Thank you Viola Davis. The accomplished actress and star of the acclaimed film The Help recently took the opportunity to make a very important statement about the way we describe black actresses.
Davis is purported to be the front-runner in the lead actress category in the Academy Awards for her portrayal of Aibileen, a 1960’s-era maid in The Help. The Hollywood Reporter recently sat down with the actress, and when asked about the dignity she brought to the character, Davis very politely let loose.
“I love and hate the word ‘dignity,’” she explained. “I feel it’s overused for black actresses, as with ‘sassy” and ‘soulful.’ I can go on. The same adjectives are pulled out of a magic box.”
Yes, please, and more of that, Viola.
It seems that somewhere, there’s a small dictionary called “ways to dole out backhanded compliments to minorities” that every privileged white person has read and memorized.
It’s insulting.
These “compliments” feel out of hand because they’re calling people out for basically doing what any other person should (being “dignified,” or speaking intelligently…) But because the person being “complimented” is black, their seemingly routine behavior is somehow exceptional.
My grandmother always said she didn’t get excited when her kids graduated from high school, or avoided jail, because that’s what they were supposed to do. She had a level of expectation that her five kids were to at least perform at the level of everyone else, regardless of their circumstance being raised by a single mom on a tight budget. Yet society doesn’t hold these same standards for black people. We’re “extremely intelligent” if we climb the corporate ladder, “sassy” if we happen to express an opinion, “soulful” if we show heart and gumption.
And it’s not just black actresses who have to deal with these exhaustively overused adjectives.
There are so many condescending descriptors commonly used for black people. While we’re on the topic, here are a couple more adjectives that should be avoided, lest the speaker wants to come across as over-privileged and out of touch:
Well-spoken/articulate – to say someone is well-spoken is to express surprise that they’re able to string together nouns and verbs to form a complete thought. It’s never because this person was able to accurately and succinctly describe something as complex as string theory to a classroom of kindergartners. People will call a black person articulate because he or she got through a job interview without saying “ain’t.” If you are over the age of 7, you should be articulate enough to have a decent command of your native language.
Intelligent/smart – small story: I switched schools my sophomore year of high school, going from a fairly diverse magnet school to being one of three black girls in my class of over 300. Once transferred, I resumed taking Advance Placement courses as everyone had at my old school, and as a lot of my new classmates did, too. The catch: I was the only black girl at my new school who did so. So of course, when a white student came up to me and said “I heard you’re really smart,” I had to roll my eyes. A lot of students took AP classes, I was no more advanced than most kids in my grade. But that I was a black girl who was doing it made me “really smart.”
Ghetto/thug – if ever there was a description of young black men that has been carelessly exhausted, this is it. Check your evening news, inevitably some man-on-the-street or thoughtless politician will give a sound bite describing a black guy as a thug. Newsflash: just because a guy might wear a hoodie or sag his pants doesn’t make him a thug. A lot of these guys have a parent or parents at home who cares about their well-being, and are just being normal angst-filled young adults, trying to find themselves. Let’s reserve the ghetto/thug descriptors for actual criminals, OK?
Light/dark-skinned – Yes, my people, you’re not getting off the hook either. So often we describe each other as one of these two very inadequate categories, when really we are way too colorful to have such limited labels. I have watched people argue over whether they were light or dark-skinned because they didn’t want the stigmas associated with the label, when really if we destroyed the labels, we’d all be free of this house slave/field slave mentality that has dogged us for centuries. We are brown, sand, tan, coffee, taupe, chestnut, bronze, and so much more, let’s stop pretending that everyone is either light or dark. That is a lie.
Not all of these adjectives are horrible to use. Sometimes they aptly describe a person. However, when we continuously pull the same words from that “magic box” to describe a certain population, we should probably consider getting rid of the box and opening a dictionary. There needs to be an assessment of these words before they’re used, a greater thoughtfulness that happens when we speak. Language is powerful, we shouldn’t be shortchanged by such a limited word choice.