How Halle Berry Tarnished the Image of Black Women

Halle Berry is the first Black woman to win a Best Actress Oscar. However, in order to receive that award she betrayed Black women all over the world. To get herself ahead, she set the image of the Black woman behind over 400 years by mainstreaming old racist stereotypes about Black women and making them cultural norms.


Now there have been other actresses like Lisa Bonet who tried to use the stereotype of the Black Jezebel as a springboard to superstardom. But in the late 1980s and 1990’s self-aware Black people refused to support Lisa Bonets’ movie Angel Heart with a passion understanding how White Supremacists could use films like this as a gateway to bring back old racist stereotypes about Black women.


The main image for Black women from 1968-2001 was an educated Black woman who had a career and a family. Characters like Julia, Florida Evans, Whitley Gilbert Kadijah James, Hilary Banks, Joan Clayton, and Family oriented women like Claire Huxatble, Vivian Banks, and Harriet Winslow. Respectable dignified ladies and clean-cut good girls like Denise Huxtable and Tia and Tamera Mowry. Black women had fought for a generation to control their image and did their best to keep it positive.


Yes, there was Lil’ Kim in the mid 1990’s. But she was on the fringe and not fully accepted by Black America or White America. For many she was associated with a small part of Hip-Hop. Dignified intelligent Ladies like Queen Latifah MC Lyte, Antionette, Precious, and Salt N Pepa were still considered the gold standard among female rappers back then.


For years Halle Berry was the good girl. The sista next door. Someone America could trust.  Someone every man wanted to take home to meet his mother and someone sistas wanted to be friends with. An A-lister with a clean image everyone was comfortable with.


But For White Supremacists in Hollywood she was Lisa Bonet 2.0.


To these racists, Halle Berry was a mainstream actress with the popularity and credibility to legitimize old racist stereotypes about Black women and breathe new life into them. Someone who was so well liked by most Americans Black or White and wouldn’t be challenged by Blacks in authority when she presented the repackaged degrading racist and sexist images White Supremacists wanted portrayed of Black women.


Now Halle Berry played a lot of good girl roles early in her career, but even with an impressive resume and good looks, she just couldn’t stand out in a crowded playing field with her Black female contemporaries like Vanessa Williams, Salli Richardson, Angela Bassett, Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett. All were better actresses than Berry and she just didn’t have the range to compete with them.


So to make herself distinct, she decided to sell out the Black community and became the new Black Jezebel. First by appearing topless in the movie Swordfish, and then by participating in a borderline pornographic sex scene in Lee Daniels’ Monsters’ Ball.


By participating in this role of Leticia Musgrove in Monster’s Ball, Halle Berry opened the door. Not for Black women. But for White Supremacists to breathe new life into old stereotypes about Black women. The Jezebel and the Mammy have become the choice role for Black actresses to play in Hollywood since Halle portrayed Letica Musgrove in Monster’s Ball a decade ago.


Where Angel Heart failed, Monster’s Ball succeeded.


 Since Halle’s Oscar win, then the image of the Black woman has been dragged into the sewer by opportunistic Black females looking to get ahead at the expense of the image of Black womanhood. Gabourney Sidbe got nominated for an Oscar for playing a mammy and Mo’ Nique won an Oscar for playing another one in Precious. Viola Davis was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for playing a maid in The Help. Octavia Spencer won an Oscar for playing a maid in The Help. Kerry Washington just got nominated for being a modern day Negro Bed Wench in Shondra Rhimes’ Scandal. And Oprah Winfrey and Lee Daniels made over $100 million dollars at the Box office on the coonfest called The Butler.


None of this modern day coonin’ and buffonin’ by Black women today would have been possible without Halle Berry compromising herself over a decade ago.


Where Real Black Women like Vanessa Williams, Queen Latifah, and Angela Bassett feared to tread. Halle Berry walked with confidence. Walking away from the legacy of Ruby Dee, Dihann Carroll, Corretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, and every other Black woman who fought in the Civil Rights Movement back to the Bed Wench’s house behind the Massa’s mansion.


What Black Historians will be talking about 20 years from now is not how Halle won the Oscar but how she was used by White Supremacists in Hollywood as a tool to usher in a new age for the Black Jezebel and the Mammy in the 21st Century How she alone in her attempt to get ahead set the image of Black women behind.


With her participation in Monster’s Ball, Halle made it possible for a generation of little Black girls and young Black women to believe it was perfectly fine to sacrifice their personal intangibles like their dignity and self-respect for fifteen minutes of fame. That people seeing a Black woman’s backside was more important than seeing their faces.


Thanks to Halle Berry a generation of women like Kim Kardashian, and Montana Fishburne think it’s okay to have sex on camera to get 15 minutes of fame. Yeah, I know it’s reaching, but where did Kim and Montana get the idea from? Pamela Anderson’s sex tape in the mid 1990’s wasn’t as popular as Monster’s Ball was and still is today. Halle became an international superstar making $15 million a picture after her sex scene, and no other actress Black or white has received that kind of fame or riches for participating in a nude scene or a sex scene in a movie since.


The legacy of Halle Berry can be seen not only in Kim Kardashian but in reality stars like KarrineSteffans and theBasketball wives, the football wives, Love & Hip Hop who all use their bodies instead of their brains to get ahead. These ignorant acting Aunt Jemimas in designer clothes owe their existence to Halle Berry’s. Ginger on Swordfish and Leticia Musgrove paved the way for Evelyn Lozada and the rest of these ghetto chicks who do nothing but cause drama and play the victim.

Even  A-list mainstrem singers likelike Beyonce and Rihanna followed in Halle Berry’s footsteps. Thanks to her Oscar Win they think it’s okay to talk “girl power” while gyrating and shaking their asses while singing about sex. Without Halle to open the door for them in 2001 as the first Black jezebel, they wouldn’t be allowed to be jezebels today.


And Halle was the role model for dozens of actresses like like Kerry Washington, Gabourney Sidibe, Mo Nique, Viola Davis who all followed in her footsteps seeking out the most degrading roles in the hopes of getting on a fast-track to an easy Oscar.


Not to mention all those Black women you see on Facebook and taking sexy pictures of themselves in skimpy lingerie just to get Likes, those females fighting in videos on World Star Hip Hop and those little girls young as eight and twelve twerkin on YouTube shaking their asses just to get views.


This is the true legacy of Halle Berry. This is the impact her participation in Monster’s Ball in 2001 had on the Black community.  By agreeing to star in that movie she was responsible for turning the mainstream image of our Proud Black Mothers and Sistas into Filthy booty shaking Whores all over the world. Thanks to you ushering in this new age of Niggerdom in America, Black women all over the are now seen as a JOKE all over the world.

Congrtulations Halle. You won your Oscar. You only sacrificed the dignity and self-respect of the Black woman in America to earn that little gold statue. I hope it was worth it.