I AM NOT YOUR MAMMY

 “ I have never and will never be the savior of a world that will never save me. I am not a servant, nor a domestic. My titties don’t overflow with milk for the next child other than my own. I have never and will never cater to everyone else’s needs before my own. I grew up in an all-Black neighborhood, raised like a Huxtable, with the personality of Hilary Banks. I had a soft life that didn’t include poverty and labor. Baby, I am the spoiled. All in thanks to the fight of my ancestors.

      I don’t know what made you all think I was the Mammy type, but you'd better think again. I am not in the business of serving or spoiling full-grown adults or their children. So stop expecting me to wait on you all, get up, and do it yourselves”- Chemistry Novels.

What is a Mammy?

-Jim Crow Museum

     “From slavery through the Jim Crow era, the mammy image served the political, social, and economic interests of mainstream white America. During slavery, the Mammy caricature was posited as proof that black people — in this case, black women — were contented, even happy, at being enslaved. Her wide grin, hearty laughter, and loyal servitude were offered as evidence of the supposed humanity of the institution of slavery.

     This was the mammy caricature, and like all caricatures, it contained a little truth surrounded by a larger lie. The caricature portrayed an obese, coarse, maternal figure. She had great love for her white “family,” but often treated her own family with disdain. Although she had children, sometimes many, she was completely desexualized. She “belonged” to the white family, though it was rarely stated. Unlike Sambo, she was a faithful worker. She had no black friends; the white family was her entire world. Obviously, the mammy caricature was more myth than accurate portrayal.

Catherine Clinton (1982), a historian, claimed that real antebellum mammies were rare.

Records do acknowledge the presence of enslaved females who served as the “right hand” of plantation mistresses. Yet documents from the planter class during the first fifty years following the American Revolution reveal only a handful of such examples. Not until after Emancipation did black women run white households, or occupy, in any significant number, the special positions ascribed to them in folklore and fiction. White southerners created the mammy to redeem the relationship between black women and white men within the enslavement society in response to the antislavery attack from the North during the antebellum period. In the primary records from before the Civil War, there is no hard evidence of its existence.  “pp. 201-202)

- Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology: Ferris State University

So you see, happy black girls, specifically in the workspace, are not there to serve the masses nor be the "right hand" to a plantation's mistress. Our happiness is not tied to a willingness to serve. We’re just simply joyful Black girls because it’s not foreign to us and because we have the right to be so. Contrary to popular belief, being a black girl is incredible and more than enough reason to wake up every morning with happiness and joy.