What is a Honey Child?

I think Sarah Jane's roommate had jumped to the conclusion that she was from a well to do Southern family that was able to have a maid. It's a reference to the whole "Gone With the Wind" Scarlet O'Hara stereotype. Of course terms like "Honey Child" and "Honey Peach" were often used by black women who were caring for white children as well as their own.

All though you wouldn't know it from many old movies the term "mammy" had nothing to do with how dark a black a women was. It simply went they were a mother or taking care of someone else's children. significantly most black actresses who played maids were dark and over weight because that was what white audiences were thought comfortable with. The Jim Crow Museum website has an interesting article about the subject.

TAG LINE: True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.

Honey Child, or "Honey Chile'," is a term of affection used in the South, as in "sweet child." More generally, it can refer to anybody, but stereotypically it is often attributed to the vernacular of black serving women toward the white women and girls in their charge in a surrogate mother-daughter relationship. Such a relationship in pop culture is today known as the "Mammy Stereotype." The "Mammy" (Mame) stereotype may be understood as such:

A mammy in the antebellum South was an enslaved African or African-American woman charged with the nursing and bringing up of the white masters children, often for successive generations (their duties typically included breastfeeding when they were in childbearing years). After the Civil War, the practice continued in a modified form with free black African-American serving women in what we would today consider more of a "nanny" role. After the war the practice was popular in wealthy and some middle-class families up until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. During this period, the "mammy" worked for wages of her own free will, but typically out of economic necessity and the situation was considered to carry great social disadvantage for the black woman in proportion to her white employers. For this reason, the practice is often frowned upon in modern academia, and hence the advent of the offensive "Mammy" stereotype.

Some modern Southern families probably still employ African-American "nannies" though I would hope the nature of the relationship has been updated to a modern, highly respected childcare professional paid fairly, and free to pursue her own life and interests outside the home of her white employer's family.

However, because of the roots in slavery, and the sometimes exploitative nature after slavery of so-called "Mammies", the presentation of a mammy-like figure in pop-culture (especially film), and indeed, the presence of an African-American servant in a white household even in the modern sense is still problematic and deeply offensive to many people. The seminal example of this in film and literature is "Mammy" in Gone With the Wind, a nameless black slave who rears three generations of a Southern family and continues to work for them in a slavish capacity after the Civil War. In film, even depictions of the mammy figure that are sensitively intended are disturbing to many people. The well-intentioned Imiation(s) of Life (1934, 1959) are often accused of racism by critics for their representation of the African-American female figure (though others have argued for a more subtle, satirical interpretation of race in both films). Recently, the popular Academy Award winner The Help (2011) was crucified by African-American academia for a well-intentioned portrayal of the difficulties facing black serving women in "Mammy" roles during the Civil Rights era.

As with The Help, white viewers often fail to understand the controversy. At her best, the "Mammy" is a wise, socially insightful, moral center with deep capacities of love and loyalty...historically the most respected role an African-American woman could have in a white household. However, in pop-culture her love and loyalty are directed exclusively toward her white "family" at the expense of her own identity and interests, and the expense of belonging in her own culture. While the whites consider her a "member of the family" she is denied equality and the advantages of her white counterparts. It is a largely one-sided relationship. She is often considered an "idiot-savant" figure: while she has deep philosophical insights, she is seemingly unaware of her own intelligence and patronized by the whites for the naive simplicity of her moments of moral clarity. In the best case scenario, the historical mammy was beloved by, but never equal to her white "family." In the worst case scenario, she was physically and sexually abused, exploited for labor even after free, and alienated from her own people and family. Hence the controversy.

Please be aware than what I have just written is not representative of my personal opinions (which I shall decline to express here) but the accumulation of what I have observed taking into account various opinions, criticisms and interpretations I've encountered regarding the portrayal of African-American women a historical and pop-cultural context.