In this qualitative study, I examine the persistent trend of black women as an
excluded relationship partner for white men. Integral to understanding the exclusion of
black women as relationship partners is the construction of black female bodies, by
influential white men historically and contemporarily, as the abject opposite of
hegemonic femininity, which holds "middle-class, heterosexual, [w]hite femininity" as
the norm (Collins 2005:193). This construction essentially places black women outside
the bounds of hegemonic femininity, beauty, sexuality, and womanhood. Using the
theoretical concept deep frame, which is the "conceptual infrastructure of the mind"
(Lakoff 2006a:12) and representative of one's commonsense world view, I argue that the
ways in which influential white men have constructed black female bodies is a critical
component of the raced, gendered, and classed deep frame of white men. This deep
frame undergirds how many white men perceive, interpret, understand, emote, and
engage in actions where black women are concerned. Hence in this study, I qualitatively
examine, through analyzing and interpreting the in-depth online questionnaires of 134 white male respondents, how the deep frame of white men affects how they perceive
black women and ultimately the relationships they seek with black women.
The results of the study show that many white male respondents, despite most
having very limited or no personal interactions with black women, viewed black women
through the one-dimensional lens of the raced, gendered, and classed deep frame. Many
respondents perceived black women as unattractive unless capable of a white normative
standard, as possessing a negative "black" culture, and as possessing negative and
"unfeminine" attributes that make them complicit in their own rejection. These findings
show how the deep frame disciplines white men to view black women as "out of
bounds" as legitimate relationship partners, and disciplines the types of relationships
they seek with black women. The results of this study also reveal that the conceptual
approach of deep frame rooted in an understanding of the power of influential white men
to control and construct society provides a theoretical alternative to the outmoded
interracial marriage theories of caste and exchange.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-08-7028 |
| Date | 2009 August 1900 |
| Creators | Slatton, Brittany C. |
| Contributors | Feagin, Joe R. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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