Slavery to Liberation- The African American Experience, 2019a

76
‘White’ sexuality, ‘Jewish’ sexuality, ‘Native American’ sexuality, etc.” 5 Even though
there is not much work to speak of that focuses on “White” heterosexuality per se in
the ways in which the discourse on Black sexuality has been created, it is safe to say
that the dominant discourse about sexuality centers and normalizes White sexuality in
general and is grounded in dominant cultural terms. It is also important to note that
there has been pushback to de-center Whiteness. Counternarratives have been
produced that question and interrogate the backdrop of Whiteness that has been used
to normalize White hegemonic sexuality on the one hand and at the same time degrade
Black sexuality on the other hand. Black sexuality has historically been negatively
judged against a particular kind of White sexual norms: “[t]he pathologizing of Black
sexuality continued as means of affirming the superior status of Europeans while
restricting the social movement of Black people by characterizing egalitarian interaction
with them as undesirable.” 6
Perhaps one of the most poignant and foundational examples of debasing the
female Black body with a particular emphasis on big breasts, buttocks, and other sexual
body parts occurred in the early nineteenth century with the European obsession with a
woman named Saartjie Baartman (1789-1815). Also known as “The Hottentot Venus,”
Baartman was a Khoikhoi woman originally from southwest Africa. Essentially,
Baartman was taken from her homeland in Africa to Europe, where she was put on
exhibit for public viewings in England and France from 1810 until her death. 7 Such a
display of Baartman’s body was certainly a way of “Othering” her Black body, especially
compared with White European women. Exhibiting Baartman was both a way of
showing various aspects of Black sexuality as well as making her a spectacle. Her years
on exhibition constituted more of an ongoing “freak show” than honoring Baartman or
her body in any way. Magdalena Barrera has noted that “When the [public] paid to see
5
Sharon Rachel and Christian Thrasher. “A History of ‘Black’ Sexuality in the United
States: From Preslavery to the Era of HIV/AIDS to a Vision of HOPE for the Future."
(Washington, DC: American Public Health Association, 2015), para 5.
6
McGruder, “Pathologizing Black Sexuality: The U.S. Experience,” 104.
7
Sadiah Qureshi, “Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Hottentot Venus’,” History of
Science 42, no. 2 (2004): 235.