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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5403 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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It seems like the obvious issue with that is that African Americans mostly have white admixture that comes from the upper classes(mostly the sons of plantation owners), not the lower classes.

The plantation owners in question were presumably violent rapists, which is how much of the admixture happened in the first place.

Having a mistress literally owned by a close relative looks distinctly non consensual today, but that doesn’t mean that’s how it would have been understood as taboo in societies which accepted owning slaves, at least not in a way which was legibly close to rape.

My understanding is that there was a lot of straight-up rape, i.e., the man physically forcing himself on the woman, who of course couldn't resist because of her status. But admittedly I have no idea how much of the admixture is due to violent rape, how much was "borderline" as you described, and how much was consensual.

The best documented example of miscegenation in the antebellum south was plaçage, which featured very little violent rape but lots of elite males, but 1) slavery in French Louisiana was different and 2) that’s just the best documented example, presumably slave owners who raped their slaves didn’t write it down. So it’s up in the air how much white admixture was due to outright coercion and how much of it was the predictable result of high status males and low status females.

It’s also complicated by the fact that very few writers about slavery in the antebellum south were neutral on the practice- they were either abolitionists who generally picked the worst examples to write about, or apologists who were almost certainly lying.

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