In this case, a white woman, with not much to lose if found out, would most likely initiate the affair. The idea that a white woman needed to be spatially and physically protected was why an enslaved black man could lose his life if found in an intimate relationship with her.Īs with human nature, the fear of death never quite stopped some from living dangerously. These were to make up for the believed inferiority in their intellectual capacity.
Prudence, modesty and restraint were expected of a white Southern woman. The world would resemble an amphitheatre of wild beasts.” “Leave men to themselves without the intermixture of female society and the softening influence of female modesty, gentleness and affection, and they would infallibly become rude, harsh, coarse, quarrelsome, and in their quarrels cruel and unrelenting. William Hooper addressing women at the Sedgwick Female Seminary, North Carolina in 1847: They also existed to humanize their men, a social process best summarized by the Rev. Their supposed purity was linked to their sexuality and virtue to their ability to maintain a home according to traditional Southern Christian values. In the thought of the times, they were to be taken care of by their men. Southern women, especially of the plantation class, were the precious jewels of Southern culture. In contrast to black women who were considered whores is the idea of white women, especially in the Antebellum South, who were seen as pure and virtuous. The former slave, Harriet Jacobs, wrote for posterity in 1861 about the very foundation of the idea of the “whorish black woman” in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. What proceeds from this whitewashing is collective amnesia over how young black women and girls have become constant sexualized images in the minds of those who hold power and influence. Part of our society feels the incessant need to whitewash the ugliness of white slaveowners having sexual relations with enslaved black women. What may have been an attempt at pointing at the silver linen in slavery, – as if there were any – results in these silver linen seekers overlooking the social essence of “property”. This is in spite of the glaring fact that Hemings was Jefferson’s literal property.
There are those who have sought to portray Hemings’ relationship with the patriarch Thomas Jefferson as a loving relationship.
Consider sexual relationships between enslaved Africans and free white people.