White male brutality toward Black women stemmed from patriarchal misogyny, not racism alone

Evidence

The shift away from the image of white woman as sinful and sexual to that of white woman as virtuous lady occurred at the same time as mass sexual exploitation of enslaved black women—just as the rigid sexual morality of Victorian England created a society in which the extolling of woman as mother and helpmeet occurred at the same time as the formation of a mass underworld of prostitution. As American white men idealized white womanhood, they sexually assaulted and brutalized black women. Racism was by no means the sole cause of many cruel and sadistic acts of violence perpetrated by white men against enslaved black women. The deep hatred of woman that had been embedded in the white colonizer’s psyche by patriarchal ideology and anti-woman religious teachings both motivated and sanctioned white male brutality against black women. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 99

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes hooks’s core analytic move: sexism (not just racism) is a distinct causal force in Black women’s oppression.
• XREF: Directly anticipates intersectionality as later theorized by Crenshaw; also echoes Angela Davis’s account of rape and slavery. — 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; Sexism and racism together intensified black women’s oppression beyond black men’s. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 60; White masochism arises from guilt over sanctioned sadistic aggression toward blacks — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 632 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Sexism unites black and white men across the racial divide that racism creates #corroborates (0.75)
• White men sympathized with black power because shared sexism overrode racism #corroborates (0.70) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 276
• Sexism and racism were twin oppressive forces in black women’s slave experience #corroborates (0.70)
• The matriarchy myth built white-male and Black-male solidarity on shared sexism #corroborates (0.65) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 231
• Black women experienced sexist oppression distinct from racism #corroborates (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 47
• White masochism arises from guilt over sanctioned sadistic aggression toward blacks #corroborates (0.55) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 632