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Many slaves were raped..and many were willing participants in sexual escapades.
Yup. Believing the first and only the first enables victimization, that is primarily why some are so bent on not beliving that the later occurred as well.
When the man has the power of life and death and ownership.....by definition sex with his slave is rape.....she is unable to give or withhold informed consent.....just as when a guard has sex with a prisoner....it is rape.....the power discrepancy makes it impossible for the sex to be consentual. When a teacher has sex with a student it is rape.....and an adult with a child....it is rape. Of course those plantation relationships were rape.....
For it to be consentual sex the slave holder would have freed his slave and provided for her financial independance which he could not recind before seeking to engage in an intimate relationship.
By this very definition of "rape"...technically all women were "raped" by men in general.
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?
I think that the problem with this explanation is that you are thinking in the context of a post civil rights, not for the color of my skin type mentality. It's pretty easy to believe that AFTER someone like Frederick Douglass, AFTER Rosa parks, AFTER mlk and Malcolm X, AFTER the civil rights act of 64', intergration, and AFTER the riots, affirmative action, all the books, narratives and black studies projects and classes and Bill Cosby tv shows. Prior to that, the congeniality of relationships between slaves, laborers, factory workers or whatever weren't always thought of in the context of "right" or "wrong" between either party, and I surmise that many of the slaves knew nothing other than the lifestyle that they were born into. It's unfortunate, but that is the reality of it. The relationships weren't linear across the board; while some slaves were treated horridly, others were not. Some slave owners actually "married" (or however you want to identify those relationships) with their slaves because those were the only women available to them. Some slaves were actually paid, and some slaves were actually hired out to work for others but allowed to keep their earnings.
Yup. Believing the first and only the first enables victimization, that is primarily why some are so bent on not beliving that the later occurred as well.
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.
Yes, there were very cruel slave owners, but there were also slave owners who were literally the grandfathers, fathers, uncles, half brothers of some slaves that lived on the same property. Some of these owners did not beat and abuse their slaves and treated them very well. Slaves that lived under these conditions did not want to leave. This did happen.
were relations between white women and black men rape? what if he refused? for that matter black men were used as breeding stock so in effect many black men were raped in de facto because they were forced to have sex with a black woman who was not of their choosing. The miscegenation laws were not passed so white men would not have sex with black women . IMO It was too keep white women from having affairs with black men. The logic behind this may have been more financial than societal, By law the ethnicity of a child followed that of his mother. When ever a slave woman got pregnant by whom ever ,the cash register would ring.
Neither do I, and that was not the question I asked was it? This is not about people of today.
Your question didn't reflect on my statement,which is why you thought I didn't answer it.
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