Summary of Dorothy E. Roberts's Killing the Black Body

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The control of Black women’s reproductive lives began with the experiences of slave women like Rose Williams. Their childbearing replenished the enslaved labor force, and their procreation was largely a result of oppression rather than self-definition.
#2 The control of slave women’s reproduction is a great example of the importance of reproductive liberty to women’s equality. The harms of treating women’s wombs as procreative vessels, policies that pit a mother’s welfare against that of her unborn child, and government manipulation of women’s childbearing decisions all come from the denial of reproductive liberty.
#3 The essence of Black women’s experience during slavery was the denial of autonomy over reproduction. Female slaves were commercially valuable to their masters not only for their labor, but also for their ability to produce more slaves.
#4 Slaveholders used many methods to increase the fertility of their female slaves, from giving them presents to manipulating their marital choices. Women who did not produce children were often sold off or worse.

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sociology
• General officer
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 05 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822500303
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Dorothy E. Roberts's Killing the Black Body
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The control of Black women’s reproductive lives began with the experiences of slave women like Rose Williams. Their childbearing replenished the enslaved labor force, and their procreation was largely a result of oppression rather than self-definition.

#2

The control of slave women’s reproduction is a great example of the importance of reproductive liberty to women’s equality. The harms of treating women’s wombs as procreative vessels, policies that pit a mother’s welfare against that of her unborn child, and government manipulation of women’s childbearing decisions all come from the denial of reproductive liberty.

#3

The essence of Black women’s experience during slavery was the denial of autonomy over reproduction. Female slaves were commercially valuable to their masters not only for their labor, but also for their ability to produce more slaves.

#4

Slaveholders used many methods to increase the fertility of their female slaves, from giving them presents to manipulating their marital choices. Women who did not produce children were often sold off or worse.

#5

Slavery was a cruel system, and slaveholders treated their slaves like commodities. They would attempt to pawn off infertile slaves on unsuspecting buyers.

#6

Some slaveowners also practiced slave-breeding by forcing their prime stock to mate in the hopes of producing children especially suited for labor or sale. While slave masters’ interest in enhancing slave fertility is well established, Fogel and Engerman argued that this was achieved through positive economic incentives rather than through massive breeding.

#7

Slaveholders had a financial stake in male slaves’ marital choices, as well as an interest in preventing them from falling in love with each other or with free Black people.

#8

The law reinforced the sexual exploitation of slave women in two ways: it deemed any child who resulted from the rape to be a slave, and it failed to recognize the rape of a slave woman as a crime.

#9

The racial injustice tied to rape is usually associated with Black men, but white men also used Black women sexually as a means of subjugating the entire Black community.

#10

The laws that governed sexual interactions between white people were not applicable to slaves. Their intercourse was considered promiscuous and was left to be regulated by their owners.

#11

The law did not recognize a crime against the slave herself, but some judges held that the rape of a female slave was grounds for divorce. Southern white women frequently cited in their divorce actions their husbands’ affection for slave women as the cause for the marital discord.

#12

While some white women were against the sexual aspect of slavery, most were not. They benefited from the system in many ways.

#13

The law granted to whites a devisable, in futuro interest in the potential children of their slaves. Wills frequently devised slave women’s children before the children were born or even conceived.

#14

The auction block was the site of many slave families being separated, as slave owners would sell off members of their families to pay off debts or get rid of unruly slaves.

#15

My mother, paralyzed with grief, held me by the hand as my brothers and sisters were bid off first. Then I was offered. My mother pleaded with the auctioneer to at least buy me. He disengaged himself from her with violent blows and kicks.

#16

The slave masters’ control over child-rearing was even more insidious than their physical separation of mother and child. They deprived mothers of the opportunity to nurture their children, and instead, they forced them to leave their nursing infants at home while they worked in the field.

#17

The slave family was the best institution to transmit moral precepts to the Africans, according to courts. The slaveowner’s authority over the family was ordained by divine imperative.

#18

Slavery required that the political existence of slaves merge with that of their masters. To be a slave, according to Lunsford Lane, was to know that I was never to consult my own will, but was, while I lives, entirely under the control of another.

#19

The dual status of slave women as both producer and reproducer created tensions that troubled their masters and injured their children. The notion that a white mother and child were separable entities with contradictory interests was unthinkable.

#20

The conflict between mother and child was most dramatically expressed in the method of whipping pregnant slaves that was used throughout the South. The slaveowner would make the woman lie face down in a depression in the ground while she was whipped, and this was to protect the fetus while abusing the mother.

#21

The beating of pregnant slaves is a powerful metaphor for the evils of policies that seek to protect the fetus while disregarding the humanity of the mother.

#22

The timing of slave births was also influenced by the seasonality of their work. Many women gave birth in late summer and early fall, when labor requirements were reduced due to completion of the harvest and harsh weather.

#23

The conflict between slave women’s service as producers and as reproducers was highlighted on the Gaillard cotton plantation. In the summer, when their labor was in high demand, slave women suffered nearly twice the level of infant mortality than in other months.

#24

The tension between slave owners and their slaves was often felt by slave owners’ children, who were often slaves themselves. Because slave owners used their children as hostages to keep their mothers under control, most slave women had children with them when they escaped.

#25

The control of Black women’s reproduction by their masters, which was often used to generate more workers, also reinforced the entire system of slavery.

#26

Despite the law’s absolute power, white women could not crush the spirit of slave women. Black women struggled in numerous ways to resist their slave masters’ efforts to control their reproductive lives.

#27

The ability of slave women to get pregnant gave them a unique method of rebellion. Pregnant slaves could take advantage of their masters’ interest in a successful pregnancy by playing the lady and pretending to be sick.

#28

There is evidence that some female slaves refused to bear children by abstaining from sexual intercourse or by using contraceptives and abortives. Planters found this extremely disturbing, and they suspected that their slaves took deliberate steps to prevent or terminate pregnancy.

#29

There is little evidence that slave mothers were ever willing to kill their children in protest against slavery. Instead, they probably acted in desperation to protect their children, not sacrifice them.

#30

Slave mothers were often falsely accused of smothering their babies, and as a result, many of them killed their children out of fear.

#31

Slave mothers were forced to deal with whites in the currency of the time: female autonomy over their own bodies. They turned to the courts to win their children’s freedom, and some even sued for it.

#32

Despite the trauma of slavery, many Black women and men were able to maintain their family life. Slaves were often able to sever their ties with their original families and develop settled kin networks over time.

#33

While many slave owners allowed and even encouraged the formation of slave families, they did not necessarily live together as a couple. The two-parent nuclear family was the societal ideal among slaves and their masters, but in practice, this did not always occur.

#34

Slaves created a broad notion of family that included extended kin and non-kin relationships. Because families could be torn asunder at the slave master’s whim, slave communities created networks of mutual obligation that went beyond the nuclear family.

#35

Slave women’s fight to retain a modicum of reproductive autonomy despite the repressive conditions of bondage demonstrates the importance of reproduction to our humanity.