Jennifer Morgan Slavery Analysis

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Recommended: Sexual relations between slaves and owners

For this paper, I will focus on Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery, by Jennifer L. Morgan. I choose to use this as one of my secondary sources because it outlines the absurd ideologies that many non-slaves, such as slave owners, constructed regarding African American women fertility, by exposing their reproductive abilities. My paper is exploring how many African American women were not just abused as slaves, but as means for sexual pleasure, reproductive use, and for mere economic profit. Discussing such a horrific topic is very difficult, so in this paper I am seeking to explore how Jennifer Morgan describes all the cruel racial injustices that African women experienced from their perspective, and the perspective …show more content…

Nonetheless, it was a grotesque technique to conceal these white men’s’ distorted and disgusting beliefs that somehow a body of an African women was able to reproduce better without any pain. Nonetheless, this irrational thought was justified because white women experienced pain because they were decedents from Eve. Thus, they were trying to avoid any women feeling pain during pain. By clarifying this ridiculous claim with representations from the bible, they believed it was constitutionally and biblically acceptable to ill-use the African women for profits. As Morgan first explains in her book, these white men usually created impressions based on the physical appearance that a person upheld. However, regarding the African women, it seemed to be very contradictory. While these men viewed the African women’s’ body as “ desirable and repulsive”(15-16), it was also “ productive and reproductive, beautiful and black” (15-16). I found this point extremely disturbing, it is vey rare to describe someone based on his or her reproductive capabilities. Yet, these women were trapped with the impression that having curves meant they were able to undertake reproductive labors better than white …show more content…

However, these women, whether they were involved in relationships with other slaves or not, were forced to bare their fertile abilities with other men for the slave owners selfish gain. While Jennifer Morgan presents many arguments, I believe an extreme brutality these women faced was having sex to reproduce so their slave owners would gain a profit. It is disgusting to force any women, of any color to expose herself and undergo the torturous pain of labor to deliver a child out of wedlock and rape. These men forced these women to give birth to children that they would never see again, or from men that had sexually abused them and forcefully inseminated them. While the image is very graphic is the ugly truth. In chapter 2, Morgan further explains the experience from the African women using evidence left behind by the slave-owners, and traders (59). These African women were forced out of their home, mostly from areas in West Africa, and placed on plantations to do unthinkable work. While men were also victims of this terrible cruelty, Morgan found that it was of more value to gift and fertile African women to a slave owner than an African man. I found it extremely important to find out the sources of Morgan’s findings because she powerfully exemplifies the inconceivable abuse these women dealt with because of their black curvy bodies. Morgan obtained her information from clues left behind from slave-owners and traders,

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