A Romanticized Racism
Jennifer Morgan’s article, “Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder”, highlights racism through showcasing the racialist discourse within the ideas about gender and sexual differences and their relation to one another (Morgan. 169). Morgan uses racism to illustrate how it galvanized the Europeans into the act of slavery through the romance and dehumanization of the African people. To make it apparent that in order for slavery and racism to prosper, the dehumanization of Africans was necessary.
Morgan sets her narrative with the romance of the African woman, as accounted by the English author, Richard Ligon; in this telling, Ligon’s perspective of the African woman is that a being of the “greatest beauty and majesty” (Morgan. 167). This is done to juxtapose Ligon’s later account of the Africans “sole utility” (Morgan. 168). Ligon’s other view was that the African-ness’ breasts during manual labor. This led the author to believing that from a distance, it gave the African-ness the appearance of having six legs-or, in other words, appearing as livestock. Making the connection that this being of extreme beauty is also a monstrous laboring beast whose purpose is to produce both crops and other laborers (Morgan. 168). This marks where the romance of the foreign beauty becomes dehumanized into commodity in a patriarchal society.
Furthermore, the image of the African-ness’ sagging breasts is used as ammunition to refute the race’s ties to humanity. Morgan does this by drawing the comparison of medieval female devils to the African-ness. , namely the iconic sagging breasts that Ligon described earlier in his second viewpoint of the African woman. The dehumanizing of the African woman is critical to the later bridging generalization that if the mothers of a society are unholy, as to be devils, and monstrous beasts for labor, then the African populace from these mothers are equally as inhuman as they are hard-working; once again, the ideal commodity.
This changing in the narrative of African women led other European authors to explore for more damning evidence to cement the inhumane qualities of the African society; all in order to further illustrate their placement in a European’s human hierarchy. This stage in the dehumanization of the African people was to barbarize the society as a whole to justify European, or white, superiority over the African savages. In 1622, Richard Jobson’s The Golden Trade, recounts his experience with African men. He paints the image, to the public, that the African males were more senseless and beastlike than their own countryside livestock (Morgan. 181). In addition, John Lok’s description of all Africans describes the society as “people of beastly living”, evidenced by his account of the absence in monogamy and sexual purity for the sanctitude of marriage (Morgan. 179).
With marriage being a covenant with God, this notion further shows the disconnect between these beastly living denizens, that monstrous woman for mothers, and God. Capitalizing on the polygamous nature of these said savages. Samuel Purchas detailed of a society disconnected from the norms of European society; he details of life being “brutish and savage”. Knowing not of any form of hierarchy both mortal and religious. This religious connection is made through Purchas’ telling of how women and men reproduce, all in one cottage outside of a covenant and sexually available to all they just happened to take a liking to at that moment (Morgan. 182-183).
