Why Are Some Women Called Wench?

The medieval definition of the word wench referred to a child or servant.  The term wench gradually devolved into describing an Antebellum era, young female Negro Slave.  With that same negative way of thinking, the Antebellum Negro Slave Buck became the term used to describe exploited Negro Slave males that were young, physically strong, well-suited for labor, and sexually exploited like their female counterparts were. Detailed examples can be found in books like, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (2019) by  Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture (2014) by Vincent Woodard and Dwight McBride, and The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (2017) by Tommy J. Curry.

Updated incarnations of the slave mythos still exist in U.S. society, affirming why  Slave bucks and  Slave wenches might still be very common today.  The 2010 book, Wench, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is fiction, yet the premise of her story contains some truth.  She got the idea for Wench based on how the book, W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race, by David Levering Lewis, explained the pre-history of Wilberforce University in Ohio.  Perkins-Valdez further researched how what is now Wilberforce University was once a vacation resort frequented by Caucasian slave owners and  their Negro slave concubines.  A question Valdez-Perkins specifically asked was, “If these women went up there, then why didn’t they run?” (This is a quote from the Interracial Intimacy in Antebellum America panel discussion listed below). Again, why didn’t these women ever try to escape, since the resort was located in Xenia, Ohio, which was a free state? 

Can we laugh at the absurdity of the bizarre for a moment?  Comedy is innate to multiple  faucets of life, including situations where humor seems inappropriate.  Richard Pryor’s album, Black Ben The Blacksmith was released on Laff Records in 1978. At the time, the subject matter was uncomfortable for many, but Pryor humorously mocked the insanity of Slavery and Post-Antebellum era life. It worked because Pryor’s characterizations painted vivid mental pictures. 

A January 29th, 2016 University of Alabama panel discussion titled, Interracial Intimacy in Antebellum America addressed the reality behind the exploitative nature of Slave life in the USA.  A presenter at the panel, Professor Trudier Harris stated how, “Mostly though, neo-slave narratives deviate from the prevailing historical script, and they imagine characters that act differently, whether that is committing violence against their so-called masters, or engaging in voluntary intimate liaisons with them.” The reality is that the relationship choices women experienced were a result of rape, brutality, patriarchy, and socioeconomic exploitation. Even today, “Black” women are institutionally enslaved by a system  that has never dismantled “institutional racism.”  The question is whether we are responsible for our own self-awareness? Are we forced to be mentally broken to the point where we compromise ourselves and the integrity of a People?

If we take a tally of television programs with subliminal  wench-like themes, there would be a long list of conspirators.  In September, 2019,  the TV show, Bob Hearts Abishola, premiered on CBS. The premise of the show is a Nigerian immigrant working for a Caucasian male that wants to court her. The stereotyped, Slave wench, colonized-immigrant mindset is clearly evident in Bob Hearts Abishola. Next, there is the (2012-2018) television show Scandal, starring Kerry Washington, where she was the mistress of  the Caucasian (married) president of the USA.  The second example is, Being Mary Jane, starring Gabrielle Union, which ran from 2014 to 2019. Her character was unapologetic, promiscuous, and another example of how U.S. society hypersexualizes Black women and transforms their femininity into immoral feminism. Shows like these are negative propaganda tools that project what is expected of Black women, and demonstrates how they are projected all over the world.

Beginning in the late 1960s, “Black” women were depicted on TV as newly liberated women.  Diahann Carroll starred in the  TV series Julia (1968-1971). Another early example of the newly liberated “Black American” woman was  Teresa Graves, starring as Christie Love in, Get Christie Love! (1974).  She was the second “Black-American” female lead actress on a network drama series in the United States. That type of role prepared future viewers to accept sexually “liberated” characters like the one played by Kerry Washington on the TV show Scandal.  Washington’s role was not a coincidence, and served as negative propaganda to subliminally imply a wench narrative.

Teresa Graves’ character was not identical to the (Olivia Pope)  character that Kerry Washington played on Scandal, since 1970s television had not completely co-opted  societal morals yet. The book, Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television (Console-ing Passions), by Elana Levine, explains something  important. Levine stated how, “In the 1970s, television actively participated in the sexual revolution even as it appeared to reinforce the status quo. Certainly, television’s handling of the new sexual culture necessarily went along with many of the accepted norms and values of American culture; after all, even though television’s sexual culture was “new” in many respects in the 1970s, it could not have achieved the popularity it did without presenting sex in a way that seemed natural and inevitable for much of the TV audience.” In the past, Black women knew that the exploitation that they faced was constantly present.  Does what we see today relate to the past?  Are people paranoid and insensitive if they ask whether bucks and wenches still exist?