Just saw 12 years a slave

[BainsBane]

357. Corrections (for outside readers)

since Little Blue has said he doesn't bother to read my posts. I nonetheless feel compelled to correct some of this so as not to allow false information to stand unchecked in case anyone comes across his post and decides to take it as fact.

Slave masters certainly did vary considerably as individuals, that is true. Many slave narratives, like that of Frederick Douglass, show a change were a slave started with a reasonable master but was later sold or hired out to a particularly cruel one. To argue that treatment depended on the type of crop produced, however, is not accurate. Certainly some work was harder than others, but the treatment depended on the mores in the particular region as well as the character of the planter. There were literally hundreds of different occupations on sugar plantations. English lacks a word to describe the sugar plantation complex, known as ingenios in Spanish and engenhos in Portuguese. Many slaves worked as field laborers and others operating some of the highly skilled functions necessary to construct, maintain, and operate the sugar mill, or trapiche. See Manuel Moreno Fraginals, The Sugarmill on sugar ingenios in Cuba. He lists the huge variety of slave occupations necessary to keep the sugar plantation complex going.

Historians debated for years where treatment was harsher in the US or in Catholic countries in Latin America. There was no resolution to the debate. Some aspects, like whippings, were more severe in places like Brazil (the country that received the overwhelming majority of African slaves), but they also had greater protection under the law and greater opportunities for manumission. The bottom line is that slavery was incredibly oppressive wherever it existed, though aspects of the institution did vary from region to region and country to country.

While house slaves did not do arduous labor in the fields, they remained under the master's, and mistress's, gaze all the time. To survive, they had to wear a mask of compliance that belied their real feelings (referred to by historians as the "Sambo mask&quot . They were not "treated like family." Planters told themselves they treated their slaves like family, but one does not own family members or sell off their children. As union troops approached during the war, those household slaves that masters believed were "like family" were often the first to flee. (See Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm so Long). That demonstrated that they certainly did not see their owners as family.

To argue that slave women had it "easiest" is patently false and ignores the reality of life in the Big House. Women working in households were regularly raped, though field slaves were also raped. Masters, however, had easier access to female house slaves. Read, for example, the testimonial by a former slave and abolitionist. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in a life of a Slave Girl. There is not a single testimonial of a slave woman that does not speak about her rape by a master, overseer, or member of the master's family. It was not uncommon for slave girls to bear their master's children. Plantation mistresses often took their frustrations over their husbands infidelity out on slave girls by inflicting particularly brutal punishments. (See Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household).

To argue that female household slaves were "concubines" who had it easiest is a completely false and offensive statement. It ignores the fact those women were owned, regularly beaten by masters, slaves, and overseers, and that they were repeatedly raped and lived under the close surveillance of the master's family. How "easy" would your life be if you were raped on a continual basis? That reality has led historians to write about slave women's double-exploitation, as both forced laborers and sex slaves. See Deborah Gray-White, Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South. I also found this article on double-exploitation online through Jstor, which allows limited free access.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4030682?uid=3739736&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104576137323

I can't help but observe this discussion over slave women "having it easy" dovetails with recent discussions on prostitution and human trafficking. The fact that a slave is owned and has no right to choose her sexual partners, one would think, should be obvious to anyone. Little wonder some think human trafficking not worth concerning themselves with, while others insist that underage girls as young as 9, as one poster insisted, willingly "choose the profession" of prostitution. People give lip service to notions of consenting adults and ignore that a great deal of the sex trade is anything but. Whether now or in the Antebellum era, slaves do not consent to sex. They are forced into it because they are owned. Children and young teens cannot consent to sex because they are under age. These are basic concepts that one would think anyone would understand. Sadly that is not the case.