Paranoia White Women

In Southern Rhodesia, the irrational fear of African men’s uncontrollable sexual urges manufactured the myth of the black peril, the epidemic of black men assaulting white women. During this epidemic, colonists ferociously campaigned for the end of the “brutality of black men” against white women. As a result of the paranoia from white men, African men were often convicted and executed for merely looking at a white woman. The black peril upheld the hegemonic stereotypes of African men, that they are overly sexual and violent. However, according to John Paper, the rise of alleged sexual attacks on white women, during the early 1900s, was due to an influx of white prostitutes who were racially undiscerning in choosing their customers (703). Whiteness
did not protect these white women from the legal sanctions for their immorality, sexism overpowered racism. The legislative assembly in Southern Rhodesia passed the Immorality Suppression Ordinance in September in 1903 (703). According to this law, (black) men could face the death penalty for anything that constituted attempted rape. This legislation also affected the maximum sentences of two years imprisonment for white women and five for black men who engaged in interracial sex.
In contrast, white peril, the sexual abuse of black women by white women was much more frequent; yet, white men had widespread impunity from the government.
A letter written to the Manchester Guardian stated that “there would be no danger to white women in Africa if the white men behaved as gentlemen ... if people in England only knew what goes on in Africa they would not be surprised at anything the black man does. At his worst he is a mild copy of his "masters' (711).” Despite colonial laws forbidding any white to incite a native to procure a female for immoral purposes, there very few convictions from white men. For example, John Thornett, a white mine manager, regularly raped the daughters of his employees. Unfortunately, his whiteness and the rampant misogyny protected him from any legal repercussion. What ultimately acquitted was the testimony of a doctor who reported that the victim’s hymen did not show recent vaginal tearing, thus concluding that non-virgins could not be
raped.
The sexuality of European women has historically been established as pure, innocent, and in need of protection, whereas, black women are thought to be hypersexual and never described in the same manner as white woman.
Janelle Hobson argues that the hypersexualiziation of black women began through a history of enslavement, colonial conquest, and ethnographic exhibitions of African women. During this time black women bodies’ were labeled as grotesque, strange, unfeminine, and obscene. Sara Baartman perfectly exemplifies how the discourse surrounding black female sexuality was established through racist stereotypes. European colonists forcefully removed Sara Baartman, a Khoisan woman from South Africa, from her home and placed her in an ethnographic exhibition in Europe. These ethnographic exhibitions, or human zoos, forcefully displayed the bodies of African women to the public. Europeans did not find an issue with these zoos because Africans were not seen as humans. Europeans ridiculed the bodies’ of African women and labeled women from the Khoisan tribe as exotic for their larger butts, breasts, and their elongated labia. Through these exhibitions African women were dehumanized and further hypersexualized for their physical features
(Hobson).