Mammies, Matriarchs, And Other Controlling Images

Ting Ting Zhang
Pop study guide assignment #17 Race and Poverty
Due by 10/27
Patricia Hill Collins article “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images”:
1. What does it mean for these stereotypical images to be controlling and dominating? Explain.
The controlling Images of Black Women are oppressive. The word ‘mammy’ is the controlling image applied to African American women (they are loyal to their owners). Audiences tend to apply meaning to these coded images. These images represent the ideological structure exist in the society. They emphasize the African American woman’s sexuality. The controlling images are created by the people in power. It is to justify oppression.
2. What are the various controlling images discussed in the

These manner of racism have led to the mass incarceration of African American in the world. Were present trends to continue, Alexander writes, the United States will imprison one-third of its African American population. When combined with the fact that whites are more likely to commit drug crimes than people of color, the issue becomes clear for Alexander. The Jim Crow law were to enforce the racial segregation with a belief of “separate but equal.” The war on drugs is a new strategy of segregating the African Americans from the mainstream ideology.

2. Alexander claims that one cannot reduce the problem of mass incarceration to poverty or the problem of crime. Why? What evidence does she give to support that mass incarceration is motivated by other things?
Alexander believed that the mass incarceration is a system of social control, racial caste system, that works in a manner similar to Jim Crow. They are meant to keep the African Americans in an inferior position. Alexander argues that the issues of mass incarceration is caused by racial injustice and inefficient of civil rights. The racial injustice issue is America’s long century problem. The mass incarceration is not the problem of crime, but motivated by the racial discrimination.

3. If you have a felon on your record, what rights of citizenship do you