Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861 (review)

Rothman's work examines the dynamics of interracial sex in Virginia prior to the Civil War. The foundation of Rothman's argument rests on three consistent themes. First, prior to the Civil War, white Virginians largely ignored interracial liaisons so long as the relationships remained informal and relatively inconspicuous. Rothman cites a myriad of examples of blacks and whites traversing the sexual color line with relative impunity. For white Virginians, interracial relationships that lacked legitimacy and existed mostly beyond the radar of polite society posed little threat to the slavery system or notions of white hegemony.

A second theme suggested by Rothman was that whites in Virginia designed the legal framework and social norms to protect the prerogatives of white men. The desire to promote white male privileges also afforded interracial sexual liaisons involving white males/black females certain immunity from social attitudes and even the laws that opposed them. This fact helps in our understanding of how white men like Thomas Jefferson and David Isaacs could live for decades in the same households with women of color without receiving much interference from their neighbors. Even when others protested, as in the case of Isaacs, courts generally ruled in such a way as to protect the reputation and property of the accused white men.

A third theme promoted by Rothman centers around the complexity of interracial relationships involving white men and black women. Rothman gives agency to black women implicated in interracial relationships. He depicts these women responding in a variety of ways to the sexual demands of white men. Rothman explains that "the power dynamics between slave owners and enslaved women were never as simple as choices between submission, compromise, or resistance. In most cases, black women and white men constantly battled over who controlled the bodies of female slaves. Slave women capitulated when they believed they had no choice" (155).

Probably the most intriguing, yet controversial, part of Rothman's work is his treatment of the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings affair. In Chapter 1, Rothman attempts to present a balanced account of the relationship, interspersing historical fact with speculation. However, at times his statements are cloudy and contradictory. For example, Rothman intimates that the Jefferson/Hemings liaison was probably consensual, Hemings trading her body for personal privileges and her children's freedom. Rothman even goes as far as to guess that if Hemings had chosen to refuse Jefferson's advances, she "probably would have suffered no harsh consequences" (24). Yet, later in the same paragraph, Rothman acknowledges that the power that Jefferson had over the status of Hemings and their descendants made their relationship inherently coercive.

Rothman also refuses to rule out the possibility that genuine intimacy existed between Jefferson and Hemings. Rothman suggests that Hemings might have seen Jefferson as many other women saw him— "charming, handsome, talented, and intelligent, a man worthy of great admiration" (24). However, Rothman again raises the power difference that existed between them as a problem to establishing a relationship based mostly on mutual caring.

With regard to Jefferson, Rothman appears to fall prey to the scholarly tendency to excuse and justify the racist actions and attitudes of the nation's founders. It is hard for the scholar and non-scholar fully to accept that Jefferson was far from the enlightened embodiment of contemporary notions about race and gender. Jefferson was a product of his society, an America riveted with racism; gifted scholars like Rothman need not work so hard to redeem him.