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CHAPTER 1 Soiled when you come up here?” -Richard Pryor to
a white man coming to a Black whorehouse. Background Throughout American history, the white
male and the Black female have had an open sexual relationship.
Not consensual by any means, it was born out of rape, humility,
and control. During slavery whites “...introduced the house slaves
to white ways, minimal education and non-consensual sexual relations.”1 It has long been held that even the father
of the United States, George Washington, had sexual intercourse
with his female slaves and it was this behavior that may have
resulted in his death. He reportedly caught pneumonia because
of his frequent visits to the slave quarters, which were less
fit for human habitation. The most perverse celebration of these
associations was Thomas Jefferson's relationship with one of
his slaves, Sally Hemmings. Many have celebrated it as a romance
of the forbidden fruit, but as Randall Robinson asserts: “Jefferson
was a slave holder, a racist, and - if one accepts that consent cannot
be given if it cannot be denied - a
rapist.”2 Black people at this time had no rights and were considered the
property of white men to do as they pleased. Robert
Newsome, a sixty year old slaver, “...needed more than a hostess
and a manager of household affairs; he required a sexual partner.
Newsome seems to have deliberately chosen to purchase a young
slave girl to fulfill this role...”3 It
is certain that “...from the moment he purchased Celia, Newsome
regarded her as both his property and concubine.”4 And “[o]n his return to Callaway County,
Newsome raped Celia, and by that act once established and defined
the nature of the relationship between the master and his newly
acquired slave”5 - she was just fourteen
years old and that was probably her first sexual experience.
During this time as well as much later on, “[f]ew Black women
reached the age of sixteen without having been molested by a
White male.”6 Without any rights, legal recourse
or protection from local state or federal authorities, a Black
woman could make no decision concerning anything that affected
her life. There were no battered women's shelters, N.O.W movement,
rape crisis center, NAACP, Al Sharpton, or any support sympathetic
to her discomforts. She was completely incapable of rejecting
her master’s wishes - her
alternatives were to do or die. This was the beginning of the soiling
of the Black female in America. It was especially devastating
when seen thorough the spectacles of Black men. The experience
painted an unflattering picture of the her that has remained
in the mental albums of Black men. She was reduced to a sexual
brood mare to increase the slave population - which helped to create the enormous
white wealth that empowered the colonizers - as well as to satisfy the slaver's salacious sickness; degenerating
her to an ejaculatory dumping ground for the grotesque pleasures
forced on the conquered. There is no denying “...that the white
man has had the chief hand in undermining the morals of the Negro
women. He has been living in concubinage with them for over three
hundred years!”7 In Souls of Black Folk, W.E. B. Dubois said “the red stain of bastardy, which two centuries
of systemic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon
[this] race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity,
but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white
adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro
home.”8 One slave recalled: “My marster owned three plantations and three
hundred slaves. He started out wid two 'oman slaves and raised
three hundred slaves. One wuz called “Short Peggy” and the udder
wuz called “Long Peggy.” Long Peggy had twenty-five chilluns.
Long Peggy, a black ‘oman, wuz boss ob de plantation. Marster
freed her atter she had twenty-five chilluns. Just think o’ dat-raisin'
three hundred slaves wid two 'omans.”9 Harriet
Jacobs in her slave narrative, Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl recounted: “For years my master had done his utmost
to pollute my mind with foul images and to destroy the pure images
inculcated by my grandmother...”10 “He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure
principles my grandmother had instilled. He peopled my young
mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think
of. I turned from him with disgust and hatred. But he was my
master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him - where
I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred
commandments of nature.”11 Dirt floors, barns, cotton fields, slave houses, back porches,
bathrooms, outhouses and any place one could imagine, served
as the theater for the slave master's pornographic exploits.
Not only was the Black woman brought down, but she was now dirty,
used, abused, passed around, and been around. The
Contrived Goddess On the other side, the white woman
was held up as the pure, Christian, ideal example of womanhood
and more importantly, she was completely off limits to the Black
man. If the eyes of a Black man were to land on a white woman
it could mean death. Black men were dehumanized through whipping,
hanging, castration, decapitation, burning, drowning, dismembering
and various other forms of atrocious human behavior - simply to right the wrongs of a casual
glance. A practice that is still in vogue in modern American
society. It was just 1989 when Yusuf Hawkins was shot to death
in Brooklyn because he was mistaken for someone seeing a white
girl. Consequently, the white woman eventually
developed a cry of omnipotence. All that was needed was an accusation against a Black person to trigger the wrath of her male protectors.
Even if she cried wolf there was guaranteed punishment for the
accused. Charles Stewart tried to use it when he murdered his
wife in Massachusetts and blamed it on a Black man. He wanted
insurance money to open a restaurant - she was eight months pregnant when
he shot her in the head. As a result, most of Boston’s Blacks
were harassed and detained... while a grown Black man was arrested
and later “confessed” to a crime Mr. Stewart was found to have
committed. Susan Smith used it to try and scatter the scent of
suspicion after she drowned her children and blamed a Black man
for kidnaping them. More recently, in the summer of 2002,
Bryant Gumbel’s son, Brandon, was arrested and held for 24 hours
because a white woman said he looked like the man who attacked
her. Not long after, the entire state of Florida was on lock
down as the world watched three Muslim men detained for 17 hours
because some white woman said she heard them talking suspiciously.
And the story of young Emmett Till's brutal hanging, beating
and drowning, for whistling at a white store clerk in the 1950's,
still remains a shameful part of American history: “Dare I ask
how does it feel to have a horrible crime committed in your name?,”12 declared Nikki Giovanni, on speaking before
white women. While the Black woman could be violated
at will, the white woman's comfort was protected with the ultimate
price. In this case the death penalty was not law, it was habit.
This environment helped to greatly increase any interest the
Black man may have had in the white woman. If the Black man had
no innate interest in the white woman, he certainly would have
developed some just out of curiosity. Anyone would be intrigued
by what was being protected. A Ph.D. in human anatomy and genetics
would find interest in a white woman if he was denied access
to her. And just being denied the ability to even look at someone
would create an interest, and over the years an obsession would
develop - a phenomenon
that is evident in many Black men. Sexual
Distance The more the Black woman was soiled,
the more the white woman was deified. On many occasions, even
looking at a movie poster with a white woman on it was criminal.
As the physical and social distance between the white woman and
the Black man increased, the psycho-sexual distance between the
two decreased, developing a mutual interest. One could view this
as a psychological rubber band. Left alone, the opposing side
of the rubber band are not drawn together, but pull them apart
and the slightest give sends the two rushing toward each other. Additionally, the white man’s relationship
with the Black woman and his protection of white women created
an appetite of vengeful lust within many Black men, as well as
a deep interest by the white woman. Interactions between white
men and Black women were in your face and very difficult to ignore.
It was not subtle, or on the down low; it was vile, repugnant,
evil and unforgiving. The experience coined the most used word
in America when describing someone or even something that is
despised - motherfucker. There was absolutely no respect for
the emotional existence of the Black family. Entering slave quarters
the white man would walk past the Black man and his children
and defile any Black female at will - that
female could even be a child. He would also warn the Black man
that the experience had better be good; and oftentimes the Black
male would pledge that it would be good, as if to provide the
rapist a sexual guarantee. On the way out the rapist would arrogantly
acknowledge that it was good and rub the Black man's head. This
event would destroy the dignity and self-respect of any man and
question his worth as well as the repute of his woman.
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