Blog 4: I Am The Girl Behind Bars.
What does “innocence” really mean? Is it the absence of guilt? Childlike naivety? A person’s chastity? Or is it racism in disguise, a microaggression where Black and brown people are blatantly cast into the role of “guilty” or “impure” before we’ve had the chance to speak?
I am used to being cast as the villain, onstage and off, because of my outspoken nature. Whether I’m performing or simply existing, the “angry Black woman” stereotype hangs on me like a chain I never agreed to wear. And though I recognize I carry a boldness that others covet, I cannot help but feel, ever since I was a little girl, that I will never get to be the “innocent” victim or the pure-hearted heroine. After all, even when giving the world its first animated Black princess, Disney relegated Tiana to life as a green frog for the majority of her film.
Black women are always the sassy sister, the wise grandmother, or the fierce executive; never the girl-next-door, the damsel in distress, or the “pure” love interest. So, when I saw this illustration, published during the peak of the White Slave Panic of the early 19th century, I felt a kind of melancholic envy unlike anything I’ve experienced before.
This illustration of a white slave girl, imprisoned in a brothel, was published in Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls, or War on the White Slave Trade (1910). This book, according to its author, was “designed to awaken the sleeping and protect the innocent.” Implied in this statement is the whiteness of the “innocent” being protected.
If it weren’t already clear enough, the book even says that its images are “Showing the workings of the blackest slavery that has ever stained the human race.” We all know the history of slavery in the United States. It is no uncommon fact that slaves were Black. Yet, in this one phrase, the authors of Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls glossed over the centuries-long history of slavery, invalidating the experiences of Black people worldwide.
This blatant minimization is subtly reflected in the image above. Viewing the picture of the girl behind bars forced me to confront our society’s standards for “innocence.” Even in the imagination of a man in 1910, white women were deserving of freedom. This girl behind bars provoked outrage among the people. Her cries were “heard by two worthy men” and inspired a crusade to shut down vice once and for all.
But what about my cries? I am a girl behind bars. I am boxed in, imprisoned by society’s expectations of me, with no exit in sight. I cannot be innocent, I cannot be small, I cannot be protected, and sometimes I feel I cannot be loved. Where is my illustration? Where is the crusade to liberate me from the cage of opinions that surround me?
I don’t get one. And that is the most painful realization of all. Oh, how I long to be soft, small, pretty, rescued. I want to be the girl behind bars, because at least her femininity is seen as worth protecting. But until society changes the value it attaches to my skin, I will have to stay rooted in the truth that my desirability comes from within.
References
https://ia904507.us.archive.org/28/items/fightingtraffici00bell/fightingtraffici00bell.pdf
This is a powerful, poignant response. I appreciate your candor and insights. Your words and self-descriptions touched me. And that statement about the "blackest slavery" both saddens and irritates me. Maybe infuriates is a better term. But it points to the toxic virulence of racism in 1910, a sickness that blinded people. I do understand why you feel imprisoned by petty and racist cultural conventions and assumptions. But I hope that you can escape. I hope that you will not imprison yourself by acquiescing to blind stupidity. Throughout our lives most of us, if not all of us, live in a repertoire of different roles. I hope that you will have a myriad of fulfilling roles well beyond the angry Back woman.
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