“The Handmaiden of Prejudice”: Property, Slave Ancestry and Status in the African American Lived Experience

Abstract

This is a mixed methods assessment of the way in which status transfer and slavery impacted the rise of the Black Upper middle class. This thesis draws upon the primary sources of slave narratives as well as first hand accounts of slave masters to draw a measurable through line of slavery and its effects on the Black community of America. I argue that by charting the mental and physical representations of slavery in modern American society we are able to garner a new understanding of what makes a successful African American person in America and by charting these movements, how whiteness is still prized in the modern American Dream.