Monday, February 25, 2013
Question about women out of place
Kerber keeps referencing women being sexually available, such as a black woman on the street is considered to be sexually available or a prostitute, or a white woman teaching black children also sexually available. She then states in a general since that a woman out of place is considered to be sexually available. this is a theme that comes up every once in a while in the book but I don't think she every really explains or discusses this. Does anyone have thoughts about this?
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I found her analysis of vagrancy laws as especially interesting, especially in regard to how it effected African-American women. I feel she is carefully trying to construct a period in American history, especially during Reconstruction, where there were laws were being adopted and reinterpreted to try to hold on the power structure which collapsed in the American South after the Civil War. Kerber's makes the point that our ands of people whose lives were spent on plantations were now filling the streets in search of work and family. This paranoia of free people of color travelling the countryside was clearly the initial influence for harsh vagrancy laws. On top of that, the psychological paradigm that the work African-Americans could do had to be observable (as it would be on a plantation) conflated the suspicion of any black man or woman on the street who was not working. Obviously, since there were many people of property who did not work but were not subject to the vagrancy laws, these laws were used to stem the tide of fear of a free black populace. The emphasis on people having to work by law combined with the ability of most African American women to do the skilled labor required of them while enslaved would have given them a leg up on the job market if it weren't for the fact that they were black, poor, AND women. Kerber's notes the disproportionate jobs available for women as well as the disproportionate pay. I read the book to mean that labelling a woman as easy or a prostitute gave many a psychological motive to disqualify them from the work force, make it harder to vote, and take their property. Clearly, a woman who is walking on the street is doing no observable job, and therefore has n o business on the street, ergo they must be doing something illegal.
ReplyDeleteok thanks! I was thinking along these same lines but it helps to have it tidied up a little.
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