Hypersexual African femininity was a literary invention justifying White men’s rapes

Evidence

The Isle of Pines was one of the first portrayals in British letters of aggressive hypersexual African femininity. Such portrayals served both to exonerate White men of their inhuman rapes and to mask their human attractions to the supposed beast-like women. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 100

Categorization

• XREF: Perfect example of the book’s causal scheme applied to a single trope: the predatory-Black-woman idea produced to justify and mask law-sanctioned White rape.
• SEED: The 1736 South-Carolina Gazette ‘African Ladies’ advice-column excerpt is a powerful primary-source hook for an essay-length excerpt on how rape culture and racist pseudoscience were co-produced in colonial print.