Black Matriarchs (Sassy, of course) and the New York Times

Matriarch, of course, is an innocent enough word, generally meaning the elder female head of an extended family. That word has a lot of baggage in American culture, however. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's infamous report, which spoke of black matriarchs emasculating black men, is one of the more vivid examples of the problem with the word. It kind of makes one wonder where someone with sense and sensibility was before the New York Times ran its page one piece on Obama's mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, moving into the White House, at least temporarily. This was no surprise. As the NYT reports:

After all, Mrs. Robinson, known as a loving, tough-minded matriarch who rarely shies from speaking her mind, has been the bedrock of the Obama family. During the presidential campaign, she retired from her job as a bank secretary to care for the Obama girls, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, while their parents were on the road.


Bedrock? Okay. Matriarch? Media have come to preference this usage when discussing African-American families for which there isn't a father in the picture. Although the NYT is trying to convey the sense of Robinson as an anchor amid change, it's not the best word choice here--especially not with the "rarely shies from speaking her mind." In other words, a sassy black woman. One suspects that, as a secretary to a bank executive, Robinson's former job, the woman had a sense of when not to speak her mind; we can also assume she won't be doing it in the White House.

Reporters should always think about word choice, but they need to spend more time thinking about how certain words perpetuate stereotypes. (Read short item on bell hooks, see Moynihan report and search document for matriarch references.)

I have a running joke/bet with a couple of family members. We know that having Obamas in the White House will invariably result in a lot of articles in which journalists will seek to explain black people to America. I've told a couple of my siblings that the first time we catch a glimpse of little Sasha playing with a black doll, there'll be all sorts of national discussion about the choice of color for her doll, and surely questions about whether she has a proper mix of white and black ones, and so on and so on. Think I'm wrong? News coverage gets dumb like that.