The New Negro Man

What I found most disturbing about the Patterson reading was the description of the perceptions of black men after slavery and reconstruction. The writings on the "savage black man" raping "geteel white women" are a creation. They do not seem to be based in any sort of truth, nor is there evidence to back up these claims. The claim that "without the paternalism of slavery, the 'new negro' or 'real negro' showed his ineluctable evolutionary legacy" (Patterson 54) is a justification for slavery and control. What I find interesting about this assertion is the focus on sex and being sexual in relation to black men and women. Furthermore, it is painted as something bad, dirty, depraved, animalistic. And it is seemingly used as a justification for why people believed whiteness was superior-- white was pure and white didn't have sex. White women were "genteel" and innocent. But by default of their race, black men and women weren't.