Comparing Black Women to Animals Is a Residue of Chattel Slavery

“Black women today are seen as a cultural product, a commodity to be consumed.”
Image contains painting of slave walking with cows and dogs

Ari Lennox took someone on Twitter to task after he compared her and Teyana Taylor’s appearance to dogs. “Ari Lennox and Teyana Taylor's ability to have dangerously high sex appeal while simultaneously looking like rottweilers will always amaze me,” a user named WinEverUwantIT tweeted.

The tweet was followed by a groundswell of responses analyzing the unsolicited, demeaning comment made on the first day of the year. Ari Lennox directly responded as well.

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“People hate blackness so bad,” the 28-year-old said in response to the tweet. She also added more context in an Instagram video, criticizing how easy it is for people to degrade Black women, and the apparent lack of outrage coming from many bystanders to that behavior.

“I’m not with it … how people hate Black people so much,” she said. “How Black people can sit up here and say, ‘It’s not my problem' or ‘She does look like a Rottweiler [so] that’s fine.’”

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY - AUGUST 25: Ari Lennox attends Black Girls Rock 2019 Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET

When it comes to Black women, in particular, disparaging comments about appearance unearths the vile history behind racialized misogyny. Specific in their anti-Blackness, words like “ape” and “dog" have long been coded as derogatory names for Black people, going back to chattel slavery. Dehumanization was used as a tool used to justify the enslavement of Black people during that time, and their further mistreatment in the Jim Crow era that followed.

It’s a trend that still manifests itself in popular culture and politics today. In 2018, ABC canceled its new rerun of Roseanne, after series matriarch Roseanne Barr said former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett looked like the offspring of the “Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes.” Donald Trump has also been called out many times for referring to Black and brown people as animals. And as recently as September, a Romanian TV-show host said on the air that tennis champion Serena Williams looked like “one of those monkeys at the zoo.”

So what do these sordid origins have to do with the casual way those words are used against Black women today on social media? Coined much more recently, the term misogynoir refers to racism and sexism directed specifically at Black women. The language employed in misogynoir — in this instance literally reducing Black women to the status of animals — often co-opts that same dehumanization. For many, the upset around this incident is rooted in the ways that society has weaponized that language against Black women.

In the same week, two journalists have had to apologize for comments they made on Twitter mocking Blue Ivy (daughter of Jay-Z and Beyonce)’s appearance. In the offending tweet, one writer, a Black man, said he felt sorry for the seven-year-old, suggesting she would soon start to look like her father, the 50-year-old rapper. In response, a writer chimed in to suggest that she get surgery at age 16 “a la Kylie Jenner.” The back and forth was also particularly indicative of the ways these prejudices are permitted and encouraged by whiteness.

It’s not lost on me or any of the other people who were outraged over these incidents that both offending parties were Black men. Internalized racism within the Black community plays a huge role in this dynamic. This is something that Lennox references directly. “Why are you so comfortable to tear down a Black woman and not any other race?” she asked in her Instagram video. “When do they do that to white women? When are white men doing that to white women?” It’s a question many Black women also struggle to answer, especially as conversations around colorism and other issues unique to the Black community make their way to the mainstream.

But regardless of where it’s coming from, there’s something very specific happening here: Black women today are seen as a cultural product, a commodity to be consumed, tokenized and fetishized, depending on who’s looking and on what day. Lennox herself can tell you that. Late last year she faced backlash after speaking out about her Soul Train Awards snub. An artist that many had considered a shoo-in for the coveted Album of the Year title, Lennox was ultimately passed over for someone with greater mainstream appeal.

It’s a confusing balance — trying to exist in a way that is true to our most authentic selves, while simultaneously being aware of the ways that our Blackness might be turned against us. It’s also one that is unfair for Black women to have to navigate.

Black women should be free to show up as their Blackest selves, and they deserve to exist in a world that doesn’t punish them for it.