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Assignment 3

In Jennifer Morgan’s Male Travelers, Female bodies, and Racial Ideology, the correlation between the female body and racism is explained through different passages and some important historical events. One of the passages she mentions was written by De Marees on page 31. Through that passage the body and motherhood of African women was graphically described. In the scenario there was a mother feeding her two or three month old child with her breast over her shoulder. The wording he uses gives us a sense of a brutal behavior from the mothers towards their children. When he uses the word “dugs” to describe women breast he is aligning them to animals to deliver the idea that they are like animals. Even though that was the term use during that time it shows how inhumane women were seen by others. Morgan shows how the idea of savagery of African women was reinforced and used to categorize African women as the “over-shoulder breastfeeding” race. In other similar ways other writers were able to imprint such observations of women from various places and target their “physical imperfections” that will make them fall under certain groups or races.

Body descriptions made by the travelers persuaded them to write about sex and reproduction. Therefore as a society begins to reproduce new individuals labor is maximized and starts togenerate more profit. Unfortunately, the bodies of black were exposed to all the traders and incoming sailors which record every detail of their physical appearances. Women were objects to their racial ideologies. Seen black women naked bombarded their thoughts with features that classify that group of people by race according to their own perspectives as superior or inferior. Based on the behavior of those women scholars were allowed to argue the definition of a race and what characteristics made them different. Unfortunately there was not time to appreciate their hard work, instead they were driven by the white superiority and just encoded the racial difference.

Question: To what extent are ideologies about race and gender able manipulate one’s behavior towards humanity ?