Women with a Story to Tell: 'Jezebel' as a Slur.

 Anthropologists have reported for every society that stories are used to build a people’s worldview. Of course, there are compelling stories and then there are competing stories challenging the main vision of reality. Social organization often emerges from this struggle over whose story captures the meaning of people’s existence. Leaders work mightily to protect their power by controlling which story gets heard. We see this all around us. 

 Social psychologists have shown that group formation often involves the mechanism of differentiating ‘us’ from ‘them’. This is true even if, as is usually the case, these categories are freighted with half-truths and wishful thinking. There would have been no Revolutionary War (in which 3 of my ancestors fought) without a growing sense of ‘us colonists’ vs. ‘them royalists’. The Declaration of Independence, if you read past the first few paragraphs, is a scorching indictment of King George III. 

 It begins: “He has refused His assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.” Notice the ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ theme and how it is biased. This is followed by 17 more claims, all identifiable because they begin with, “He has” done this and he has done that. Are they true? Was King George that bad? Depends on whether you are a Patriot or a Tory.

 In these stories, there are stock figures, memes in today’s terms, like ‘the rebel’ or ‘the turncoat’. There are also named characters like “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “John Bull.” 

 People who are marginalized in society often suffer when these labels are weaponized and applied to ‘them’. Minorities like Jews, Gypsies (Roma now), or Negroes (African Americans now), or even today Haitians who are accused of eating dogs and Somalians who are all suspected to be experts at fraud. None of it is true of everyone in that category, and some of it is not true at all. Successful politicians are quite adept at manipulating these terms, as Adolf Hitler was at demonizing Jews and Eastern Europeans who were in the way of German expansion so they would have lebensraum. Even today some leaders claim that their nation must take adjoining territory in order to have national security.   

 Perhaps you have heard someone called a ‘Jezebel’. This epithet is still in use today. Just a few days ago, I read this: “A street preacher whose group screamed ‘whores’ and ‘Jezebels’ to concertgoers outside a Mississippi amphitheater won a unanimous victory at the Supreme Court on March 20” (Evansville Courier and Press, Saturday, March 21, 2026, page 7A). 

 Though it has not disappeared, that term was more widespread in American society in the past, particularly as a racist taunt. The term has a history in Europe as well. 

 In America, ‘Jezebel’ became a common slur for African-American women. Its origins trace back to the Slave Era when breeding and trading people was considered proper, or at least acceptable. 

 The value of a black woman at a slave market in South Carolina, for example, was enhanced by two implied traits. First, that she was in fine shape to reproduce more slaves. Thus, the purchase of this woman would ensure that the purchaser had made a profitable choice of a woman who could work and who would produce more slave labor. 

 Second, behind this was the implied charge that this woman was more than willing to engage in the sex necessary to produce the next generation of slaves. Such was the abuse involved in the term ‘Jezebel’.

 Finally, in a third layer of meaning behind that, randy white men got the message that this woman would welcome their own advances to engage in sex. The children produced would still be slaves, not heirs of the master. Why? Because of their association with this Jezebel who, in their minds, was the epitome of evil and deceit. This reveals the complex connection between lust and greed. Men like a ‘devil woman’, don’t they?   

 So, Jezebel, the princess who married Ahab, king of Israel, got her 15 minutes of fame, followed by punishment for the wicked life she had lived. 

 Not content to learn the Biblical lesson, down through the ages men who imagine that they are attractive have portrayed some women as wicked but desirable. What women? Not their 'angelic' wives. It was the women they owned and controlled. Such demonizing of women, particularly black women, continues today in some genres of music and film. This meme also gets played out in reality by the rape, violence, and sex trafficking of little girls, especially of dark-skinned girls. ‘Them Jezebels’.