Interracial Relationships: An Introduction

In Harriet Jacob’s narrative Incidences of in the Life of a Slave Girl, she realistically details accounts of the social relationships that she developed with the white women in the North as depicted in their variation of interracial relationships. Understanding the relationship that exists throughout the narrative enables readers to gain an insight into the unfair nature of the transformative slavery because Jacobs reveals the ever shifting companion verses dominating interaction that dominates these relationships. She sheds light to the complex and misunderstood dynamic of black and white relationships before the American civil war which was fueled by the different viewpoints against the fugitive law act that abolished slavery. 

The first interaction with a white woman was when Jacobs learnt to sew, write and read under her grandmother’s mistress, Margaret Horniblow. Harriet was born as a slave and lived in an era where interracial marriage and relationships were banned by law with black people viewed as transferable property. Harriet’s impeccable appeal to the white women gave her an opportunity to gain literacy and wisdom to maneuver through difficult situations enabling her to give a detailed account of her story to world and ultimately set her free from the bondage of slavery. This is her first encounter with a compassionate woman hence brings to light the significance of white women in contributing towards modern viewpoints against slavery. 

The second account is when she interacts with Dr. Flint’s wife, who noticed that Jacobs, as a teenager was undergoing distress under the new master. Jacob’s freedom was relinquished after Mrs. Horniblow died living the slaves under the will of her relative, Dr. Flint, who was supposed to set them free. However, the new master shared a different viewpoint from the deceased and therefore, sold Jacobs relatives and took in Jacobs as his slave who suffered sexual assault under his stewardship. His wife, a white woman, appealed to the plight of Jacobs while also protecting her from his advances by refusing the isolation of Jacobs in her husband’s apartment. However, Jacobs could see the wrath in her mistress’s behavior but empathized with the white woman’s situation. Her husband was cheating on her by preying on a teenage slave girl. In such a scenario, the readers understand the plight of slavery from both ends of the coin. On one hand, there is the discrimination and sexual objectification of female black slaves while on the other hand there is the forced adherence to slavery laws by white mistresses. 

Jacobs depicts how white women knew the truth to their husband’s sexual maltreatment of the female slaves and grew to loathe the black women. Such instances bring forth the underlying delicate nature of female slave owners that would have otherwise offered a space for ventilation for the slaves. In particular, Dr. Flint’s wife sympathized with the vulnerability, naivety, and the fear of the then sixteen year old teenager that led to a raged encounter between the doctor and the wife. Such instances provided Jacobs with solace because it meant that she could no longer fall victim to sexual exploitation. Mrs. Flint knew that the men exploited the false hope to freedom and material gains to develop concubine relationships that would extend to hurt their holy union. 

The author also highlights the importance of the centrality of religion in uniting the different races. As a common denominator, God created the appeal of Jacobs to white women such as her new mistress who would harvest honest information from the slave girl so as to decide whether to take her concerns with sobriety. She details accounts of rare white mistresses that took better care of slave families than the rest of the master populations. The relationship would be soiled by the introduction of a love affair between the kind white woman and a white man that believes in the isolation of human emotion when dealing with slaves. She give an example of the woman that used religion to teach her black slave family on the ideals of morality. Little to their knowledge, the white lady would form a liaison with a man that was brutal to the slaves and soiled the former instilled purity. In such a case, the author reveals the soft nature of white women and how male love interests played a role in further demonizing slavery as the souls sucking will out of female black slaves. Jacobs further narrates the proclivity of white men taking over their fathers habits whenever they inherited property. White women bore the plight of property transferability as the society expected them to remarry so as to have male managers of their property. 

In comparing the similarities of the white women’s plight and that of the female slave, Jacobs suggests that the challenges resonated but on different class levels. She implies that at the end of the day the slave was subdued by the rights of their masters and mistresses. Such incidences involved the surrender of all property control to the male member of the household regardless of their past statuses. On a parallel end, the black female slaves would be passed on as inherited property and subjected to the rule of the white male master. The master and their sons would indulge in manipulation and bondage to make the slave submit to their demands while failing to meet their promises. On the other hand, white mistresses would be given conditional terms for marriage proposals which would include the adjudication of wills and property rights. 

Jacobs appeals to the issue of stigmatized gender and race by using a polite language to cover the obscenities by which minority races such as the blacks and the inferior gender which was the female precede the literal story. The historical disparities are intertwined in the foundation of the American society. As a woman, she had to systematically prove herself and as a black person she has to further debase herself. In her interactions with white women, she found solitude because she found a clever way of debunking their belief systems in the inferiority of her race. Her manuscript writer in New York was astonished while at the same time impressed by her high literal levels and her pursuit for a creative outlet. The writer played a significant role in exposing some of the ills that black slaves faced with fear of repercussions that would lead to re-enslavement. 

On a darker scale, Jacobs exposes the entangled relationship between black women and their mistresses in return for protections against the challenges of living freely. Free black women had to keep working relentlessly to achieve a higher social economic status thereby bringing to light the disproportionate class divisions. The arrangement brought a new challenge of classism in addition to sexism and racism. Race and class reduces the bond between women of color and white females that lived in the north. She replaced the mistress-slave relationship with the employer-worker relationship that still bore a significant divide between their class and race. The differences was more physical and ideological where the servants lived in quarters that are under poor conditions while their mistresses enjoy the luxuries of life. The female servant is still vulnerable to maltreatment with the exception of sexual harassment.