Note 31 — Chapter III · THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY

We must, of course, be understood to speak generally. There are to be found, among the lowest class of our Half-castes, women of the most spotless sexual integrity and of irreproachable sexual pride. But one is undoubtedly justified in stating, that, generally speaking, the Half-caste is less sexually self-respecting than the white woman, or even than the black woman is till she has been totally severed from her own social surroundings and therefore practically reduced to much the same condition as the Half-caste. In her native state the Bantu woman is in many respects in a higher sexual position than large numbers of civilized females. Of the price paid for her at her marriage she receives nothing, it passes to her family. She not only supports herself by her own labour, but is the mainstay of the society in which she exists, largely feeding and clothing it by her exertions. Her position is probably much farther from that of the female who lives idly and parasitically on society through the sale of her sex functions than is that of most European women, married or single.