Knowing Your Triggers

 

Black History Month is a time for me to reflect on my racial triggers, those lingering annoyances that I can't seem to let go of or resolve -- though not for lack of trying. 

Pretty close to the top of the list is the Black nanny trope in popular culture.

Oddly, I have less of a problem with Hattie McDaniel's Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1940) than I do with Nell Carter's housekeeper / nanny Nell Harper, 40 years later in the Reagan-era sitcom Gimme a Break! 

Maybe I'm applying Maya Angelou's dictum here: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Network television should have known better by 1981, had they been paying attention to Norman Lear's troubles with Good Times (1974-1979)

Depending on the frame you use, Nell Carter's mouthy domestic could be viewed as an empowered Black woman who was standing up to "The Man" on the regular or as an updated version of the classic Sapphire stereotype -- a bossy, difficult Black woman, without children or a man of her own, who exists to serve white folks and intimidate. My view is the latter.

Nell Carter's career seemed on the verge of blossoming into something big but that never happened. Her early acclaim for her work in the Broadway ensemble review Ain't Miss Behavin' (1978) didn't seem to open doors to bigger and better things on the stage right away. Her casting in Gimme a Break! was timely and no doubt needed, so I don't begrudge her for going for a paying job. But the character was stale and stock, IMO. Even so, it garnered Carter notoriety -- a couple of Emmy nominations over the years.

Carter, who died in 2003 at age 55 of complications from diabetes, may or may not have been sensitive to this casting. I couldn't find anything suggesting otherwise.

Still, portrayals of childless Black women -- angry or not -- who nurture the children of white employers is pretty close to the bone of America's racial past and perhaps need not be a part of its racial present.