I DESERVE A HERO WHO LOOKS LIKE ME

Loud. Angry. Desperate.

Leave it to mainstream media and anyone encountering me would think that those words describe me because the media continues to portray Black women as characters that play into common stereotypes.

“We’ve seen the drugged-out mother storyline in Losing Isaiah and Moonlight. We saw Mo’Nique beat her daughter and throw a baby down the stairs in the film Precious; and [Taraji P.] Henson as a pregnant prostitute in Hustle & Flow. We saw a woman allow her children to [be murdered by their father] in For Colored Girls; and Octavia Spencer and [Viola] Davis as domestics in The Help.”¹

In fact, the American Advertising Federation and Zeta Phi Beta, a historically Black sorority, released a white paper featuring the 8 most frequently cited African-American female stereotypes. On this list included “the hood rat,” “the desperate single,” “the angry Black woman,” and “the mammy.”

During an interview with Variety, former first lady, Michelle Obama, commented on this issue stating, “for so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them.”

This lack of positive representation leads those who don’t live in communities with positive representations susceptible to assumptions, stereotypes, and biases.

But the harm doesn’t stop there. According to Nielsen, a global information, data, and measurement company, Black TV viewers watch roughly 57 more hours than white viewers (averaging 213 hours per month) and Black women watch 14 more hours of TV per week than any other ethnic group.

Teenage girls and young Black women (who are 59% more likely to watch reality TV) are constantly seeing how we are portrayed in the media and looking up to this as the standard. Or we aren’t seeing Black women at all and feel isolated.

In September 2017, the Action Alliance hosted a Black Women’s Town Hall. This was a chance for our community to come together and discuss issues that we face. Heartbroken, Virginia Delegate Delores McQuinn recalled the moment that her granddaughter was vocal about the lack of representation of Black women:

_{“My 3-year-old granddaughter came to me recently on a Sunday night,” she started. “‘Gilo, I wanna be white. I want their hair and I wanna be a princess.’ I stayed up all night that Sunday night. My granddaughter has an environment where everything is afro-centric. Pictures of Black women on the walls, statues, doll babies, books. She goes to a predominantly African American school… We’re talking about pulling down monuments which she may or may not see, and all of us have televisions in our homes that they see every day. How can we say to the system that we demand that Black women and African American people are reflected [positively] in the school books and on television?”}

Seeing Black women as educated, successful, and respected (both in the media and in person) has a huge effect on the way young Black girls see themselves and their roles in society.

“When I come across many little Black girls who come up to me over the course of these 7 1/2 years with tears in their eyes and they say ‘thank you for being a role model for me. I don’t see educated Black women on TV and the fact that you’re First Lady validates who I am,’” Obama reminisces.

Like Obama, Virginia Delegate Delores McQuinn and several other Virginia legislators are putting themselves in a position to not only be positive public figures for Black girls but to also improve the Black community as a whole.

Delegate McQuinn, Senator Louise Lucas, Delegate Jeion Ward, Senator Jennifer McClellan, and Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy have introduced a number of bills this year to increase racial justice and food justice and prevent the trauma-to-prison pipeline, including:

• a program to provide funding for the construction or expansion of grocery stores in underserved communities (Del. McQuinn, House Bill 69);
• the restoration of voting rights for those convicted of nonviolent felonies (Sen. Lucas, Senate Joint Resolution 5); and
• eliminating the requirement that principals report certain misdemeanor incidents to local police ( Foy, House Bill 445)

McQuinn is inspired by strong and successful Black women like civil rights leader, healthcare executive, and health activist Roslyn Brock. She wants to ensure that the Black girls in her community have a plethora of positive Black role models to guide them, including herself.

Not only is McQuinn a Delegate for Virginia, but she is also the Chair of the Richmond Slave Trail Commission, a minister in Henrico County, VA, and has dedicated her time to advocating for the development of an African American History and Slave Trade Museum in Richmond, Virginia.

To ensure that she is having a lasting impact on the lives of children in her community, McQuinn started a nonprofit: the East End Teen Center. The Teen Center has been providing a six-to-eight-week Writing Institute to 11 to 15-year-olds in Richmond Public Schools for the last ten years.

While at the Writing Institute, students are able to improve their reading and writing skills, gain self-confidence, and develop a love for learning and storytelling. At the end of the session, the students’ writings are compiled into books and published.

Our girls deserve to see Black women like this in the media. Our girls deserve positive role models. Our girls deserve to see positive representations of themselves when they turn on the TV.

Strong. Educated. Caring.

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¹Kerwin, Ann Marie. “The ‘Angry Black Woman’ Makes Real Women Angry.” Ad Age, 27 Sept. 2017, adage.com/article/media/angry-black-woman-makes-real-women-angry/310633/.

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Ki’ara Montgomery is a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelor’s degree in public relations, and minors in business and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. She is currently working with the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance as Member and Donor Liaison.

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