(no subject)

kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Mon Mar 12 15:11:28 PST 2001


At 05:32 PM 3/12/01 -0500, LeoCasey at aol.com wrote:


>Is there an historical materialist explanation for the racist discourse of
>sexuality which characterizes people of African descent as hyper-sexualized,
>with men possessing larger than life glans and women extraordinary genitalia?

yes! the connection between the rise of industrialized capitalism and the emergence of the victorian idealization of womanhood: the public/private sphere, the split between work/family. etc.

white upper class women were defined during this process as pious, devout, nurturing, etc. they had no sex, they didn't like it, etc. they were defined as such in contrast to both working class women and black slaves who were defined as overly sexual, lustful, etc.

In the antebellum South, ideas about women went hand in hand with ideas about race and are intricately connected to the work/family split that emerges under capitalism.

see Deborah Gray White's Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South.

it is very good and she provides a great discussion of the mammy/jezebel imagery as both controlling the womanhood of black woman and regulating the womanhood of white woman.

consider, for ex, why white trash are called white trash. they are not "really" white but act too much like blacks: sexual, lazy, etc.

kelley



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