Enslaved black women shared racial status with men but faced sexist subordination

Evidence

As regards hierarchies based solely on race, the social status of black women and men was the same, but sexist differentiation caused the lot of the male to be distinguished from that of the female. A measure of social equality existed between the sexes in the area of work but nowhere else. Black women and men often performed the exact same tasks in agricultural labor, but even in that area black women could not rise to leadership positions. Outside the work arena, in day-to-day life, female slaves were treated differently from male slaves and were in some instances the subordinates of male slaves. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 150

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes hooks’s core distinction between racial hierarchy (shared) and sexist hierarchy (differentiating) operating simultaneously on Black women.
• XREF: This race-plus-sex analysis parallels the intersectionality framework later formalized by Crenshaw. — connects to: White male sexual power over slaves redirected white women’s anger onto black women — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 451; Enslaved black women withheld the respect they granted white men from white mistresses — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 450; Nineteenth century black women suffered most from sexism yet lacked collective power — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 465 (+29 more)

Related

• Sexism made the black female slave’s lot harsher than the male’s (similarity 0.93)
• Enslaved black women worked as hard as men but were barred from supervisory roles (similarity 0.90)
• Black men asserted dominance over women to compensate for losing to white men (similarity 0.90)
• Nineteenth-century black women endured double enslavement by race and sex (similarity 0.89)
• Black slave gender roles replicated white patriarchal divisions of labor (similarity 0.89)
• Enslaved black men held higher status than black women under slavery (similarity 0.89)
• Sexism and racism together intensified black women’s oppression beyond black men’s. (similarity 0.88)
• Understanding black women’s status requires analyzing race and sex together (similarity 0.88)
• Sexism and racism were twin oppressive forces in black women’s slave experience (similarity 0.88)
• Black women under slavery were doubly enslaved by race and sex (similarity 0.88)
• Black women experienced sexist oppression distinct from racism (similarity 0.87)
• Enslaved black women withheld the respect they granted white men from white mistresses (similarity 0.87)
• Black women’s exploitation is better described as masculinization than black men’s de-masculinization. (similarity 0.87)
• Nineteenth century black women were the most sexist-oppressed female group in America (similarity 0.86)
• Enslaved women absorbed anti-woman violence that white women otherwise faced (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Enslaved black men held higher status than black women under slavery #expands (0.70)
• Sexism and racism were twin oppressive forces in black women’s slave experience #qualifies (0.60)
• Black slave women were both accomplices in and victims of patriarchy #complicates (0.50)