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" Mammy was both the perfect mother and the perfect slave: whites saw her as a “passive nurturer, a mother figure who gave all without expectation of return, who not only acknowledged her inferiority to whites but who loved them.”23 It is important to recognize, however, that Mammy did not reflect any virtue in Black motherhood. "

Dorothy Roberts , Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty


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Dorothy Roberts quote : Mammy was both the perfect mother and the perfect slave: whites saw her as a “passive nurturer, a mother figure who gave all without expectation of return, who not only acknowledged her inferiority to whites but who loved them.”23 It is important to recognize, however, that Mammy did not reflect any virtue in Black motherhood.