Where the Aunts Are: Family, Feminism, and Kinship in Popular Culture

2. “Othered” Aunting: Race, Class, and Institutionalized Misogyny

37 2 “Othered” Aunting RACE, CLASS, AND INSTITUTIONALIZED MISOGYNY The legacy of the mammy aunt in the United States is troubling and persistent.1 Although thought of as part of the history of the pre–Civil War American South, the black mammy figure maintains a tenacious hold on current cultural imagination, deeply influencing contemporary views of women’s roles as they intersect with race and class. For example, it is not uncommon to see black mammy figurines in Southern souvenir shops. Their familiarity is a reminder of the all-too-ready assumption that African American women are “naturally” fit for servitude . Strolling the streets of New Orleans in the autumn of 2011, the authors saw several ceramic mammies, as well as postcards featuring vintage advertisements with mammies. Intending to read them critically as cultural texts, Laura brought them to the checkout counter. “They are suitable for framing,” the shopkeeper explained brightly, to Laura’s dismay. Moreover, such unthinking invocations of the mammy are not isolated in Southern locales. On its website, the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich, Connecticut, documents Civil War era history and features a photograph from their collection that portrays an African American woman identified only as “Aunt Nanny, a Greenwich woman who worked for the Bush Family.”2 This is but one example of lingering associations not only between black women and the mammy 38 WHERE THE AUNTS ARE role but between the black mammy and the title and role of aunt. This woman was a domestic employee for the Bush family, yet her individual identity is completely erased by history, leaving her named only for the function she served for the white family—child care and housework . Her title of aunt is not a signal of inclusion within the family unit but of a proprietary claim on her services. The mammy aunt’s sublimation to her servant role is left unmarked by the Historical Society, which fails to note that the woman had a name and an identity prior to (and presumably after) serving the Bush family. Historical accounts such as these contribute to a normalization of elitism and historical dismissal: poor women’s names are not worthy of preservation, while the names of affluent white families are carefully recorded. In the process , the persistent tie between servanthood and aunting is implicitly documented. The black and white family sitcoms discussed in the previous chapter remind us that gender identity necessarily intersects with race, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, and other positionalities.3 While all aunts embody and resist assorted stereotypes of femininity, culture inscribes on the bodies of aunts of color the legacies of racism, none more so than the mammy or servant aunt. The familiar American image of the mammy sets the benevolent maternal aunt in a historicalpolitical context of slavery and genocide. The “mammy” or “auntie” is a nonwhite domestic servant whose popular image refigures maternal benevolence and domestic order as a fiction of the faithful, obedient, smiling house slave—often referred to as Aunt Sally—who embraces her domestic responsibilities and loves the family that exploits her.4 Popular representations of the mammy aunt are almost universally of heavyset women whose large bosoms symbolize their roles as nurturers for more powerful others; their bodies literally provided sustenance for others, first through breast milk and then later through the preparation of food. Reality was a sharp contrast to these images, however, as slave mammies generally were malnourished and consequently quite thin, as we can tell from historical photographs of real slave women who functioned as wet nurses, child-care providers, and household slaves.5 “OTHERED” AUNTING 39 While bestowing the aunt title upon a woman unrelated by blood or marriage is often a positive mark of affection and reciprocal obligation among perceived peers, part of the legacy of bestowing “aunt” status on a woman is deeply troubling. The title “aunt” traditionally signified the elevation of the mammy above other servants (who were addressed by first name) while withholding the authority and legitimacy afforded by being addressed formally as “mister” or “mistress.”6 Southern whites adopted the terms “aunt” and “uncle” to refer to slaves in a specifically nonreciprocal show of power and authority, even if coupled with some affection.7 Hence, the identification of a black woman as a mammy articulates maternality and domesticity with white privilege and black enslavement. The title can also reflect a socioeconomic boundary, linking the woman...