Note: This post comes mainly from “Roll, Jordan, Roll” (1974) by Eugene Genovese, a Brooklyn-born Marxist historian. He is a white man who argues that it was not as bad as black people think:
When you think of white men and black women back in slave days in the US, the thing that springs to mind is the rape of black slave women by white slave masters. It is an image so striking and terrible that it is hard to get it out of your mind. In fact, the Mammy stereotype was pushed by the South to counteract it.
It is a fact of history: we have accounts of just such rapes. But while true, it was not as common as you might think. During the civil war when the Union army got to the large estates in the low country of Georgia and South Carolina the northerners were surprised by how unmixed the blacks were.
In our time something like 75% of blacks are part white, but at the end of the civil war fewer than 25% were. Most of the mixing of the races took place after the civil war, after the slaves were freed.
The government used to count mulattoes separately, those who were part black, part white. So we know where they lived and where they came from. They mostly did not come from the big slave estates in the deep South but from the towns and cities of the upper South, in states like Arkansas and Tennessee. As it turns out, these were the places where there was an oversupply of both white men and black women.
And just as we have accounts of rapes and of black children of white slave masters, so we also have accounts of the opposite, of slave masters who did not permit such things – not just according to the slave masters themselves, but even according to their slaves after they were freed and had no reason to lie about it.
In fact, we even have the diary of one slave master, a 44-year-old virgin apparently, who complains about the lack of sex in his life – even though he owned slave women. When he thought about where to get it, he did not think about his black slave women but the white prostitutes in town.
Some slave women, called fancy girls, mostly light-skinned, were sold to work in the household with the understanding that they would provide special services.
While some white men did openly live with black women, most hid what was going on as something shameful. As late as the 1970s, more than a hundred years after the civil war, we have court records where it is assumed that having sex with a black woman is so shameful for a white man that none would admit to it unless it was true.
In most cases slave masters who had sex with black slave women were just using them, but it was not always that simple. From court records we know that sometimes it led to divorce and contested wills. While most white men did nothing to try to free their black children and black lovers, some did.
– Abagond, 2008.
See also:
Abagond 
My suggestion … read The Isis Papers by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing (a psychiatrist practicing in Washington D.C. The Isis papers: the keys to the colors is a collection of essays she has written over 18 yrs on white supremacy) I can assume you have never read that book or else you would have never created this post. This one and a couple of others. I’d figure that you’d know that the above is all bullshit considering Saarah Bartman was not only a sideshow in Europe, but a prostitute as well (a “sucessful” one (haha sry, my wording was terrible) I must add) where most, if not all of her customers were white men. Another claim that deducts from the merit of this post a bit is the ideaology that the relationship between the slavemasters and their slaves were not abusive and oppressive, but in fact healthy and upright (another pile of bullshit.) I figure claims like these that have no merit whatsoever are desperate attempts to mitigate white guilt. I figured since you made an entire post on that topic you’d know that. For the first time since I’ve been reading your blog I utterly disagree with you. Good day 🙂
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Fascinating stuff.
You clear up many age old misperceptions that many black Americans have about slavery.
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No, Abagond … I wasn’t saying that you have ever stated (or even implied) that the relationship btw. The slavemasters and their slaves were healthy and upright. My American studies professor in my freshman yr. Of college most certainly did though. I don’t know where on earth he got those facts from, but I found it to be farthest from the truth as possible. (By the way, my professor was a blk man) I simply compared statements like that to this one because for a long time when people thought of slavemasters and their slaves cruelty came to mind– I think this was right, wasn’t it? (But my prof. Thought otherwise) And when ppl thought of slavemasters and their slave black women rape comes to mind … I think that is true. However, I don’t think it was a wall to wall rape fest. But I think I know for a fact that it was common … considering many slavemasters had black mistresses– black women who willingfully slept with them. I don’t think the internet is the most reliable source … books are better as this entire post is based upon one man’s research. I probably would have agreed had I not read the Isis papers. Though it is ONE book it is a good book and is not only based upon her perception but the works of others, it focuses primarily upon the psychology of white supremacy (racism she calls it) and just to see it from another point of view Aba, I’m going to share this info. I’ve learned from the book to you. She says that Black males represent the biggest threat to white male genetic survival because only males can impose sexual intercourse. She says in a place where numerically the minority of people are white (everyone else colored) they are afraid of genetic annihilation. (This realization to whites that the world’s vast majority of people are colored came about in the 15th century.) Black people however present the greatest color potential, with red, yellow, and brown peoples presenting lesser quantities, respectively– thus blacks by whites are envied the most. I say envied because white skin is a genetic deficiency state of albinism or its variants [whites, unconciously, or conciously knows this] (according to Dr. Welsing, Louis Leakey, Dr. Alan Stone and many others… she lists many of her references in the book) I say all of this to say while you may think White men were ashamed to sleep with Black women I’ll agree but differ slightly. I don’t think they’d want the public to know though (wouldn’t that shine some light on their inadequacy?)… sleeping with black women as white men projected their insecurities when it came to their genetic make up; sleeping with someone you view as genetically inferior to you projects insecurity with your own genetics and prove that you in fact DO NOT believe that you are genetically superior to this person (it is also a known fact that blacks genetically are dominant to whites recessive genes as they are mutations of their black mothers and fathers in Africa. It is said by many of scholars that the white race evolved from African Albinos) white men are also threatened by black men, they just reduce their significant inadequacy when trying to measure up to black men to something as vain as the size of blk males penis compared to white (thus terms like mandingo.) It is not the black male’s penis itself, but the testicles that store the genetic material that the whites are so concerned with. Something that has the highest potential of genetically annihilating their own. Because of the white males insecurity concerning his genetically deficient state I can assume those slave masters raped black women (A LOT) … not out of love, to use them for sex, or even desire but out of pure admiration and envy of the black man– that constant yearning and wanting of what the black man has [genetic dominance, that “tall dark and handsome” bs that white women spew as wanting in their mate, the bass in their voice (the voice quality of albino males is soft and higher pitched than moreno males), they also appear to be deficient in male sex hormone due to flaccidity since albinos usually have flabby muscles and reduced muscular strength…] thus you can see how sleeping with a black woman could make that white male feel as if he measured up to the black man. All of this is in her book (most are direct quotes from her) I know really, really long post but I did wanna share this with you. Just so you could see it from another angle. I think you should read it for yourself or @ least google it. Oh and by the way, I was in a library in Pennsylvania the other day and saw some of Miguel Covarrubia’s work. He was a magnificent painter. Just frm his work you can tell he loved his craft.
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And in complete response to your comment … honestly I am not offended by your take and I do not think it is unfashionable. Sometimes you even gotta give the “devil” what’s due to him (no pun @ all intended, I am racist by some standards just not to that extreme) I read somewhere in a book as well that whites raped black women just to produce more slaves … I believe that too. As it makes sense. I disagree that white Americans were stricter with sex … it is of my understanding that they raped little black boys too… no? They also had mistresses … no? I know where you’re coming from though … I do understand. Trust me, I do.
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Oneee more thing and I will stop bothering you … Abagond, I am almost embarassed to ask you this BUT … are you white? I’m sorry … I just … its not um … darn I’m so embarassed LOL. I am so rude. Its just, its not you, it was a commenter. Shucks. I suck @ this. I can understand if you do not wanna answer but I would appreciate it if you did.
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Strangefruit,
Wow. Your post is so insightful. I learn something new everyday. Thanks. And your knowledge corresponds with a comment I made on here recently about how black women lack the same sense of “desirability” that black men have in this racist white society. Your comments add a historical context to my observations.
Also, I believe that Aba said that he was West Indian in his ‘About’ page. But that can mean any race, though.
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“They mostly did not come from the big slave estates in the deep South but from the towns and cities of the upper South, in states like Arkansas and Tennessee. As it turns out, these were the places where there was an oversupply of both white men and black women.”
My understanding of the “oversupply of both white men and black women”, is that the higher ratio of black population to whites occurred in states like Virginia and South Carolina, cities like Charleston, and cities like New Orleans.
“And just as we have accounts of rapes and of black children of white slave masters, so we also have accounts of the opposite, of slavemasters who did not permit such things – not just according to the slavemasters themselves, but even according to their slaves after they were freed and had no reason to lie about it.”
Slave masters DID NOT like ANYONE tampering with their “property”, so it was not some chivalrous desire to protect the honor and chastity of enslaved black women that white slave masters had in mind.
If a poor white, non-slave owner raped a black woman, the majority of slave masters considered that a boon to them——more slaves for the plantation.
I agree with strangefruit. Slave masters raped black women (and girls) to PRODUCE more slaves.
“Some slave women, called fancy girls, mostly light-skinned, were sold to work in the household with the understanding that they would provide special services.”
And these fancy girls were just that: GIRLS, many as young as 10-, 12-, 13 years of age. Sold into a lifetime of concubine sex slavery before they were even conceived by white male debauchery.
“While some white men did openly live with black women, most hid what was going on as something shameful.”
Okay, now you’ve really pissed me off 🙂
White men were NEVER shameful in sexually degrading black women and girls. The SHAME WAS IN MARRYING a black woman. Lay up with her, and the white community tittered about it, the black community fumed about it (and could do nothing to retaliate), but, shameful?!
White males came to believe that black female bodies were theirs for casual sex, and nothing more. White males were never ashamed to have sex with a black woman.
Shamed by their community to NOT respect and honor a black woman, but, never shamed from sexually using them. In fact white males were encouraged to do degrading sexual filth to black females they would NEVER DARE to do to white females.
“As late as the 1970s, more than a hundred years after the civil war, we have court records where it is assumed that having sex with a black woman is so shameful for a white man that none would admit to it unless it was true.”
“Court records”, eh? Whose records, whose testimony? You do realize that WHITE MEN wrote much of the history of the South, do you? You have obviously not read J.W. Cash’s “Mind of the South”, where he praises the sexual hate that black women faced during slavery, where he has the audacity to state that black women were “natural” for white men to rape.
You obviously have not read Kenneth Stampp’s “The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South”, a book so repulsive that I threw it on the floor after reading it, and then KICKED it under the closet door where it still remains.
Tell you what, I will reach down and get it out, just to type a few comments from it to help you see how wrong you are in your impressions of what white males so blithely wrote about black women——since those white males were the ones doing the sexual assaulting ——-and writing history to shore themselves up. The following is when Stampp is in one of his few lucid moments of stating actual historical documentation:
“To measure the extent of miscegenation with precision is impossible, because statistical indexes are crude and public and private records fragmentary. But the evidence nevertheless suggests that HUMAN BEHAVIOUR [my italics] in the Old South was very human indeed, that sexual contacts between the races were not the rare aberrations of a small group of depraved whites but a frequent occurrence involving WHITES OF ALL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LEVELS. It was a practice, a Kentucky judge avowed, “but too common, as we all know”; a practice, Olmsted was told, that pervaded the “entire society”. “How many have fallen before this temptation!” [As if black women and girls were some sexually lascivious sirens and seductresses who lured white males to rape them, against the wills of white males-my emphasis], wrote a Virginian. “So many that it has almost ceased to be a temptation to fall!”
from “The Peculiar Institution”, by Kenneth Stampp, pgs. 350-351. (paperback, 1956,1984.)
“During the civil war when the Union army got to the large estates in the low country of Georgia and South Carolina the northerners were surprised by how unmixed the blacks were.”
Depended on what part of the country Union soldiers were in.
Some areas of some states, less mixed blacks; some areas of other states more mixed blacks, Louisiana and notoriously Mississippi where there would be more mixed blacks during and after slavery abolition.
“In most cases slavemasters who had sex with black slave women were just using them, but it was not always that simple.”
Of course, it is not that simple. Sexual coercion can be a powerful weapon against a group of women who do not have the right to say “No”, nor do not have the right to their own bodies.
When you are starved, whipped, in fear of seeing your children sold off, you will be forced to do anything to keep some semblance life going for your loved ones and yourself.
“From court records we know that sometimes it led to divorce and contested wills. While most white men did nothing to try to free their black children and black lovers, some did.”
Manumission in America rarely happened.
Manumission was more likely to happen in Brazil, before it happened in America.
Yes, court wills/contestations did occur, but only because the white wife could not take it anymore, or the family that was left behind after white slave master died, sold the mulatto children….often against white slave master father’s will.
Very FEW white men freed their mixed black-white offspring.
Many did not give a damn, and sent those children off to the slave fields or sold them to make peace with an angry vindictive white wife.
To make peace even more, he sold the child and the black mother he got the child off of to keep white wife from brutalizing both the child and the black mother.
A FEW white men cared enough to save their mixed children from the toil of the field and the lash of the whip.
Many, many white men did not.
Many white men cared only for the hides on their backs.
“When you think of white men and black women back in slave days in America the thing that springs to mind is the rape of black slave women by white slavemasters. It is an image so striking and terrible that it is hard to get it out of your mind. In fact, the Mammy stereotype was pushed by the South to counteract it.”
Yes, the “Mammy Image” was created (after the Civil War), to counter the sexual assaults of black enslaved women.
Black women who did work in the master’s house did not live beyond 40 years of age, were younger (true) but also were thinner and just as less healthy as their counterparts who worked in the fields.
For more enlightenment on the Mammy/Aunt Jemima image created by whites, read here:
http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2007/05/16/towards-the-end-of-aunt-jemima/
“The government used to count mulattoes separately, those who were part black, part white.”
After the War, they “became” black/Negro in the eyes of their white fathers and the white race.
“And just as we have accounts of rapes and of black children of white slavemasters, so we also have accounts of the opposite, of slavemasters who did not permit such things – not just according to the slavemasters themselves, but even according to their slaves after they were freed and had no reason to lie about it.”
Oh really? “Had no reason to lie about it.”
You do realize that there is truth to the old African proverb: “Until the lioness learns how to write, history will continue to be written by the hunter.”
White men were the ones who knew how to read and write and they wrote what made them look good in the eyes of future generations. Slaves could not read or write and were forbidden to do so.
If you listen to many of the slaves narrative audio tapes from the 1930s WPA you will hear much hesitancy in their voices.
Also, much of what slaves told the WPA interviewers/people who gathered testimony was denied to us.
“WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives” is an excellent book to get a more actual accounting of slave narratives on ex-slave’s lives. Of the many efforts to collect the WPA interviews with ex-slaves, this book is the best.
It is well-sourced, includes many interviews NOT SENT ON TO Washington (as well as lines struck by the federal editors, which were often sentences that were strongly anti-white or had to do with sex of white males against black women, girls, and boys.)
The more you have to think about it, it is interesting (and quite sad), the degree to which the interview “questions” have shaped all American’s minds on the limited understanding of what slavery was truly like for black women and men.
Not known by many people is that the WPA interviewers went out into the field with ready-made questions to ask the ex-slaves, instead of just letting the slaves “tell it like it is (and was)”.
Much anti-white statements and comments about sex were deleted from the final archival tapes.
Such a terrible, irretrievable loss to all time.
Shocking, yes. Many people do not know this.
But, if you want a more TRUTHFUL and not excised and denied version of slave accounts of life under slavery, obtain a copy of the above referenced book.
If possible, try to get to a library and view the original typescripts, many of which should be available on microfiche in larger public branch libraries.
If you are very lucky try to get to the New York Schomberg Center for the Study of Black Life.
If ever there was an organization that has complied astounding information on black life in America, this is the place to go to. If you cannot make it to NY, google the Schomberg Center via the Internet. You will learn much from this center.
There is much ignorance on what black women endured at the hands of white male hatred.
I agree with much of what strangefruit stated. And I too, have read the books strangefruit mentioned, both Welsing’s book, and Genovese’s book as well (he comes off too much as an apologists for the white slavers).
It is not enough to read ONE BOOK on any subject. You will get a lop-sided slanted view from that author many times.
To really get an understanding, you must read 5-10 books, and that is on only ONE ASPECT of a certain subject.
Never mind the whole concept of a particular subject.
I will look into more books you need to read, but this parting comment:
Black women have been marginalized for over 400 years. White men have felt THEY had the right to speak of the experiences we have lived in this ….damn country. Neither white men nor anyone else, no longer have the right to decide what is the truth or not the truth concerning black women’s lives lived in America, as I told another white male on another blog, last year during the Imus crap:
http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2007/04/13/who-am-i/
Black women have been silenced for far too long. The truth of our lives in this country must be told and not lied on by white historians or apologists for white male hatred. (Not saying you.)
Hope this helps you in your quest to learn the truth about what life was truly like for us black women in America.
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Abagond.
On the book, “Oklahoma Slave Narratives”, I left off some important information.
The authors names: T. Lindsay Baker and Julie P. Baker.
Paperback: 543 pages
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (March 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0806128593
ISBN-13: 978-0806128597
Unlike other books on slave narratives, this book ALSO includes the Cherokee slavers of black women, men and children, since this book concentrates on Oklahoma, and the so-called Five Civilized Tribes (because they aped white institutions).
Yep, Native Americans stooped to the level of white racism and kept black people as slaves in the American South. (Not trying to derail the conversation, but, white men were not the only men who enslaved and sexually abused black women and girls.)
Also, google the Library of Congress for the Slave Narratives to learn more from the voices from the past:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam001.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/
“Born In Slavery: Slave Narratives by State”:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/mesnbibStates1.html
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Schomberg Center for Research in Black Life:
http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html
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“I hate to be put in a position of defending slavemasters, but their rapes simply cannot account for all the white blood in Black America. The numbers are all wrong. And, as I pointed out in the post, so are the times and places.”
I agree. There is no way the white slave master could do all the raping, there was no way he could be having sex WITH ALL THE ENSLAVED BLACK WOMEN on the plantation. . . .
. . . . he had lots of help, as I stated on your “White Men Not Marrying Black Women” post.
Again from Stampp’s book:
“Female slaves were quite accessible to both rural and urban NON-SLAVEHOLDERS [my emphasis] who desired casual sexual partners.
“Men of the NON-SLAVEHOLDING CLASS [my emphasis] were responsible for much of the miscegenation.
“Again, most of the relationships between slave women and males (white) of the slaveholding class were the casual adventures of adolescents engaged in sexual larks (there is an historical account of college students who would go down South to rape and impregnate the enslaved black women at a certain master’s request—my comment), and of older bachelors or widowers periodically DEMANDING [my emphasis] the favors of one of their female chattels.
“On a Louisiana plantation, an overseer, named Patrick, caused his employer no end of trouble because of his habit of “sneaking about after . . . negro girls”; and when he was discharged he left behind a brood of mulatto children….
“Slave women did not always regard a sexual contact with a white male as a privilege, which was in no case to be REJECTED.”
As you can see, ALL TYPES OF WHITE MALES forced sex and pregnancy onto defenseless black women and girls—-so-called high-class white slave masters, and low-class poor whites.
The white blood that flows in our veins is NOTHING to be proud of.
I do not acknowledge it, and I never will.
It is a thorn in our side that due to white male vice and white male hatred, black Americans ARE a race raped into existence.
That we are by force of chattel slavery rape TIED genetically to whites, no matter how much they deny it, and no matter how much it angers and sickens us.
And white men cannot lord themselves over black women as if white men have never done wrong to black women.
And they still do.
Hope I was not too hard on you 😉
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Ann & Strangefruit: Thank you so much for your long and very good comments!!
I have not read all the way through Ann’s yet, but I know they will be good, being a fan of her blog. Even if she makes me look like a mindless fool.
Strangefruit, I think, makes a good point: the whole psychosexual aspect is missing from my post.
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“Because of the white males insecurity concerning his genetically deficient state I can assume those slave masters raped black women (A LOT) … not out of love, to use them for sex, or even desire but out of pure admiration and envy of the black man– that constant yearning and wanting of what the black man has [genetic dominance, that “tall dark and handsome” bs that white women spew as wanting in their mate, the bass in their voice (the voice quality of albino males is soft and higher pitched than moreno males), they also appear to be deficient in male sex hormone due to flaccidity since albinos usually have flabby muscles and reduced muscular strength…] thus you can see how sleeping with a black woman could make that white male feel as if he measured up to the black man.”
The psychosexual aspect of white male racism came AFTER the abolition of slavery.
During slavery, this form of mentality would not have been prevalent, just as the immensensely numerous lynchings of black males did not occur during slavery, but after slavery, from 1890-1945.
Whites males mainly used black women for sex for two reasons:
-Casual sex
-To create more slaves by NATURAL INCREASE (a thing unheard of in other forms of slavery around the world)
-Because they could
White males sexual inadequacy: “fear of small penis size”; “fear of not measuring up in bed”; “fear of genetic annihilation” started to come into being after freed blacks began to take control of their lives, after freed blacks began to marry, after freed blacks began to slowly build communities of their own.
White males during slavery used black women as an end to a means. White males certainly did not have to worry about feeling inadequate towards black males because white males could rape and defile black women and girls at will. . . .
. . . .at not suffer the consequences for it.
The “pure admiration and envy” of the black penis psychosexual abyss did not evolve under slavery, it evolved after slavery when black men then became a threat to white males and the white social order.
Which is why the tens of thousands of lynchings started.
Which is why white males used a morally bankrupt lie to destroy black men with lynchings and castrations. Suce behaviour was unfathomable during slavery because to do such actions white slave masters would have been stupidly destroying their property.
Once slavery ended, black life became cheap:
-Black people, no longer protected by chattel slavery property status, were at the mercy of entire whites in the county/state. Therefore, black males who posed a genetic threat to whiteness were killed on the morally bankrupt alter of the white man’s “We must save our pure white women from the black man!”
-Black women had open season declared on them—-no longer could white slave masters have carte blache right to their bodies, along with white slave overseers—-now they were being raped by any and all manner of white males. Former white slave masters did not have to continue to rape their former property (although some did).It was now the millions of white males who did not own black women who were so eager to inject rapist blood into black women. White males who envied the white slave master who had free access to the bodies of black women and girls.
Your comments on white males “black male penis” envy is correct—-but, after the Civil War, not during slavery.
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“Even if she makes me look like a mindless fool.”
Not meaning to make you look like a fool.
We all learn more when we ask questions. . . .and that is a good sign; to learn more than what we learned in school (especially where black American history is concerned.)
Or as a famous person put it:
“You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.”
Theodor Seuss Geisel
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Thank you Ann and Strangefruit for further educating me
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Hello Ann!
I’m so glad to know more about a shameful history that mainstream historians and society try to deny.
Even today’s trend of IRs ignore and downplay the shameful history of bf/wm in America. Instead, the articles shut down altenative views, especially when voiced by Black women because they don’t want their version of IR utopia challenged. Instead, we are labeled as angry and resentful.
As long as the issue is being swept under the rug, race relations are still being marked by tension, inequality, and resentment.
