This book does a deep dive into the role that white women in the South played in the slave trade. The role of white women as slave owners is significantly downplayed, and I say that as a white person who was (sparsely) educated in the south from Kindergarten through 12th grade. History in general is extremely whitewashed, but especially history regarding the slave trade. White women had a strong role in the lives of slaves, especially the ones in the house. A lot of the time, they were raised in slave owning families, learning how to (mis)treat slaves from an early age. White women were certainly able to own slaves, or inherit them, and were able to make decisions about them without the opinion of their husbands. White women controlled clothing, food, chores, childbirth, and even down to the last drop of breastmilk. A lot of the time, these women dished out punishments that were just as brutal and disgusting as their male counterparts. It is really shameful that women are portrayed as "too kind" or "too obedient" or "too ignorant" to have had a part in this gross behavior, because that is just simply not the truth.

One thing that I have heard a lot is the "not all slave owners were bad" just like "not all Nazis were bad" and that is true. There were some who made sure that their slaves were fed, clothed, had medical attention, that their families stayed together, etc. There were also Nazis who helped hide Jewish people and made sure they were fed and treated as well as possible. Despite those facts, the overall amount of miserable people who perpetrated these acts far outweighs the few good ones...and the fact remains that people were still slave owners, buying human beings and treating them like animals. It's easy for people, especially white ones (extra especially for white Southern ones), to skate over the worst parts of this and only look at the least abhorrent examples. It is something that should not be done.

I actually would have rated this book five stars, which is rare for me to do, but I refrained simply because of the amount of legality that this book contained. That can be tedious to read for a lot of people. This book is currently available to listen to on Audible Plus, and if you have the opportunity to use that feature, do. If you have or want a physical copy of this book, read it! I highly recommend this book for everyone, definitely for white women, but especially for white Southern women. As a white Southern girl myself, this information was NOT taught in school. White women were portrayed as silent wives who would only handle slaves working in the house, but who never had any dealings with buying, selling, punishments, etc. That is not accurate at all based on the research done in this book and others. Even if you know your family did not own slaves, or if they did, it is still very important to know this information to understand the generational struggles of people who had family that were enslaved. We can all be more empathetic and strive to be better people to each other regardless, and education is a great first step in doing so.

As a final side note, if you have not yet read Medical Apartheid, you really should. That book goes into great detail about the role that slaves and African American people in general played on modern medicine thanks to being forced into experimentation, which is something else people are not taught in school.