Double tragedy on african american slave woman assignment

Male domination did not start from a recent past; women during this Era were the victims of this gender based discrimination that did not only affect the slave women, but also the white women in the plantations. Black women were seen as a liability and not an asset. The normal woman features of a woman such as the monthly menstrual period and pregnancy were treated as a great disadvantage as it reduced their performance in their capacity as plantation workers.

If a woman is denied what makes and defines her as a woman she will always feel worthless and not part of the society (Fox 1988, 122-127) The other cry of the black woman was seen in their labour. In case a woman was employed in the farm, no special consideration was paid to her as a woman. She had to do the same type of work and magnitude as the men. They worked for long hours in the plantations and even longer during harvesting time. Jones in Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow writes: “ Together with their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, black women spent up to fourteen hours a day toiling out of doors, often under a blazing sun…… hey plowed fields; dropped seed; and hoed, picked, ginned, sorted, and moted cotton. ‘(Jones 1985, 198). Working at night with a candle light was common, making them work for more than sixteen hours a day for seven days a week. Despite their role as mothers to their children, they were forced to cook, and take care of their masters’ children as well as washing and doing the other entire domestic work for their masters. No one gave her any sympathy for her being a woman; no one helped her in her hard work. Punishment did select her either.

The folks over there they used to say to me: ‘ Who’s your pappy? Who’s your pappy? ‘ I just say: ‘ Turkey buzzard lay me and the sun hatch me,’ and then go on ’bout my business. Course all the time they knows and I knows, too, that Massa Daniels was my pappy” (Botkin 1958, 34). Roberts argues that ‘ While slave owners profited from encouraging slave women to bear many children… ‘ Others found it a business to sell women as concubines to them that viewed a black woman as a object of sex (Sanders 2001). Rape was another vice that the black American slaves had no any judicial or societal protection against.

According to Fox ‘ There were no safeguards to protect them from being sexually stalked, harassed, or raped, or to be used as long-term concubines by masters and overseers. ‘ Despite the end of slavery in 1865, justice for a black woman was unheard off. No single case of sexual assault against a white male was presented in court and the few that reached the courts against a black suspect, it found no fair listening. (Fox 1988, 122-126) How did the black woman fight back? Any kind of oppression will always develop resistance of its own kind. This was not exceptional with the African American slavery.

Those incapable of escape ‘ Others killed their masters outright — some by using weapons, others by putting poison in their food. Some slaves committed suicide or mutilated themselves to ruin their property value’ (Antebellum slavery 2002) Conclusion Despite abolition of slave trade by Abraham Lincoln, many women in the world today are still asking the same question, ‘ aren’t I a woman? ‘ How many women today are faced with neglect, sexual abuse, domestic violence and injustice every day? The history of the black American woman slave can be used to address the origin of the gender disparities seen in the world today.

Slavery is not welcomed in the modern society. No one can agree that slavery is still going on today. However, oppression against women of the African origin in the American society is so evident and so pronounced today. Many are denied the freedom of work and decision making even concerning their own welfare. This, as we have seen from the discussion above, emanated from the oppression during the slavery period in the South. Fight for social justice and gender equity should be in the frontline in ensuring a just society. Sexual abuse against women based on race in the world and USA in particular should be made the thing of the past.