Summary Of Jennifer Morgan's Some Could Suckle Over Their Shoulder

In Jennifer Morgan’s “Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder”: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500-1770 (1997), description of the early European travelers’ log sent back to Europe from Africa constructs a negative image of the African woman. These men described the African woman as a monstrous beast, unwomanly, a sexual deviant and a savage whom must be tamed and put in her place, and suitable enslavement for American colonizers. This attitude produced a mythical woman of African descent as inferior, less than, sub-person, and not-quite-human (Lorde, 2014; Mills, 2000; Nayak, 2015; Weheliye, 2014). Historically classified as the other , the Black women’s existence is challenged and ignored due to the perceived lack of womanhood.
The above mentioned racialized images and thoughts continue today, which produced racial contracts placed from White supremacists adopted in the educational system. Women art educators are seeking ways to engage dialogues on stereotypes and feminist perspectives to incorporate race and gender issues (Knight, 2006; Kraehe, 2015; Whitehead, 2008). These racial contracts are a political strategy for creating controlling categories for non-whites, which set limits on who has the right to be viewed human, who has privilege, and who has the right to rule over themselves (Bailey, 2007; Mills, 1997) “The color-coded morality of the Racial Contract restricts the possession for this natural freedom and equality to white men…By virtue of their complete nonrecognition…They are designated as born unfree and unequal” (Mills, 1997, p.16, italics