Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 September 26

= September 26 =

Mixed-race people and Anti-miscegenation at the same time
In American history, I know there were anti-miscegenation sentiments, attitudes, and laws; but at the same time, there were also mixed-race marriages. A white plantation owner might rape his female black slaves to exploit their bodies to make new slaves. A white settler might marry one woman from a Native American tribe. Were there any limitations to the miscegenation? Were people allowed to marry or have children with whomever they wanted? Since when did anti-miscegenation sentiments start to occur? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 17:56, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I have never heard it said that "A white plantation owner might rape his female black slaves to exploit their bodies to make new slaves" and I consider this an example of trolling. Bus stop (talk) 18:02, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * If you don't believe me, then you might want to read this: Link. No, I'm not making this up. You can find lots of exploitative treatment of slaves. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 18:26, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi 71.79.234.132—please quote the relevant sentence. Thank you. Bus stop (talk) 18:48, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It's not a sentence. It's a whole paragraph with examples and citations. "Because of the power relationships of the institution, slave women in the United States were at high risk for rape and sexual abuse.[83][84] Many slaves fought back against sexual attacks, and some died resisting. Others carried psychological and physical scars from the attacks.[85] Sexual abuse of slaves was partially rooted in a patriarchal Southern culture which treated black women as property or chattel.[84] Southern culture strongly policed against sexual relations between white women and black men on the purported grounds of racial purity but, before the late 18th century, the many mixed-race slaves and slave children showed that white men had often taken advantage of slave women.[84] Wealthy planter widowers, notably such as John Wayles and his son-in-law Thomas Jefferson, took slave women as concubines; each had six children with his partner: Elizabeth Hemings and her daughter Sally Hemings (the half-sister of Jefferson's late wife), respectively. Both Mary Chesnut and Fanny Kemble, wives of planters, wrote about this issue in the antebellum South in the decades before the Civil War. Sometimes planters used mixed-race slaves as house servants or favored artisans because they were their children or other relatives.[86]" 71.79.234.132 (talk) 18:58, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * 71.79.234.132—trolling is frowned upon. You have provided no support for your claim that female black slaves were exploited "to make new slaves". Bus stop (talk) 19:24, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:WHAAOE: Slave breeding in the United States and sources referenced there.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:55, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This is not a point that can be so blithely made, and I have removed it. In the article you mention it is only mentioned in the WP:LEAD. Bus stop (talk) 23:22, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * "...and sources referenced there". It may be uncomfortable, but it's neither surprising nor obscure. I'd suggest if you want to improve Wikipedia, you add information to the body, rather than deleting it from the lead on a technicality. See e.g., for further sources. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:39, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Stephan Schulz. That is the article that influenced me. For some reason, Bus stop is the one who insists obnoxiously that I need to provide references, even though he could have just read the page. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 21:20, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Did Bus stop never read Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Becher Stowe?  As far as I am aware, anyone is free to marry whomsoever they choose, though the situation in Nazi Germany might have been different, and apartheid - era South Africa had restrictions. 92.24.105.244 (talk) 18:42, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What? Until 1967 in some parts of the U.S. miscegenation was illegal. It's not just about South Africa and Germany. --Golbez (talk) 22:00, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, Oklahoma forbade marriage of "any person of African descent ... to any person not of African descent", which, scientifically, would have made Spock and B'Elanna Torres offspring of illegal marriages, but otherwise should have had no effect. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:25, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The simple answers to your first two questions are "yes" and "no". However laws and customs varied a great deal from time to time and place to place.  Also, keep in mind that children can be had out of wedlock.  Anti-miscegenation laws, One-drop rule, and Passing (racial identity) might be helpful.  The book Devil in the Grove discusses the inequities of legal treatment of an attitudes toward rape in Florida in 1949 with a good amount of background history.  One of the Road to Disunion books by William W. Freehling discusses attitudes towards sexual relations between masters and slaves (it's been a few years since I've read it, so the details are a little fuzzy).