Good Essay About Companionship, Family, And Relationship

The American miscegenation laws prohibited the white women from relationships, love, and companionship with the black men. This was perhaps due to the nature of the relationships. In most states, whites were forbidden from relating with the blacks. Slavery prevailed, and the slaves who tried to break rules that controlled them witnessed brutal treatment from their masters. The writings of Frederick Douglass and Peggy Pascoe present a view of the treatment that slaves went through in their efforts of building strong families and relationships. This paper compares the two readings with the view of deducing the similarities in the companionship, relationship, and family lives of the slaves.
Relationships and families between the blacks and whites were not regarded legal, and one would pay the price for engaging in such relationships. In Pascoe’s reading, Fred and Ophelia engaged in a multiracial relationship although they were targeted for a trial. Later, the jury tried the two because the relationship was interracial and violated the miscegenation laws. Similarly, in Douglass’s work, the narrator explains that her mother was a black woman, but her father was a white man. However, she never had the time to interact with her family as they were separated. Her mother visited for short hours at night while she never saw her father.
The family aspect among the black slaves merely meant a blood relationship that subsisted between people. The family members did not get a chance to live a united life and share in the family treasures. Pascoe mentions that the miscegenation laws not only prohibited the relations between the blacks and the whites but also prohibited the blacks from forming compact family relations. The black people were slaves, and their treatment reflected exactly what slavery included. In Douglass work, the narrator notes that she had to suffer a challenge of growing under care of one parent her parents were separated because they were of different races. In essence, she seldom has a chance to see them. This highlights challenges that multiracial families faced during this time.
The miscegenation laws prohibited what they termed as ‘miscegenation crime marriages’ as criminal, and any property sharing in such an encounter stood no legal grounds. The point of such a relationship between the whites and the blacks was a bad idea in itself hence in case of separation; property sharing had no precedence in the courts. Pascoe reveals many cases where the black women got no share of the property from the white men especially in the case of Fred and Ophelia. However, the whites never thought such an act as a wrong act. Douglass’ writings also present a similar case with the narrator explaining how desperate her mother was despite the fact that her father was white. She also saw her moves to learn how to read and write killed by the master who blocked her from being instructed by anyone on the plantation.
Family, marriage, relationships, and companionship among the slaves were not easy to get as many of the slaves lived under strict miscegenation laws. Any relationship between the whites and the blacks or Indians was illegal. The blacks and Indians were not allowed a share of the property. The degradation of the Africans and colored people stretched to the extent that killing a slave was not criminal in the society.