Early American Slave Owners and Slave Relationships (torture, Africa, rights)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Would you be willing to be a slave just because you might be owned by a "kind owner" or an owner you find attractive? If everything in your life depended on your relationship with a slaveholder, you might appear to be a willing participant even though it would not be your first choice. Why is this important anyway? Does it make some people feel better about the institution of slavery to imagine that it was in some way good or beneficial for the slave?
No no...Im not saying that slavery was fun or nice by any stretch of the imagination...Im not even saying that because there were a few occasional consensual sexual encounters, that it diminishes or absolves the atrocities of rape, subjugation nor bondage that black women and men encountered.
That said, I cant just force myself to look at only one aspect of slavery and its effect on black women or black people in general...and in this instance I was just pointing out that some black women did have consensual sex with their slavemasters, just as some black men did have consensual sex with their slave master's wives.
I think it might be unrealistic to assume that in 250 years, 4 million slaves , and how ever many white people there was, that not a single instance of a black person and a white person had genuine affection for each, within the institution of slavery. It was not uncommon for small Slave owners ( having under 20 slaves) to live as a family unit with their slaves and intermarry with them, particularly widowed men. I have read many letters written by slaves to their masters, and have read primary sources where owners described the feelings they had for their slaves.
so in the 1800's no black woman would have sex with a white man but now in 2010 they would ? or maybe the black woman are forced by their pimps? yeah thats my story and I'm sticking to it
humans are human I have no proof but .... logic points to a man and a woman white black yellow and maybe even purple just might crave each other to gratify their sexual needs in the 21st,20th,19th and even the 18th centuries. and I dont need google to figure that out!
No one claims that there was never any affection between blacks and whites during slavery. What we do claim is that it was not the same as today. Today black women choose who they love. In slavery times black women had no choice. I am sure some actually did feel affection for the white men in their lives, but it is still a matter of who they were forced to be with. I don't believe anyone in their right mind believes that slavery was every good or one, big happy family.
This type of activity probably went on all of the time during the period of slavery. It doesn't make sense to think it didn't. The problems begin to arise when someone wants to start being the hanging judge without the arrest, conviction or sentence of a guilty party. It's a sad chapter in human history that needs to be acknowledged, and then, move on from there.
No one claims that there was never any affection between blacks and whites during slavery. What we do claim is that it was not the same as today. Today black women choose who they love. In slavery times black women had no choice. I am sure some actually did feel affection for the white men in their lives, but it is still a matter of who they were forced to be with. I don't believe anyone in their right mind believes that slavery was every good or one, big happy family.
First off, or course slavery was not moral. But I don't understand why you think in terms of how the world was back then. Imagine being born into this world during times of slavery without anyone telling you how wrong it is. The first few years of a persons life determines much of their personality. This has been proven with babies. Why is it so difficult to imagine that many slaves just accepted their roles and lived in an act in accordance with the current customs of the day?
There are many women today who want to get pregnant by certain men because it will help them in some way. Could it be possible that there were cases where slave women who knew that kindship with the slave masters would be a benifit in some way? This way the family could stay in the same place.
"Some people in this area of abolitionist sentiment were shocked when wealthy Southern planters arrived at the resort with their entourages of enslaved or free African-American mistresses and mixed-race "natural" children."
This excerpt is from the History of Wilberforce University, (Wikipedia ) Although the college was known as the first college owned and operated by blacks , I was told by a former Instructor there that before it was black owned it was known as the institution wealthy and prominent white Plantation owners sent their children that their Black Mistresses bore them.
The arguements about "consentual sex between women held in chattel slavery and the men who held papers of ownership.......are very much like the arguements that some pedophiles make about how the children are better off and enjoy the sex and that they want and seek it out. Those arguements reveal how totally selfish and cruel those men are........just the same as the arguements about plantation relationships being anything other than rape.
When an individual is owned and society enforces that status.....the man who has the power to brand her with a hot iron or cut off her foot or to mutilate her or sell her or her man or her children off to work the cane fields in Lousianna or Texas....cannot claim their sexual exploitation is consentual. The consent is situational.....a product of the power inequity.
First off, or course slavery was not moral. But I don't understand why you think in terms of how the world was back then. Imagine being born into this world during times of slavery without anyone telling you how wrong it is. The first few years of a persons life determines much of their personality. This has been proven with babies. Why is it so difficult to imagine that many slaves just accepted their roles and lived in an act in accordance with the current customs of the day?
The chains and manacles and whips and disfigurement and instruments of torture e.g branding irons...and the attempted escapes and the pervasive fear of slave rebellions.....prove otherwise.
I am sure that some slaves felt hopeless and resigned to being worked to death in the fields or beaten to death by the overseers....but I dont believe they "accepted" their roles. Some may have learned how to advance within the circumstances and get jobs in the big house etc.....but it would have been based on survival....there were African tribes who were considered undesirable as slaves because the incidence of suicide when enslaved was so high.
The arguements about "consentual sex between women held in chattel slavery and the men who held papers of ownership.......are very much like the arguements that some pedophiles make about how the children are better off and enjoy the sex and that they want and seek it out. Those arguements reveal how totally selfish and cruel those men are........just the same as the arguements about plantation relationships being anything other than rape.
When an individual is owned and society enforces that status.....the man who has the power to brand her with a hot iron or cut off her foot or to mutilate her or sell her or her man or her children off to work the cane fields in Lousianna or Texas....cannot claim their sexual exploitation is consentual. The consent is situational.....a product of the power inequity.
Thank you. Finally, a voice of reason in a thread that continues to amaze me.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.