--Wikimedes (talk) 23:45, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Recent TV series such as Who Do You Think You Are? and Finding Your Roots have repeatedly uncovered evidence for slaveowners having fathered children via their slaves. That they couldn't marry them didn't necessarily stop them from getting it on. Thomas Jefferson is a well-known example of such. As to it being "rape", the theoretical litmus test for rape is if she says "No" and he goes ahead anyway. The catch is that a slave, being property, could not say "No". As to whether they were doing it for the purpose of producing new slaves - well, that was the practical effect, but that was not necessarily the reason. The more obvious reason would be "horniness". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:25, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Correct. Therefore the statement "A white plantation owner might rape his female black slaves to exploit their bodies to make new slaves" is an unfounded statement. Did he do this in order to "make new slaves"? Such a plantation owner would be aiming to create his own enslaved sons and daughters. We don't have a source saying that such bizarre intentions existed. Exceptional claims require exceptional sources. This is a claim that is not supported by a source. Reproduction is a common consequence of sex but sex is known to have motivations other than reproduction. I've removed that assertion from the Slave breeding in the United States article. Bus stop (talk) 08:07, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have the impression that you do carefully avoid reading the sources provided. "[F]emale slaves who attempted to exercise reproductive autonomy were often raped or otherwise forcibly impregnated", "As one former slave explained during an interview with the Federal Writer's Project, sex with girls as young as twelve was not frowned upon even if they were not married, so long as the sex was with white men or with the owner's permission and would result in a birth", "Slave owners were granted carte blanche to rape and impregnate their slaves. Since slave owners had unfettered sexual access to their slaves, a slave owner was able to be the biological father and owner of many slave children. This state of the law made sexual assault a wise investment strategy for a cash-strapped slave owner who was interested in increasing the number of his slaves" . --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:29, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I believe I'm seeing a failure of communication here. It seems to me that Bus-stop is not challenging the claims that it happened, but is challenging the claimed purpose: "to make new slaves". Various people have adduced evidence that the practice happened, but not to corroborate the particular part of the claim that he is questioning. Baseball Bugs acknowledges above that that particular claim is not supported, but everybody else seems to be assuming that Bus Stop is claiming that there is no support for the practice, and presenting him evidence to support what he is not challenging. --ColinFine (talk) 10:44, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There may well be a failure of communication - it wouldn't be the first time on Wikipedia, nor, likely, the last ;-). But if you look at the source I have given, it clearly supports the fact that increasing the offspring of slaves was at least one (though certainly not the only) consideration for sexual contact between slave owners and (female) slaves, and that the system was tacitly supported by a legal framework that made the child of a slave women a slave, regardless of the father. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:13, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Plausibility does not do away with the need for support in sources. As we know, sources should squarely support assertions. "Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in the Wikipedia article." This is an exceptional assertion. "Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources." We should think about what questions we are addressing in this discussion: Did the plantation owner set about having sex with the female slave for monetary gain? The assertion that he did is an exceptional claim. Didn't he have qualms about creating sons and daughters that were enslaved? An overwhelming number of reliable sources support that plantation owners raped the female slaves that they owned, with the predictable outcome that the plantation owners produced sons and daughters who were slaves. But was this inadvertent or was this with the intention of financial gain? It is not for editors to answer these questions in the absence of square support in sources. Bus stop (talk) 11:54, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Which is why I have provided just such a source, published by an acknowledged expert in a scholarly journal, and conveniently online. For a longer exposition, try Breeding a nation: reproductive slavery, the Thirdteenth Amendment and the pursuit of freedom, also by Bridgewater, or Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History by Gregory Smithers. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:09, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia also covers this part. I've read on two articles that the master may keep his own slave children to do house work or lighter work. Sometimes freeing them or giving them an education. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 12:25, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I think a big dimension of this question has to do with Negro superiority. Whatever the masters might have said, the historical fact is that they paid a lot of money to have African slaves shipped in from the far side of the world out of the belief that they could stand up to long days of hard work in the fields better than any Indian they could catch locally, or even (I think) the white prison population.  Did the masters believe that half-white slaves could work as hard and long as Africans? Wnt (talk) 17:41, 27 September 2015 (UTC)