Steph
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Ann I utterly disagree with much of your last post. “The psychosexual aspect of white male racism came AFTER the abolition of slavery.” … “The “pure admiration and envy” of the black penis psychosexual abyss did not evolve under slavery, it evolved after slavery when black men then became a threat to white males and the white social order.” No … it was always there. Always existant. Even with black men stripped of their power (just as he is today) white males still fear them. Why do you think they went to such great lengths to keep black males and white females apart DURING (and after) slavery? Perhaps, the abolition of slavery caused the white males to rear their insecure heads a lot more OBVIOUSLY considering the black male did have significant amount of “freedom” after slavery … but nevertheless that fearful mentality was there long before slavery and it has been here long after. The white male has felt threatened by the black male since the dawn of time. And no … you didn’t read the Isis Papers, or else you would know that. According to Dr. Wesling, Jesus was a black African man … a poor carpenter that lived some 2,000 years ago whose ideology (expressed in the Beautitudes) and thoughts threatened the power, control, and authority of the conquering Romans (the whites.) If Jesus and the other blacks got out of control the whites could be annihilated genetically. Jesus was then turned over to the white oppressors who killed him. She says he was not only hung from the cross and stabbed, but was undoubtedly castrated (again the fear of white genetic annihilation resurfaces considering they cut off his penis … something that possessed the power to genetically dominate whites.) She says in Christian religion it is stated that Jesus died on the cross and suffered so that “we” (whites) can be “saved” (survive.) Another thing she brings up is the Christian song “nothing but the blood of Jesus” the chorus “oh precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow, no other font I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus” she interprets it as this “as long as the genetic material from the Black male is spilling on the ground from castration, whites can remain white as snow” might I remind you … this is thousands of yrs ago so how on earth could the white male’s fear of genetic dominance come about after slavery?! That makes no sense. Sure … white males could THINK they were using black women for casual sex, to multiply slaves (don’t doubt that) and just because they could (by the way, if white males wanted casual sex they could get it from anywhere … meaning both black and white women. And just as a white man could rape a blk woman he could a white woman as well. White males has placed themselves upon a high pedestal for a long time … they were even oppressive to their women. Why do you think it is that today we have a group of white women who calls themselves “feminist?” who else are they rebelling against? SURELY not men of color) but the psychology behind reasons for white males raping black women during slavery times are much deeper than casual sex, upping the numbers of slaves or simply just because they could, they are in fact not what is manifested in the mind conciously, but unconciously … so just as blind to the real reasons why white men raped blk women during slavery times you are … so were the white males who actually committed these crimes. It is and has not been about the black woman all of these yrs. Men are the leaders, the women are the followers. It is my understanding that people know that the family goes in this order (man, woman, and child) it is and has always been about the black man. Compare the likelihood of a black man getting killed by the police “accidently” to a black woman. Get my point? Men are the leaders. If a group of men are oppressed then so are their women. Black women, as our men, are oppressed today. Its just, the black man is a lot more feared, a lot more desired, and a lot more envied and a lot more likely to be killed in early age because of this envy. He is in the image God … IMO. P.S. Olivia it was my pleasure. And mynameis… thank you. I learn so much from commenters on here, or even Abagond himself although I’m as stubborn as a bull and will argue my case like a lawyer defending an accused murderer lol 🙂 (excuse the typos, if any. Its really long and I wasn’t focused on the spelling. Sry)
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Strangfruit,
You got it all wrong. It’s Black women who are most threatening to white men. It’s because of their reproductive capability and, yes, they can just as be threatening to the white racial purity as are Black men.
Read the poem by Kimberle Crenshaw and see what I mean by that.
Respect”
Delivered at V-Day at the Apollo
by Kim Crenshaw
Black vaginas
the hardest working vaginas in America,
and still they get no respect.
No vagina has done so much for this country
and received so little. Really.
Black vaginas built this country.
It all started right here,
between blueberry black, chocolate cream, honey brown,
praline pecan
french vanilla
legs.
It wasn’t the Declaration of Independence,
the Constitution,
or the Stars and Stripes that gave birth to America.
It was the Black vagina that laid the golden egg,
or rather, the chattel slave.
That’s right–during America’s formative years, the most valuable property
it produced,
the property that the entire economy was based on,
the property that was mortgaged to build America
was property in slaves.
12 billion dollars worth.
One can’t begin to fathom it in today’s dollars. And where did it come
from? Whose vaginas passed this 12 billion dollars?
Whose vaginas were capitalized, colonized, and amortized all to give birth
to America?
Who’s vaginas have been appropriated, syndicated, deprecated, but never,
ever
vindicated in the process of building this country?
The Black vagina, the only vagina that was less valuable when it was
protected, loved, and respected
than when is was open, taken, and occupied at will.
And the law made it that way–black women couldn’t be raped as a matter of
law during those old days.
The Law Said
that Rape was something that happened to white vaginas
not to black ones.
But those were the old days, we can rest assured.
We finally got that Respect that Aretha’s been talking about all these
years.
Or did we?
Has the black vagina received the respect she deserves even today?
Is it respected when those who enter our vaginas against our will are least
likely to be arrested, least likely to be prosecuted, least likely to be
convicted, and when, by some miracle, they are convicted, they will
receive only 1/5 the sentence of those who rape white vaginas?
Is it respected when no one seems to know or care about what happens to our
vaginas within our communities, right here in Harlem?
Is it respected when everyone knows about the Central Park Jogger, but no
one knows about the 8 other women of color raped in New York that very
week, one who was gang raped, thrown down an elevator shaft and left for
dead?
Is the Black vagina respected when our own community readily embraces those
accused of rape, and chastises women for “not having the good sense God
gave her” or “having no business being up there with that man at 2:00 in
the morning” or “being foolish not to know what the brother’s true
intentions were?”
Is it respected when politicians trip over themselves trying to be “tough
on Black vaginas” by embracing punitive policies to sew up and shut down
these vaginas now that our labor isn’t needed anymore?
After four hundred years is THIS the RESPECT we’ve been waiting for?
I don’t think so…
So here’s an idea. The next time we hear ReRe belting out
R>E>S>P>E>C>T,
let’s reach for it, own it, proclaim it as our national anthem for Black
vaginas,
for all vaginas
Because we know that respect goes to those
who demand it, expect it, and refuse to live without it
So from Harlem to Watts
From Memphis to Detroit
From Nairobi to Beijing
From Kingston to Jerusalem
Let our voice, our Demand, our Command be heard:
RESPECT This Vagina!!!
__________________________
La Reyna
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LMAO. I just can’t! … I’m supposed to honestly sit here and read a poem about black vaginas? LOL. I skimmed through it. I didn’t like it. “Black vaginas” greatest contribution to society wasn’t producing slaves or “12 billion dollars.” (Nor should reproducing “slaves” earn blk women any respect) The female vagina is priceless and in essence it is not black or white, but pink (I do understand that the author is figuratively speaking). I’m a blk female, but I don’t believe black women are a threat to white males. Black males represent the biggest threat to white male genetic survival because only males can impose sexual intercourse. I have nothing wrong @ all … You do, with your logic. Anyway … Black women are most definitely God’s first daughters … IMO of course. Our significance encompasses giving birth to the entire “hue”man race. That is a blessing. It is black women who gives birth to black sons, fathers, cousins, uncles and so on … I wouldn’t discredit that. I wasn’t saying blk women weren’t as good as blk men but blk men are the leaders … its that simple. There is NO competition btw. Black males and females. None whatsoever. Men lead, women follow (within every race. I strongly believe it was what God intended.) I wrote a really long post and the only thing you could pick out of it to say and counteract was that “its blk women who are most threatening to white men” and a poem about black vaginas? I’m sry. I can not entertain your foolishness. People has gotta stop reading what they want to and believing what they want with no background facts and just for the hell of it.
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Ah! Took me a while to find it. . . .but, I came across my copy of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing’s Book, “The Isis Papers: The Keys To The Colors”.
First, before I begin, strangefruit, calm down, take a chill pill and gain your composure. No need to go into meltdown because I do not agree with you. No need to go into a rage. Life goes on, the world does not end.
As I stated, I read Dr. Welsing’s book. Quite a while ago, but, I have no need to lie, nor do you have need to accuse me of lying.
Much of what she writes, I totally DISAGREE with. SOME of what she writes in her book I AGREE with, particularly Chapter 9: “The Motherfucker and The Original Motherfucker” (pages 119-131.)
“Why do you think they went to such great lengths to keep black males and white females apart DURING (and after) slavery? Perhaps, the abolition of slavery caused the white males to rear their insecure heads a lot more OBVIOUSLY considering the black male did have significant amount of “freedom” after slavery … but nevertheless that fearful mentality was there long before slavery and it has been here long after. The white male has felt threatened by the black male since the dawn of time.”
“Since the dawn of time”?
So, white men live in Africa before the original peoples began to leave the African continent and spread across the world?
My understanding of evolution and human migration is that there were no people living in Africa 40,000-100,000 years ago who would be classified as “white”, so how could whites fear “since the dawn of time” the dominance of black genes (black woman, or black man)?
“Why do you think they went to such great lengths to keep black males and white females apart DURING (and after) slavery?”
You are preaching to the choir. White men kept black males from white females because they saw the genetic damage they (white men) were doing to the black race, and began to fear the same happening to their own “white race”.
Of course, whites thought slavery would exist forever in America, but, history and some of white society (all of black society) was against them.
I still stand by what I stated. White males used black as an end to a means.
Indentured servitude (before the enactment of rigid “black slavery”) allowed indentured black males much free access to white females who were indentured right along with them. Before slavery became codified as black slavery, European white women lived their lives not only with indentured white men, but, also with indentured black males.
Some masters even encouraged their indentured white females to cohabit with black men to produce mulatto children.
As the ECONOMIC interests of planters changed, their concern and color consciousness CHANGED. With the introduction of black slavery in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, it became a matter of public policy to use every means to create an UNBRIDGEABLE chasm between blacks and whites, black women and white men, white women and black men.
“The central point of this policy was the colonial white woman, who became the primary instrument for organizing the color perceptions of whites and for extending the economic exploitation of blacks. Defending her honor and purity now became a collective imperative.
“Through her, sex became politics, and bodies became counters in a surrealistic game. This had nothing to do with the white woman, who was a mask for a deeper purpose, which was the strengthening of slavery and the permanent subordination of blacks.”
“Before the Mayflower: A History Of Black America”, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., pgs. 300-301. (paperback, 1988)
White women were never always on a pedestal. They worked at hard labor in the fields right along with indentured white men, black women—–and black men.
“Many respectable citizens,” he wrote, “who are reduced in temporalities; on their decrease their poor orphans are bound out in gentlemen’s homes, and the employers are generally white, the servants are black, and the employers allow the blacks as many liberties as they think to take; and no distinction is made between the white girls and the black men.”
from “Before the Mayflower”, page 300.
There were many reasons for much mixture between not only white men and black women during the colonial period, as well as much mixing between white women and black women.
The first, UNBELIEVABLE as it may seem now, is that the colonial white women—-and the colonial white men—-did not know they were “white”. There was no conception then of “whiteness”. No name for it.
Second, no organized system of white supremacy/racism existed to define and focus the FEARS and anxieties of whites.
Third, and most important, most of the white colonists were indentured servants, who were subject to the same indignities as black servants and slaves and were held in equal contempt.
Therefore, your argument that the white man has vilified and feared the black man for thousands of years lacks support. In fact there was much, much more racial mixture in the colonial days between blacks, whites (and Native Americans) before the the early 1800s. Not to mention much racial mixture going on during Roman times, and before, as well.
But, back to America.
It was not always indentured white women either who went after black men. Some aristocratic white women had black men in their lives, where the granddaughter of one of the founders of a settlement known as Gouldtown, where blacks intermarried with whites and ACCUMULATED considerable property.
Before the institutionalization of the 19TH Century system, the major link of the racial-sexual network was the WHITE FEMALE. But, with the rise of the plantation system and the institutionalization of racism, the focus shifted to the WHITE PLANTER AND THE BLACK FEMALE SLAVE.
Some people state that white males having black women as wet-nurses on the plantations caused them to turn to black females for sex more than white women, supposedly causing white males to have a psychological fixation on black women and the parallel process that led to a glorification of white women.
Some people believe there is some truth in that concept.
I disagree.
As Franz Fanon (“Black Skins, White masks”), wrote, the mechanisms that make racists seek mates among their victims are functions not of nursery training but sadistic impulses created by a system of oppression.
Fundamentally, as Jean-Paul Sartre said, there is an “aura of rape and massacre” in every sexual encounter between a RACIST AND HIS VICTIM; and it was this aura that gave a “special sexual signification” to the sustained sexual assault of planters and their ilk (any white male both on and off the plantation.) agianst defenseless black females.
So, yes, white men could and did rape black women and girls not just because they could, but also because they lived in a society that condoned and sanctioned degradation of enslaved black women.
Back to Bennett:
“Plantation amalgamation, as a rule, was the result of what Calhoun called, “the master’s right of rape.” Although mutual attraction played a part in some relationships, force or threat of force defined all relationships. Despite what some commentators say, every sexual contact between a slaveholder and a slave woman was a symbolic de facto rape, for the simple and obvious reason that the institution of slavery and the power of slaveholders destroyed the possibility of free choice.”
“And just as a white man could rape a blk woman he could a white woman as well. White males has placed themselves upon a high pedestal for a long time … they were even oppressive to their women.”
You are preaching to the choir. It is well-known that white men suppressed their own women. The callous treatment they gave them before and after slavery is historically documented.
Of course a white man could rape a white woman just as he could a black woman. It is not as if he did not rape white women during segregation, and then blame it on a black man.
“Why do you think it is that today we have a group of white women who calls themselves “feminist?” who else are they rebelling against?”
Wow.
You obviously have very limited knowledge and understanding of the Feminist movement (Suffragette movement during the time of Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglas, et. al.). White women of the First Wave of feminism attacked and undermined black women so much that what could have been accomplished was destroyed because white women then (as now) wanted to be up there WITH the white man, not against him. Even with the Second wave (and the Contemporary wave we are in now), white women have never been feminists in the true sense (That is another post in and of itself).
Tell you what, for your edification on feminism, I am going to track down my post of feminism, and give it to you for your help in understanding the true origins of feminism in America.
“so just as blind to the real reasons why white men raped blk women during slavery times you are … so were the white males who actually committed these crimes. It is and has not been about the black woman all of these yrs. ”
Now, don’t let your rage blind you. White men raped black women for the reasons I stated and due to the social conditions that condoned the defilement of black females.
“It is and has not been about the black woman all of these yrs.”
It has been about black females as well as black males. Black women were raped because rape of them was sanctioned. Use of them was legally ratified. To leave black women out of the equation, is to leave out a very important aspect of race and sex in America.
You cannot speak of white women, white men, and black men without speaking of black women.
I would expect something of what you said from a person woefully ignorant of the dynamics of race AND sex in America. If you were more cognizant of the history of this country, you would not willfully leave black women out of the historical realities of this country.
“Men are the leaders, the women are the followers.”
Oh, really?
Only if they are good leaders, not just because they harbor the Y-chromosome.
Let those who rule well, rule……otherwise, get the hell out of the way.
Women are not to blindly follow a man just because he is a man. Women are to follow a man because he is leading well, not leading her and her children off a cliff.
“Compare the likelihood of a black man getting killed by the police “accidently” to a black woman.”
And your “point” is what? Because black men are more likely to be shot to death, that means a black woman cannot be shot to death? Okay, so I guess you have never heard of the black women shot to death by police? Oh, right, they were just black women, so who cares?
“If a group of men are oppressed then so are their women. Black women, as our men, are oppressed today.”
Where did I state that only back women are oppressed? Black women and men are and have been oppressed since they have been in this country.
“Its just, the black man is a lot more feared, a lot more desired, and a lot more envied and a lot more likely to be killed in early age because of this envy.”
Yes, yes.
Feared. Envied. Desired.
For the wrong reasons.
No matter what many people: white men, white women, black women—–even black men may conjure up in their thoughts against black men, they are NOT walking life support systems for a penis, the way so many people wish to look at them. They are not super-sex machines. They are not savages. They are men like any other man ; nothing more, nothing less.
“He is in the image God .”
ALL men are made in the image of God.
No one race of men is above or below any other race of men.
Men are made of flesh, dust of the earth. Therefore, they are created in God’s image. Only one Man walked the earth who was truly of God.
And his name was Jesus the Christ.
“I’m as stubborn as a bull and will argue my case like a lawyer defending an accused murderer lol ”
Glad to hear it.
The ball is in your court.
Abagond, Olivia and Stephanie, much thanks to you all.
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FEMINISM:
http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2007/01/02/the-origins-of-black-feminism/
Oh, and since you seem to think that white women created feminism all by their wittle selves, here is another post on the true trail blazers of feminism:
http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2007/02/03/the-combahee-river-collective/
A collective of black lesbians who were real feminists in words—-and actions.
There ya’ go.
Learn and enjoy!
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Thank you Ann for telling the truth. Like I said and I’m standing by my views, Black wombs are a threat to white supremacy because we begat more Blacks that challenge white supremacy. Strangefruit needs to brush up on her history. I suggest she reads Paula Giddings’ When and Where I Enter and Dorothy Roberts’ Killing The Black Body for starters.
Steph
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Another thing, Strangfruit. Black women are also victims of police brutality. Eleanor Bumpurs, Faith Evans, and Tyiesha Miller are prime examples.
Racially motivated hate crimes:
Megan Williams, Sherrice Iverson, Carole Jenkins.
Mass sterilization of Black women were about reducing the number of Blacks in America. It’s still going on today.
Steph
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Dorothy Roberts. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage, 1997.
——————————————————————————–
Dorothy Roberts is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School. She is currently a professor at Northwestern University School of Law, where she teaches criminal and family law and civil liberties.
Dorothy Roberts provides a thorough look at the degradation of Black motherhood and womanhood in terms of reproductive liberty. The book takes the reader from the value of Black women’s fertility during slavery, through their exclusion from the feminist agenda of a woman’s right to choose and their coercion into sterilization, to a discussion of reproductive technology as it furthers a system of racial inequality and oppression. The three central themes that run throughout the book are the 1) regulation of Black women’s reproductive decisions as a central aspect of racial oppression in America; 2) control of Black women’s reproductive rights, which has shaped the meaning of reproductive liberty in America; and 3) reconsideration of the meaning of reproductive liberty to take into account its relationship to racial oppression.
Roberts contends that the regulation of Black women’s reproductive decisions is rooted in a system of slavery that valued fertility because it benefited the slave owner economically. Slave women were given incentives to bear children and were often punished for failure to procreate. Their children were born into slavery and became the property of the owner, creating a labor pool that could both self-replenish and expand. Future fertility determined slave women’s auction block prices; in fact, they had no rights to their offspring (pp. 34–36). For example, women were often coerced into sex with male slaves chosen by their masters in order to ensure the constant renewal of the labor pool. Rape by masters was also common, resulting in a significant population of mulatto slaves. Rape was not only used to increase the slave population but could potentially create a submissive workforce in the long term. Roberts argues that by taking away control over sexuality and the rights of motherhood, slave masters took away a piece of women’s humanity and their worth as people in society (p. 30). She gives us an example of the beating of pregnant slaves as “maternal-fetal-conflict.” This separation of woman from fetus allows social policies and medical practice to treat a pregnant woman in opposition to the fetus she is carrying. Pregnant slaves were forced to lie face down on the ground where depressions were made to shield the fetus from harm (p. 40). Womanhood and motherhood could be separated, which enabled care of the fetus without regard for the woman’s health and well being.
Slavery gave way to the icons of “Jezebel” and “Mammy.” Jezebel was seen as a sexually insatiable character that welcomed sexual advances. She could not be raped because she was always ready for sex and could not control her sexual desire. In opposition to Jezebel was Mammy who was non-threatening and loyal to her master and his family. She raised the children and was viewed as the ideal slave and mother. These two historical icons formed the basis for the icons of the “matriarch,” the “unwed mother,” and the welfare queen.
In the next section of her book, Roberts notes that as the fight for women’s reproductive liberty began and birth control became more widely available to white women, Black women were being coerced into sterilization. The first Black birth control clinics were founded on racist motivations hoping to curb the Black population, an apparent financial burden on the economy. Sterilization was used to prevent poor women from bearing children. Roberts cites Buck vs. Bell (1927), which allowed Carrie Buck to be institutionalized and sterilized on the grounds of feeble-mindlessness. Many women were labeled as such because they were deemed promiscuous, had a child out of wedlock, or engaged in interracial sex (p. 68). Sterilization punished these behaviors and kept this undesirable female population from bearing children.
In the seventies Black women were introduced to a new means of governmental control over their sexuality. In 1970 Edgar Chasteen wrote The Case for Compulsory Birth Control and Garret Hardin wrote Exploring New Ethics for Survival. These studies concluded that over time inferior races would die out and sterilization would merely hasten the process (p. 89). Continuing this train of thought, in 1972 the Boston Globe reported that medical students at the Boston College Hospital admitted to performing excessive numbers of hysterectomies on Black women (p. 91). Another example highlights the link between poor Black women and inadequate reproductive medical care. The only obstetrician that accepted Medicaid in South Carolina’s Aiken County required patients on welfare to agree to sterilization after childbirth in return for his services (p. 92). In fact, this philosophy became so accepted that for decades sterilization was the only publicly funded means of birth control for poor women of color.
In the early 1990’s, Norplant was introduced as an ideal form of birth control that could be inserted into a woman’s arm and prevent pregnancy for years. Immediately, Norplant was targeted to low income women with the Norplant Foundation devoting 2.8 million a year in Norplant kits to low-income women who wanted to use the system and several states offering these women financial bonuses. For example, in 1991 Kentucky gave women a five hundred-dollar bonus for voluntary use of Norplant and fifty dollars for each year they used the system and in Louisiana, home of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, there is a one hundred dollar per year incentive for use (p. 109). Most women are not told that Norplant’s side effects include headaches, depression, acne, weight gain, hair loss, nausea, dizziness, breast tenderness, swelling of the ovaries, cysts, spotting or excessive bleeding, and the outside chance of stroke or heart attack (p. 122). Despite the fact that the process of inserting Norplant is relatively safe, the operation for its removal is not widely practiced and not nearly as simple. Depo Provera is another highly marketed sterilization method that is less intrusive though still involves hormone injection. However, its main drawback is that it is irreversible and women who receive the injection must wait out its duration.
Roberts devotes a large section of her book to the punishment of drug-addicted pregnant women. These women can be criminally prosecuted for child abuse or for supplying controlled substances to a minor (via umbilical cords). Many women charged with prenatal crimes are crack addicts. Crack is a variant of cocaine that is smoked rather than inhaled, which allows the drug to enter the bloodstream faster. Crack is also significantly cheaper than cocaine; its instantaneous high and cheaper prices make it the drug of choice in many inner cities. Disturbingly, half of the crack-addicted population is female. Thus, in the crusade to rid our nation of crack, crack addicts and crack babies, the war against drugs turned its sights on a disproportionately large number of Black pregnant women (p. 152).
Roberts notes that there are several links to poor Black women and prosecution for prenatal crimes. In 1990 the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project published a memorandum that showed that seventy percent of the fifty-two cases prosecuted against drug-dependent mothers involved Black women (p. 172). Roberts also raises the point that indigent Black women are under closer governmental supervision and are therefore most often reported to the authorities. For example, public hospitals routinely conduct toxicology screenings on infants, and this might help to account for the high number of poor women who are reported. In contrast to the legal and media attention on crack babies, the other numerous substances that are harmful to a fetus, including coffee, second hand smoke, and exposure to sexually transmitted diseases garner less public attention. In fact, the harm caused by excessive alcohol abuse far exceeds that of crack, but crack-addicted women are vilified and prosecuted to a greater extent than alcohol-addicted mothers. This unequal attention led all but one appellate court to invalidate the charges for drug use during pregnancy and spurred the American Medical Association to express its concern regarding reporting drug use in pregnant women because it often leads to incarceration rather than treatment (pp. 191; 167).
While there was an emphasis on controlling poor Black women’s reproduction, there was a simultaneous introduction of reproductive technologies whose goals were to restructure the nuclear family. Yet, these procedures are often withheld from single women, poor women, and gay and lesbian couples, which Roberts blames on racial bias and prejudice. In a section entitled “Creating White Babies: The Value of Biotechnical Children,” she outlines how such technologies, as screening for sickle cell anemia, are used to keep Black women from reproducing, while similar technology is used to create racially “pure” white babies. Women with sickle cell anemia are often discouraged from bearing children due to the risk of passing the disease on to their children despite the fact that sickle cell anemia is not the only prevalent genetic disorder. Yet, sickle cell anemia remains the only genetic disease screened for in these reproductive technologies, once again restricting the reproductive liberties of Black women.
