Short Story Of A Victim Of The White Controlled Society: Deborah

Victims of rape and other forms of sexual harassment became more vulnerable and susceptible toward psychological and emotional control by whites due to severe mental and physical ramifications. Sexual harassment was a means of forcing blacks into submission; this tactic created a somewhat obedient labor force. Besides these motives, black women were denigrated through use of their reproductive capacity as a form of slave breeding.

She emphasizes that the life of a slave woman is incomparable to the life of a slave man, in the sense that a woman’s sufferings are not only physical but also extremely mental and emotional. Whether or not a slave woman is beaten, starved to death, or made to work in unbearable circumstances on the fields, she suffers from and endures horrible mental torments. Unlike slave men, these women have to deal with sexual harassment from white men, most often their slave owners, as well as the loss of their children in some cases. Men often dwell on their sufferings of bodily pain and physical endurance as slaves, where as women not only deal with that but also the mental and emotional aspect of it. Men claim that their manhood and masculinity are stripped from them, but women deal with their loss of dignity and morality. Females deal with the emotional agony as mothers who lose their children or have to watch them get beaten, as well as being sexually victimized by white men who may or may not be the father of their children. For these women, their experiences seem unimaginable and are just as difficult as any physical punishment, if not more so.

In a time period when women were considered inferior, as were blacks, it was unimaginable the horrors a black woman in the south had to endure during this period. African women were slaves and subject to the many horrors that come along with being in bondage, but because they were also women, they were subject to the cruelties of men who look down on women as inferior simply because of their sex. The sexual exploitation of these females often lead to the women fathering children of their white masters. Black women were also prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse, including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself she was often subjected to further beatings from the master. The black female was forced into sexual relationships for the slave master’s pleasure and profit. By doing this it was the slave owner ways of helping his slave population grow.

This paper discusses the experiences of African American Women under slavery during the Slave Trade, their exploitation, the secrecy, the variety of tasks and positions of slave women, slave and ex-slave narratives, and significant contributions to history. Also, this paper presents the hardships African American women faced and the challenges they overcame to become equal with men in today’s society. Slavery was a destructive experience for African Americans especially women. Black women suffered doubly during the slave era.

While the majority of black women accounts are lost to history due to anti-literacy laws, we do have a good idea of what their lives were, through slave narratives and other records. The life of a female slave in pre-civil war America was characterized by sexual assault, physical and mental abuse along with harsh treatment both in the fields and inside the master’s house. Female slaves were treated as property with no regards to their

The Myth of the Black Rapist, according to Davis’s Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist, “has been methodically conjured up whenever recurrent waves of violence and terror against the Black community have required convincing justifications.” So, a seed would be planted that an African American raped someone in hopes that it would help in their sentencing. It functioned as a form of social control because no one would stand up to support them; even if it was blatantly obvious that this male didn’t rape anyone, no one wanted to go against the “norm.” “The myth of the black rapist of white women is the twin of the myth of the bad black woman-both designed to apologize for and facilitate the continued exploitation of black men and women”

White explores the master’s sexual exploitation of their female slaves, and proves this method of oppression to be the defining factor of what sets the female slaves apart from their male counterparts. Citing former slaves White writes, “Christopher Nichols, an escaped slave living in Canada, remembered how his master laid a woman on a bench, threw her clothes over her head, and whipped her. The whipping of a thirteen-year-old Georgia slave girl also had sexual overtones. The girl was put on all fours ‘sometimes her head down, and sometimes up’ and beaten until froth ran from her mouth (33).” The girl’s forced bodily position as well as her total helplessness to stop her master’s torture blatantly reveals the forced sexual trauma many African females endured.

Back when her narrative had been written and observed, slavery, like in her narrative, had been a huge factor in the resulting pain and anger she had gained. In her narrative, she had to deal with the fact that she was not only a woman, but a woman with no power, as did many women in contemporary society. In both society and her narrative, she illustrates a world in which white men are the most powerful and it affected many. The same intersection can be operated in today's society because, excluding slavery, racism and gender preference are still big issues today. Society today still acts like the white race is superior to others and that minority are to be feared or untrustworthy.

This whole concept that white women are holy beings that require protection is the entire premise of Southern Horrors, in which Rebecca Felton and Ida B. Wells had both explained that white women would receive more retribution from sexual assaults. If a black woman was raped by a white or black man, there was little to no punishment handed to the assailant, plus the amount of publicity the cases received where next to nothing. Although, when a white woman was sexually assaulted it was considered as the most heinous crime, which led to white mobs’ beings assembled within a day demanding the immediate death of the rapist. This was true for the claimed rape of Mollie and Sadie Bruce by two black brothers, and once this story was released it spread swiftly and immediately white men gathered their guns and went searching for the suspects (Feimster, 95). Later, it was thought that these women had voluntarily intercourse, but since this was an interracial relationship that wouldn’t

Minrose Gwin‘s book, Black and White Women of the Old South, argues that history has problems with objectiveness. Her book brings to life interesting interpretations on the view of the women of the old south and chattel slavery in historical American fiction and autobiography. Gwin’s main arguments discussed how the white women of the south in no way wanted to display any kind of compassion for a fellow woman of African descent. Gwin described the "sisterhood" between black and white women as a "violent connection"(pg 4). Not only that, Gwin’s book discusses the idea that for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, a black woman usually got subjected to displacement of sexual and mental

Examining the links between sexuality and power in a system of interlocking race, gender, and class oppression should reveal how important controlling Black women's sexuality has been to the effective operation of domination overall. The words of Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, and Alice Walker provide a promising foundation for a comprehensive Black feminist analysis.

Now, to explain why I said, “Slavery was hard for all, but women experienced the Hell of it!.” Here is an example in a reading from Sara Evans, “At the same time, young slave women, especially household servants and mulattos, were always vulnerable to sexual abuse by whites, something from which no family could protect them.” (Evans, 109) Women who

“He told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his…” The treatment of slaves varied in their personal experiences as well as in the experiences of others they knew, but Harriet Jacobs phenomenally described the dynamics of the relationship between many female slaves and their superiors with these words from her personal narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Before slavery was outlawed it was not uncommon for young female slaves to be sexually abused and exploited by their masters. Although many people know about the cruelty of the sexual assaults that made too many young girls victims of rape in the Antebellum South, most people are unaware of the complexity of the issue and how many different ways these women were abused.

An important issue Harding discusses is the fact that both men and women of color are treated much differently within a system of rape culture. Race is a huge component when looking at almost any subject, as people of color are met with prejudices and discrimination in many areas, not just rape culture, but what Harding discusses in her book parallels the treatment of black men and women after the Civil War in very similar ways. Harding states that a woman’s best chance at actually being taken seriously when reporting being raped is to be white. If a woman is not white, her credibility in this case decreases, and her chances of getting a fair trial and having her rapist incarcerated also decreases. This is because, according to Harding, women

Equality has been a long fight for black women even though they have been through desegregation but yet they still don’t have the same equality for jobs. Meanwhile, women use to be looked at a person that couldn't do anything for themselves because they were dependent on the men to do things for them. Black people fought a long fight for equality in history but yet they are still looked as people that shouldn't get the same equality as a privileged white person.Even though there has been a fight for equality. Black females still think that they are not getting the right respect as to be compared as to a white woman and people are still wondering why are people still protesting for a racial equality if they already have equality. there