White Men 's Exploitation Of Black Women 's Sexuality

This is proof that this terrible act was very typical within slaveholding societies. Now, just because this relationship seems usual in the south, it does not mean everyone condoned it. The wives of many slave owners proved they were not okay with a white male and a black female relationship by the way they acted with “anger and resentment” towards other slaves (McLaurin, 26). Wives chose to ignore this behavior simply because if they didn’t, not only would their lives be in danger, but so would their children’s.

The introduction of Africans to America in 1619 set off an irreversible chain of events that effected the economy of the southern colonies. With a switch from the expensive system of indentured servitude, slavery emerged and grew rapidly for various reasons, consisting of economic, geographic, and social factors. The expansion of slavery in the southern colonies, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to just before America gained its independence in 1775, had a lasting impact on the development of our nation’s economy, due to the fact that slaves were easy to obtain, provided a life-long workforce, and were a different race than the colonists, making it easier to justify the immoral act.

The author also explores the profitability of slavery as an institution, as while the tendency of slave owners to keep their capital invested in slaves rather than industry resulted in a lack of economic diversification in the South, it also resulted in great profits during times of high demand for agricultural products. Phillips states that more research is required in this area.

The slave owner’s exploitation of the black woman’s sexuality was one of the most significant factors differentiating the experience of slavery for males and females. The white man’s claim to the slave body, male as well as female, was inherent in the concept of the Slave Trade and was tangibly realized perhaps no where more than the auction block. Captive Africans were stripped of their clothing, oiled down, and poked and prodded by potential buyers. The erotic undertones of such scenes were particularly pronounced in the case of black women. Throughout the period of slavery in America, white society believed black women to be innately lustful beings. The perception of the African woman as hyper-sexual made her both the object of white man’s abhorrence and his fantasy. Within the bonds of slavery, masters often felt it was their right to engage in sexual activity with black women. Sometimes, female slaves made advances hoping that such relationships would increase the chances that they or their children would be liberated by the master. Most of the time, slave owners took slaves by force.

Two factors that prompted the growth of the slave trade in half the century before the civil war were the cash value for slave increased and the slave trade ended. This happened because the legal importation of slaves to U.s. was ended in 1808. So, selling slaves became a huge business for brokers and auctioneers. Because they could gain more money by selling the slaves rather than just getting another slave for one who works better. Because the importation ended they had to start selling slaves locally. This made the slaves

The crops grown on plantations and the slavery system changed significantly between 1800-1860. In the early 1800s, plantation owners grew a variety of crops – cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, hemp, and wheat. Cotton had the potential to be profitable, but there was wasn’t much area where cotton could be grown. However, the invention of the cotton gin changed this - the cotton gin was a machine that made it much easier to separate the seeds from cotton. Plantation owners could now grow lots of cotton; this would make them a lot of money. As a result, slavery became more important because the demand for cotton was high worldwide. By 1860, cotton was the main export of the south. The invention of the cotton gin and high demand for cotton changed

The antebellum era (also referred to as the plantation era) between 1800’s to 1860 was a period of slave driven farming, marking the economic growth of the south. During this period in 1815, cotton was the most valuable traded produce in the United States and by 1840, it was more valuable compared to all other imported and exported goods combined. In 1860, one year before the Civil War, the South was predominantly reliant on the sale of agricultural products, such as tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton estimated at 5,344,000 bales, to a worldwide market. while the southern states generated two-thirds of the world's cotton supply, the South had little industrial capability (manufactured good estimated to the value of$156,000,000), consisting of an estimated 29 percent of the railroad tracks or 14484.1km, and only 13 percent of the nation's banks. The South attempted slave labour in manufacturing, but were mainly content with their agricultural economy. Their delay in industrial expansion was not the result of any integral economic disadvantages, there was a vast amount of wealth in the South, but it was mainly bound to slave labour. In 1860, the financial value of slaves in the United States surpassed the participated value of all of the land's railroads, factories, and banks combined. the day before the Civil War, the value of cotton was at its peak, the Confederate aristocrats were confident that the significance of cotton on the world market, especially in England and France,

By 1804, all of the states above the Mason-Dixon Line had voted to end slavery. Things went a different way in the South. There were usually more slaves there, and the rise of cotton after the invention of the Cotton Gin created huge demand

