History, Race, and Violence in the Arena of Reproduction Enslavement.

1863 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Inhumane and degrading punishment of slaves

History, Race, and Violence in the Arena of Reproduction Enslavement. In 1997, Dorothy Roberts wrote a salient book titled Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Roberts explicates the crusade to punish Black women—especially the destitute—for having children. The exploitation of Black women in the U.S. began in the days of slavery and, appropriately enough, Roberts introduces her first chapter with an illustrative story: When Rose Williams was sixteen years old, her master sent her to live in a cabin with a male slave named Rufus. It did not matter that Rose disliked Rufus "cause he a bully." At first Rose thought that her role was just to perform household chores for Rufus and a few other slaves. But she learned the true nature of her assignment when Rufus crawled into her bunk one night: "I says , ‘What you means, you fool nigger?' He say for me to hush de mouth. ‘Dis my bunk, too,' he say." When Rose fended off Rufus's sexual advances with a poker, she was reported to Master Hawkins. Hawkins made it clear that she had no choice in the matter: De nex' day de massa call me and tell me, "Woman, I's pay big money for you,and I's done dat for de cause I wants yous to raise me chillens. I's put you to live with Rufus for dat purpose. Now, if you doesn't want whippin' at de stake, yous do what I wants. Rose reluctantly acceded to her master's demands: I thinks ‘bout massa buyin' me offen de block and savin' me from bein' sep'rated from my folks and ‘bout bein' whipped at de stake. Dere it am. What am I's to do? So I ‘cides to do as de massa wish and so I yields. The story of control of Black reproduction begins with the experiences of slave women like Rose Williams. Black procreation helped to sustain slavery, giving slave masters an economic incentive to govern Black women's reproductive lives. Slave women's childbearing replenished the enslaved labor force: Black women bore children who belonged to the slaveowner from the moment of their conception. This feature of slavery made control of reproduction a central aspect of white's subjugation of African people in America. It marked Black women from the beginning as objects whose decisions about reproduction should be subject to social regulation rather than to their own will. (22-23) Once slavery was abolished Black people no longer had to worry about their children being the property of slaveowners, or anyone else.

Show More
Related

  • Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia

    1446 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Colonial Virginia in 1661, Rebecca Nobles was sentenced to ten lashes for bearing an illegitimate child. Had she been an indentured servant she would also have been ordered to serve her master an additional two years to repay his losses incurred during her pregnancy. After 1662, had she been an enslaved African woman she would not have been prosecuted, because in that year the Colonial government declared children born to slave women the property of their mother's master. A child born to a slave brought increased wealth, whereas the child of an indentured servant brought increased financial responsibility. This evolving legislation in Colonial Virginia reflected elite planter interests in controlling women's sexuality for economic gain. Race is also defined and manipulated to reinforce the authority and economic power of elite white men who enacted colonial legislation. As historian Kathleen M. Brown demonstrates in her book Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs, the concepts of gender and race intersect as colonial Virginians consolidated power and defined their society. Indeed, gender and race were integral to that goal. In particular, planter manipulations of social categories had a profound effect on the economic and political climate in Colonial Virginia.

    Read More

  • The Danger of the FLDS

    917 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cults are dangerous institutions that have existed for many years, corrupting and reforming the minds of innocent people into believing outrageous doctrines that eventually result in disaster. Horrifying cases involving men such as Charles Manson, Jim Jones and David Koresh have bewildered people and raise the question: how could individuals be easily susceptible to the teachings of these men, so influenced that masses go as far as to commit the unthinkable? Individuals who are in a vulnerable position in search for an identity are attracted to cults because they offer a sense of belonging. In addition, isolation from society contributes to the functioning of a cult for it creates an atmosphere where submissiveness and obedience runs high. These two factors seem to hold true for one of the most notorious cults currently established in the United States and Canada. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or, FLDS, is an international polygamist sect that incorporates belonging and isolation along with a dangerous mentality that have resulted in the abuse of women and children in the name of God.

    Read More

  • Slavery and the Life of Harriet Jacobs

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    The history of slave women offered by Davis suggests that "compulsory labor overshadowed every other aspect of women's existence" (Davis 5). This is quite apparent through examination of the life of Harriet Jacobs. All slaves were forced to do hard labor and were subject to cruel remarks by whites, in this sense they were genderless, except women endured much more foul treatment. Harriet Jacobs was forced to listen to the sexual berating from her master, Dr. Flint, as well as receive jealous scorn from her mistress, Mrs. Flint. Yet worse than the verbal abuse was the physical, sexual abuse imposed on slave women. "Naming or not naming the father of a child, taking as a wife a woman who had children by unnamed fathers, [and] giving a newborn child the name of a father" were all considered by Herbert Gutman to be "everyday choices" in slave communities (Davis 15). Not being able to name a father must have made slave women feel great pain from being a "genderless" tool and great isolation by forcing them to take care of bastard children on their own. However, the worst comes when the child is old enough to work and, in most cases, is auctioned off. By auctioning off a slave woman's children slave masters not only dehumanized slave women but gave additional pain to slave women by taking their loved children away. Slave...

    Read More

  • The Damnation Of Women Analysis

    1282 Words  | 3 Pages

    D. Du Bois views are consistent with Coopers ’assessment of the plight African American women faced in the United States. In Du Bois essay The Damnation of Women, he makes distinct connections between Christian theology, women’s rights and the importance of elevating black women. Du Bois points out contradictions and unrealistic expectations set on women through Christian theology and ideologies, “All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.” Du Bois understood the importance of the woman’s position as the first teacher of man. The woman ultimately determines the disposition of their society. He goes on to clarify the origin of “the mother-idea” as being derived from African culture. Asserting the first mother came from the dark-continent Africa and Isis, a goddess who was worshiped and revered as the ideal mother and wife as being the original mother. “No mother can love more tenderly, and none is more tenderly loved than the Negro mother.”