Roberts’s final chapters give examples in popular culture that work well to highlight the reality of these technologies and their restrictions. For example, the first surrogacy adoption in 1978 was widely televised by the Donahue show and it was of a blond-haired, blue-eyed white girl, but could one imagine a multi-billion dollar industry to create Black children (p. 271)? The importance of these technologies being used to produce white babies is also highlighted in the case of the woman who sued her fertility clinic because instead of receiving the sperm of her deceased white husband, her sperm donor was Black. Another example of the importance placed on producing white children is the couple that adopted what they believed was a white infant only to find out that the baby was biracial. They promptly returned the child to the adoption agency demanding a refund (p. 272). These women received damaged goods and were able to make claims against the agencies because our society, where social status and economic positioning is based on a racial hierarchy, values genetic ties.
Roberts ends her book with a call for a positive view of liberty and the recognition by law of the connection between reproductive liberty and racial equality. She writes that “liberty is inadequate to eliminate the subordination of Black women. The abstract freedom to choose is of meager value without meaningful options from which to choose and the ability to effectuate one’s choice (p. 309).” This view of liberty does not take away the choices of privileged women but instead calls for facilitation of change and equality, and the protection of an individual’s autonomy free from degradation. This expansion of reproductive liberty makes room for all women to share the means for equality.
Steph
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Ann … that was really long. Some of your post I did not read; instead I skimmed through it.
Firstly, what gave you the impression that I was in a rage? Did I not address you saying I disagreed with your post or did I verbally attack you? (not literally of course) I don’t get where you got rage from. Interesting. Secondly, I’ll tell you that you said all of that just to say … well … nothing as it does not change my perception at all. “So, white men live in Africa before the original peoples began to leave the African continent and spread across the world? My understanding of evolution and human migration is that there were no people living in Africa 40,000-100,000 years ago who would be classified as “white”, so how could whites fear “since the dawn of time” the dominance of black genes (black woman, or black man)?” Maybe it is in reading comprehension skills and understanding that you are lacking. Whites evolved from African Albinos. They were the Albino mutant offsprings of their Black mothers and Black fathers. These Albinos (what we now know today as the “white” race) gradually moved northward (Europe) [they either moved willingfully to escape the intensity of Africa’s climate and sun or were alienated by their black mothers and fathers who rejected and casted them out of the community] this awareness has lived with them ever since (if you took my “dawn of time” wording literally… lol … then idk what to tell you. I am a writer and have a tendency to not be serious but figurative and exaggerate a lot of my statements) and it has played a MAJOR role in white Supremacy (an organization that has oppressed peoples of color for centuries.) It is of my understanding that when a person has a pattern of strange or destructive behavior it comes from somewhere; not from a healthy, happy place but a place of misery, confusion, rejection, and anxiety. Anxiety is the number one reason why white supremacy strives to this day … it is the anxiety known to whites conciously or unconciously that non color can be easily annihilated by color. Conciously or unconciously whites know that if all people were equal the “white” race would become the “brown” race [color is the “hue”man norm] and numerically they are a minority compared to the rest of the world’s inhabitants. Yes! They have known since the “dawn of damn time” that they were white, they knew “white” was a genetically deficient state conciously or unconciously. So therefore I discord when you say colonial whites did not know they were white [LMFAO] that is preposterous considering around the 15th century much of Europe questioned Catholism and the world around them (known popularly as the Renaissance or rebirth) they began to trade with the different countries of the old world (cultural diffusion, etc.) and noticed that all of these people were COLORED! And since they weren’t deaf, dumb, and blind (respectively) don’t you think (coupled with the knowledge, conciously or unconciously, that their origins lied in Africa) they’d know that something was NOT right? Whites have always known they were different, it is this same difference that they have taken and reversed and instead of wallowing in genetic inadequacy they turned it around to white powerful over nonwhite powerless. Destructive behavior comes from a place and that place is our brain computers (that is where white supremacy [racism] comes from.) The functioning of our brain computers can only be understood by people specifically trained to study human behavior, the brain and how it works, and yes those people are PSYCHIATRIST! NOT you Ann. You went in depth about indentured slaves (right, I think many ppl know that when slavery first came about the only colored that mattered was green, but then it did BECOME about race after indentured slaves proved to be not so profitable. After all, they couldn’t have those slaves forever. They tried permanent slavery with the Indians, it fell through … who were next? The Africans. I am almost certain if the Africans didn’t work out, they would have tried the Asians. Anybody of color..hm.) “Much of what she writes, I totally DISAGREE with. SOME of what she writes in her book I AGREE with, particularly Chapter 9: “The Motherfucker and The Original Motherfucker” (pages 119-131.)” Ahh… so you did read it? LOL … further validates my “point.” People, in the book Dr. Wesling claims that the term “motherfucker” is used frequently by black people in the U.S. In her attempt to decode this terminology she finds that blk ppl refer to the white male as “The man” … which would only leave woman and child left in the family. The perception that the white male is “The man” would leave every other nonwhite male with either two options … the woman or child (heterosexual males of color opts to be the child, thus liked being called “baby” and their girlfriend’s they usually call “ma” or “momma therefore it is a sense of “fucking your mother” thus the term “motherfucker) however … she was trying to find where the terminology originated from. She provides the following, according to Louis Leakey in his book By the evidence, human life began in Africa and the first “hue”man beings were black. It is possible for peoples of color to produce white (albino) mutants however it is impossible for albino mutants to produce black offspring. This brings her back to square one in which she claims Albinos (whites) were the genetically deficient sons and daughters of normal skinned blacks in Africa that were rejected by their parents and cast out of the community (might I remind you I mentioned that conciously or unconciously whites have knowledge of this) she therefore goes on to say that if the origins of whites are as she strongly believes (whites evolved from African Albinos that were rejected by the normal skinned blacks) then deep within the unconcious psyche of the white collective is an awareness of their origin amongst blacks (with blacks as their parents and them the defective offsping of blacks) therefore the white male at a deep unconcious level knows that his original mother was a black woman, they expose their unconcious awareness by referring to black women as “mammy, aunt, or auntie.” She goes on to say that each time the white male imposed himself sexually upon the blk female he knows at a deep unconcious level he is the original “mother fucker,” but the white male in turn imposes this terminology upon men of color considering they are powerless … so Ann if you agree with this chapter as you say you do then I can assume you know that your logic (“Therefore, your argument that the white man has vilified and feared the black man for thousands of years lacks support.”) is totally screwed up … no? Well I’ll gladly explain, you say that the anxiety mentality of genetic annhiliation in the white males psyche were not post slavery or even during slavery but in fact AFTER (as you claim whites didn’t even know they were white!) but yet and still, you do agree with Dr. Wesling’s chapter on who was the original motherfucker. So since you do I’ll assume you know what the myth of Oedipus is. Dr. Wesling breaks it down like this; the white man sleeping with the black woman (his mother) and slaying his father (the black man.) [Brings us back to fear and envy by white males of black males] I’ll let you see the flaws in your statement. As far as feminist goes you are right, I do not know much about feminism … for I am not a feminist nor am I a lesbian. I heard Truth’s ‘aint I a woman’ speech and found that not to be feminist but a black woman who was on her own without a black man — her rightful partner. Maybe I was wrong. White women, from an outsider looking in, would have no reason to be feminist … EXCEPT if there was something going on inside blind to the outsider (white male oppression against white females) lastly, it is funny you twist my words up and try to manipulate them into what you want. Don’t do that. Did I put any words in your mouth? Read what is given with understanding and not “blind rage”. Thanks. Black males are killed “accidently” in a police shooting in numbers far more than black females. I am a black woman- of course the black woman matters. The black woman is mother of the races. A divine woman she is … I just couldn’t take a poem that referred to black and white women as vaginas seriously lmao … whew, I’m still laughing- but yeah, anyway western society is almost transfixed on the black man (the black race’s best army). I say that from my own observations and what I see out of my own two eyes. It is my experience that the man leads and the woman follows. Maybe not to you, but this is my reality. I grew up in an environment where my father was and still is the head of the household. That is my reality– you have yours. My boyfriend is definitely a leader as I allow him to and he leads well. Blk men have it very hard today. Even when they are just baby boys it seems there is little hope for them. I sympathize. And yes, IMO the black male (man) is made in the image of God as well as his rightful partner the black woman … everyone else is mankind. Finally, I’ll say white supremacy (racism) is not something you can decipher studying history (though it is a part) but PSYCHOLOGY plays a very key role in understanding this destructive behavior. Studying “slavery” and not the psychology of it is backwards as hell. I’d recommend, umm … Sister Souljah’s biography titled “No Disrespect.” As well. A lot of interesting stuff in there. One more thing … I didn’t leave blk women out of history lol. You just read whatever the hell you wanted to read and in the true words of a Jamaican, “yuh lucky.” Lolol … kidding, just kidding. 🙂 I’m ready for your novel now lmao.
Dr. Wesling’s references; Keeler Clyde cuna moon child Albinism.
Albinism-Carl Witkop Jr.
The philosophy of Schopenhair, Metaphysics of love of sexes-Arthur Schopenhauer. La Reyna… I am politely skipping over your posts. I will check that book out though. I’ll go to the library on campus in the morning. Good day.
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” It is of my understanding that when a person has a pattern of strange or destructive behavior it comes from somewhere; not from a healthy, happy place but a place of misery, confusion, rejection, and anxiety. Anxiety is the number one reason why white supremacy strives to this day … it is the anxiety known to whites conciously or unconciously that non color can be easily annihilated by color. Conciously or unconciously whites know that if all people were equal the “white” race would become the “brown” race [color is the “hue”man norm] and numerically they are a minority compared to the rest of the world’s inhabitants. Yes! They have known since the “dawn of damn time” that they were white, they knew “white” was a genetically deficient state conciously or unconciously. ”
Whites obviously knew they were different from every non-white race they encountered. They had fears and anxieties with every further encounter with non-whites, especially blacks/Africans. What is now known as White Supremacy/racism was not a concept thousands of years ago. Whites were not a collective cohesive group thousands of years ago, the way they are today.
“Whites” were Britons/English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., before the creation of white supremacy. Before they left Europe in large numbers, they warred and destroyed each other: English fighting Spanish, French fighting Germans—even when they did not fight other “nation states”, they warred amongst themselves; Scottish Highlanders fighting Scottish Lowlanders.
ONLY with the founding of American racism did white people become “white” people. Of course this did not evolve immediately, but occurred over 1-2 centuries.
There were no “white” people as they are known today. Only with the codification of racial subordination of POC (socially, economically and legally) do we find ourselves in the throes of racism, individual and institutional: White supremacy.
Common sense dictates that they knew they were different, and of course inadequacies, fears, anxieties and terrors of “annihilation” became concertized in their brains when they saw how vastly different from POC they were.
“The functioning of our brain computers can only be understood by people specifically trained to study human behavior, the brain and how it works, and yes those people are PSYCHIATRIST! NOT you Ann.”
I never stated I was a psychiatrist. Are you?
One does not need to be a psychiatrist to understand human behaviour. Everyday interactions gives each person experience with various types of human behaviour—-good, and bad, aberrant.
“Well I’ll gladly explain, you say that the anxiety mentality of genetic annhiliation in the white males psyche were not post slavery or even during slavery but in fact AFTER (as you claim whites didn’t even know they were white!) but yet and still, you do agree with Dr. Wesling’s chapter on who was the original motherfucker. So since you do I’ll assume you know what the myth of Oedipus is.”
I agreed with her that “white men” were raping their “Mother” by sexually assaulting enslaved black women, not that they knew they were raping in essence “their original mother”.
Since ALL humans evolved from African origins, a white man raping an enslaved black woman could not help but be a “Motherfucker”—-one who has sex with his mother. And yes, I know about Oedipus, Jocasta, and Tiresias.
Whites knew they were destroying an entire group of people who were just as human as they were, which is why Africans had their knowledge, language, traditions, customs torn away from them on the Slave Coast, on the slave ships, in the New World.
“Whites”/Europeans would not through the years want to ever face the fact that 1( they (“whites”/Europeans) evolved from Africans; 2) That Africans had great civilizations before Europe did. How could they face such facts that flew in the face of their belief in the inferiority of Blacks/Africans? It would and obviously led to mental deformities and social pathologies in whites.
“As far as feminist goes you are right, I do not know much about feminism … for I am not a feminist nor am I a lesbian.”
I mentioned the Combahee Collective lesbians because they made a tremendous contribution to feminism. TRUE feminism is not just for women and children; true feminism includes men as well. Just as they made a positive contribution to feminism, so too have some black homosexual males (Essex Hemphill comes to mind) given much to the eradication of not only racism against blacks, but also towards the eradication of sexism against women, most notably black male sexism against black women in the black community.
“I heard Truth’s ‘aint I a woman’ speech and found that not to be feminist but a black woman who was on her own without a black man — her rightful partner.”
Her statement is feminism. Like so many black women of her time, and so many after her, black women have resisted BOTH racism and sexism. “Ar’n’t I a Woman?, she asked. Not just because she was a former slave who wanted to be carried over puddles—but, a black woman who wanted her womanhood and humanity validated. She fought against the hypocrisy of so-called white chivalry and double standard that raised white women up and cast black women down.
White women faced gender sexism; Black women faced the double jeopardy of Racism/Sexism. And still do. So, white women certainly would benefit from feminism but not the mainstream feminism that so many parade around as true feminism.
“It is my experience that the man leads and the woman follows. Maybe not to you, but this is my reality.”
To me the man leads the woman when he leads right, and when he who seeks to do right by her AND himself. That is MY reality. It is not enough to be a male that gives men carte blanc to lead—it is sound reasoning, respect, compassion, understanding towards all women, all children and all other men. The current capitalist patriarchy of America harms not only women, it also harms men. There are some men I would not trust to lead a dog (and some women too I would not trust).
Leading a family/nation is not to be taken lightly by anyone entrusted with that tremendous responsibility.
“I grew up in an environment where my father was and still is the head of the household. That is my reality– you have yours.”
So too, did my father lead as the head of the household. Whatever twists and turns the world gave him outside our front door, he took it well and was a good father to us all.
“Let those who rule well, rule.” I stand by that. Whether it be a man OR a woman.
“My boyfriend is definitely a leader as I allow him to and he leads well.”
Good for you.
“Blk men have it very hard today.”
Certainly they do. So too do black women. WE (black men and black women) both suffer (maybe in different ways in the eyes of the world), but we do, in this country and this world.
“Finally, I’ll say white supremacy (racism) is not something you can decipher studying history (though it is a part) but PSYCHOLOGY plays a very key role in understanding this destructive behavior. Studying “slavery” and not the psychology of it is backwards as hell.”
No, not backwards at all. Studying history gives one knowledge of people’s minds and behaviour. It does give you a window into their minds—-and souls. How people lived in their actions (during American slavery, indentured servitude, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, Age of capitalism, Industrial Age), towards each other, and towards people different from them. History does give much psychological breakdown in how people faced—or could not face the world, if you care to realize that it does. While one is studying history, one is also studying psychology, behaviour and actions that lead to consequences. Which is why America and the world is in deplorable shape due to White Supremacy.
Whites mistreatment showed forth their psychological pathology. Actions definitely spoke louder than words in how whites maltreated their fellow black human beings. Therefore, psychology is never hidden from view, even when one studies history.
“I’m ready for your novel now lmao.”
Oh, no, I am ready for YOUR novel, now 🙂
Now. . . . . . . .can we please stay on topic?
I do belive the post is entitled: “White Men and Black Women in Slave Days”.
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“Now. . . . . . . .can we please stay on topic? I do belive the post is entitled: “White Men and Black Women in Slave Days”.” It is of my understanding that you addressed MY post, I never acknowledged yours as the first couple were too long to read even if I tried. I skimmed it again. You said : [“Whites” were Britons/English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., before the creation of white supremacy. Before they left Europe in large numbers, they warred and destroyed each other: English fighting Spanish, French fighting Germans—even when they did not fight other “nation states”, they warred amongst themselves; Scottish Highlanders fighting Scottish Lowlanders.”] So … I can assume that you think disharmony within a nation means that the parties engaging does not know or are not aware of whom they are? Lmao, I’m sure you see the flaws in that statement. In my experience nations war amongst eachother in an attempt to unify… but if what you say is true then the Africans did not know they were Africans [they had civil war as well] the Americans did not know they were Americans. The Scottish did not know they were Scottish. Smh. That makes a lot of sense … not. Civil war was prevalent in Europe, not because they didn’t know they were all white, but because before and after the establishment of the Roman (white) empire that was what they were used to. They were struggling to establish a government. Fighting for a cause. The civil war in the United States is proof of that. Eat your words, because more often than not they make no sense. “Whites obviously knew they were different from every non-white race they encountered. They had fears and anxieties with every further encounter with non-whites, especially blacks/Africans” lol … you’re confusing me again … you agree or disagree with me? lmfao. I think you’re over there confusing yourself with your “intellect” lol… is this not what I have been saying all along? Or no … did you just read what you wanted to read with “blind rage” (lmfao … I still can’t get over that. It is a blog for crying out loud) haha … “What is now known as White Supremacy/racism was not a concept thousands of years ago. Whites were not a collective cohesive group thousands of years ago, the way they are today.” And who makes that true? Who says so? You? Bwahahalol…. “Common sense dictates that they knew they were different, and of course inadequacies, fears, anxieties and terrors of “annihilation” became concertized in their brains when they saw how vastly different from POC they were.” Lol did I not say that in my previous posts in which you went out of your way 2 “prove” (you didn’t prove anything) was untrue? Decide. Decide. Decide. I know sometimes decisions are hard to make. Another thing, why did Hitler kill Jews by the millions? It was because they were “semites.” With African blood … It was because although they were washed out like stone jeans and from the naked eye one could assume they were “white” Hitler knew better … lol … it is of my understanding that Hitler, Austrian Born German, was not American so therefore his thoughts (white supremacy ideology) were not thoughts he entertained AFTER the civil war considering he wasn’t even American! Lmfao. Yeah, but anyway … you’re saying that umm … white supremacy was established after they abolished slavery although whites knew they were “different” (but not white smh makes no sense) long before and feared genetic dominance. And I’m telling you no, it has been established long before. -shrugs- you’ve got your opinion, I’ve got mine. I won’t stop having mine and you won’t stop having yours (opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one.) Mine IMO makes more sense. Yours IMO is what you read out of a textbook. If you know that whites during prehistoric times (or pre-western civilization times) knew that they were numerically a minority compared to the vast majority of the world’s people, it is easier to believe that the white collective psyche began thinking of ways (thousands of yrs ago when they came across this knowledge) to control, manipulate, and minimize the number of non white inhabitants of the world than it is to believe that this strong, subtle, prevalent “ideology” that has destroyed millions of blacks and non white families through the adminstration of highly addictive drugs, guns (so that they can kill one another), poor education and diseases into the black and nonwhite “ghettos” of the nation was formed just a mere 200 years ago. Yeah, whatever! As far as the comments on feminism goes… What was your point exactly? That men made contributions to “TRUE” feminism? Lol … homosexual men, IMO are as good as women! Anatomically they’re men, sure, but child … “everythang” else is SWEET. Lmfao (I crack myself up hahaha whew) idc too much for your comments on feminism though. I skipped over most of it. And since you were so bothered by my men lead and women follow comment, then let me rephrase it … GOOD MEN are to lead, and GOOD women are to follow–was that good enough for you? Lmao … its the same thing, because my perception will NOT change.[“My boyfriend is definitely a leader as I allow him to and he leads well.”]
“Good for you.”
I KNOW RIGHT? THANKS! 🙂 LOL. Studying slavery and not the psychology of it is backwards as hell! (Yet I reiterate smh) studying why people do the things they do and where it comes from as opposed to just studying the things people do isn’t backwards– it gives you better understanding. When you know where it comes from and know what it does it is easier to diagnose and treat. Ask your doctor! Studying history tells about history– it is what the people in the past has done and what has already happened and why they conciously did so (generate more money, cultivate crops, blah, blah, blah)… there is nothing psychological about history … psychology deals mainly with what goes on deep within the unconcious psyche. It also seems to me that you are trying to “educate” me in your comments … but who gave you the qualifications? Is that why you make them as long as books? What exactly are you trying to prove … on a blog? I still stick to Black men have it harder than blk women which is why so many blk men, instead of identifying as the “baby” in the family (who with some good raring will ONE day eventually become a man) they identify as the “woman.” The white male sends them to prison (or they themselves) in an attempt to feminize the black man (being told by men when to eat (and being given BY men 3 meals a day), when to go to bed, when to shower with other men, and eventually they sleep with men) … this is because the white male is not threatened by a female and black males, unconciously or conciously know this, so some find it easier to be women. Yes, blk women have it hard. I have it hard. My momma have it hard. My sisters have it hard. My female cousins have it hard. No one ever said the blk woman does not have it hard. Stop reading what the hell u want 2 and read what is given. You are probably over there with your panties twisted in a bunch … writing stories and trying to “educate” (that is what school is for, I am enrolled in college. I think I’m being educated just FINE.. THANK YOU!)… educate yourself first and all else will follow. 🙂 yeah I agree stay on topic … genius.
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And also if you are stating that whites could not function as “one” because of the disharmony in Europe I beg to differ. That’s like saying in a house, a family of 5 argues and fights like cats and dogs amongst one another but has not the common sense to “unify” when in the presence of an “enemy” or “outsider.” When I was younger, 11 or 12 my older sister would kick my ass as we’d fight all of the time … but let an “outsider” come and try to do the same. We’d join up and kick that outsider’s ass– together. Think of the white collective cohesive with that very SAME mindframe … and yes! Thousands of yrs ago up until this day. Just look @ it like this … August 31st, 1980 the washington post reported that Poland, a communist country, was asking the U.S to increase credits for grain purchases from $550 million to $670 million. Does “enemies” (as you put it) bail one another out of economic difficulties? Yes… because the Polish, like the Western civilization is ran by whites and for whites. Other reports the west had lent the Soviet union $78 billion… So who is the real enemy, Black people are to ask. The disharmony btw. Europe in pre historic times did not mean they did not have the common sense to know when to unify, just as in present day society the western civilization (the self proclaimed “democracy”) has the common sense to “bail out” Poland and the Soviet Union (communist countries) out of their economic difficulties… Ann Einstein.
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Wow…..a tremendously loooong post. (Oh and a double-post, at that.)
I did not bother to read any of it.
We are both at a deadlock.
Anything else I have to say on this post: “White Men and Black Women in Slavery Days”, will definitely stay on topic.
Take care that you do as well and stop derailing the conversation.
It is possible to speak of black women without it unraveling and spiraling out of control.
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Ann, I know. It’s no use writing to strangfruit, when she derails the conversation about Black women and White men everytime we write about it. She’s not even from the U.S. anyway. How could she know much about our sordid American history without taking it out of context?
What say you?
Steph
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La Reyna… I believe I was born in Brooklyn, New York and currently living on campus @ a historically black college in Pennsylvania … which means I was born on and still currently living on U.S. soil. Now do you see why I usually skip over your comments? Smh. No merit whatsoever. Ann, you can call it whatever you want to … derailing and blah, blah, blah. I’ve made my point and backed it with some other good points. And yeah double the post to double the dose. I wouldn’t have to stray from the topic if you hadn’t addressed me and placed words in my mouth in your “blind rage” (that will NEVER get old) It was fun though girl, maybe we can do it again some other time? Lol toodles. Good day 2 all. 🙂
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I just want to say I enjoyed reading every bodies comments and this web blog. Somethings I didn’t even know about. So thank U All.
Especially You ANN. Thanks for those web sites.
