British officials equated blackness of household women with enslaved status

Evidence

The social status of white women in America has to a large extent been determined by white people’s relationship to black people. It was the enslavement of African people in colonized America that marked the beginning of a change in the social status of white women. Prior to slavery, patriarchal law decreed white women were lowly inferior beings, the subordinate group in society. The subjugation of black people allowed them to vacate their despised position and assume the role of a superior. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 449 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Consequently, it can be easily argued that even though white men institutionalized slavery, white women were its most immediate beneficiaries. Slavery in no way altered the hierarchical social status of the white male but it created a new status for the white female. The only way that her new status could be maintained was through the constant assertion of her superiority over the black woman and man. All too often colonial white women, particularly those who were slave mistresses, chose to differentiate their status from the slave’s by treating the slave in a brutal and cruel manner. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 450 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: British officials read black skin in Egyptian households as automatic proof of slavery. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 706; Slavery elevated white women’s social status above black people — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 449; White women, not white men, were slavery’s most direct beneficiaries — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 450

Related

• Slavery elevated white women’s social status above black people (similarity 0.89)
• White women, not white men, were slavery’s most direct beneficiaries (similarity 0.84)
• British officials presumed any black woman in an Egyptian household was a slave (similarity 0.83)
• British officials read black skin in Egyptian households as automatic proof of slavery. (similarity 0.81)
• African women’s accustomed labor made them ideal plantation slaves. (similarity 0.81)
• Enslaved black men held higher status than black women under slavery (similarity 0.81)
• Black men asserted dominance over women to compensate for losing to white men (similarity 0.79)
• Enslaved black women worked as hard as men but were barred from supervisory roles (similarity 0.79)
• Black slave gender roles replicated white patriarchal divisions of labor (similarity 0.79)
• Black women’s exploitation is better described as masculinization than black men’s de-masculinization. (similarity 0.79)
• Egyptian elite households ran parallel hierarchies of gender and slave status (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Slavery elevated white women’s social status above black people #corroborates (0.55) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 449
• White women, not white men, were slavery’s most direct beneficiaries #corroborates (0.50) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 450