Slavers exercised unchecked power over unshackled black women on slave ships.

Evidence

White male slavers did not regard the African female as a threat, so often aboard slave ships black women were stored without being shackled while black men were chained to one another. The slavers believed their own safety to be threatened by enslaved African men, but they had no such fear of the African female. The placing of African men in chains was to prevent possible uprisings. As white slavers feared resistance and retaliation at the hands of African men, they placed as much distance between themselves and black male slaves as was possible on board. It was only in relationship to the black female slave that the white slaver could exercise freely absolute power, for he could brutalize and exploit her without fear of harmful retaliation. Black female slaves moving freely about the decks were a ready target for any white male who might choose to physically abuse and torment them. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 56

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Black women bore the brunt of slave-ship terror because they could not retaliate

Related

• Black women bore the brunt of slave-ship terror because they could not retaliate (similarity 0.85)
• Terrorization aboard slave ships forced Africans to adopt the slave identity. (similarity 0.84)
• Enslaved women absorbed anti-woman violence that white women otherwise faced (similarity 0.83)
• White women, not white men, were slavery’s most direct beneficiaries (similarity 0.82)
• Enslaved black women withheld the respect they granted white men from white mistresses (similarity 0.81)
• Enslaved Black men prioritized self-preservation over protecting Black women (similarity 0.80)
• Enslaved women were no more sexually liberated than white women. (similarity 0.80)
• Sexism made the black female slave’s lot harsher than the male’s (similarity 0.80)
• Slave parents rarely prepared daughters for the reality of sexual exploitation (similarity 0.80)
• White mistresses usually sided with their husbands against enslaved women (similarity 0.79)
• Slave sexual violence was punishment, with the master’s deviance transferred to the woman (similarity 0.79)
• Castration of slaves was exemplary punishment, not a project to destroy masculinity. (similarity 0.79)
• White male sexual power over slaves redirected white women’s anger onto black women (similarity 0.78)
• White women fear black women’s power to expose their hypocrisy (similarity 0.78)
• Enslaved black women worked as hard as men but were barred from supervisory roles (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Black women bore the brunt of slave-ship terror because they could not retaliate #corroborates (0.80)