Black women’s domestic-service legacy sustains distrust and rivalry with white women

Evidence

Overall, black women have come away from encounters with white women in the servant-served relationship feeling confident that the two groups are radically different and share no common language. It is this legacy of attitudes and reflections about white women that is shared from generation to generation, keeping alive the sense of distance and separation, feelings of suspicion and mistrust. Now that interracial relationships between whites and blacks are more common, black women see white women as sexual competitors—irrespective of sexual preference—often advocating continued separation in the private sphere despite proximity and closeness in work settings. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 195

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that black women see white women as sexual competitors ‘irrespective of sexual preference’ is sweeping and worth probing — does the author evidence this or is it asserted from position?
• XREF: connects to: White women’s freedom from domestic duties rests on Black women’s coerced labor — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 194; Domestic service gave black women an insider vantage for judging white women’s morals — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 195; White women’s affection for black servants coexisted with status domination they denied — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 191 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Segregation confined black-white female contact to the servant-served relation #expands (0.90)
• White women’s affection for black servants coexisted with status domination they denied #expands (0.85) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 191
• Positive cross-race feminist encounters occur mainly where white women lack power over black women #corroborates (0.82) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 201