White women’s affection for black servants coexisted with status domination they denied

Evidence

White women continued to see black women as sexual competitors, ignoring white male sexual assault and abuse of black females. Although they have written poignant memoirs which describe affectional bonds between themselves and black female servants, white women often failed to acknowledge that intimacy and care can coexist with domination. It has been difficult for white women who perceive black women servants to be “like one of the family” to understand that the servant might have a completely different understanding of their relationship. The servant may be ever mindful that no degree of affection or care altered differences in status— or the reality that white women exercised power, whether benevolently or tyrannically. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 191

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader themes of intimacy coexisting with domination seen in the slavery/‘plantation mistress’ scholarship, and to reader’s ongoing work on unacknowledged power relations in care work. — connects to: Cross-racial intimacy between black and white women was structurally impossible under segregation — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 184; White women’s lady-status depended on keeping black women legally unmarriageable. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 186; White mistresses feared black slave women despite holding power over them — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 188 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Segregation confined black-white female contact to the servant-served relation #expands (0.86)
• White mistresses often punished rather than protected sexually exploited slave women #complicates (0.82)
• White mistresses usually sided with their husbands against enslaved women #complicates (0.80) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 112
• Shared slave labor forged a gender solidarity black women could invoke over white women #complicates (0.80) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 662
• Post-emancipation white women worked harder to enforce racial superiority through degrading stereotypes #expands (0.79) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 189
• White women feared black women’s perceived immorality threatened their own status #complicates (0.78) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 384
• White male sexual power over slaves redirected white women’s anger onto black women #expands (0.76) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 451
• The white woman’s pursuit of Negro lovers sought self-dissolution she could not attain #complicates (0.75) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 616
• Black women under slavery were doubly enslaved by race and sex #qualifies (0.73) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 26