    Read More

  • Leith Mullings' On Our Own Terms: Race, Class, And Gender In The Lives Of African American Women

    874 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.

    Read More

  • Moynihan Negro Family

    1321 Words  | 3 Pages

    Collins, Patricia Hill. "Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images." Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000. 89. Print.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Gender, Race and Reproduction in Laboring Women by Jennifer Morgan

    840 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Laboring Women by Jennifer Morgan, the author talks about the transformations African Women suffer as they become slaves in America. The author explains how their race, gender and even their reproduction of African women became very important in the sex/gender system. She explains the differences of European, African and Creole and how their role was fit and fix in the sex/gender system in regards of production, body and kinship. Morgan explains the correlation of race and reproduction as well as how this affected the Atlantic World. She also explains the differences between whites and blacks and how they experience reproduction differently. Morgan also elaborates on how sex is a sexual disclosure. This gave us the conclusion on how the ideologies of race and reproduction are central to the organization of slavery.

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography Of Colorism In African Americans

    1756 Words  | 4 Pages

    This source goes generally explains the history of colorism and how it relates to slavery. It is relevant because it shows how black woman were sexually exploited by their slave masters. This unfortunate occurrence then is lead to the conception of a mixed race child. The subject of sexual exploitation goes hand and hand when talking about woman affected by colorism. Women of a darker skin tone are often perceived to be promiscuous, single mothers who have children with multiple men. Most would assume that the fathers of the children are not involved with in their lives; which is parallel to what occurred during slavery. During slavery, when the child was old enough, he or she was able to work and live in the slave masters house. These mixed race children were referred to “house Negros.” They were clothed, fed, and treated differently than slaves that did hard, physical labor in the fields. This can be compared to the treatment of people of color today. People of a lighter skin tone are thought to have more access to social opportunities than people of a darker skin tone. My mother is a figure in my life that has faced these social issues of sexual exploitation and discrimination as a black woman. She has had a career in a professional setting and although these statics that black women face are not in her favor she has still managed

    Read More

  • The Rise of Cult Activity

    1652 Words  | 4 Pages

    The panic and fear of cult activity in our country seems to continue to grow with the more unbelievable stories that hit the news. The first big news event that was cult related occurred in 1969. Five dead bodies were found by the maid at 10050 Cielo Drive. Beautiful actress Sharon Tate who was pregnant at the time, and her friends Steven Earl Parent, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski, and...

    Read More

  • Cult Essay

    692 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cults can be bad influences in several different ways. This article is about real facts of why cults make society a much worse place.

    Read More

  • Blurred Boundaries: Religion vs. Cult

    1155 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fine lines proceed to subsequently blur the separation between a religion and a cult. Throughout history, the label cult has consistently succeeded in disparaging numerous religions including Christianity. To bring a standstill to the confusion amidst all personages, the narrow slash between these two matters need to be entirely divulged and established. Distinctions separating a religion and a cult are elucidated primarily by their treatment of individuals and relations. Variances can be seen through examples of behaviors, the “Moonies” cult, and the works of the Christian religion.

    Read More

  • Slavery In The Souls Of Black Folk By Harriet Jacobs

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    Analyzing the narrative of Harriet Jacobs through the lens of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du bois provides an insight into two periods of 19th century American history--the peak of slavery in the South and Reconstruction--and how the former influenced the attitudes present in the latter. The Reconstruction period features Negro men and women desperately trying to distance themselves from a past of brutal hardships that tainted their souls and livelihoods. W.E.B. Du bois addresses the black man 's hesitating, powerless, and self-deprecating nature and the narrative of Harriet Jacobs demonstrates that the institution of slavery was instrumental in fostering this attitude.

    Read More

  • Slavery Is Terrible For Women, By Harriet A. Jacobs

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    In fact, women had to carry with the pain of having their children wrenched from them. Women were forced to be “breeders” they were meant to bear children to add to their master’s “stock”, but they were denied the right to care for them. It was not something unusual to happen to these women it was considered normal. The master didn’t believe the female slaves had feelings, or the right to ruin their merchandise. It was also not unusual for the plantation master to satisfy his sexual lust with his female slaves and force them to have his children. Children that were born from these unions were often sold to protect the honor and dignity of the slave owner’s wife, who would be forced to face the undeniable proof of her husband’s lust for “black women.”

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s

    Read More

  • Analysis of John Saliba´s Understanding New Religious Movements

    800 Words  | 2 Pages

    The word “cult” has a very negative connotation in modern society as a result of it being applied to several religious groups that have violated basic moral or societal rules. It is regularly applied by the media to groups that are considered to be “deviant, dangerous or corrupt” (1). “The Theological use of the word “cult” is most evident in Christian Evangelical literature.” (2) Here, a cult is described by Walter Ralston Martin as “a group, religious in nature which surrounds a leader or a group of teaching which either denies or misinterprets essential Biblical doctrine.”(2) Another definition by Charles Braden is “those religious groups that differ significantly from those religious groups that are regarded as the normative expression of religion in our total culture.” And “a group of people gathered about a specific person or person’s misinterpretation of the Bible.”(2). Two very vague definitions that could apply to just about any faith that doesn’t align with what the...

    Read More

More about History, Race, and Violence in the Arena of Reproduction Enslavement.

Open Document