Additionally, the white Democrats were not pleased with the outcome and felt a sense of inadequacy among white men. Many whites struggled with this reformation and attempted to find loopholes to continue the exploitation of black labor.
The Southerners who were used to being dominant were now no longer legally allowed to run their farms using slavery. The Reconstruction Era following the Civil War started to disassemble traditional aspects of Southern society. There are a few potential reasons as to why such strong ideas on interracial sex developed. This created tension, implying that white men were having sex with black women because they were more lustful, and in turn black men would lust after white women in the same way. Similarly, black men were stereotyped for having a specific lust for white women. As the men were not used to the extremely hot climate, they misinterpreted the women's lack of clothing for vulgarity. This idea stemmed from the first encounters between European men and African women.
This increased white anxiety about interracial sex, and has been described through Montesquieu's climatic theory in his book The Spirit of the Laws, which explains how people from different climates have different temperaments, "The inhabitants of warm countries are, like old men, timorous the people in cold countries are, like young men, brave." At the time, black women held the " Jezebel" stereotype, which claimed black women often initiated sex outside of marriage and were generally sexually promiscuous. There was a widely held belief that uncontrollable lust threatens the purity of the nation. The remnants of the racial divide became stronger post-slavery as the concept of whiteness developed. 1.1 United States before Civil Rights EraĪttitudes towards interracial relationships United States before Civil Rights Era Īfter the abolition of slavery in 1865, white Americans showed an increasing fear of racial mixture.1 Attitudes towards interracial relationships.Racial bias may involve a sexual dimension, which often takes the form of racial fetishism. The ways in which people perceive the relationship between these two concepts implicitly informs attitudes toward interracial sexual relationships and sexual preferences for particular races expressed by individuals. Human sexuality involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is understood by scientists to be a social construct rather than a biological reality. ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Ĭoncepts of race and sexuality have interacted in various ways in different historical contexts. ( August 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic.