The Myth Of The Black Rapist Essay

Over the past couple centuries that the United States has existed, society has always had a judgement to make on one’s sexuality. At the head of society has consistently been white, Christian, hetereosexual males; therefore, they had the power to define sexual and societal norms. As a result, judgements on one’s sexuality have always intersected with one’s race, class or gender, groups of people that are not dominating society.

One historical example of the exertion of dominance through societal norms and prejudices about sexuality is the numerous lynchings of black men during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with the charge of raping white women. During this period, African-Americans only recently received their freedom, but the

This is most clearly discussed in Ida B. Wells-Barnett Exposes the Myth of the Black Rapist, 1892. In the South, this era was comprised of hundreds of lynchings of innocent black men, so much so that there were 728 by 1892 and “...only one-third of the 728 victims to mobs have been charged with rape, to say nothing of those of that one-third who were innocent of the charge” (Peiss 158). White men interpreted black men having intimate relationships with “their” women as a threat to their masculinity and power. They could not understand that a white woman would want to be with a black men, so the only conclusion would be that she was raped: “Why is it that white women attract negro men now more than in former days? There was a time when such a thing was unheard of. There is a secret to this thing, and we greatly suspect it is the growing appreciation of white Juliets for colored Romeos” (Peiss 156). However, dominant attitude was incredibly hypocritical and consisted of double standards, considering white men were able to sexually abuse black women. During and before the antebellum period, white slaveowners sexually abused black female slaves and this behavior continued into the