From “Rebirth of a Nation: Reparations and Remaking America” by Joel Edward Goza
Even in colonial America, sexual relationships transcended racial divides. But consistently, the context of white men’s sex with Black women was the brutality of rape, not interracial intimacy. Enslavers’ freedom to rape the women they enslaved was often considered a birthright. And it was a birthright with the potential to increase one’s wealth through the children the sexual violence produced. By the time of the Civil War, it is estimated that as much as 80 percent of the enslaved population shared in the family line of their enslavers.