Creating Sexual Ethics in Slavery’s Shadow

Bernadette Brooten is exposing the deep historical roots of contemporary stereotypes as prologue to building new sexual ethics.

By Carrie Simmons

Bernadette Brooten imagines a world in Her work illustrates how the Such doubts have their roots in slavery, which jurists judge a rape case on its humanities can help to solve contends the MacArthur “genius merits, not on the race of the victim. pressing social problems. award” recipient, who directs a research team of scholars, artists, and But in the twenty-first century, an “If all rape cases were judged on the activists under the banner of the African American woman who is raped merits—and if rape were rare—ours Feminist Sexual Ethics Project (FSEP). is still less likely to report the crime, would be a totally different world,” Their research has established that less likely to have her assailant says Brooten, the Robert and Myra sexual abuse and the breakup of prosecuted, and less likely to a jury Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Professor of families have frequently accompanied convict. Christian Studies and professor of slavery in world history. Slaveholders women’s and gender studies. “Citizens’ often blamed the enslaved victim, With support from the Ford Foundation, views of who is virtuous and who is whom they cast as sexually licentious. Brooten has spent the last six years not virtuous would be transformed. The research team has also uncovered exposing the historical roots of We as a society still have doubts about a disturbing toleration of slavery in contemporary sexual stereotypes whether African American women the sacred texts and traditional in order to create new sexual ethics. are virtuous.” religious laws of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, even in the face of slaveholders having sex with their Dialogue 10 female slaves. Bernadette Brooten

“Sexual ethics needs history. Slavery profiting from the slave trade, and Last fall, the FSEP team presented its corrupts the moral fabric of society, some U.S. Christian denominations research results to overflow crowds including its sexual morality. Past have urged passage of a bill put forth at a major public conference held at toleration of slavery still shapes our by Illinois congressman John Conyers Brandeis. “Beyond Slavery: Overcoming moral imagination and our individual authorizing a congressional study Its Religious and Sexual Legacy,” ethical decisions. In order to heal from of reparations for slavery. included speaker Mende Nazer, a the past, we need to confront it,” says Sudanese woman who herself escaped Brooten. “Antebellum U.S. slavery Judaism and Islam also continue to contemporary slavery. Brooten is editing continues to cast its shadow. Our live with the effects of past toleration a volume based on that conference racism is sexualized, and our sexuality of slavery. For example, early rabbis and is writing a book on early Christian is racialized.” and early Muslim jurists distinguished women who were enslaved or who between slavery and marriage, and were slaveholders. During U.S. slavery, slaveholders, yet used the language of slavery to in an effort to increase their wealth, describe marriage. In rabbinic sources, “We can create a world in which owning pressured enslaved women to give a free wife, like an enslaved person, or controlling another person’s body, Creating Sexual Ethics birth frequently. But even after slavery, is “acquired.” In Islamic religious whether as a worker or a wife, is whites sought to control African texts, male “authority” or “dominion” impossible to imagine,” she says. American reproduction, this time applies both to slavery and marriage. in Slavery’s Shadow by limiting it through targeted birth For more information, see the control and forced sterilizations “I am encouraged that a small group project’s Web site: during the eugenics movement. of thoughtful Christians, Jews, and www.brandeis.edu/projects/fse/. Muslims are looking at this history, “Echoes of that mindset remain,” acknowledging where things went Brooten says. “Although the majority wrong, and rethinking how we of people who receive welfare benefits view sacred texts and think about Nineteenth-century are not African American, the general sexuality,” says Brooten. freedom medallion public pictures welfare recipients as sexually irresponsible black teenage girls and women. Roman matron surrounded by enslaved women. “Such distortions pose a moral problem to the nation at large and to Christians in particular. Christians cannot simply claim that we used to tolerate slavery, but that we no longer do,” says Brooten. Although early Christian leaders knew that enslaved women were sexually vulnerable to their owners, they did not penalize Christian slaveholders in the New Testament or in canon law for having sex with their slave women.

Recently, some religious denominations have begun to examine the connection between religion and slavery. The Church of England apologized in 2006 for Dialogue 11