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“What say you?”
I have some more literature for Abagond, and his readers 🙂
Off topic, for those who wish to know more on feminism:
-bell hooks: “Ain’t I A Woman?: Black Women And Feminism”. This is bell’s groundbreaking book on how racism/sexism have tremendously affected black women’s lives in America, and how black women’s resistance to this double jeopardy gave form and substance to feminism;
-Mab Segrest: “Memoirs Of A Race Traitor”. Segrest is one of the few white women radical feminists who acknowledges her debt to the contribution of black women and other women of color in feminism.
Feminism.
As bell hooks said: “It’s a black thing.”
Getting back on topic.
For more reading material on the first two hundred years of slavery/indentured servitude, I highly recommend “Many Thousand Gone: The First Two Centuries Of Slavery In America”, by Ira Berlin.
He explains how slavery in America evolved over a two-century span. Berlin reveals the color-caste codes of the Afro-Creoles of the Chesapeake, the survival of African culture in the South Carolina-Georgia-Florida coastal area, and the intermingling of Africans with French and Spanish in the Mississippi Delta area. His book is a revelation of how slavery evolved into the cotton gin-type of slavery that many people are familiar with. He chronicles the mores, lifestyles, occupations, conflicts, wars, and rebellions (Stono Rebellion, Bacon’s Rebellion, etc.) that made up the ongoing relationships between masters and slaves. Relationships that gradually changed to a more pernicious and savage enslavement for black people.
@truth.
“Especially You ANN. Thanks for those web sites”
You are most welcome.
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Thanks for the book recommendations. If you think of any others, especially about the truth of American history, please let me know!
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This was probably one of my worst posts, but it got the best comments!! Thank you so much to all who commented!
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Cress-Wesling is a color-obsessed idiot, nothing but played-out, 40+ year-old “everyone against whitey” identity politics bullshit. A perfect example of “Afrocentric scholarship,” a total oxymoron.
The idea that mass-rape of black slave girls (hot as it does sound) was common during slave times in the U.S. South says more about black peoples’ sex fantasies than any historical reality.
Black men are way more “into” white women than white men are black women. No reason to believe that wasn’t the case 140+ years ago.
I’m white and have only dated black women for 10 years now. From numerous conversations I’ve had with white dudes, I’ve learned that few of them share my preference for black girls.
No doubt plenty of black slaves were raped, probably more frequently by field overseers than by massa.
The far more likely scenario is slave girls slipping he overseer some pussy for special treatment.
That sh!t real enough for y’all?
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Abagond,
You really have to watch the ANTI-BW LIAR/HATER TROLLS like Prairie Villain.
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Laromana,
Not sure why you flagged my brief comments compared to the voluminous bile of strangefruit.
I know that the tone of my previous post doesn’t match the deferential, milquetoast tone white people are expected to discuss race matters in, but there’s not a damn thing “lying or hating” about it.
Dr. Frances is a retard, and any non-black scholar who tried to talk a similar kind of bull$hit would be rightfully ridiculed as a crackpot.
Hate to break it to you, but after dating a number of black women, I’ve known a couple who loved role playing master and slave girl in the bedroom, and it was their idea not mine.
I can point to the Duke rape hoax of a few years ago as an well-publicized example of the myth of white on black rape and how fallacious lefty assumptions about “race and power” fanned the fire of that travesty.
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Prairie Villian,
Your OFFENSIVE STEREOTYPES based on the “alleged behavior” of some BW you “claim to have dated/known” in no way applys to ALL or even MOST BW. Thus you’ve made my point. I CONTINUE to REJECT your VILE, TROLLISH, RACIST, ANTI-BW MYTHS, LIES, and HATE.
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Even if 25% of the African American population was mixed in 1865 and 75% were of pure African bloodline there is still NO need for any further mixing with Europeans to have a population of 75% mixed African Americans today.
Let me explain – Within that first generation after the Civil War that mixed population (25%) could have mixed / married etc. with 25% of that pure Black population and within one generation 50% of African Americans have some European genes and for future generations these populations continue to overlap each other, producing today’s current population of African Americans with little continuous European mixing. Thus when we examine the African American family tree and go back 8 generations (238 people in that original gene pool) you will most likely find one person or European descent and/or one person of Native American ancestry out of that group.
The slave name fallacy:
Recently Henry Louis Gates in the PBS doc African Americans Lives exposed the fallacy of possessing a last name directly from a slave master. Untrue emancipated Blacks were given the opportunity to choose there last names and most chose names of people the knew and/or admired.
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Question – Strangfruit – why do you say “only males can impose sexual intercourse.” you say it several times. In reference not to white men raping black women which would make sense (if understating the matter)….but in reference to procreation. Impose is not a word I would have chosen. Do you not like men. I know most women dont feel imposed upon. I sure as heck dont.
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Where did you get the tidbit that 25% were mulattoes? How could they know how mixed people were w/out dna tests? How coudl 75% of blacks be ancestrally mixed with european if only 25% were mixed due to slavery, if those other mixed blacks bred with the non-mixed blacks, wouldn’t the european dna diminish from generation to generation?
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The 25% comes from the U.S. Census which used to have “mulatto” as one of races you could pick.
If in 1860, just to keep the numbers simple, 25% of blacks were 50% European by blood and 75% were 0% European, then by blacks marrying freely among themselves over time 100% will become 12.5% European. It is just like when you pour milk into coffee.
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I just don’t understand how race mixing would be more common during the reconstruction though to the point that blacks are coming out with 25% admixture plus in today’s age?
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nvm
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That number still seems a little bit low to be me. I don’t think the majority of blacks were mulattoes, but surely more than 25%. Which year it couldn’t have been before 1870, unless you’re talking about free blacks. You would have to check the slave schedules before that. Maybe my line was just more diluted than average, but most of us are more than 12.5% european admixture and we’re only a prodcut of ancestral mixing, most of us are not ‘biracial.’ I always assumed it to be pretty common that most blacks were similar to us in a sense. I supposed it could have happened during the reconstruction/ Jim Crow, but I just dont’ see how it would be easier during those times as opposed to slavery? What about blacks who were 1/4 european or the ones that were able to pass after slavery wouldn’t that affect that number? I just don’t think that number is indicative of the amount of rape that occured, when so many people’s lineage says one thing and DNA another.
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I do not know if the numbers work out. You might be right.
I would not draw any firm conclusions based on your own family, that is too small of a sample.
One thing we do know from looking at the DNA of white Americans is that black African genes have been coming into their gene pool at a constant rate for the past 400 years. There was no one-off event that caused it, like, say, rape in slave days followed by a wave of people passing for white during Reconstruction.
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The whole mass-rape thing always struck me as improbable. It seems more probable that if a WM (back in the day) was interested in black women he’d pick a particular one and stick with her, at least for a while. The idea of every WM around doing it and each of them doing it with countless women seems unlikely.
On the other hand, the caveat that “lots of WM aren’t attracted to BW” also strikes me as irrelevant. Back then, if they weren’t married, they had their choice of BW and prostitutes. I’m sure that plenty of WM who preferred WW would still have chosen their friends’ pretty, young, mulatto niece over a white whore. His friend might become angry over it but it would be nothing like how angry he’d be if he slept with his pretty, young, white niece. KWIM?
Where my father’s from (small town in SC) there’s a large mulatto population and it’s known who is related to whom. Nobody openly talks about it but it’s “understood” that when, for example, a young black man receives preferential treatment on a job hire it might be because his white uncle put in a good word for him.
My father’s mother was “light, bright, and damned-near white” although her father is officially unnamed. We do know that her (mulatto) mother became pregnant while working as a housemaid for a wealthy white family. They never acknowledged her and nobody knows who exactly the father was but my father and siblings were often treated preferentially by that family.
For instance, my grandmother was quite poor but had a tab that was never paid at a white grocer in town. And when she was married, my grandfather (who was a black sharecropper) was hired on to unusually favorable conditions.
I think that kind of thing was quite common back then, but only in certain areas of the country.
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listen to the strangefruit song black men and you will know 2 leave white women alone
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Interesting excerpt regarding “Most of the mixing of the races took place after the civil war, after the slaves were freed.”:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VlGHUz8GfVsC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=white+men+attacking+black+women&source=bl&ots=i01Q1v1Mjn&sig=1byWTKgBeHORf3Ks9BxE75XNxaA&hl=en&ei=lpW3SrHpNtaF8QbHuJWTDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=white%20men%20attacking%20black%20women&f=false
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Thanks for the link.
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to Monica Says:
Slaves were highly valued commodities and their racial purity or mix impacted their value thus detailed records were kept reflecting these facts. They were also used heavily as collateral instruments. Fleet Insurance (then named, late became Fleet Securities now Bank of America) made millions of dollars (billions today) in insuring the slaves along with other corporation many still in business today; thus gaining seed monies from this institution.
Another fact in the book “Black History Book Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion” It was mentioned that most White people could look in the face and built of an enslaved African and identity the exact part of Africa and ethnic group the individual came from. It is important to mention that skin color and facial features may not be enough to accurately determine the level of racial mixture occurring in the New World since an ample number did come from as far as North and East Africa, Madagascar as well as from West African groups like the Fulani and Tuareg that are not exactly typical looking West Africans.
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I hate Steve Sailer but this is useful:
http://www.isteve.com/2002_How_White_Are_Blacks.htm
“In contrast, African-Americans are much more racially mixed than European-Americans. Yet, Shriver’s study shows that they are less European that was previously believed.
Earlier, cruder studies, done before direct genetic testing was feasible, suggested that African-Americans were 25 or even 30 percent white. Shriver’s project is not complete, but with data from 25 sites already in, he is coming up with 17-18 percent white ancestry among African-Americans. That’s the equivalent of 106 of those 128 of your ancestors from seven generations ago having been Africans and 22 Europeans.
According to Shriver, only about 10 percent of African-Americans are over 50 percent white.”
I think over time even the 17-18% will be reduced.
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http://www.isteve.com/2002_Not_So_Black_and_White.htm
This one is interesting.
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Abagond, I am curious. Please explain something to me. I recently found out that after many African Americans starting taking dna test, it was discovered that 1/3 of all African American men that were tested had y chromosomes of European origin. Now, if these test represent the greater African American population, that would mean that there are 6 Million African American men with y chrosomes since there are close to 20 million African American men in this country. Do you really believe that all of this race mixing occured after slavery? That is ALOT of race mixing. White men had access to black women as property for close to 200 years in this country. You do not honestly believe that men who could do whatever they wanted to their female slaves, chose not to take advantage of the situation. Yes there were probably some honorable men, but even some of the most respected white men, such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, were acused of having half-white children. In fact, they have proven through dna test that either Thomas Jefferson or one of his male relatives fathered a black child.
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And by the way, only 5 percent of African American women have mitochondrial Dna of european origin. That means that 6 times more race mixing occured between white men and African women. Again, I do not believe that all of this race mixing occured after slavery. White men did not have as much access to black women after slavery. Even today, white men and black women don’t interact that much neither do they express an interest in each other that much. So my belief is that this occured during slavery because slave women simply did not have a choice in the matter. And having sex with a slave woman is easier than having sex with someone who can simply say no.
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In my first comment, i mean’t to say 6 million black men who have y chrosomes of European origin.
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In case people don’tknow what I am talking about, a man gets his y chrosome from his father, who gets it from his father, who gets it from his father, etc. It remains unchanged unless a mutation occurs. Mutations could be why there are differences in y chromosomes. Women ( and men, I think) get their mitochrondrial Dna from their mother who gets it from her mother, who gets it from her mother, etc. You get the point. So if 1/3 of black men in this country have y chromosomes of European origin, they got it from a male paternal ancestor. Same thing with black women. If they have european mitochrondrial dna, they got it from a female maternal ancestor.
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Oh yeah, I must have spelled chromosomes “chrosomes” .
My mistake. But hopefully, you guys got the point.
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I think over time even the 17-18% will be reduced.
I doubt it. This is racist wishful thinking.
I will be satisfied when ALL the data comes in from a statistically significant number of black americans, randomly selected.
Too many of these studies authors “cherry pick” their data. I saw a recent study on this type which made blanket claims regarding “latinos” taken from two groups of samples: a public hospital in a Dominican neighborhood in NYC and a backwoods rural Texas county with the largest concentration of mexican americans in the U.S.
How those 25 sites were chosen and what the numbers are regarding them is going to be crucial for this project’s reliability. If Shriver doesn’t show us how his data was gathered, we can pretty much toss his study into the toilet.
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Another thing, just to give a genetic lesson for you guys who still may not know what I am talking about. A man is different from a woman in that he has a x chomosome and a y chromosome like this “XY”. A woman has two X chromosomes like this “XX”. A man determines the sex of a child in that a women contributes one X chromosome to her child and a man contributes either a X chromosome or a Y chromosome. So a man contributes a Y chromosome to his son, who contributes that same Y chromosome to his son. Chromosomes carry the genes that determined heredity.
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I agree the 17-18% will probably increase not decrease. Blacks and white are marrying each other more and more so the percentage will probably increase slightly.
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i agree with jeri i think it was during slavery also and during the reconstruction. I don’t think 99.9% of slave women were raped, but my guess is most were atleast sexually abused (rape or not) and actual rape i believe was probably 1/3 women were raped, similar to percentage of women raped today overall. All in all there’s no way to know for sure, because lets not pretend every instance of rape results in a child. That also doesn’t take into account sometimes people may have had an agreement, but I personally don’t believe there can eb consent when someone doesn’t have the option to say no. There’s only acceptance. I remember reading in a slave narrative how a slave owner gave a slave he bought two options. She could either work as a house slave and his mistress or he would sell her as a field hand to the worst plantation in Misssissippi. I don’t call that choosing of free will.
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I would say more “prostituted themselves” than “were abused”.
Women have traditionally used sex to try and better their lot in life and it should be remembered that in African slavery, this was actually a viable tactic. It was a risky strategy for black women under slavery in North America, but many probably did it anyhow.
Most surviving slave manuals are very clear on one point: sex with slaves, whether abusive or not, was the easiest way to create unrest in the quarters. Given what I’ve read, I’d say most sex happened between the planter’s immediate white family and house slaves and I doubt that most of this was based on rape – though certainly some of it was. The slave narratives in the Library of Congress report all kinds of different forms of sexual contact between slave women and white men, not just rape.
It should also be remembered that up until the mid-18th century, white indentured servants and black slaves were often housed in the same quarters and that there was probably a lot of sexual contact between the two groups. Tabitha, the “African” (but probably really Native American) slave of Salem shared her quarters with a black husband and two white indentured servants, IIRC (I’d have to look it up to be sure).
Another thing people forget to factor in here was that white women – and especially lower class white women – also suffered a lot of rape and sexual abuse during this period and very few women – of any color – had anything approximating “free will” on the point of who they were going to marry and have sexual relations with. Certainly, black slave women suffered more, but it’s very hard to disentangle the effects of race from the effects of gender on this point and they don’t always add up in linear form.
In short, the “miscegenation is a result of rape” story is just as much a myth as the Brazilian “miscegenation proves that white and black truly love each other” story.
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[Having now cast doubt on one of America’s most cherished myths, just let me zip up my flame-proof suit, here….]
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Understand something, rape doesn’t just mean physical force. If a plantation owner says to himself ” I’m horny. I wonder, should I have sex with one of these field hands?” So he approaches a slave. Now imagine the female slave saying something like this. ” Well, I like you and everything, but let me think about this for awhile. Give me some time. ” Now, doesn’t that sound ridiculus to you. There could have been some women who may have approached a white man as you say for “prostitution” but let me say this again. If a slave owner or any other white man approached a black slave women, Can she say no? He doesn’t have to force her physically. She would be terrified to say no. Now there could have been a few relationships, if you could call it that. People try to romanticize the “relationship” between Thomas Jefferson and his slave concubine. But do we really no what was on her mind at the time they were together. I’m not saying there may have never been attraction or love between some of these unions( such as indentured servants and slaves) but again, I am going to say this. Can a slave woman say no?
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Understand something, rape doesn’t just mean physical force.
Yes, it means precisely that in U.S. jurisprudence and in every nation in the west, AFAIK. What you’re properly talking about is called seduction or debasement of morals in most western nations, not rape. It’s a crime, yes, and as Deborah Gray White points out in Arn’t I a Woman? in ANY slave-master interaction, the threat of violence is always present, even if lurking in the background.
The problem is that this sort of coercive situation was also normative across a vast variety of gender relations at the time and not just among slave/master relations. A poor, single white woman at a mill was in a similar position with regards to her foreman or the mill’s owner. In a lot of situations at the time, a woman couldn’t say no, period.
I’m not bringing this up to deny the rape of slaves. What I am pointing out is that this has taken on mythological proportions in the U.S. because of the false comparison with upper class, southern white women of the time. These white women were in no way normative, and yet their experience is cast as ther direct opposite of the normative slave experience.
I think that much of what happened during slavery was seduction, coercion and prostitution. I believe that this probably happened at least as much as rape.
The problem is that I’m a human sexuality researcher and the more I look into this sort of thing, the more I realize that much of our opinions about sexual relations – let alon slave/master sexual relations – are clouded by an assumption that sex is properly a romantic and loving thing. Fact: for most human beings throughout most of history, sex has not been anything we’d consider to be romantic or loving. It’s thus difficult to project out understanding of today’s sexual relationships back on those times.
As I said, however, most surviving slave manuals indicate that “intimate relations” between the quarters and the Big House were a very bad thing, indeed, because they impacted negatively on a plantation’s “discipline”. This can be read in at least two ways: rape was resisted by slaves; sexual relations lead to certain slaves being “favored” over others and to fighting within the slave-holding caste itself (typically between the master and mistress).
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And understand this, I am not saying that the only reason why a black women would want to have sex with a white man is through coercion. But I am absolutely certain that coercion was probably the primary reason DURING slavery.
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And rape for that matter. It seems that some people have a hard times accepting the harsh realities of slavery. It was a dehumanizing practice. Women were sold away from their husbands, children away from their parents. People were beaten with whips. Why do you have such a hard time believing that coercion and outright rape was the primary cause of sex between white men and slave women. It was a evil practice overall. A man who would sell a human being, beat him, and call him abusive names, wouldn’t rape a women? Come on now.
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Lets not try to romantacize the situation.
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I just want to say one last thing and then I am done with this subject. I don’t want to demonize white men, or white people in general. Slavery is a evil institution and it conditions people into thinking that the slave is inferiour. People who could have been decent people became monsters as a result. Understand, there were white people who were against slavery, such as John Brown. There were many white abolitionist and whites who were involved in the underground railroad. So there were the good and the bad. But remember, slavery was terrible for black people.
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But I am absolutely certain that coercion was probably the primary reason DURING slavery.
No doubt of that in my mind at all. But coercion and rape are not exactly synonymous. A social situation, for example, can work to coerce you. Coercion, in other words, can be structural. Rape is always personal.
It seems that some people have a hard times accepting the harsh realities of slavery. It was a dehumanizing practice.
Certainly. But dehumanization actually kind of mitigates against the idea of instituionalized rape. Humans – except for a very, very small minority, tend to have sex with other beings that they recognize as human. In fact, this was the primary critique of sexual relations with slaves on the white southern side: that sex with slaves encouraged them to think of themselves as being “better” than slaves, as being potentially the equal of whites.
The problem here is that alot of different things are getting mixed up in the debate. I have no idea whatsoever why you think I’m claiming that slavery wasn’t based on coercion or that it was somehow “romantic”. What I am saying is that if you look at the slave narratives, you see a lot of different sexual relations on display and, given the way in which sexual coercion works, it probably wasn’t necessary to violently rape slaves most of the time. Coercion alone is enough to explain most of the sexual relations.
Take a look at what Max Weber has to say about domination: though domination is ultimately based on the threat of violence, if it has to use violence to have its way every time or even most of the time, it’s not domination any more. Domination works because the threat of violence is internalized and thus doesn’t NEED to be made explicit.
What it comes down to is that you think rape and coercion are synonymous. As a student of human sexuality in some pretty desperate situations (Is tudy sexual tourism and prostituion in Rio de Janeiro) I can tell you for a fact that one doesn’t need rape – or even necessarily the threat of rape – to feel coerced.
Gender relations in the 19th century were already based upon the notion that a woman’s body was not her property. There was a huge power differential between men and women and men in general could and did rape women, quite often.
And yet would you say that SEXUAL relations in general needs must be based on rape? No. Why? Because coercion usually got men what they wanted, one way or another, long before rape enterted into the picture. Usually structural coercion.
By the way, if you want to talk “romanticism”, nothing is more romaticized in American mythology than the notion of interracial rape.
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rape is defined according to dictionary.com as
“the unlawful compelling of a woman through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.”
duress is defined as “compulsion by threat or force; coercion; constraint.”
So, to the commenter I think Thaddeus: You’re telling me if a slave owner told his female slave, “if you don’t sleep with me I’m going to sell your children?” That’s not duress?
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“I would say more “prostituted themselves” than “were abused”.”
Response:
I hope you’ve read the story of Celia and Harriet Jacobs then. Both women didnt’ seem to enjoy the sexual advances of the white men in their lives. Both had children by white men, Harriet by a white man that wasn’t her master (to gain power over her master) and Celia murdered the white man who fathered her children. That doesn’t sound like either of them were prostituting themselves, that sounds like trying to survive to me and gain some sense of control over their lives.
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This comment came from prairie something
“The far more likely scenario is slave girls slipping he overseer some pussy for special treatment.
Hate to break it to you, but after dating a number of black women, I’ve known a couple who loved role playing master and slave girl in the bedroom, and it was their idea not mine.”
my response: first of all, I think rape did occur during slavery, to what extent, who knows? All i know is I’m still trying to figure out where those blue eyes, straight hair and white skin that I see at my family reunion came from…that’s all i’m going to say.
Secondly, I find it funny that there is always some excuse used to try and excuse the poor behavior of SOME white males during and after slavery. There’s always something. In terms of the slave-master role play, you participate in it, so why participate in it at all if you’re not into it and you know how twisted it is? Also, please look at the racism in pornography as it pertains to black females/white males and black males/ white females. Then look at what group consumes more pornography than any other group. I’ll give you a hint, it aint black females. That’s all I have to say about that.
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That doesn’t sound like either of them were prostituting themselves, that sounds like trying to survive to me and gain some sense of control over their lives.
I think we have different notions of what “prostituting oneself” means.
You seem to think that prostitutes are morally failed women. I work with prostitutes on a daily basis and I can say that almost everyone of them that I have met is a woman “trying to survive to me and gain some sense of control over their lives.”
What is your view of prostitution? My basic definition of it is “sex with someone engaged in in order to improve one’s situation”. It can most definitely occur under coercive situations. What the Jacobs went through would, to me, be a case of coerced prostitution.
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So, to the commenter I think Thaddeus: You’re telling me if a slave owner told his female slave, “if you don’t sleep with me I’m going to sell your children?” That’s not duress?
That’s coercion, duress, not physical duress, which is what both the dictionary and legal definitions imply: “physical” in that definition is anadjective applicable to both “force” and “duress” and not just “force” alone. Telling someone, “Have sex with me or I’ll destroy your family” is blackmail, coercion, use of duress and any number of criminal and unethical things. What it is not is rape. Ask any lawyer or judge.
This discussion would probably go a lot smoother if folks would quit presuming that I don’t think coercion was involved in master/slave sexual relations. What I AM saying is that in human sexual relations, coercion is usually a lot more complicated than simple rape.
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dictionary definitions of prostitution: ” a woman who engages in sexual intercourse for money; whore; harlot.
2. a man who engages in sexual acts for money.
3. a person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base and unworthy way, usually for money.
–verb (used with object) 4. to sell or offer (oneself) as a prostitute.