There is no doubt that the United States was built upon the hard work of Black-American slaves, referred to at the time as bondpeople, who were the main labor force in producing important American exports, such as cotton or tobacco, which were, in fact, the backbone of the American economy during that time. Due to bondpeople’s overall importance in keeping the United States the powerhouse that it was, the domestic slave trade was a value market that “‘was roughly three times greater than the total amount of all capital, North and South combined, invested in manufacturing, almost three times the amount invested in railroads, and seven times the amount invested in banks’”(23). In “‘In Pressing Need of Cash,’” Daina Ramey Berry, a professor for the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, looks at a fifteen year period, from 1850-1865, of the economic factors of the domestic slave trade. Berry uses Steven Deyle’s findings in his study, "Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life” which examined both the "long-distance interstate trade" and the extensive local or "intrastate" trade of enslaved males and females, who were priced differently depending on their perceived market value (23). With Deyle’s findings, Berry specifically discusses the relationships among gender, age, skill, or type of sale and how those factors, generally, determined the priced paid of enslaved workers.

The scarcity of land in Virginia made planters or male members with their families move further West in search of free arable land. This migration spiked the demand for slaves, until 1808 this demand was met by a supply of slaves shipped from Africa. After 1808 the Trans-Atlantic trade ceased (at least officially), and the only legal means of acquiring of slaves was the domestic trade.

New markets brought forth new opportunities for expansion. America was infantile to other developed nations, yet impeccably ambitious and anxious to get competitive. The expansion of markets created hope for some and worry for others. Financial prosperity in the southern states was solely reliant on the blood, sweat and tears of slaves to flourish the Cotton Kingdom, the driving force in transforming and expanding the southern states’ economy. In the industrialized North, workforce labor was readily available for their needs, in contrast to how imperative slavery grew to become

Perhaps one of the most well documented cases of slave breeding comes from the plantation being tended by Robert W. Campbell. Mr. Campbell was the brother-in-law of President James K. Polk. In one letter, Mr. Campbell promises to buy him young female slaves for the purpose of forced mating, because President Polk had a great proportion of young male slaves on his “farm.” So, the forced breeding of slaves ran through even the highest-ranking office in the country, that of the

As it was common for large amounts of African slaves to live on one plantation, families began to become prevalent among slave communities. Slave owners actually encouraged marraige because it generally meant better moral among the slaves and thus less opposition, as well as, because slave marraiges meant children which would become the slave owner’s next generation of laborers. Therefore, slave families grew quickly and became a key aspect of slave culture. Instead of relying on friends on the plantation, slaves had their families to go back to. Black mothers found great joy and happiness in their newborns, even though childbirth deaths were common, but

Gradually, over the seventeenth century, laws were passed to institutionalize the practice, usually by articulating divisions between blacks and whites. By keeping the two racial groups socially apart, lawmakers were able to firmly put slavery into place. In 1640, Virginia gave everyone the right to bear arms except “negroes”, as it was too risky to arm slaves (Williams, 26). The same year, the court in Virginia outlined the ways in which black people were to be treated. In one example, where three indentured servants escaped together from their master, two of which who were white (Victor and Gregory) and the other black (Punch), Punch received a much harsher punishment of being locked into servitude while Victor and Gregory were only given four extra years of service. The court made it clear that this harsher sentence was given to Punch simply because he was black (Williams, 27). Later in 1662, Virginia passed a law making slavery hereditary and declaring that the status passed through the mother (Williams, 28). So a child of a white man and a black woman could be claimed a slave by the owner of the mother, however a child of a black man and a white woman would immediately be free. It’s important to note that interracial sex in and of itself was looked down upon and made illegal. It was considered a “dishonor of God” and the colony disapproved of interracial

When looking at this question from the media’s point of view, I would have to say yes, some Black males do help to propel the sexual exploitation of Black women. Especially through music and music videos. But if you look at it from a societal point of view, there are certain men that exploit women regardless of their race. In our reading Hooks describes the black male equating manhood with fucking, and many black men saw status and economic success as synonymous with endless sexual conquest. The reading also tells us that when the movement for sexual liberation intersected with racial integration in the sixties, for the first time Black males were able to establish a public discourse about their sexuality. Yet they revealed the first and foremost