Black.” Blackness as a racial identity is pivotal to this text. “Black” as an adjective and signifier is used to describe a variety of persons, t­ hings, moves, ideas, and places throughout. Deciding where to use “B” over “b” proved difficult. Ultimately, I deci­ded to capitalize Africa, Eu­rope, and Amer­ic­ a, maintain the disciplinary capitalization of the Black Church, and deploy a lowercase letter for black (and white) in all other places, including references to racial identities. 2. Th ­ ere is a significant amount of scholarship on the historical Black Church. My intention is not to “reinvent the wheel” in terms of defining and historicizing the Black Church. My use of the Black Church notes the collective of historically black Protestant traditions, including Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Holiness, Non-­Denominational, and other affiliations, for example, the more con­temporary designation, Full Gospel, which have their roots in North American black religion, slavery, experience, and hush harbors. Scholarship on the historical Black Church includes W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903); E. Franklin Frasier, The Negro Church in Amer­i­ca (1974); Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South (1978); Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-­American Revolutionary Chris­tian­ity (1982); Milton Sernett, ed., African American Religious History: Documentary Witness (1985); C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (1990); Hans Baer, African American Religion in the Twentieth C ­ entury: Va­ri­e­ties of Protest and Accommodation (1992); Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righ­teous Discontent: The ­Women’s Movement in the Black

Baptist Church 1880–1920 (1994); Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans (1998); and Cheryl Sanders, Saints in Exile: The Holiness-­Pentecostal Experience in African (1999). 3. In a story highlight by Frank Newport, titled “Five Key Findings on Religion in the U.S.” on Gallup News (December 23, 2016), a Gallup poll taken in 2016, notes that 74 ­percent of Americans identify as Christian, 5 ­percent identify with a non-­Christian religion, and approximately 21 ­percent of the adult population polled said they do not have a formal religious identity or offered no response. Five Key Findings on Religion in the United States, http://­www​.­gallup​.­com​/­poll​/­200186​/­five​-­key​-­findings​-­religion​.­aspx. 4. Of t­ hose who identified with black churches, 53 ­percent attend weekly ser­vices, 37 ­percent attend once or twice a month, 10 ­percent seldom or never attend, and 1 ­percent are unsure. Of the same group, 59 ­percent interpret the Bible literally while 23 ­percent do not, 93 ­percent believe in heaven while 5 ­percent do not, and 82 ­percent believe in hell while 12 ­percent do not. Thirty-­three to 35 ­percent identify as po­liti­cally conservative, 34 ­percent identify as moderate, 25 ­percent as liberal, and 7–8 ­percent unsure. In terms of gender, the Religious Landscape Study noted, of ­those who identified as black Christians, 59 ­percent identified as black ­women and 41 ­percent as black men. Th ­ ese percentages ­were the same for black and mainline traditions. No percentages ­were offered for black gender nonconforming or transgender Christians. Fourteen ­percent of ­those surveyed identified as Evangelical Protestant, 4 ­percent as Mainline Protestant, 5 ­percent as Catholic, 2 ­percent as Jehovah’s Witness, 1 ­percent as Other Christian,