Engendering Racial Difference By Kathleen Brown Summary

In her essay, Engendering Racial Difference, author Kathleen Brown argues that “early definitions of racial difference and the accompanying discriminatory practices resulted ultimately in a race-specific concept of womanhood.” Such a ‘race-specific concept of womanhood’ was eventually ingrained in the laws of Virginia which expedited the perpetual enslavement of the African people and their children. The initial legal ambiguity in Virginia laws regarding slaves facilitated either the exploitation of slaves by their masters or servitude and their eventual release subject to the “good-will of their masters.” As more slaves (who were mostly African) started arriving in Virginia, however, a need for a slave code soon developed. Because many of
Men were expected to contribute toward the protection of the colony by either serving in the military or paying a compensation tax for each servant in the house. The Virginia Assembly declared that negro women should be included in this tax but not white women creating the first legal distinction between ‘normal’ people and ‘negroes’ consequently signifying “very different expectations for their future roles in the colony.” A subsequent law passed by the Virginia assembly mandated that free negro women “yet ought not in all respects to be admitted to a full fruition of the exemptions and immunities of the English” revealing that the English legally and openly declared their racial superiority over the ‘negroes.’ The tax on black females, consequently, impeded the formation of free black families because struggling free black plantation owners also had to pay a hefty tax for having a wife. Indeed several free black families had to request an exemption from these taxes because they were ‘considerable’ while their white counterparts received such labor free and not taxed from their white