Planters rewarded slave motherhood while punishing abortion as theft of property.

Evidence

The scarcity of workers coupled with the relatively few numbers of black women in American colonies caused some white male planters to encourage, persuade, and coerce immigrant white females to engage in sexual relationships with black male slaves as a means of producing new workers. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 48 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Labor scarcity led planters to coerce white women into breeding slaves. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 48

Related

• Labor scarcity led planters to coerce white women into breeding slaves. (similarity 0.95)
• Matrilineal inheritance of slave status made black women’s breeding economically central (similarity 0.84)
• Planters had to pay enslaved women to bear children because birthrates were low (similarity 0.82)
• Breeding black women slaves became economically key once importation was restricted. (similarity 0.82)
• Slave breeding was widespread despite scholarly dismissal of it (similarity 0.81)
• Slave parents rarely prepared daughters for the reality of sexual exploitation (similarity 0.81)
• African women’s accustomed labor made them ideal plantation slaves. (similarity 0.80)
• Devaluation of black womanhood licensed exploitation and prostitution (similarity 0.79)
• White women, not white men, were slavery’s most direct beneficiaries (similarity 0.79)
• Enslaved women limited their fertility to strike at the plantation system (similarity 0.79)
• The cult of true womanhood demoralized enslaved women and enabled manipulation (similarity 0.79)
• Sexual exploitation dehumanized black women more than labor exploitation did (similarity 0.79)
• Calling enslaved Black women prostitutes misdescribed their coerced sexual exploitation (similarity 0.79)
• Slaveholding demoralized planters while they feared their slaves (similarity 0.78)
• Black women bore the brunt of slave-ship terror because they could not retaliate (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Labor scarcity led planters to coerce white women into breeding slaves. #expands (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 48