Came across a comment elsewhere in the redditsphere where they claimed that "Actually, in my African Americans in the U.S. economy class, we learned that slave families stayed together a surprisingly high percentage of the time, 2/3rds of African American children were in two parent house holds, which is actually twice as high as today. I mean, that's not say slavery wasn't horrible and it's effects aren't seen today (nobody teaches an African American studies class and then sugarcoats the issue of slavery), but the family unit was a part of slave life. Of course, the whole raping slaves and selling children from the parents was very common."
I disagree, but have little to no sourcing. I know that black families were routinely broken up by selling but I also have this notion that it was in the particular interest of slaveowners to actually break up the families. I know the migration westward in the early 1800's sent a ton of the younger black males away from their families but I admit I really don't know much of how the chattel slavery system treated families.
Walter Johnson's Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market deals with this myth of slave-family togetherness. I suggest you check it out, since it's a very powerful book. Whether or not slave owners had incentives to break up black families or not, they always maintained the threat of such, which could be used to obtain obedience from any number of slaves. However, often they would sell slaves and justify it for financial reasons, thereby absolving themselves of any real blame for the transaction.
In short, look at Johnson's book for an analysis of how families were treated in the chattel slave system. The redditor who is making that claim has greatly misguided logic (which it seems is displaced to an economics class, but anyway).
Can I tack an extra question onto this: I have repeatedly heard of 'Slave Preachers' (?) adding an extra line or so to the wedding ceremony, although I don't recall ever reading about it. The line is usually "until death or distance" or something like that.
Is that true? If so, how common was it, and when did it start? Was there any backlash again the implementation from slaveowners?
I assume you are paraphrasing in your quotes. Did your teacher say this? Were they talking about a study you could refer us? Was there a time period and/or region there were talking about when they said this? I have not read any books specifically about the slave family, but I have read several that dealt with it in pursuit of other issues so I may be able to help. Context for the quote would be most useful. Thanks!
Edit: Didn't see the quote was from a different reddit board. If they got that from a college class I am hoping they were misquoting or there is an investigation into the professor because that just sounds crazy.
I read "The Classic Slave Narratives" and also got the impression is was very common for families to be broken up. It seemed to me that this could have partly been done to keep the overall morale of slaves low, making them less likely to rebel. I don't have a source for that second statement though.