"Playing the "Lady Sambo

Bibliographic Data

ID4052041
AuthorsLeigh-Anne Francis (corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume19
Issue2
Pages250-270
Publication date2020-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMeridians (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1536-6936 • E-ISSN: 1547-8424
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/15366936-8308363
OpenAlexW3099104328
LanguageEN
References cited28

In the post-Civil War South, black women litigants made conscious tactical appeals to white male judges' racism, particularly the racist-sexist stereotypes at the heart of the white paternalism ethos, in order to win lawsuits against whites who defrauded them. African American women's arsenal of legal strategies included the "Lady Sambo," an intentional racialized gender performance of feigned ignorance. By performing the "Lady Sambo"-an ignorant, servile black woman in need of protection-some poor black women mobilized their expertise in white racism to defend their economic rights. In a white-dominated society predicated upon the denial of black rights, freedom, and dignity, poor black women seeking justice in civil court cases had to employ resistance strategies that did not openly challenge white authority. In white paternalism, a cultural mainstay of the postbellum South, poor black women discerned and wrested an opportunity to covertly resist economic racism. Unable to attenuate or eradicate structural racism, black women treated racism as a weakness that, at times, made whites vulnerable to manipulation. As long as judges' legal decisions left the white male power structure intact, some black women were the potential beneficiaries of jurists' racial paternalism ethos. While whites imagined themselves as controlling paternalistic exchanges with blacks, black people engaged whites as conscious actors drawing on a keen understanding of white people's supremacist self-perceptions and projections onto blacks. When possible, black women exploited white racism to their advantage and white judges' racial paternalism ethos occasioned such exploitation. In so doing, black women earned their legal victories by acting intentionally and with savvy

Denial · Dignity · Ethos · Paternalism · Political science · Racism · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society

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