Ryann Beemsterboer on Yvette Abraham's "Sexual and Racial Discrimination"

In her article “Sexual and Racial Discrimination”, Yvette Abrahams discusses the fact that black women were viewed as sexual beasts for their large bottoms. She goes on to say that in Britain that same feature later became considered fashion.

            The author argues that this is a form of displaying another woman’s sexuality. I agree with this because Sara Bartman was exploited for her “odd figure” only to have that figure be re-created on white women as a fashion statement. Having that large bottom was what made others think of Sara as a sexual beast and women of that time knew this when they imitated the look. Her explanation of the turn of large bottoms to go from a science exhibit to a classy Sunday look further proves for sympathetic perspective towards the judgment of Sarah and other black women who experienced similar sufferings. I find her point of view to be appropriate considering her extensive knowledge on the hardships Sara endured.

 Her argument allowed me to think about the fact that it was most commonly men finding interest in Sara’s exhibit. Men are also the ones creating slurs towards black women and found them to be savages. I believe that this begs a few questions. Is it okay to make light of someone else’s stark situation if you weren’t the one making it dark? Is this making a mockery of black women in these times or is it normalizing their structure and unintentionally flattering their natural physique? The authors seem to have a very negative view on the idea of British woman faking large bottoms and I agree with the intentions may have not been proper, but I think that this took away from the savage idea of black women and in turn, was not entirely an awful situation.

Issues of appropriating black culture occur every single day. White women and men get dreadlocks or cornrows in their hair, products are sold to plump and white women's lips, acting as if the does she key is some new garment not worn by Africans for years, and so much more. This is harmful due to the fact that heavy racism still occurs in America every single day Abrahams’s point was just the start of the black culture appropriation trend. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/10-times-black-culture-was-appropriated-in-2015_us_566ee11de4b011b83a6bd660

So, does the end result of less discrimination toward African American individuals justify the means of making their culture into a trend?