“The rape and exploitation of enslaved black women was not just rampant, it was endemic. The writings of former slaves such Harriet Jacobs, as well those of sympathetic white women like abolitionist Sarah Grimke, paint a picture of black girls in their early teens getting routinely bribed with presents and "favors," such as promises of better treatment, for agreeing to sex with white plantation workers or relatives of the owner. Resistance was met with punishment by way of a whipping. "When he make me follow him into de bush, what use me to tell him no? He have strength to make me," one enslaved woman is quoted in the book Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. Such testimony led the authors to conclude that the rape of female slaves was likely the most common form of interracial sex. The dehumanisation and hypersexualization of black women was so systematic it was woven into the very fabric of society: their optimal breeding times were the topic of dinner conversations, and they were sold at market in little to no clothing as potential buyers prodded and poked their frequently pregnant bodies to assess their "breeding" potential. Often forced to dress in rags, with legs, arms, and sometimes chest showing, they provided a deliberately marked contrast to the fully and heavily clothed white women, which, as Bell Hooks has noted, both reinforced their supposed innate lack of chastity and morality and exposed them to yet more abuse: "the nakedness of the female slave served as a constant reminder of her sexual vulnerability."
We cannot put a number on how many black girls and women were sexually abused, but we do know that such abuse was the defining feature of their enslavement, prompting Jacobs to proclaim, "Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women." The abuse of black women served at least three functions: it terrorized the black population in order to reinforce white domination, it provided a source of continuous labor, and it was a sexual outlet that white men took advantage of in order to maintain the illusion of the moral superiority of white society in an era of supposed sexual chastity.”
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