5. to put to any base or unworthy use: to prostitute one’s talents. “
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to me it just sounds like you’re watering down rape, that’s what it sounds like. To me, there is nothing complicated about having no choice but to consent. I don’t get it…why is it complicated?
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Yes, Peanut. I am, of course, talking about the sociological definition of prostitution, which is a bit more complex.
to me it just sounds like you’re watering down rape, that’s what it sounds like.
Nope, not at all. In fact, to the contrary: I’m trying to develop a language which is better able to understand coercive sexual realtions. If you hold to the position that “having no choice but consent” is rape, then a HELL of a lot of sex on this planet – historically and currently – is rape. Throwing all those different types of coercion under the rubric “rape” is, in fact, “watering down” rape and to no useful purpose because it doesn’t help us explain or undertsand what’s going on, but instead obfuscates our view.
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okay thaddeus…
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I don’t know thaddeus your post sound like “victim blaming”.
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The ironic thing about this is that rape and sexual coercion have become one of the defining characteristics of modern slavery according to the United Nations.
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Dani, how is it “victim blaming”? No one is saying that the women were to blame. In fact, the idea that people in coercive situations needs must struggle to the end of their strength is a form of victim blaming. It stipulates that if someone is coerced and goes along with it, they were really “asking for it”.
I don’t think you’ve really thought this “victim blaming” thing, or what it means, through.
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But let’s take Sally Hemmings as an example, seeing as how someone above brought her case up.
Peanut, do you seriously think Jefferson had to threaten Hemmings in order to have sex with her, verbally or physically?
The structural dynamics of the situation were probably enough to convince Hemmings that it was better to go along with whatever Jefferson wanted in this department. That’s structural coercion and its not to Hemmings fault that she was in that kind of situation.
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wats your point?
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i guess i just dont understand wat point ur trying to make
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Peanut, the point is that if we truly want to understand what went on back then, it’s useless to mythologize. Glossing black/white sexual experiences as rape doesn’t let us understand what went on. In fact, it often obfuscates some of the really coercive shit that still goes on.
For example, here’s a common discusion I’ve had on many occasions…
A: White/black relationships are impossible because of racism. You can only truly love someone who understands you and only a black person can understand a black person.
Me: Well, then only women can understand women, right?
A: Yeah.
Me: So that means you must be a homosexual too, right?
A: What?!
Me: Well, you couldn’t love someone who doesn’t understand you and you just said only people of the same sex can really understand each other, so…
A: But that’s different!
Me: How?
A: Black people were oppressed by white people during slavery and are still oppressed by racism. Women aren’t oppress… er, wait a minute…
So, neh? The rape myth obfuscates the really nasty and weird ways in which oppression actually works. We’re better off without it.
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I said I was done with this subject but I want to tell a true story that relates personally to me and my family. My sister’s family come from Canada. My dad married a black Canadian shortly after my parents divorced. Well, years later, my step mother told me about her ancestors. She came from one interracial union( well actually, more than one . She is extremely light skinned.) Well, she told me that one of the unions involved a black slave and her master. They were involved with each other for years and it produced a biracial daughter. Well, for some reason, he( the slave owner) became furious with his slave concubine. He beat his slave concubine with a whip, over and over, until it killed her. Their daughter, who was 18 at the time, was both furiuos as well as heart broken. She ran away the next day.. This happened in Virginia, by the way. She walked miles until she arrived in Canada. Most of us know that Canada did not allow slavery and many slaves escaped there. The daughter became a very out spoken women who fought for the rights of blacks in Canada. Now, do you think that coercion or rape didn’t produce this situation? This man beat his concubine to death. Do you think this was a healthy relationship? Rather he coerced or raped her, don’t you think she must have been terrified of him? Rape or coercion. Does it matter? And I agree with Peanut, what is the difference?
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Oh, yeah. Does that sound like prostitution? Don’t get me wrong. I am not naive. There could have been some women who approached white men in exchange for favors. But I still believe that coercion and rape( which to me can be the same thing) is the predominate cause for these unions.
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And again, a threat or physical force? In my opinion, if someone threatened to harm me as opposed to actually hitting me, it is still RAPE. If I am afraid he will do something to me, It is still rape. These slave owners were not naive. They knew that these women were powerless and they took advantage of the situation.
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@Jeri:
That sounds similar to my history! I am a black Canadian and part of my family has a similar history to your step mother’s. My great grandmother several times removed, was the daughter of the plantation owner as were several of her siblings. Her mother was officially married to another slave. She had seven children and guess what? The one child she had for her husband was sold away. It took over a hundred years for the descendants of this family to reunite.
As for the other children, they bought their own freedom or that of their siblings. The sibling I am descended from, was purchased along with her two youngest children, by her brother, and promptly set free. Her two older sons escaped to Canada and went back to fight in the civil war. They tried in vain to reunite with their family returning to Canada and starting families.
This was not a ‘romantic story’ of a plantation owner taking a concubine from the slave ranks and treating her like a wife. It was more like rape and coercion. The man had the gall to educate this daughter in order for her to act as a governess to her white half-siblings even though it was illegal to teach blacks how to read and write. I get the feeling that this plantation owner used the threat of selling her children and other coercive methods to keep her in line. It was probably as you said, the threat of violence or selling the woman’s children probably went a long way in keeping this woman as a ‘concubine’ despite the fact she was married. Her husband probably felt powerless to do anything also, otherwise he may have been sold or worse. A very coercive culture indeed! To this day, apparently, the white descendants of the plantation owners are ashamed of this, most keep silent. One white woman threatened to commit suicide should this ‘secret’ get out. After 150 years they are ashamed as to what their forebears did so much so, that they wish to keep it under wraps. Go figure!
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Jeri, I can’t understand why you’d fail to see that what I’m saying doesn’t negate your stepmother’s story in any way.
So let me tackle your only non-rhetorical question: “Does it matter? What is the difference?”
Yes, I think it does matter and there are some very crucial differences.
It matters first of all because, as I said above, the rape myth tends to underplay sexist oppression in general, with the violence black women suffered during this period set as a function of their race and a false comparison being drawn with white women, as if these were free. Simple fact: if you were a white woman – period – in the early 19th century you were not free. You were your father’s property until you became your husband’s property. Now, you may have had slightly more rights than a slave. For one, rape against you was formally illegal. But practically, if your assaultant was richer than you, all that needed to be proven was than you were “a harlot” and the rape charge disappeared in a puff of smoke.
In 17th century Britain, for example, gangs of wealthy youths often took to the streets at night to rape poor girls and women and got away with it, scotfree.
So, if the claim is – as I’ve heard it articulated many times here – that black and white relationships are fatally poisoned by the violence of rape during slavery days, this should hold true across the board between women and men.
The fact that it doesn’t indicates that this is a myth – not something natural, but something socially construed. And then it becomes quite interesting, because if you look at it with an anthropological eye, it seems that American culture will do whatever it can to keep the myth of interracial rape alive as a barrier against consensual interracial sexual relationships.
(It occurs to me that some people might be reacting negatively here to the word “myth”. Please note that “myth” is something entirely different than “lie”. Myths are generally rooted intruths, but have certain aspects of these truths emphasized and others wiped away in order to make a coherent “just so” story. Myths give us palatable truths without forcing us to look at unpalatable truths.)
A second reason why this matters and makes a difference has to do with the history of slavery itself and the various forms of resistance – both active and passive – that were set up against it.
Several years ago, I spent some weeks reading through the slave narratives in the Library of Congress. It’s quite interesting the number of different types of sexual relations between whites and blacks these narratives throw into the light. By no means could all be classified as rape. Most could indeed be classified as coercion. Some could even be classified as love, or something else. It’s a very rich and interesting archive and what it shows is the wide variety of black human experience under slavery. It also shows some extraordinary forms of resistance and survival which were undertaken using sex as a tool or a weapon.
You may not think it’s worthwhile looking at or recovering this history. I do. In fact, most non-Americans of all colors would find it endlessly fascinating. So let me suggest that your repulsion to this has more to do with general American views regarding sex and not anything to do with blackness.
Of course, Brazilians have their own myths which they cling to just as stubbornly as Americans. The main one being that sex during slavery times was, in fact, an expression of interracial love. I think both positions are extreme. I think interracial sex during this period was mainly shaped by structural coercion, not rape nor romantic love. Studying the history of sex under American slavery allows me to dismantle some of our own national myths and this is yet a third reason why this sort of thing matters and makes a difference.
Now, on the split between structual coercion and rape.
Female sexuality in the west is traditionally limited by all sorts of structural coercion. I could name a dozen black-on-black examples of this from black literature alone, just of the top of my head. Women have often been put in the position of “sex or else”, “marriage or else”, “prostitution or else”.
For example, let’s take your stepgrandmother’s story and block out the racial signifiers:
They were involved with each other for years and it produced a biracial daughter. Well, for some reason, he became furious with his concubine. He beat her until it killed her. Their daughter, who was 18 at the time, was both furiuous as well as heart broken and ran away.
Are you seriously going to tell me that that sort of story hasn’t been repeated uncounted times outside the slavery dynamic? There are people who’d make the claim that this, in fact, is a nutshell version of male/female relations over the past two milennia.
As for it being prostitution or not, hell, who knows? People think prostitution is an evil thing and don’t like to imagine their relatives engaging in anything remotely like the exchange of sex for favors, but the origin of the story you told could have been that. It could also have been in coercion and love. From what your family remembers, however, it wasn’t rape because the master’s acts were seen as being a BETRAYAL which caused the daughter to run away. That wouldn’t have been the case if it had originated in rape.
I would say, however, that if you call the original relationship “rape”, you are seriously underplaying the agency that your stepmother’s ancestor had and, perhaps, made use of. This was a very risky game and the people who engaged in it don’t deserve our scorn or pity and this is a fourth and final reason why this sort of thing matters.
Deborah Gray White, in “Arn’t I a Woman?” shows where such a relationship could end up if it went wrong:
Eliza was no common slave. She was arrayed in silk, with rings on her fingers and golden ornaments suspended from her ears. She had been the concubine of a planter who had separated from his wife and built a new house that he shared with Eliza and the two children born to them. He promised to free Eliza and her children but domestic problems prohibbited it. Instead of receiving her manumission papers, a bill of sale was issued to a slave trader who at once separated Eliza from her two children and sold them all into slavery. Only a few months passed before her face became ghastly and haggard and her once elegant form became bowed under the weight of her physcial and mental oppression… ‘Freedom for hersefl and her offspring had for many years been her cloud by day, her pillar of fire by night… She had ascended to the top of Pisgah and beheld the land of promise. In an unexpected moment she was utterly overwhelmed with disappointment and dispair… Now she wept in the night and tears were on her cheeks”.”
I submit to you that the story of Eliza is not a rape, and yet its consequences were far worse, far more tragic – in short, far more crimional – than those brought about by rape.
And you’re saying we should just forget stories like these and the social environment which brought them about? Because that’s what I hear when I hear you say “Why does it matter? What difference does it make?”
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Look, I am not discussing this to prohibit consensual interracial relationships. I am not against white men, or white people in general. I have nothing against interracial relationships. I just don’t want the written history of African Americans or slavery changed just to keep whites from looking bad. Look, I am going to say this again. Slavery and the jim crow system turned people who could have been decent people into monsters. Think about the violent reactions that white southerners had to intergration. Think about the hundreds of thousands of blacks who were murdered( lynched) AFTER SLAVERY. You may say only a few thousand blacks were lynched but there were WHOLE TOWNS of blacks that were wiped off the map simply because racist whites were jealous of that towns success. My father recently sent me information about one town that was considered “Black Wall Street” that was destroyed because whites were jealous of their progress. And this happened more than once. Okay, so I am not trying prohibit interracial relationships. When two people who are equal, who respect each other, who love each other are in a relationship, it is wonderful, no matter what the color. But that wasn’t the case in slavery. Even if the slave women was attracted to her master, the fact that he OWNED her must have made it difficult for her to trust him and trust is a very important part of a relationship..You say it is structural coercion as opposed to direct coercion. How do you know this for sure? Peanut gave an example of a women who was given a choice between being a field hand on the worst plantation in Mississippi or his mistress. Are you saying that the coercion was never direct? Why assume this? Like I said before, slavery turned some people into monsters. The coercion may not have always been direct. No, not always but will we may never know.
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And your saying that women in general, especially if they were poor, were considered property. But white women were never sold on the auction block for money. So there is a big difference. The threat of being sold had to be a constant concern for black slave women.
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And the situation that took place in New Orleans a systemed called the placage( I think that is what is called, I am too lazy right now to look it up) may not be called direct coercion. Well, maybe it would be called structural coercion. This system created the modern Creole of color. Black( often mixed) women offered themselves to white men through what people called Quadroon balls in the 1700 and 1800’s. The mothers of these young women would come up with an agreement at the Quadroon balls with these white men. These men were to provide for these young black women and their future offspring financially. Well, often time these women were free women of color, so the situation may not have been as bad. Yeah, it may not always have been direct coercion but when a women is a SLAVE. Once again, the threat is always implied.
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Well, I will say this. Free black women may not have had many options in how to provide for themselves. I mean, they may not have been slaves, but they still faced discrimination. When faced with absolute poverty, they may have felt that the placage system was their best choice. But I admit, if these women felt threatened if they didn’t participate in this system, Yes I would call it rape. Maybe they felt pressured. I don’t know. Whenever you have a system where the man has way too much power over his partner, When the woman is considered inferior and treated as such, When the women feels she doesn’t have a choice in the matter, I would say the relationship (once again if you could call it that) wouldn’t be considered healthy.
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Relationships should be between two equals, not where the man has power over life and death, over the woman. It should involve mutual respect, love, and COMMITMENT. It wasn’t uncommon for the white men who participated in the placage system to abandon their black concubines. The women, now burdened with children, were faced with poverty once again.
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And when I say equal, I mean they are treated equal under the law. If he could kill, maim, abuse, and abandon his partner without any repercussions, then once again, what kind of union is this.?
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Thaddeus, rape is rape. Still don’t get the point you’re trying to make. Rape dressed up in nice clothes and sweets and a nice rape house is still rape…
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“if you were a white woman – period – in the early 19th century you were not free. You were your father’s property until you became your husband’s property. ”
the difference is you didnt’ get put on the auction block and sold away from your family. You didn’t get listed as “property,” next to horses and carriages and acres of land. I wish people would stop the condescending attitude, where they think they know everything there is to know and have the “true” answers to everything, when really they’re just as ignorant as the people they try to condescend to.
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you can play word games all you want and try to talk around the word ‘rape’ if its your opinion to call it ‘coercion’ so be it. It doesn’t change anything in my eyes and I still call it rape and will continue to.
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Peanut, Ana and I were talking about this over dinner and we both came to the same conclusion: It is, in fact, more comfortable to believe that rape during slavery times was the norm instead of what we’re talking about.
If the “bad stuff” happened because of a handful of evil men who violently raped black women, then we’re pretty good, I’d say. Every white guy in the world can say “I wouldn’t rape a woman under any circumstance” and 90% of them would be right. It’s MUCH easier to wave rape away as something which involved evil and unenlightened people, not people like us.
The fact of the matter is, it was much worse than that. Eliza’s story – and the story of Jeri’s step mother – were probably a lot more common than rape. How do we know this? Simple: such stories outnumber rape stories in the slave narratives by a considerable margin.
Now think about what Eliza’s story probably means.
Here’s a guy who probably honestly loves this slave woman. He has two kids with her. He means to manumit her. But in, say, Alabama or Georgia in the years leading up to the Civil War, manumission became every more difficult, legally, until it was finally offcially abolished in all but a hand ful of cases. The white guy in quesation is no legal eagle. As J.W. Cash, probably one of the most insightful of America’s historians of the south, would have it, he was more likely than not some white trash, barely literate Irish immigrant himself who was in the right place at the right time to catch onto the cotton rush. He almost definitely wasn’t some highly educated white Virginian cavalier, the kind you see in movies like Gone with the Wind. In fact, there’s a better than even chance that he was one generation removed from servitude himself.
So he’s a bit at sea, legally speaking when it comes to how to conduct manumission in an ever more hostile legal environment.
(Btw, if you think i’m making this up, this story so far is apparently what happened to the white father of Michael Healy, the first “black” captain in the history of the U.S. naval forces. You might want to look at his story here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Healy. Healy was not married to a free woman, btw. A Smithsonian article I have in my files deals with that point: his wife was a slave.)
But this hypothetical white guy’s not too worried. He’s relatively young and strong. There’s plenty of time for everything.
Unfortunately, he dies of a sudden heart attack while still in his early 40s. His common-law wife and kids have not been manumitted. They are still legally slaves. They are, of course, sold off with the rest of the household property to meet debts.
The horror of the story above is that it needs no Simon Legree, no absolutely evil and violent man, for it to occur. Things happen because that’s the way society has set them up to happen. It’s what Hanna Arendt calls the banality of evil. And THAT, my friend, is what made slavery so awful and horrible.
The problem is that you are a 20th century american, raised on Hollywood. You firmly believe in black hats and white hats, good guys and bad guys. It is inconceivable to you that bad stuff can happen simply because an entire social system is set up to make it happen that way – for PROFIT. In order to relate to a system of oppression, you want to see learing, drooling villians and you’re so addicted to this view of history and the world that you’re sure they must exist in any system you see as evil.
But the fact of the matter is – as anyone who’s studied Nazi Germany can attest to – looney psychopaths don’t make social-poltical systems that function. Evil, when it arises in human affairs, is a small thing that’s rapidly assimilated into peoples’ daily lives. It’s the white man’s sister, in the story above, calmly settling her brother’s affairs without even thinking about the human anguish that she’s causing. It’s you Americans, nice people that you are, watching the president you voted for send tens of thousands of more troops and bombs to Afganistan and basically not saying anything.
This is how evil works on the social level, Peanut. Not because 2,000,000 Simon Legrees are rubbing their dirty little hands and planning nastiness, but because otherwise normal, rational and even NICE men and women just stop thinking about it.
So, ironically enough, when it comes down to brass tacks on tis issue, I’d say you’re taking the romantic Pollyanna position my friend. I can tell you firmly and truthfully that, as a white man, I would much rather believe that miscegenation in the slave south was the process of rape. It is much easier for me to emotionally deal with that because I know damned well that I’m not a rapist.
What’s harder to deal with, harder to understand, is a system in which even relatively good men could end up creating a situation like Eliza’s.
So you go ahead and believe your rape myths, Peanut. The reality of what we’re talking about was far nastier, far dirtier than a made-for-t.v. Hollywood special can handle.
Rape, in the final analysis, was very much the least of it.
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Oh and by the way, your comment that white women were not property?
The vast majority of white Europeans were property up until the late 18th century. They were serfs. They could be – and were – legally sold along with estates. Their only “right” in most cases was that thyey couldn’t be spearated from the estate, at least officially.
Nevertheless, in many, many cases, they were.
The problem with this sort of debate is that it presumes that all white people were free agents on the lines of Scarlet O’Hara and Rhett Butler. In fact, the vast majority of white people themselves were a generation or two removed from servitude in 1850.
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Co-sign with everything peanut mentioned. And jeri, too. TB, you can debate about the meaning change of rape. It is what it is.
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thankyou leigh 204. I am going to say this again. When you don’t have power over your own body. When you can’t say no without repercussions. It is ALWAYS rape.
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This post is about black women and white men during slavery. How did it veer off into serfdom and peasantry?
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and the hardships of white women in those times as well. I was wondering the same thing Herneith. Happy New Year everyone 😀
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Happy New Year AO, Leigh, and everyone else!
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“The problem with this sort of debate is that it presumes that all white people were free agents on the lines of Scarlet O’Hara and Rhett Butler. In fact, the vast majority of white people themselves were a generation or two removed from servitude in 1850.”
don’t insult me, i’m well aware of servitude, still not the same as chattel slavery.
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and don’t assume that i assume anything, you don’t know me.
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this debate could go on forever, i think we both know that. you can have your point of view and I can have mine. Let’s leave it at that.
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Thaddeus Blanchette Said:
“Oh and by the way, your comment that white women were not property?
The vast majority of white Europeans were property up until the late 18th century. They were serfs. They could be – and were – legally sold along with estates. Their only “right” in most cases was that thyey couldn’t be spearated from the estate, at least officially.”
That’s not true!
A serf was a landless person not a slave! It’s been confused with slavery. I think you’re talking about East european and Russian serfdom!
In fact peasants in the middle ages (11th – 16th centuries) didn’t have it that bad!
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don’t insult me, i’m well aware of servitude, still not the same as chattel slavery.
Obviously. What would Franz Fanon say about that, however? I think he’d say that it’s utopian in the extreme to get hung up on how one kind of inhuman behavior is “better” than another.
and don’t assume that i assume anything, you don’t know me.
I’m just following your lead, Peanut. You made some pretty heavy assumptions about me and what I’m saying. If you don’t like that sort of thing, you should refrain yourself. Otherwise, you have no cause for complaint.
That’s not true!
A serf was a landless person not a slave! It’s been confused with slavery. I think you’re talking about East european and Russian serfdom!
In fact peasants in the middle ages (11th – 16th centuries) didn’t have it that bad!
First of all, in Western jurisprudence a serf was not a landless person: he was property. PART of the land, in fact. He went along with it and was quite, quite sellable.
Secondly, while serfdom took longer to be eliminated in Russia than elsewhere in Europe, the majority of white europeans were still serfs in the 18th century – in and out of Russia. And certainly, the Scots-Irish who made up much of the white immigrant class in the south didn’t “have it good” during the middle ages.
Finally, serfs and slaves were indeed the exact same thing in English jurisprudence until about the 18th century. “Slave” comes from “slav” and it indicates a serf who was born in foreign lands and who, presumably, was not Christian.
Ironically, you might have a point if you were talking about Spain and Portugual, because in those countries, the Roman institution of foriegn slavery never completely died out and significant juridical differences existed between serfs and slavs. But in England, that wasn’t the case. Slavery had died out some 500 years before the colonization of the Americas. The original laws restricting black behavior were simply the same laws that were applied to servants. This situation began to change in the 18th century as the planter class in the Americas began to see that dividing white trash and blacks would make the system a hell of a lot more solid.
Early slave revolts in what was to become the U.S. contained both white servants and black slaves. The British Carribean was originally colonized by white prisoners forcibly removed from Ireland by Cromwell. They died by the tens of thousands in the tropics and it was only then that England decided to go with slaves from more acclimatized peoples in Western Africa.
So while this may be shocking to you, Peanut, the histories of white trash Americans and black Americans are not so far apart in the first centuries of colonization. They were consciously separated by the master class.
The ironic thing here is that you seem to presume the same exact thing as white racists: whites were never slaves.
As for rape during slavery, again, I’ll repeat what I said above and which, in the storm of knees jerking, was obviously not read by you, Leigh or Jeri:
The situation was actually far WORSE than the word “rape” implies. If you want to get white people to really think about what sexual relations during slavery meant, rape is actually a much more comfortable thing to salient. Most men are not and would not be rapists under any circumstances and nop ammount of rhetoric is going to convince them otherwise.
But what was evil about slavery was that it didn’t have to count on rape to create what black slaves themselves universally recognized as some of the worst situations of oppression imagineable.
But hey, man: you keep tossing that buzzword “rape” around if it pleases you.
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By the way, Peanut, I find it ironic how you’re willing to gloss a whole series of inhuman activities as “rape” when we’re talking about sexual behavior under slavery, but when we come to forms of servitude, you’re willing to split hairs until the sun goes down.
Why the generalization in one situation and the differentiation in another?
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i said what i said
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Why the generalization in one situation and the differentiation in another?
