Difference between revisions of "Week 15 Questions/Comments-327 11"
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'''Many of the points made in Eaton's study were pretty familiar, but I had not really thought about the idea that many black women would avoid domestic work because it "savors of slavery".''' This makes perfect sense, that women would not want to end up doing voluntarily what women of their race had been forced to do for so long. It would seem particularly degrading, in a different way than it would to white girls, to be working as a servant and basically just going back to what their employers might think of as their natural place and all they were capable of. --Rebecca W. | '''Many of the points made in Eaton's study were pretty familiar, but I had not really thought about the idea that many black women would avoid domestic work because it "savors of slavery".''' This makes perfect sense, that women would not want to end up doing voluntarily what women of their race had been forced to do for so long. It would seem particularly degrading, in a different way than it would to white girls, to be working as a servant and basically just going back to what their employers might think of as their natural place and all they were capable of. --Rebecca W. | ||
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| + | When Isabel Eaton asked the question '"Have you ever tried to do other work?" a large number of domestics replied, "I never go any place I'm not sure of-- won't give them a chance to refuse me."' (299)Why were black women so scared to go out and fight for opportunities? Another woman said "The reason I don't try to teach is because I know I'd have trouble..." (299)Why were these women so willing , it seems to settle for less? There had to have been some opportunities for them outside of domestic work. It is also interesting to think that this problem was in Philadelphia, a free state, during the Civil War. Would it have been easier for black women to get and maintain domestic work in the south? Were they preferred over white women, in the south? --Jennifer S. | ||
I found it surprising that light-skinned women who had worked for an extended period of time for an employer would still be fired when it came out that they were black. It seems to me that since there were those preconceptions about black women being less efficient and less desirable workers than white women, it would no longer apply after the employer had had that employee for an extended period of time, because that belief/idea would already have been either debunked (and therefore not an issue) or somehow supported (in which case the servant would have been fired already) BEFORE the servant's race became an issue. '''It seems to me that clinging to preconceptions that have already been disproven is highly illogical, and yet somehow this huge departure from logic still took place.''' --Nicole | I found it surprising that light-skinned women who had worked for an extended period of time for an employer would still be fired when it came out that they were black. It seems to me that since there were those preconceptions about black women being less efficient and less desirable workers than white women, it would no longer apply after the employer had had that employee for an extended period of time, because that belief/idea would already have been either debunked (and therefore not an issue) or somehow supported (in which case the servant would have been fired already) BEFORE the servant's race became an issue. '''It seems to me that clinging to preconceptions that have already been disproven is highly illogical, and yet somehow this huge departure from logic still took place.''' --Nicole | ||
