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Assignment 3

The author, Jennifer Morgan, immediately makes a connection between the female body and racism in the first paragraph. Here she highlights how Europeans viewed an African woman’s hair, color and facial features as something that was flawed. The racist’s views were used as a way to justify slavery. A common theme regarding the connecting of the female and racism is the labeling of African women as “beasts” or “monstrosities”, to further justify enslavement by Europeans and the Americas. This is clearly evident in the last paragraph on page 36.

In this paragraph, the link between an African woman’s ability to supposedly be able to have a painless childbirth and be able to breast feed her child with long hanging breasts over her shoulder is a justification that they were well suited to preforming hard labor. Morgan illustrates that these ideas were depicted and were circulated by different writers, including medical writers. The paragraph describes how medical writers during the 17^th century described childbirth and nursing as difficult work for a wealthy woman. The truth of the matter, according to Morgan, was that the English feared that they would die during childbirth. Morgan suggests that the English accepted the pain during childbirth as confirmation that they were part of a “Christian community”. This brings back the notion, that if African women were more capable of hard labor. Moreover, according to writer Saidiya Hartman, African women were able to take the pain from a lashing or branding. The shocking revelation made by this comment suggests that the ability to withstand that pain, further improved them by becoming slaves. Morgan views that by writers circulating these views, readers were learning about African women with amazement. Lastly, Morgan illustrates in Chapter 1 and in the passage reference that the English established a connection between an African women’s ability to reproduce “painlessly” and breast feed her child as justification to enslaved them, because this ability along with their “flawed facial characteristics”, enabled them to preform hard labor.

QUESTION: Why did the English or “Christians” believe that African women were less religious?