This post isn’t about serfdom or various forms of sevitude in other countries or white women’s legal rights in times past. It is about relations between black women and white men in the ante-bellum South. This is the Arab Trader arguement at its finest.
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Herneith, when people bring up the concept that white women were never sold and claim that they were somehow sexual free agents during this period, I think it is quite relevant to recall what the actual and historical situation of white women was.
It seems to me that you do not like this because you really don’t have a good way of incorporating the simple, obvious fact that the vast majority of whites were not free for most of European history into your personal beliefs.
The Arab Trader argument is that other people enslaved black people worse than whites. I have not mentioned Arabs or blacks, not have I said – or even implied – that black slavery in the U.S. was anything but inhuman and horrible. The fact that you bring it up here only demonstrates that you don’t understand what the Arab Trader argument is: it’s simply a convenient buzz term for you to drop into a conversation when you don’t like someone’s point.
What I HAVE said is that it is ludicrous to presume that sexual relations between whites during this period were generally based on love or respect for women’s rights. While legally, yes, you could get away with murdering a slave, you could also get away with murdering a woman, simply by showing that she had a reputation as a whore or loose woman. Women were property during this period, legally speaking, slave or “free”.
What I HAVE said is that a wide-ranging series of sexual relationships were conducted between white and black during this period and what evidence we have is that the majority of these weren’t based on violent rape, but on a structural coercion which – even in those cases where two people really loved each other – could quite easily end up creating a horror story for the black person involved.
This is what I find quite interesting: what I’m saying is that the situation was actually WORSE than the rape myth would lead us to believe. This opinion of mine, by the way, is based on what cutting edge black historians themselves are discussing today.
That is hardly defending slavery, friend, or claiming that slavery was somehow “softer”. and it is CERTAINLY not applying the Arab Trader argument.
Your knee is jerking so hard, Herneith, that I’m surprised you don’t bite your tongue. I’m showing you how sexual relations during slavery were actually more perverse and WORSE than you imagine and – for whatever reason – you’re hung up on the word “rape”. As if rape were the worst thing that could happen to a person…
Read Eliza’s story again and reflect that it probably involved a white man who sincerely cared for her.
That, to me, is far more chilling than rape and that sort of story was probably as common, if not more common, than rape because, when it comes right down to it, very few men of any color are – or were – rapists.
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It is important for me to say this. I did not bring up this topic to create divisiveness between blacks and whites. But I think it is important for people to be realistic about history and what happened. I don’t like it when people try to pretty up an ugly situation. Yes maybe some white slave owners were better to slave women and their biracial children than others, but remember when a person cannot decide their own fate, can’t decide who they want to have sex with, it can not be considered anything but rape. I think when people think of rape they think of violence. Maybe the slave masters thought they were being good to the women, but the women were property, not free. So it can not be considered a relationship. Period. If the men were good to these same women in a marriage, it would be different.
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I don’t like it when people try to pretty up an ugly situation.
Jeri, answer me one simple question, please.
Given what I’ve said above regarding Eliza and the possible results of ANY interracial sexual contact during slavery, how am I “prettying up an ugly situation”?
I sincerely think that you are reacting to something else and not to what I am saying. You think I’m saying rape didn’t exist so that makes slavery OK. In fact, I’m saying that rape, when it comes down to it, wasn’t anywhere near as big a problem as other things.
You say you’ve read the slave narratives at the Library of Congress, correct? Count the number of times people talked about rape as opposed to the number of times they talked about situations like the one involving Eliza or your stepmother’s ancestor.
Don’t you see? Rape wasn’t the main issue: lack of legal recognition or any safeguards whatsoever for slave women and their children: THAT was the issue. The number one fear of the people who gave those depositions wasn’t rape: it was seeing their family broken up and sold, WHOMEVER the father might be.
As for “relationships”, I presume you’re using that word in its 21st century sexual/affective sense, correct? NO sexual/affective relationships back in the 19th century would meet today’s standard. Women were property in general, period. Marriage was a very, very slim reed on which a woman could pin her hopes as it gave her next to no rights. Any casual persual of women’s history will clearly show you this.
A man could legally rape his wife up until about 40 years ago in the U.S. You know this, right? That’s FORTY years ago – not 140. Marriage did not protect women.
What marriage did do was protect the inheritance rights of women’s children and that’s about all it did. White bastards were as SOL as any slave.
So I think it is very, very utopian to judge what was going on back then by today’s cosmopolitan (or should that be Cosmopolitan?) standard. The proper way to look at it is in the context of its own time. As a 21st century woman, embued with the discourse that sex is one of the most important things in life, loss of sexual autonomy is logically one of your greatest fears. 19th century women – of any color – didn’t have any sexual autonomy to begin with. Loss of FAMILY: that’s what women feared, as family was one of their only means of getting on in the world, their only means of protection.
This is why, for example, that I am surprised that Abagond seems shocked that Sally Hemmings didn’t leave Jefferson when she was in France. Well, what in heaven’s name was Hemmings going to do there? What positive improvement in her life would she have? She’d be free, that’s one thing. But what good is that when freedom meant that, as a non-virgin, unmarried serving girl (of any color), she’d probably either have to work as a maid or a prostitute in order to support herself?
When you look at what her options were, it’s quite easy to understand why Hemmings would stay with the known situation. At the very worst, it provided her with a higher standard of living than she’d have had running with the mob through the French streets. At best, she’d have her family around her and that was more protection than the law offered any woman, slave or free, in 1796.
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Thaddeus Blanchette says:
First of all, in Western jurisprudence a serf was not a landless person: he was property. PART of the land, in fact. He went along with it and was quite, quite sellable.
Sellable to who exactly!? The lord of the manor couldn’t sell the serfs! Infact even the land he had was not his during the middle ages! Btw the “part of the land” thing is a phrase not an actual law! Many peasants or serfs could freely leave the land. Most of time they didn’t because travelling was expensive and awkward!
Thaddeus Blanchette says:
“Secondly, while serfdom took longer to be eliminated in Russia than elsewhere in Europe, the majority of white europeans were still serfs in the 18th century – in and out of Russia. And certainly, the Scots-Irish who made up much of the white immigrant class in the south didn’t “have it good” during the middle ages.”
Officially maybe, In practice serfdom was done with in western and central europe by about trhe 17th century! This is simple common knowledge to any historian!
Thaddeus Blanchette says:
“Finally, serfs and slaves were indeed the exact same thing in English jurisprudence until about the 18th century. “Slave” comes from “slav” and it indicates a serf who was born in foreign lands and who, presumably, was not Christian.”
True enough!
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Sellable to who exactly!? The lord of the manor couldn’t sell the serfs! Infact even the land he had was not his during the middle ages!
Actually, the land did indeed go along with his title and he could sell it. This is, in fact, what the nobility was notorious for doing when they needed to raise cash in a hurry. Sales didn’t happen much in the middle ages because it wasn’t a cash economy, for heaven’s sake. But land was given and the people on it were also given, like cattle. Furthermore, when we get to the primoridial moments of capitalism – the 15th and 16th century – land was indeed sold by nobles, along with the serfs on it. Turns out that most of these serfs ended up being superfluous and were kicked out of their homes, giving rise to the white urban proletarian and lumpen, but that wasn’t because of any concern for them or their rights. And yes indeed, serfs were property: giveable, tradeable and sellable, just like Pokemon.
Officially maybe, In practice serfdom was done with in western and central europe by about trhe 17th century! This is simple common knowledge to any historian!
Oh really? 1600 you say? Western Europe? The same Western Europe of which France, Portugal and Spain are part of, where servitude most certainly didn’t die out 1600 or even 1700? I guess I must be a piss poor historian, then, because when I look at the history of the French Revolution (the late 18th century, if you’ll recall), I see the serf issue as alive and kicking.
I think you’re making a very common anglophonic ethnocentric mistake, Vindicator: you seem to feel that the history of England is the exact same thing as the history of Western Europe. But even in England, servitude lasted as a mass phenomenon until the END of the 17th century and certain forms of servitude lasted well into the 19th. You just don’t think of them as “servitude” because you’re focused on the black experience, which is understandable.
But to think that the vast majority of Europeans were free men and women in 1600 AD… I’m sorry, but what history book are you reading which says that?
There are many forms of servitude: chattel slavery is only one of them. The problem with you Americans, again, is your binary thinking: you only believe in two options: black/white, pepsi/coke, ford/chevvy. For you, it it wasn’t slave it HAD to be free. Historically however, that simply wasn’t the case.
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The illustration Abagond has chosen for this post is ironic. It is from an anti-abolitionist primer which is trying to cast all white abolitionists as men who secretly lust for evil-smelling black women. This was hardly propaganda designed to encite white men to rape black women. In fact, the main thrust of almost all anti-abolitionist propaganda was that any right-thinking white man would stay as far away as possible from supposedly ugly, smelly black women. The man you did the illustration above was extremely and disgustingly clear on this point in his other work.
This is hardly the propaganda of a class of people who are engaged in the systematic rape of black slaves.
The entire push of slavery (and post-abolitionist racism) was that black people were beasts, property and not humans at all. Miscegenation, however it occurred, was considered a shameful affair which reflected poorly on the white man in question. This, more than anything else, is what kept these sort of relationships “secret”: the stigma which adhered to the white man who took black sexual partners.
Also, it is incorrect to say that slaves were “powerless”. Everyone who has ever studied resistance to slavery has been struck with how much relative power slaves actually had to SERIOUSLY screw up production and damage property. Every slaveholder lived in fear of having his throat cut in the night. One thing which the slave manuals are unanimously in accordance about is that the EASIEST way to goad slaves into resistance was to “interfere in the family life of the quarters”. This was avoided if at all possible, not because white masters were “good” people but because unhappy slaves meant lost cash. Slavery, it should be recalled, was first and foremost an economic system, not something white people engaged in for the lulz.
Certainly, there was rape and sexual abuse during slavery. But the current myth is that plantations were just big rape farms a lá the Serbs in Bosnia. The available evidence indicates that this was not the case. Of course, it was the exceptions to the rule – exceptional brutality and sadistic sexual abuse – that served as a warning for the slaves in the rest of the system. Even if your master was a fairly OK guy, he could always threaten to sell you to someone who WASN’T. So those relatively rare sadists served a definite purpose in the system by marking its limits and indicating what COULD happen if slaves didn’t behave. They were definitely part of the structure and not an exception to it.
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Strangefruit,
Saarah Bartman was not only a sideshow in Europe, but a prostitute as well (a “sucessful” one (haha sry, my wording was terrible).
You are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!!!!
Saarah Bartman was a adolescent when she was displayed naked for the amusement of the European upper class. She was married and died at twenty five. Sarah was dissected and her vagina was displayed for years in the French Museum of Natural History as “proof” of black woman’s abnormality and hyper-sexuality. She was finally laid to rest in South Africa in 2001.
Get you facts right and stop defaming black women.
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Abagond: You are right: I have not read Welsing.
Don’t bother Welsing is black essentialist hack who blames black women for emasculating black women.
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“In our time something like 75% of blacks are part white, but at the end of the civil war fewer than 25% were. Most of the mixing of the races took place after the civil war, after the slaves were freed.”
The more DNA tells us the more these statistics are suspect. The South did not accurately count the number of mulattoes. Only the house slaves were counted. There were plenty of “half breeds” in the fields.
If all the mixing happened after slavery, how did it happen? Rape was used as a tool of terrorism by the KKK, there were white men with two families and black houses of prostitution for white men. All this does not explain the incredible amount of admixture in current African Americans.
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Thank you Abagond and Ann, for the WPA references. The ones that I have read always seemed edited to me.
For some reason I knew you were West Indian. I takes on to know one. I know the name Agabond from somewhere in Jamaican history, but I cannot recall why. Could you let a poor American yardie know who or what agabond is?
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@eshowoman
I’ve proposed there was a lot more mixing “behind closed doors” between many of the Irish immigrants and than has been historically explored. For this reason, either due to proximity or relations, many Black Americans have Irish last names.
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colorofluv
That is very true there are plenty of black folks with Irish names. There would really be no other explanation for why black folks have Celtic names other than through some interracial lovin. 😉
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Also most Irish came after slaves were freed, most Irish were also poor and never owned slaves, so I would assume it was consensual sex. I mean why would a black women allow her baby to have her rapists last name.
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Right . . .
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Just to say:
“Don’t bother Welsing is black essentialist hack who blames black women for emasculating black women”.
This not an accurate representation of Cress Welsing of position
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Ó Dochartaigh
Also most Irish came after slaves were freed, most Irish were also poor and never owned slaves, so I would assume it was consensual sex.
Have you read Noel Ignatiev? Or how about Daniel O’Connell, who, while still in Ireland, spoke out to the Irish in America saying, “Not in Ireland did you learn this cruelty”?
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Ankhesen
No I haven’t actually, some links would be great. But my biggest question is, why would a black women give her child the last name of her rapist?
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J.
Please explain to how you understand Cress Welsing position?
Most of the black people with British names are West Indian.If you could find historical evidence of all this African American hanky-panky, I would love to see it. If there was so much interracial sex between bw/wm why are the marriage and cohabitation rates so low no that it is legal and above board?
I really think that sisters need to out date and marry, but I would try African, Caribbean and Hispanic men. The cultures are very different but I think that one has a better chance at being respected than with most white men.
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Can any of you want to the rape of black women come up with some actual historical documentation to back up your fantasies?
I have got plenty of documentation refute your delusions
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I really think that sisters need to out date and marry, but I would try African, Caribbean and Hispanic men. The cultures are very different but I think that one has a better chance at being respected than with most white men.
I totally agree. Dont forget Asian men.
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If black women are going to date out, minorities are a much better option than “the white man”.
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With regard to Cress Welsing she is a qualified medical doctor,and a psychiatrist by profession.
Using her profession as her base she utilises psychoanalyses and biology in essence to develop her Cress theory of colour, as a hypothesis into the origins of White Supremacy (ie all systems of power) as a global rather than a few localised and isolated phenomena.
If I remember, she also took some of her ideas from Neely Fuller.
Her famous book is the Isis Papers which again touches upon psycholanaysis and Jungian Psychology, and off course and its back-drop White Supremacy.
However, she is not one of those scholars whose theory touches upon the intersection and dichotomy of Black male/Black female – unless she has recently changed tact.
As I typed this, and this all from memory – I had flashbacks to my days at school sitting exams ha ha ha
Would you like to assess this precis Eshowoman and give me marks out of 10 he he he he??
Nice one!
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With regard to:
If black women are going to date out, minorities are a much better option than “the white man”.
This may be obvious and at times simplistic, but with regard to the above. Then it is probably best to date the ‘best man’, with regard to him being a person and a human being etc.
However, I do understand the reasoning nevertheless…
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@Eshowoman,
I would love some documentation, whether it refute or back up my opinion (delusions) as I am interested in historical facts. I’ve found many instances in the Caribbean where the Irish were also slaves; however, it is much harder to find documentation in the United States between the Irish & Black communities.
HENRY LOUIS GATES is part Irish and admits his grandmother had relations with an Irish man.
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@J –
quote: “This may be obvious and at times simplistic, but with regard to the above. Then it is probably best to date the ‘best man’, with regard to him being a person and a human being etc.”
I second that “brother”…
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As for an interesting perspective on Irish/Black relations: Please read this article
http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2003/10/26/those-other-irish-americans
I like his reference as to the “Black Irish”, although literally, the Black Irish is altogether a different background from Ireland’s earlier times; however, since this is a thread about “White Men & Black Women”, I leave you with this excerpt as a teaser:
QUOTE: “Because the black man was a better financial bet than the Irish indigent, many Irish women chose to marry the man with better prospects – the man who could provide for the kids and keep a roof over their heads”
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This may be obvious and at times simplistic, but with regard to the above. Then it is probably best to date the ‘best man’, with regard to him being a person and a human being etc.
However, I do understand the reasoning nevertheless…
Umm there are many white men who do not even veiw black women as fully human so why should they be regarded? Most dont respect black women or our history.
To me it is an insult for people tell black women to date white men. When you say regard him being a person. What good person directly or indirectly oppresses people and live comfortable having a unearned priviledge just for having pale ass skin? What good person make excuses for a horrible things like slavery and rape?
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When more white men start to speak out against racism, respect our history, and treat us the same as they treat other women then more black women would open their options to them.
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@Leaveumthinking –
Part of what this article discusses is the use of Irish Surnames by many Black Americans. (Thus relating to the Topic/debate pertaining to the rape/slave owner name debate.) The author lightly touches on some of the same things W.E.B DuBois mentions in some of his writings: About the commonaliites of the early Irish & Black communities, but also the competition for jobs between the two communities, which lead to clashes (fighting over the menial jobs that the Whites did not want at the time. – Yes, the Irish were not considered white.)
The commonalities: Shared neighborhoods, economic conditions, social class most certainly contributed to interaction between the two groups — subsequently, competition for the limited opportunites also served to push them apart.
This does lend credence to the idea that there were relations between the Irish & Black Communities, before & during this time.
Not only were Irish men involved in these “inter-racial” relationships, but so were many Irish women.
I don’t agree with the overall tone of the article (but that is a different thread), however, sticking to this thread’s topic: of “White men and the rape of Black Women, which lead to the miscegination topic as being primarily a slave owner rape attribute – is “somewhat” — misrepresentative — due to the large numbers of Black Americans today with Irish surnames.
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@Leaveumthinking
you said: “What good person make excuses for a horrible things like slavery and rape?”
No good person should make an excuse. One can debate from an intellectual perspective about economics, colonialism, etc… but the simple fact of the matter is, as Human Beings there is no excuse.
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ColorofLuv,
Part of what this article discusses is the use of Irish Surnames by many Black Americans.
What exactly do you mean by “many?” Any figures? I’m sure there are some, but most black Americans I meet do not have last names like McCarthy or Connolly.
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@Natasha W
Growing up, questioning my own identity, knowing I’m Irish but also walking the bi-racial line, I always “noticed” Irish last names among Whites AND Blacks. So… personally, it always seemed like a “large” number to me. I haven’t really been able to find stats but the above article states 5 Million Black Americans have Irish surnames. (Extrapolating from my “personal experience”, I think that is low, but I’m not sure how those figures are derived.)
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5 million? That seems like a lot. I wonder if they are counting “Smith” as Irish, although it isn’t strictly/mainly Irish. But from what I can tell, most black Americans (descendants of slaves) have surnames like “Jones,” “Williams,” or “Brown,” names which originated in the UK, mainly England.
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@Natasha
You said: “most black Americans I meet do not have last names like McCarthy or Connolly.”
Maybe that is why the stat of 5 million seems low, since that number is attributed to the Irish names, such as you will find in the Caribbean and not the Ulster names, such as Jackson. (for example) Perhaps a better example would be to separate “Ulster names” (South) from “Irish names”. (more common in Northern U.S)
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ColorofLuv, I said the 5 million estimate seemed like a lot, not a low number.
The article mentions Toni Morrison as having an Irish surname, but AFAIK, “Morrison,” is of English/Scottish origin. Though there is probably some overlap with the Irish in that regard.
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Yeah, I’d like more accurate stats. Hopefully, Eshowoman can help out in that regard.
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Thaddeus Blanchette said:
“Actually, the land did indeed go along with his title and he could sell it. This is, in fact, what the nobility was notorious for doing when they needed to raise cash in a hurry. Sales didn’t happen much in the middle ages because it wasn’t a cash economy, for heaven’s sake. But land was given and the people on it were also given, like cattle. Furthermore, when we get to the primoridial moments of capitalism – the 15th and 16th century – land was indeed sold by nobles, along with the serfs on it. Turns out that most of these serfs ended up being superfluous and were kicked out of their homes, giving rise to the white urban proletarian and lumpen, but that wasn’t because of any concern for them or their rights.”
So how did they trade?
Oh I know with cash because the middle ages did have a cash economy.
Thaddeus Blanchette said:
“Oh really? 1600 you say? Western Europe? The same Western Europe of which France, Portugal and Spain are part of, where servitude most certainly didn’t die out 1600 or even 1700? I guess I must be a piss poor historian, then, because when I look at the history of the French Revolution (the late 18th century, if you’ll recall), I see the serf issue as alive and kicking.”
Dude, the main issue of the French Revolution had nothing to do with the “serfs” but everything to do with France being bankrupt by helping the revolters of the American Revolution!
But like you said you are a piss poor historian!
Thaddeus Blanchette said:
“I think you’re making a very common anglophonic ethnocentric mistake, Vindicator: you seem to feel that the history of England is the exact same thing as the history of Western Europe. But even in England, servitude lasted as a mass phenomenon until the END of the 17th century and certain forms of servitude lasted well into the 19th. You just don’t think of them as “servitude” because you’re focused on the black experience, which is understandable.”
Hahahahahahahahahaha! What a joke! Can you tell me which forms “servitude” was still around in 19th century England?
I’ll tell you your mistake Thaddeus Blanchette: You seem to think that “Slavery” and “Serfdom” are the same thing!
They aren’t.
Serf = Landless peasant, tied to a certain plot of land (mainly because of technological reasons!)
Slave = A Human being owning 1 or more human beings!
This however does not reflect what rights a serf or a slave have!
Thaddeus Blanchette said:
“But to think that the vast majority of Europeans were free men and women in 1600 AD… I’m sorry, but what history book are you reading which says that?”
Actually you said it yourself and I quote:
“Furthermore, when we get to the primoridial moments of capitalism – the 15th and 16th century – land was indeed sold by nobles, along with the serfs on it. Turns out that most of these serfs ended up being superfluous and were kicked out of their homes, giving rise to the white urban proletarian and lumpen, but that wasn’t because of any concern for them or their rights.”
Let me get this straight – 15th and 16th nobles kicked the serfs off their land yet they still had power over the serfs which were not on their land!
I don’t know about you, but I see a big contradiction here!
Thaddeus Blanchette said:
“There are many forms of servitude: chattel slavery is only one of them.”
While that maybe true! It still doesn’t mean they are all the same! Many Ottoman generals were slaves yet still had a lot of political and military power over supposed freemen of the Ottoman empire!
Thaddeus Blanchette said:
“The problem with you Americans, again, is your binary thinking: you only believe in two options: black/white, pepsi/coke, ford/chevvy. For you, it it wasn’t slave it HAD to be free. Historically however, that simply wasn’t the case.”
I’m not American! I’m British and technically like most Britains except the Queen of the U.K. I’m a serf!
Nobody In Britain owns land! All of it belongs to the monarch of the U.K.
By that logic I’m still oppressed!
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White men will say and do anything to get away from their guilt of being thought of in the same way as white men in the slave and post slavery era.
Most Americans, Scholars, Professors, Researchers, anyone with any common sense and the Whole World knows that white men are the Great Rapist of the World.
The common phrases and reason white men will say they didn’t rape black women are usually
1. white men were not attracted to black women ( as if attraction has anything to do with rape). This the most common thought perpetuated with made up images of Mammy’s. Mammy could have ever existed, there were no slaves that who could work all day on her feet raise the Master children and cook, and she could not have been able to eat so well to become obese.
Also you stated which was not always the case that only Lighter skinned slaves worked inside, not true.
You have no fact that only 25% of black were mixed race. That’s enough but not true.
White men will say and do anything not to be thought of as the Rapist they are get over it Rape is in your blood.
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@proudchocolategirl re–
It’s as if people seriously care what white men think about black women…like we need their validation…?
Women do need to have their beauty validated by men. The reason why these debates continue is because so many American black men validate white women and whiter beauty like crazy, but few white men and few American black men validate the appeal of American black women.
I think that since Michelle Obama, an American black woman, is the President’s wife, that has brought this issue out front and people notice that hardly any men validate American black women’s beauty and appeal. That includes American black men, the group of men who you would think would be raving about their women’s beauty and appeal. There is so much lopsidedness on this until it’s just weird.
