True Story: What Reality TV Says about Us

by Danielle J. Lindemann

Author bell hooks has described how, during Reconstruction, African Americans who attempted to improve their social standing were met with derision. Specifically, “A black woman dressed tidy and clean, carrying herself in a dignified manner, was usually the object of mud-slinging by white men who ridiculed and mocked her self-improvement efforts. They reminded her that in the eyes of the white public she would never be seen as worthy of consideration and respect.”49 Today, while white women on shows like the Housewives are not immune from this type of mockery, the reality genre gets particular traction out of taking putatively elegant Black ladies and cutting them down to size. The image of a well-to-do Black woman behaving in a “low-class” way is not a random one. It has a history and a function, and there’s a reason that Americans gravitate toward it.