Some white slaveowners raped their slaves, though. What about that?
John David Smith: As I’ve said above, whites defined blacks in such ways that some whites could justify raping black women. Recent scholars point to the domestic slave trade as the best example of the open, blatant, and perpetual sexual exploitation of blacks, especially women but of men as well. While white women allegedly were shocked by the sexual activities of their husbands and sons, miscegenation was so pervasive that I think it was justified and accepted by whites of all classes as part of the whites’ “Herrenvolk democracy.” Whites viewed blacks as uncivilized people with no rights that whites were bound to respect. Didn’t whites and blacks ever fall in love? Jane Dailey: Whites and blacks often fell in love. There are many instances of interracial love affairs and marriages, from the colonial period through emancipation and Jim Crow and on into the present. Perhaps the most famous couple in the modern era are Richard and Mildred Loving, who married in 1958, were arrested for vi