So I think that people are saying–well, if so many black men are marrying whiter beauty (22% in the U.S. in 2008), then why aren’t white men doing the same to black women?
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no we don’t need validation…you only need validation one FROM man and that’s the man you’re in a relationship with. NEW FLASH: you don’t need EVERY man to like you, you only need ONE (if that’s what you want).
No one SHOULD need validation, but if society has told you over and over all of your life that you’re not attractive and that compared to other women, you’re at the bottom of the appeal scale, even the most beautiful woman in the world sometimes think she’s not as appealing. It makes it that much harder to find that ONE man because you don’t think you appeal so much to men.
Remember what Tyra Banks said about how she thought she was ugly because guys overlooked her in high school and no one asked her to the prom. Beyonce had some of those issues too when she said she wished she looked more like a Hispanic woman with straight hair and lighter skin.
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@abagond–
In fact, one of the underlying themes of this blog is how whites set beauty standards and then, as Leigh put it, shove it down the rest of our throats.
This doesn’t have to be the case, but black men and other men just cave in to the shoving and then blame whites for doing it. Women are going to try to look like the women who men think are most beautiful. If men liked women the most who looked like cats, most of us women would put on cat outfits and pretend to be cats.
The question is why do so many black men, for example, (not you) just accept these standards, pursue women who look like those standards, and then say they can’t help themselves? Do you know of other sites where black men are getting help for this?
I benefit from these current standards due to my looks, but I don’t accept them because I always knew that something is off about this.
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proudchocolategirl says,
jorbia says,
laromana says,
proudchocolategirl, jorbia,
Your comments are so on point and highlight a major underlying issue when it comes to ANTI-BW HATE in American culture/media.
NON-BM are known to uplift the humanity, dignity, and beauty of their same race women but MANY ANTI-BW BM are the ONLY race of men who CONDONE/PROMOTE attacks on the humanity, dignity, and femininty of their same race women while OVERHYPING/OVERPRAISING the value of NON-BW.
Of course this behavior is IGNORANT/ABNORMAL and needs to be CONFRONTED/CHALLENGED/CHANGED by PRO-BW BM so that BW don’t continue to be the MOST DISRESPECTED/MISTREATED women in America (and the planet).
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@ jorbia
I don’t know why, but quoting “newlywed black men marrying-out 22% of the time in the year 2008 alone” seems disingenuous. Especially when that’s constantly and dishonestly conflated with “since slavery has ended” by black women with an agenda who are scrounging for justifications over what they’d do anyways.
Also remember that BM/WW has the highest divorce rate of all interracial couples as well. Nothing is said about what they do afterwards, in terms of spousal choices. If that same black man remarries to another white women, since they are prone to divorce, that doesn’t make the numbers as nearly as bad as people (white men and black women with an agenda) try to make it out.
@ proudchocolategirl
So are you doing to elaborate on why Abagond needs to find a better source, outside of “Because you say so”?
@Laromana (who’s name I’ve always read as “Laromania” for some reason up until now…)
You accuse and demonize black men for following these white influenced standards of beauty, while black women carry out these same measures to make themselves appealing to black men, while crying about it at the same time. Frankly I’m sick of hearing about black men worshipping whiteness from no sources other than worthless, “Look Around You!”-esque, anecdotal evidence. I for one am tired of hearing about this supposed “white worship in black man”. Time to put up or shut up! Show me valid statistics, or stop using this crap. But before you look for that statistic…
You have two options for the state of Black Beauty:
1. Either you all stop caring about how white men view you and create your own damn standards, to put an end to this crap. Thus actually earning the right to call yourselves “proud black women”,
2. Or you shut up, keep hypocritically calling yourselves “proud black women”, while crying silently, and keeping the generationally damaging status quo in effect.
Finger pointing to “many” (when you probably mean “all”) black men, is just going to turn black men away who still (statistically speaking) generally like black women, and then your only resort is to be the last choice (statistically speaking, once again) for white men. The latter portion of that sentence being exactly what is going on now anyways.
And “no”, I’m not “anti-BW” as all I’ve ever dated were dark skinned black women, and the woman I’ve vowed to spend the rest of my life with is dark skinned. So don’t fire up your “Outrage Machine” and knee-jerk with the same foolish “He’s another ANTI-BW HATER!” post. It’s getting tired.
Oh! And East Asian men have black men beat by a long shot when it comes to sitting by and doing nothing while white men fetishize(degrade) their women.
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@ proudchocolategirl:
I was very disappointed in Genovese. It looked like a good book and I was kind of hoping that as a scholar and as a Marxist he could rise above his white skin. Not so. I need to do this topic again and do it properly. Do you have any books or even websites you could recommend?
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@Proudchocalategirl and Jorbia
This is a weird topic to be discussing men and beauty standards. Rape is not about a man’s attraction for a women but about power and sadism. It is about a man’s ego and his need to feel poweful at the expense of a powerless woman. Now, I think I discussed this topic with someone once before. I totally disagree with Abagond when he said that rape didn’t occur that often during slavery. I don’t know what he consider’s “often”, but genetic studies have proven that 1/3 of all African American men have y chromosomes ( the sex chromosome that makes a person a male. A female has two x chromosomes and a male has a x and a y chromosome) of European origin. And I think these men got these European y chromosomes from the rapes that occured during slavery. The average African American is about 20% white. Even very darkskinned men like Don Cheadle are close to 20% white.
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@Jorbia and ProudChocolategirl
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@Jorbia and ProudchocolateGirl
Now how did all these people get this white ancestry? From the rapes during slavery. You guys should watch tv shows like Henry Lois Gates “African American lives” and “African American Lives part 2”. It talks about how many of them discovered that they were mixed and that they became mixed primarily from rapes during slavery. No. Every woman didn’t get raped. But if 1/3 of all the women got raped, that is still alot of women! The rest of them were probably forced to breed with men they hardly knew. And others were forced to mate with more than one man since it was frequent that the men outnumbered the females which mean’t that one female was often forced to sleep with more than one man. So this situation was weird and perverse for black women. Marriage was not honored during slavery. So a women could easily be raped even if she had a partner. Or she could be sold away from her husband. It was a sad time. And to say that white men were somehow honoring some ethical code sounds ridiculous. Some might have been honorable( how honorable can a slave owner be?) but most of them saw black women as less than human. If they didn’t have a problem kidnapping and forcing these women to work for free, then they certainly didn’t have a problem raping them!
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@Franklin
What exactly are you arguing about? I get so tired of seeing black men and black women arguring with each other about this topic! I hate to say this but I think both black men and women are a little obsessed with skin color and I think it comes from living in a racist country! It doesn’t make any sense for us to beat each other up about this. It is not easy for black people to hold on to their self respect when we live in a country that is constantly trying to make us feel ugly and undesirable. Black men and women need to stop hating one another and just get over the past. I think most of us have issues rather we want to admit it or not. So we should forgive each the best way we can and let it go. It is not easy. But all this bitterness and arguing seems foolish to me.
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@ proudchocolategirl:
Yes, please email me.
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When the slaves were freed a million of them were part white. It is hard to believe that that was mainly due to love matches, particularly given how rare such white male/black female matches are in our own, much more liberal times.
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@ProudchocolateGirl
No. I wasn’t saying that you didn’t believe that rapes didn’t occur. I was actually just giving you some information about the topic. I was agreeing with you. But I just think that this topic is a weird topic to be discussing men and beauty standards ( black men’s preference for lighter skin). How did a topic about rape during slavery turn into that discussion?
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@Abagond
So in other words, you agree that it was rape. No, I wouldn’t it call it love. If a man forces you, it isn’t love. Some might try to make it sound romantic but that would be stretching the truth a bit. Wouldn’t you say?
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@Abagond
But what does the topic of rape during slavery have to do with modern relationships? And sex, rape, does not mean a marriage. Relationships between blacks and whites ( regardless of rather it is bm/ww or bw/wm, both are rare) is more than just sex. It is about the willingness to stay with someone and make a commitment to them, for better or for worse. Many whites may want to sleep with us but they don’t want to marry us!
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@ Jeri:
I think there were some love affairs, human nature being what it is, but in most cases it would be rape, millions of them from the look of the numbers.
The beauty standard stuff seems to be bleed-over from this thread, where some of the same people were commenting:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/black-women-that-white-men-like/
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@ Jeri:
It is best to talk in terms of parents, not marriage. In our time only about 0.3% of blacks have a white father, if I remember correctly. Yet, in 1860, 25% of blacks were part white, nearly all of it coming from white men of the 1700s and early 1800s. If you ran the numbers I am pretty sure you could show that nearly all of that 25% came from rape.
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“Many whites may want to sleep with us but they don’t want to marry us!”
That’s f’d.
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I started commenting in this thread to respond to a comment Proudchocolategirl made. Let’s look at all of this in another way.
@
But what does the topic of rape during slavery have to do with modern relationships? And sex, rape, does not mean a marriage. Relationships between blacks and whites ( regardless of rather it is bm/ww or bw/wm, both are rare) is more than just sex. It is about the willingness to stay with someone and make a commitment to them, for better or for worse. Many whites may want to sleep with us but they don’t want to marry us!
I would definitely like to know what rapes during slavery has to do with modern relationships. The typical man who rapes an American black woman today is a BLACK American man.
Many American black men or even MOST of them sleep with American black women and don’t marry them, so why are whites seen different?
It’s sad to say that a lot of black people here are suffering from extreme Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder and this is discussed in some places.
I see a gender difference. I think that continuing to talk about rapes during slavery causes many American black women to wallow in history every time they look at a white man. So they won’t go out with respectful white men.
Meanwhile a lot of American black men obviously don’t want their own women for a thousand plus reasons: their supposed bad attitudes, “frumpy” hair, too fat, too educated, too demanding, babymamas, thug loving, goldiggers, too dark, not submissive enough, too much drama and so on. Just read all the putdowns of blackwomen on this site! Yet black women are digging in history for what white men did to them?
Here’s the gender difference. The lynchings and other brutal treatment of many American black men that many white women cheered and even caused to happen (with lies) is downplayed and conveniently forgotten by many American black men these days as they pursue white women, marry them, . . . . Have American black men gotten over history a lot faster and better than black women.
I think that American black people should tell white people what they want. Reparations? Do they want every white person to apologize? Share their pain? Hang their head in shame? A congressional apology? Admit to the world that white people did terrible things to black people during slavery? What?
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-IR marriage rates really don’t tell us anything. A LOT of it is simply based on statistical chance. For instance, every racial/ethnic minority group in the USA is more likely to marry a non-Hispanic white than any other racial/ethnic group. Now is this bc all of those other groups generally prefer whites or is it biggest white ppl are the biggest percentage of the population?
White folks are the LEAST likely to marry someone who is not of the same race as them. Is this bc they are the most racist, or is it bc their are simply more of them?
People analyze over statistics too much when the stories behind those numbers are often much more complicated than the conclusions we make from them.
-Oh and I agree with Franklin. I really get sick and tired of this all BM hate themselves BS. It’s so annoying and to be honest it doesn’t make me anymore empathetic towards BW. If anything it just foments tension.
-If you didn’t get this from Abagond’s comments, there were about four million black ppl in America after the Civil War.
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*Now is this bc all of those other groups generally prefer whites or is it bc white ppl are the biggest percentage of the population?
*anymore sympathetic
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“People analyze over statistics too much when the stories behind those numbers are often much more complicated than the conclusions we make from them.”
Co sign
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Jorbia is such a hypocrite. How can she talk about black men “uplifting other races of women”, being in IR relationships, and hating BW when she does all three based on her utter HATRED for black men?
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@Cynic–
Jorbia is such a hypocrite.
Stop talking about YOURSELF.
her HATRED for black men?
Just because YOU say it does not make it so. I like black men who like BW, and I’m not fooled by BM who say they love the sistas and then put BW down constantly.
Oh and I agree with Franklin. I really get sick and tired of this all BM hate themselves BS. It’s so annoying and to be honest it doesn’t make me anymore empathetic towards BW. If anything it just foments tension.
And I really get sick and tired of all the foul comments, the putdowns black men make about black women. Then some of YOU had the utter gall , the sheer hypocrisy to criticize what that Japanese “scientist” said the other day about BW. He said no more than what many of you BM have said in many threads about BW here and elsewhere.
And any black woman with a few brain cells working can read in your comments that you’re not empathetic towards BW.
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@Jorbia
I haven’t insulted bw once in this entire blog. All I have said is that I don’t believe white racism/white dominated media has made them less attractive and that their are certain things a significant number(notice I did not say all or even a majority) of them do that make them non-marriage material for many men. How is that translated into BW hatred? That is the objective un-PC truth that you choose to ignore.
Don’t get mad at me bc I refuse to constrain myself to political correctness. You notice that when I made those comments about weight/hair management and attitude issues among many bw that NOBODY came out and disagreed w/ me? That’s bc they all silently agreed, but were too afraid of the e-backlash/judgement that might ensue.
Yes, I am a black man, but I do not represent ALL black men. I speak for myself. I have nv said I love “sistas” after or b4 bashing that Japan man. A lot of the sh*t in your comment does not pertain to me at all. Address those folks and not “some of YOU”.
Hypocrite? Umm… no. I have no hatred towards bw. What have I said that translate into that? Plz pull out specific comment.
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@Cynic–
I haven’t insulted bw once in this entire blog.
Ha-Ha and Ha!
their are certain things a significant number(notice I did not say all or even a majority) of them do that make them non-marriage material for many men.
A majority is 51%. So, not a majority could be 50%, 49%, etc. So, you carefully use the term significant. to slam Black women and then get pissed because I called you on it.
.
How is that translated into BW hatred? That is the objective un-PC truth that you choose to ignore.
That is YOUR truth. You’re the one who used the term HATRED. I didn’t.
Don’t get mad at me bc I refuse to constrain myself to political correctness. You notice that when I made those comments about weight/hair management and attitude issues among many bw that NOBODY came out and disagreed w/ me?
Nobody–as in some Black men? I’m not surprised that they don’t disagree with you. We also already know why many white men won’t disagree with you. Just because no one disagreed with you doesn’t mean that what you said was a fact.
That’s bc they all silently agreed, but were too afraid of the e-backlash/judgement that might ensue.
Oh, so you can now read minds. Here’s the part I DO agree with. Lots of people in the entire world are socialized to AGREE with negative things about black people in general, no matter how unfounded. It doesn’t mean it’s true or factual.
This entire board is mostly about all of the negative things that people, including Black people, have been socialized and internalized to be true about Black people. Most of those people are very silent. Yet, you’re claiming that agreement = truth.
A lot of the sh*t in your comment does not pertain to me at all. Address those folks and not “some of YOU”.
I wasn’t even talking directly to YOU. YOU are the one who started talking to me and namecalling.
Hypocrite? Umm… no. I have no hatred towards bw.
And I have no hatred towards bm. My dad is a fantastic man who I love to death. I have some pretty good uncles too, actually.
I’m not a hypocrite either. It’s very telling that when you put down a significant number of Black women, you call it being “objective,” but when I point out what some Black men do to Black women you call it HATRED towards Black men.
Anybody can see that’s a double standard.
What have I said that translate into that? Plz pull out specific comment.
Everybody here can read. I stand on what I said.
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@Proudchocolategirl–
MOST black women do not get with white men JUST BECAUSE of slavery…its the institutional racism and privilege of the present day, which stems from slavery that is part of it too, but yes some black women do have difficutly looking past that history, which is understandable.
Well, “institutional racism and privilege” doesn’t stop Black men from getting with and marrying white women, so why should it stop Black women from getting with white men when said white men treat us well?
That’s why I don’t try to tell any other woman who she should or shouldn’t go out with. It’s her decision.
You and I obviously feel differently about this. I don’t go out with ALL white men. The ones who I go out with treat me well and with respect. I would think that’s mainly what any woman would want. At least, I do.
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@Jorbia
A majority is 51%. So, not a majority could be 50%, 49%, etc. So, you carefully use the term significant. to slam Black women and then get pissed because I called you on it.
-No. I use the term significant bc these issues do not apply to all black women, nor are they rare. I am not ignorant. I don’t believe black women should be defined by stereotypes, however, I will not act as if their aren’t enough bw living out these caricatures for it to have an affect on marriage rates.
This entire board is mostly about all of the negative things that people, including Black people, have been socialized and internalized to be true about Black people. Most of those people are very silent. Yet, you’re claiming that agreement = truth.
-So, if I say bw have higher overwieght/obesity rates compared to other American racial/ethnic groups it’s bc I have been socialized to believe this? Do you deny this is a fact? Do you acknowledge that a women’s weight may harm her in the marriage/dating market?
I wasn’t even talking directly to YOU.
-Then list the bm on this blog who were criticizing that Japan dude after putting down bw. Who were you directly talking to? Why would you even bring up those guys in a post directed towards me as if I am responsible for them?
YOU are the one who started talking to me and namecalling
-I wasn’t calling you “names.” I called you a hypocrite bc you bash black men in 100% of your comments and justify your IR dating by putting black guys down, which in effect uplifts other races of men. Those are three things you constantly bash black men for doing and that is what makes you a hypocrite Jorbia.
Everybody here can read. I stand on what I said.
Yeah, I thought so. Nothing. Once again you fail to put forth the FACTS.
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Proudchocolategirl,
Thank you. This is the sentiment many of us have when it comes to racialized sexism in America.
May I share this commentary from Blaque Swan from Racism Review regarding this very issue you wrote:
“Blaque Swan, previously No1KState said:
Are black women willing to date white men? I can say unequivicolly, yes. Is that the preference? Unequivicolly, no. Have you seen the movie SOMETHING NEW with Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker? They get at the reasons behind our hesitance very well. Since white man are the primary perpetrators of the US’s racist patriarchy, white men by and large are still viewed with suspicion. The way black woman conjures up all those negatives images for white men, as mentioned in the post, so does “white man” conjure up negative images for us. Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to a white male coworker or boss or salesman or cop, we can judge each guy on his own merits. But a white guy as a romantic partner? Uh, yeah, we don’t care to actually sleep with, or to put it better, we don’t care to bring that home with us. It’s one thing to put up with racialized sexism and sexualized racism outside our homes, but to actually bring that in the house? where we expect the most comfort and freedom? It’s not a brick wall, but it is a major mental hurdle to climb.
Also, there’s what we know of white men as it relates to dating and black women. One, you don’t find us marriage material; two, when white men do date us, it’s either as an exotic adventure or a sexual one, due to our being stereotyped as hyper-sexual. We really don’t expect to be “hit on” by a white guy. So they may have not realized you were seriously interested in dating.
And that’s assuming you didn’t approach them with some lame line like, “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?”
Keep in mind, time, place, and day plays a part, too. Did you approach these women after five on a work day? When they’re still stressed from work and here comes the “coworker/boss/salesperson/cop” white man you represent who just pissed them off not a couple hours ago? Or, was it earlier in the day on the weekend when they were still in a morning time, “new day” mood? Were you out in Vanilla City, or did you meet them on their on turf? Besides, there’re times when women just don’t want to be hit on, and that’s all women.
Your lack of success has nothing to do with you personally. I actually think your race does play a part because of the meaning white skin carries with it. Whereas white men have limited experience with black women, we have tons of experience with you, the majority of which is not good. Even at it’s best, white skin still represents mainstream culture, a culture that negatively judges black culture, black women. Again, why bring judgment that “home?” “Home” is where I can speak black English. Will dating a white man change that?”
And
“Hmm . . . Yeah, it is something to think about. But just so we’re clear, black women are victimized by society by what’s called racial microaggressions, yes? So regardless of how I imagine my position in society, not bringing racialized sexism into my home is just a matter of protecting my self. I mean, people who can afford it live in gated communities or apartment buildings with security guards. Do they think they’re below the rest of society?
That said, I will give serious consideration to your info apart, of course, from how it applies here. But as far as my general self-image, yeah, that’s something I’ll think about.”
It’s about racialized sexism that began in slavery and continues today. I don’t think this should be played down or dismissed.
La Reyna
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my husband livd with a black women they had a child out of wedlock.i feel shame that he did that. he feels no guilt or shame! I AM A PROUD, WHITE WOMEN! i cannot understand how he could have had intercouse with a black women. WE CONSTANTLY FIGHT OVER THIS ISSUE.MY HUSBAND IS A VERY GOOD LOOKING MAN!!!!!! WHAT WENT WRONG IN MY HUSBA -NDS CHILDHOOD!!!!!!! this mixed daughter is a huge probelem, even though she is 27 years old…….. –
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@Roe
my husband livd with a black women they had a child out of wedlock.i feel shame that he did that. he feels no guilt or shame!
I think you need to revisit your marriage vows…and possibly dig even deeper and remember why you got with him in the first place in spite of all ‘his’ past!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can’t imagine that this BW was his only partner prior to you and yet it seems that you are totally focused on this aspect of his life. It says more about you and your own feelings than anything.
Meanwhile I should hope that he doesnt feel guilt or shame, after all, this life he was involved in creating should be celebrated and embraced.
In short ‘sort your life out’!
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I don’t understand what is the big deal of kids being born out of wedlock. Marriage is no guarantee of good parenthood nor loyalty. Men who evade their responsibilities as fathers should be ashamed of themselves, though. Fatherhood is a privilege.
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@Hannu
Men who evade their responsibilities as fathers should be ashamed of themselves, though. Fatherhood is a privilege.
Well said.
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@Demerera
What I meant to say they should be kicked in the nads to prevent them from breeding again, but I try to behave myself every now and then. 😉
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but I try to behave myself every now and then
Really 😉
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Nah! 😀
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@ proudchocolategirl
I took down that comment.
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Between 1850 and 1860, the Mulatto slave population
increased by 67 percent — in contrast — the Black
slave population increased by only 20 percent.
SOURCE:
Naomi Zack, Race and Mixed Race
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).
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Silly black people. So educated and always looking for a debate.
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As Usual no comments about the hundreds of thousands of WHITE IRISH SLAVES from 1619 onwards. English slavers made fortunes, Cromwell and then Charles. Queen Elizabeth ! would be considered like the english view Hitler in the systematic genocide of the irish. 5% of current mitochondria DNA in afro-americans is due to the inheritance from these literate irish women, and their children, and their children’s children, all slaves. Americans and english hide this fact.
http://www.raceandhistory.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/1638
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White men purposely selected black woman as slaves who would be good breeders. It is all about money. Like a puppy mill. The slaves were a white mans most valuable property. It was no secret that black woman were bought to breed either with other black slaves or whites or whomever. Women had no rights their children were sold and never seen again. White woman could not leave their falandering husband so there was no consiquence for men. Think if his wife is moody or has her period or gets fat or old he can just get sex from one of his many lovely slaves. One black woman even murdered her child so that that child would not profit her master. It is sick and twisted that humans could look at other humans in this way. Men like George Washington were good to their slaves. He never separated families and kept slaves he couldn’t use because he wouldn’t sell them. His will gave his slaves their freedom. Others were not so nice. Even today many people will step on others to get a head and make a profit. Poor whites were slaves also until a law was passed saying only blacks could be slaves. But those white prostitutes were also victums of a society where women could not get a job and the alternative to prostitution was starvation and death. Woman of all colors were treated unfaily. Black women’s struggles far outweighed white women’s struggles but it was the rich white man that had the power and comitted the crimes against humanity. When white woman learned to read they formed societies to educate black woman and support the abolitionist movement. Of course white men found beautiful young black women attractive. Rape is about domination and controll mixed with perversion and men with low morals would definately take advantage of their slaves. Why pay cash to a poor white prostitute when you can get sex for free at your plantation where there are sometimes hundreds of woman to choose from and I’m sure many of them were very beautiful.He might also get lucky and impregnate his slave and boom he’s just made a thousand dollars. That was a ton of money in those days. Slaves value increased with the invention of the cotten gin. He might even be able to give his white workers sex benifits so that he can get more of his female slaves pregnant and sell their children. It was all about the profit so they could indulge in an aloof lifestyle.What I do not get is why dwell in the horrible past we have grown as a country and many good men lost their lives fighting to free slaves. Southerners are very lucky the northerners won because if the southerners would have gotten their way and been allowed to keep importing slaves the slaves would have outnumbered them in such great numbers that they would have eventully rebelled and murdered their masters for sure. In the end the right side won. Slavery for whites, blacks, indians, irish and others is over in our country and now we can move forward in the peace that the enlightenment has given us. However, there is still a disproportionate amount of power given to men. Today only woman are still opressed by being sexualized on tV, music, etc. It is sad that we accept this degrading entertainment that opresses us. Most woman do not report rape it is a very common crime still in society and woman are still blamed for it. Just look at what happened to the 16 year old unconcious girl in Ohio. She was passed out drunk and rapped by the football team and then they posted their crime on the internet. The idiots! But many still had negativity directed at the girl. Why did she drink with friends? This is really unnerving. My own husband saw a girl out by herself at night and said “yea and if she gets raped she will complain” I was like are you serious? Like a woman can’t walk by herself at night or she is asking for it. We should be able to walk around without being seen as prey. If I want to go visit my sister a few blocks away and it is late I should be able to walk there. I am fortunate enough to drive but not everyone is and driving pollutes our air. I like walking. It keeps me in shape. If no one will walk with me I should not have to be afraid of walking by myself. Rapists should get a stiff, stiff punishment. Then we can all be free!
