During
the slavery era, which lasted for over 400 years, Africans were
captured and chained, forced onto ships and taken into unfamiliar
countries all against their will. Through their very bitter experiences
on these ships, many of the captured Africans lost their lives before
reaching their unknown destinations. For the ones who survived, it was
just the start of sleepless nights, long hours of work on plantations on
empty stomachs, and the constant reminder that in their fresh lives
they were nothing but a commodity to their masters. And also not
forgetting horrible and painful sexual exploitation and abuse. The
sexual abuse of enslaved African men is something that was not only
rampant but also extremely painful and inhumane.
Buck Breaking:
Buck
Breaking as a form of sexual abuse was very popular in the Caribbean
and it involved slave owners and white supremacists and merchants
forcefully having sex with a male slave right in front of the public to
embarrass him and make him feel less of a man. Buck Breaking became
popular when slaves increasingly rebelled against their masters.
Enslaved African men were first stripped naked and flogged in front of a
crowd, after which a white man raped them to serve as a warning to
other slaves who planned to rebel. Most times, enslaved men who had
families were forced to have sex with each other in front of their
families or were raped in front of their sons by their masters. Many of
the enslaved men who had gone through the process of buck breaking
killed themselves afterward or they ran away and never ever returned.
For the slave owners and white supremacists, buck breaking either on
ships or on the fields was a way of utterly embarrassing the men and
showing white dominance.
Breeding Farms:
If
you’ve ever wondered how the term ‘mother fucker’ came about, just read
on. During the rise of the slave abolitionists who were fighting
against slavery, the slave trade drastically reduced. They usually
stopped slave ships, they helped slaves to escape, and many slaves
gained a fresh form of confidence to rebel against their masters, or
even resist and escape. This affected negatively the slave trade and
also, plantation owners did not have enough labor to meet the market
demands for their produce. They then invented breeding farms that
exploited the sexuality of men. This was just another horrible sexual
abuse of enslaved African men.
At these
breeding farms, they forced healthy enslaved African men to have sex
with enslaved women to get them pregnant. The white slave masters did
not care if these women were the daughters, mothers, or even relatives
of the men. They forced the men to have sex with at least 6 slave women a
day to increase the possibility of the number of slave women who got
pregnant.
Breeding farms became a very
lucrative business especially in South America and created the term
‘mother fucker’ which literally means a male having sex with his mother.
Many enslaved men who were the heads of breeding farms died because of
sexual exhaustion.
Sex For Entertainment:
Many
white supremacists, wealthy slave merchants, and aristocrats often used
enslaved men as a form of sexual entertainment. Enslaved men were often
forced to line up naked for their sexual organs to be examined, laughed
at, and discussed. They also made the men dance naked. In extreme
cases, they made an enslaved man to forcefully have sex with an enslaved
virgin to entertain the white onlookers.
Castration and Genital Mutilation:
Their
owners castrated or sexually mutilated, enslaved African men as
punishment. Such punishments were often meted out to an enslaved man
when he was caught in bed with his master’s wife or daughter or when he
was said to be married or having an affair with an enslaved woman, whom
the master or merchant have sexual interstate in. They also did these
acts to take away any form of pride of an enslaved African man. Enslaved
men who were often the leaders of a group of slaves on a plantation or a
rebel group were castrated and referred to as women to show the white
man’s dominance over their black slaves. This was just another horrible
form of sexual abuse of enslaved African men.
African
American women had to endure the threat and the practice of sexual
exploitation. There were no safeguards to protect them from being
sexually stalked, harassed, or raped, or to be used as long-term
concubines by masters and overseers. The abuse was widespread, as the
men with authority took advantage of their situation. Even if a woman
seemed agreeable to the situation, in reality she had no choice. Slave
men, for their part, were often powerless to protect the women they
loved.
For many enslaved African Americans,
one of the cruelest hardships they endured was sexual abuse by the
slaveholders, overseers, and other white men and women whose power to
dominate them was complete. Enslaved women were forced to submit to
their masters’ sexual advances, perhaps bearing children who would
engender the rage of a master’s wife, and from whom they might be
separated forever as a result. Masters forcibly paired “good breeders”
to produce strong children they could sell at a high price. Resistance
brought severe punishment, often death.”

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