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@ Thaddeus Blanchette
“The entire push of slavery (and post-abolitionist racism) was that black people were beasts, property and not humans at all. Miscegenation, however it occurred, was considered a shameful affair which reflected poorly on the white man in question. This, more than anything else, is what kept these sort of relationships “secret”: the stigma which adhered to the white man who took black sexual partners”
Really! And what of the thousands of overseers who had no economic interests, save for what we now call a paycheck? After their vile, despicable acts committed against slaves, did they just not move on to other estates/plantations to repeat their pernicious behaviour? Don’t forget in a great number of instances, plantation owners were absentees.
You are nothing but a despicable apologist for western slavery! Go chew on this! I hope, you enjoy a good long read.
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpeople.cohums.ohio-state.edu%2Fguy60%2FHistory326%2FBurnard.pdf&ei=7xycUff_NMqYyAGC1YH4BQ&usg=AFQjCNEpIVLcYYJ7_qywCHB-nOjxNy_wDw&bvm=bv.46751780,d.aWc
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@ Thaddeus Blanchette
Grab a few bottles of beer and popcorn. It’s very long!
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC-rL1ENL7s)
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“Peanut,
Have you all ever listened to the lyrics…isn’t that song about black women/white men in slave days??…what do you all think?”
It was about Mick Jagger’s black American girlfriend, Marsha Hunt.
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No, Marsha wasn’t a slave but I he admits that she inspired him to write the song.
I guess he was paying homage to white men’s draw to black women since the slave days.
Brown Sugar Lyrics
gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he’s doin’ all right.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.
brown sugar
how come you taste so good
brown sugar
just like a young girl should
drums beating cold
English blood runs hot
lady of the house wondrin
where its gonna stop.
house boy knows that he’s doin’ all right.
you shoulda heard him just around midnight.
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I think the figure should be higher than 75%, maybe more like 85-90%. But I would need to find references for that. I also have read that at the close of the civil war, about 50% were full black. Maybe another 25% were mostly black and the rest were mulatto or quadroon.
This is a bit misleading.
The mixing of the races did not take place because white people married, formed famlies with or otherwise mated with blacks.
It occurred because whites were actually banned from marrying blacks (in particular from marrying mulattos, quadroons and creoles), forcing the mixed white/black people to marry each other or darker blacks. So, after the civil war, European ancestry was mixed into the black population not by whites, but by those who were mixed black/white. It happened mostly within the group that was labelled “colored”.
In fact, post civil war, more and more African ancestry entered the white population this way too. If mixed white/black persons have children, some will be lighter than both parents, some darker. Among the lighter ones, some may “pass” into “white” carrying their African ancestry into the white population. The darker ones will carry their European blood back into the black population.
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The effect of all this was a flattening out of the population that was about 25-50% black. At the close of the civil war, maybe up to 25% of the population of some places could have been in this range. 100 years later, this group nearly disappeared, with an increase of white people that were about 10-15% black, and with the vast majority of blacks in the 60-95% African ancestry range.
since 1970, the population in the 25-50% black range has been growing again.
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Now you know why Booker T. is put in the white American history books as an example to WHITE people about *Negroes* who made a name for themselves. It helps relieve them of white guilt regarding
– being descendant of slaveowners
– about everything in past history.
But when Booker T. was at the height of his power, segregation reached its peak, jim crow became law, lynchings escalated, voters were disenfranchised and the KKK grew in numbers and power. He was not doing a lot to help the situation of blacks in general. Hence the establishment and growth of the NAACP.
Booker T. was in my history books, but DuBois and Thurgood Marshall were not.
I suspect that in the 2000s, MLK, Jr. and Rosa Parks are in the history books, but Malcolm X is not (can someone let me know for sure?)
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“Booker commented that the youngest Burroughs son, Billy, used to plead for leniency for the slaves when his father was set on punishing them. When Billy was killed in the Civil War, the slaves mourned for him as much as the family did”
now I wonder which side billy fought for, cuz if he was on the confederate side, the slaves should not have been mourning for him.
“Booker’s mother apparently was a Godly woman, but of course she had had no say in who took advantage of her. ”
Lady don’t u mean rape her stop sugarcoating this mess.
“As for the Burroughs family, Booker wrote that although the “master” was not as hard on his slaves as some were, he apparently still whipped them when they displeased him. One of the Burroughs daughters took exception to that statement when she read the book years later, saying that her father was “no harder on them than he was on his own children”
So did this man whip his own children? ok his so called daughter show me ur whip marks, oh don’t have any then sit ur as down.
“so many people whine about their lack of opportunity in life, using that as an excuse for never amounting to anything. They should read Booker’s T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery.” He’s the perfect example for anyone who wants to make a difference in the world.”
lady this is probably why ur story has 0 comments smh. so what does this have to do with u finding out ur ancestors were slave owners and being related to booker t Washington? oh I bet if u realized u were related to a black man like Malcolm x u would not have wanted to know, but because he was one of the kumbaya negroes u ok, and expect everybody else to be just like him.
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Read Mary Chesnutt’s Civil War diary:
http://books.google.com/books?id=oRtCAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=mary+diary+civil+war&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_YaxUqGsF-m0yAGvxoCADw&ved=0CEMQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q=mary%20diary%20civil%20war&f=false
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Truth should always be exposed to always eradicate the injustice that’s been Imposed upon the innocent,by means of every power or method.
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White men in Southern Louisiana, Jamaica, Haiti, Martinique, Barbados (pretty much most Latin colonies) fathered many children with mulatto and quadroon women.
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@ Pumpkin
Updated.
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I am Hispanic and I have a lot of mixes in me. Spaniard, west African, native south american, and British. A British ancestor of mine living in the west indies and who owned a plantation, married a free black slave. We have the document. But he had to keep it secret. They had 2 sons that were sent to the Dominican republic. They were sent to a boarding school by their dad since he did not want them to face racism. Racial mixing was more tolerant in Dominican republic then the other islands.
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Slavery happened, it’s horrible, unfair, unjust and against every moral fiber of the American soul, whether folks are of Irish, Italian, German backgrounds I think 95 % of white people wish that it had never happened, but it did. Nobody can change it, or alter the physiological effects that continue to poison our country today. Obviously, many or most of these women were forced into relationships with planters. The truth is, aside from a few different memoirs, and what has been drilled into our heads over time, nobody can put a number or estimate on the actual facts on the ground 160 years ago. Yes, I’m white, do I feel guilty about something I’ve only read about? No. Do I understand how black people feel? No. I do know that we will never get past this issue if people are not willing to give in to the fact that while I cannot read your mind, you cannot read mine either. That said, we can choose to make this country a better place for our kids by accepting one another, or we can leave it as a dumpster fire. That’s all I got, peace.
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@Pumpkin
I have just written a comment on “my family never owned slaves” to Kiwi explaining why racial equality will never exist, have a look.
This tactic of appealing to the good faith of the White Man for compensation just doesn’t work.
The White Empire will throw olive branches at its Black minority to keep it satiated, whilst maintaining their social exclusion.
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I feel sorry for Blacks that keep bringing up their short stint as slaves. Blacks ignore the thousands of years that Whites were slaves and their women used for sexual pleasure including little children. Ancient Greeks bought slaves for all of the hard work on their farms as did the Romans. It was only when Rome fell that slavery declined though it never disappeared. Raiding parties regularly visited the coastal villages of England and France to capture slaves and raid for plunder.
When plantations in the New World were created the first slaves were prisoners from England. They were worked to death in the heat of the tropics which none were used to. Only after the number of available White slaves declined did the use of Black slaves begin. The percentage of Blacks brought to what became the US was less than 6% of the total sent to the Western Hemisphere. The majority went to Brazil and the Caribbean where disease and overwork meant that the slaves lasted just a few years on average. Those sent to the British colonies lived much better lives and lived much longer. While few people owned slaves in the colonies the slaves included Whites just as it always had. They were treated just the same as the Blacks and in some cases worse since the White slaves were cheaper than the Black slaves from Africa. The White slaves were criminals that England had a steady supply of and they unloaded them for whatever the owner wanted to pay knowing that another ship full of prisoners was on the way.
I do hope that someday Blacks will realize that all people have slavery in their history, primarily the Jews who have been slaves or the target of mass murder for over 3,000 years. They seem to have overcome their slave history and the hatred of them by almost every country they have had to live in, Germany being the worst. They control almost all media in the Western world and make up a great percentage of doctors and scientists. What is it that makes them so motivated to succeed despite their horrific history of slavery and mass murder? If only Blacks could figure that out they would be able to get out of the ghettos and stop feeling so inferior to the rest of humanity.
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” …the Jews who have been slaves or the target of mass murder for over 3H,000 years. They seem to have overcome their slave history and the hatred of them by almost every country they have had to live in, Germany being the worst. They control almost all media in the Western world and make up a great percentage of doctors and scientists. What is it that makes them so motivated to succeed despite their horrific history of slavery and mass murder? ”
.
Hmmm….. perchance it was (in small part) all those billions or trillions of dollars in undying AID and loyalty they’ve received and still are receiving as reparations, grants, gifts and restitution, a NEW homeland stolen from Palestinians and the overwhelming defense of it.
They not only largely control the media, they dictate much or most of the political landscape globally, particularly in the West. That’s beyond amazing INFLUENCE for such a tiny – nuclear weaponized – country in the Middle East.
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@John the Baptist
Do better research? It is a comparison of apples to oranges to compare a time when chattel slavery did not exist to modern slavery aka chattel slavery. Blacks were subject to chattel slavery were whites were only subject to that during barbary slave trade. Prior to that each group engaged in a form of “slavery”. So no a short stint is false.
“Only after the number of available White slaves declined did the use of Black slaves begin.”—That is not entirely true. The decline of white “slaves” was the result of indentured servitude being up. There service was not for life and in the beginning neither was blacks until the case of John punch. That case was official first case on books that enforced life service on blacks. Another ignored fact is a lot of whites sold themselves into servitude just to get to the new world.
“They were treated just the same as the Blacks and in some cases worse since the White slaves were cheaper than the Black slaves from Africa.”—White slaves were said to be cheaper, but were not treated worse. Chattel is life servitude. Indentured servitude is 7 years and then freedom.
“The White slaves were criminals that England had a steady supply of and they unloaded them for whatever the owner wanted to pay knowing that another ship full of prisoners was on the way.”—That is not entirely true as the English readily sold Irish, who were not criminals, into servitude. The criminals that the English sent over were not in servitude at all in most cases.
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@ Fan
So true about the reparations. When will J the B and his ilk cough up reparations for:
◆Centuries of chattel slavery (“a short stint”, if it didn’t happen to you or yours)?
◆Sharecropping thievery by Southern landowners?
◆Banishment of Black people from their legal homesteads by mobs of Whites?
◆Lynching (both the mob version and the police version)?
◆Redlining Black neighborhoods by White owned banks?
◆Generations of ramshackle Black schools?
◆Lead tainted water in Flint, MI and Washington, DC?
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@Sharina
Thanks for pointing that major fact out.
At the end of the seven years, many indentured servants also got a “starter kit” of a mule, a gun, and sometimes a small amount of cash.
When Black people were “freed”, they got nothing but a hard time.
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I think its also likely that enslaved black men had relationships with white women more often than we think.
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/747/2/sexual-relations-between-elite-white-women-and-enslaved-men-in-the-antebellum-south-a-socio-historical-analysis
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@Glorp
Thanks for the link.
This paragraph caught my eye:
I have often thought about how wealthy White men of that era were at the top social terrace and basically poured oppression on everyone on lower terraces including White women and poorer Whites. Their White wives were merely another class of property——and the wives knew it.
It’s not surprising that some White women would seek power through non-consensual sex with Black male slaves. (Sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.) I like how the writer describes a few of the abuse scenarios that occurred and the consequences for both the White woman and Black man.
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I agree with the article for the most part. You can’t really prove or disprove some aspects of it. People have different personalities and insecurities. One white man may be a rapist and one may genuinely have affection for the woman involved. It’s like saying, “Every slave owner was cruel.” Most likely it would be like people today. Some people are cruel and delight in having power over someone. Some people are indifferent and would probably approach slavery and slaves as property that should be at the very least protected to ensure a return on the investment. Some people would be kind and allow them to buy back their freedom or set them free when no longer required. There are plenty of examples of each scenario in history, don’t generalize every white man and every black woman in history!
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You surely schooled us coloureds John!
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What self-respecting man would recognize his bastard mistake lovechildren?
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I don’t know if you meant to but you’re sweet and kind tone made that white wash very passable as fact. I was so hartened that I forgot that children of rape would represent a small fraction of rapes that occurred . And the census itself is obviously inaccurate , just like today an official usually just asks the head of house how many people they have. And I’ve never studied the importance of mullato statistics but I think that may have been a question likely to be forgotten or omitted . As you say circumstance was such that no one would admit raping a black girl unless true, then there exists a larger majority of white slave owners(for some reason you dont mention family members raping the slaves) that didn’t admit it and kept the secret well. I won’t accuse you of misrepresenting the facts. My hope is you’re just such an optimistic person with a great faith in your country. I admire that greatly.
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@ Lane
This post is based on historian Eugene Genovese. I thought as a Marxist he would not Whitewash the past – but he did.
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This was written by an insecure white individual on American slavery.
Giving no stats and rare accounts, writing in bold key words to demean the large scale accounts of the rape of slaves as if the common slaver didn’t participate in those acts whilst being surrounded by hundreds of vunerable and unprotected black women
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https://violenceagainstwhites.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/i-killed-them-because-they-were-white-warning-graphic-photos-of-anti-white-murders/
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@RACISM AGAINST WHITE AFRICANS IS REAL
Funny how does who control over 80% of the SA economy are the ones who are complaining about racism
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Not only that, what has that got to do with the topic at hand? Nada.
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There are hundreds of slave narratives that give insight to this topic. I am perusing my book shelf and I found a book that has been on my shelf for a couple of years, Celia, A Slave: A True Story by Melton McLaurin. It tells the horrific story of fourteen year old Celia, she has no last name. The year is 1850 when she was fourteen Celia became the property of Robert Newsome a respected and prosperous Missouri farmer. For the next five years Celia was cruelly and repeatedly molested by her abusive master and bore him two children in the process. But in 1855 she is pushed to her limits of endurance and fights back and at the age of eighteen, she is desperate and frightened and murders her master and has to stand trial. She is found guilty and is sentenced to death by hanging.
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White men were definitely raping Black women and girls during slavery, but the plantation’s white overseers probably raped more Black women and girls than white slave-masters. They were definitely close in numbers. The involuntary and voluntary rape of Black women (during slavery) produced America’s so-called Mulatto group. Historically speaking, we know who’s the #1 rapist in America.
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I had no idea people were still so deluded that they have convinced themselves that most of their black problems is still the white mans fault. That bit about black vaginas may have been the most offensive part of all these written words.
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@DKD
That is because studies show that certain black problems are the white man’s fault, but I had no idea that some people were so deluded that reading a historical post made them think it was today.
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I had no idea people were still so deluded that they have convinced themselves that most of their black problems is still the white mans fault.
What about it also being the white woman’s fault? Why isn’t the white woman ever blamed? Not only are you racist, but you are also sexist. Discuss. Oh, and your punctuation is atrocious!
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@DKD: Reading is so fundamental why don’t you get your head out your hinder parts and read the post without your racial bias. Your stupidity is hindering your reading comprehension.
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Historical? You don’t have to look too far up the page to read about somebody who believes reparations will/would have cured their ills. I don’t think I’m the only one with racial bias around here. It’s just as hurtful when bias goes unnoticed the other way. As for being sexist, where white women allowed to own slaves back then? Even if so, I find it difficult to believe they could have controlled them by themselves. Punctuated!
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DKD
Actually the talk of reparation is pretty far down thread, so please don’t use a nice lie to avoid that you were talking out your backside. In your original post you talked of people viewing it as the white man’s fault not reparations.
White women did own slaves. Who else took care of those rich widow women? Also they had overseers to help. All historical truths.
No one’s being racially bias. They are simply doing what people.like you hate to see happen. The truth get told.
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@ DKD
Look up Martha Washington for one. People like to point out that George Washington freed his slaves in his will, but it was only the few that belonged to him. The majority of the slaves at Mt. Vernon belonged to Martha and after her death ownership passed down to her children from her first marriage.
I can also pull an example from my own family history. One of my great-great-great-grandmothers was given four house slaves as a wedding present by her parents — over the objections of her new husband who was opposed to slavery.
You forget that most slave owners only held a few slaves, not a large plantation. An unmarried white woman of means might well own a maid, a cook, and a butler. And there are in fact historical records of widows managing large estates — all they had to do was hire overseers.
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I think you all are making part of my point for me in that overseers were a necessary part. In any event I was responding to a sexism charge by someone who assumed I am male and was trying to … Well, I don’t know exactly what the point was. Or was the point that women are the real problem? Anyway, I don’t really care if women owned black people or not. That was someone else’s hang up to make sure women are included in the problems of black people. And to that point I will completely agree.
To say that I am the only one around here with racial bias is hypocritical. And yes, I feel reparations is a fair example of blaming the white man. Err, women or white women or whatever your point was. And, as I stated, I was reading up the page, not down. Perhaps my reading comprehension is not the problem here.
Revealing is the fact that I am the one who gets called out for racial bias and factually incorrect statements while all the others get passed without comment. Truth is on my side this time. Being accused of not being able to read, no way will I deign to point out other examples on this page. It will have to be a test of everyone else’s reading comprehension and hypocracy. It is no fun, nor is it of any educational value to banter with hypocrites.
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@DKD
To be fair I don’t think you know what your point was. Overseers are still whites and really only dealt with slaves in the fields. That in no way excludes or deals with the primary ownership which could be white men and women.
“In any event I was responding to a sexism charge by someone who assumed I am male and was trying to … Well, I don’t know exactly what the point was.”—She actually did not assume you were male. She asked about why are white women never at fault. How is that assuming anything about you?
“To say that I am the only one around here with racial bias is hypocritical.”–No one said you were the only one, but you do display it. Pointing to another wont change that your comments are riddled with it.
“And yes, I feel reparations is a fair example of blaming the white man.”—Good things facts have little to do with a person feelings.
” And, as I stated, I was reading up the page, not down.”—And as I stated “Actually the talk of reparation is pretty far down thread”. In other words, those two people who spoke on reparations are the only two that actually mention it. The first mention was not even talking about in the sense of black people. The second was not talking about it curing ills. So it was a very wrong move to go to reparations to make up some false complaint.
“Perhaps my reading comprehension is not the problem here.”—Perhaps not. You responded to a post about things that have nothing to do with the post. You then try to claim other people were saying something that is not so far found in the comments. I say that is reading comprehension.
Revealing is the fact that I am the one who gets called out for racial bias and factually incorrect statements while all the others get passed without comment. Truth is on my side this time.”—Sorry but truth has skipped you over. Many who responded provided the truth. You just wrote long comments dancing around it. Prehaps if you would have approached the conversations with intellect instead of name calling you would get a better approach. Till then stop crying victim.
Being accused of not being able to read, no way will I deign to point out other examples on this page. It will have to be a test of everyone else’s reading comprehension and hypocracy. It is no fun, nor is it of any educational value to banter with hypocrites.”—Who accused you of not being able to read? Do quote them.
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It’s just as hurtful when bias goes unnoticed the other way.
No, being raped or sexually coerced into a sexual relationship hurts.
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‘Reading is so fundamental why don’t you get your head out your hinder parts and read the post without your racial bias. Your stupidity is hindering your reading comprehension.’
If you are referring to being named a hypocrite you are correct. Hypocracy is running rampant and I am simply calling a spade a spade. Again, you have a problem when I call a name but fail to admonish others. It just never ends.
Yes, reading comprehension does seem to be the biggest obsticle here. I do not think I can simplify my argument for you much more than I already have. It is not a complicated concept. If you are still having difficulty understanding you will just have to work and grow. You seem not to have any trouble parsing words and challenging veracity even if you do miss the forest for hope of seeing trees. I challenge you to apply that same (or hopefully better) sceptsism (or whatever word you choose) equally.
As I am used to certain types feeling they need the last word I will leave you to it.
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@ DKD
The only thing Herneith assumes about people like you is that you’re from Uranus. Personally, I believe you are a fartleberry.
Just curious: what did you find so offensive about the black vaginas poem?
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@DKD
” Hypocracy is running rampant and I am simply calling a spade a spade. Again, you have a problem when I call a name but fail to admonish others. It just never ends.”—Except you are not calling a spade a spade. You are calling the truth a spade because you don’t like it. I never took issue with you calling names. This is were you basically prove that you have reading comprehension issues or this is a fine deflection tactic.
“Yes, reading comprehension does seem to be the biggest obsticle here.”—It is but that reading comprehension is actually an issue on your part. For several posts now I have pointed out you responding to things I did not say or misinterpreting them in means that I did not say and ran rampant with it. So while you are busying trying to point out others having it I think you forget it really is just you. If we look at your original point it was already debunked, so what new concept do you claim to have?
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@Solitaire
I honestly don’t think he/her read the post and ran with the first thing he could think to take offense to. I think reparations was only a last minute anything he could find to prove a point type effort.
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“Not as bad as you think?” Wow somebody needs to beat yhe the shyt outta Eugene Genovese
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I think that I am going to make a compilation of the typical White drone arguments– the ones with false equivocation, false analogies, non sequiturs, tu quoques, straw men, and the good ole red herrings. They lack any suitable amount of analytical thinking skills to think successfully on their own with regards to Black History. They have been taught admire statistics without admiring why they are the way that they are. They have learned to think that they will automatically be given credence for their lunacy and imbecility. And by now, it is getting old; I see the same arguments from White people every time someone is reasonably and justly showing the history of Black people– the history in which White people, male and female, were savages.
**Disclaimer for the White and Black drones alike: This is not applicable to all White people. This… is… not… applicable,,, to… all… White… people… Get it? Got it? Good!
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https://used-guns.com.au/ Lithgow Rifles Australia thanks you for an excellent blog. Great Effort
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I agree with you
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