So this may not seem like a direct answer, but this is a great question to highlight an issue in contemporary historiography: nationalizing the past.

The reason I bring this up is that Malcom’s assertion makes this assumption in spades.

The idea that people with a similar ethnic heritage constitute a cohesive entity and that one’s social standing is based on solidarity in said group. That the group as a whole determines the authenticity of individual identity... This is a modern conception.

Malcom X’s premise carries this nationalistic idea. That slaves who worked in domestic roles were somehow traitors to their ‘brethren’ who worked in agriculture. That being a domestic slave was akin to being complicit in their enslavement. And Malcom’s statement also carries a marxian tone, that labor is the basis of identity (therefore domestic slaves weren’t real slaves). These ideas are false.

It also seems to take for granted the “appliance revolution” of the 1950’s and 1960’s which saw modern amenities such as the washing machine, clothes dryer, electric refrigerator, lawnmower, and “weedwhacker” become standard household items. These advancements greatly changed daily household life.

One of the issues I would take with Malcom’s assertion is that running a rural household in pre-industrial eras took an immense amount of physical labor. These plantations are often like little villages. And the maintenance of a plantation would be a highly demanding job for most of us who live contemporary post-industrial lifestyles.

• Laundry: Cleaning clothes took hours before the advent of the washing machine. Scrubbing clothes by hand with a washboard, and then manually hanging each piece to dry, and then meticulously ironing wrinkles out was a process that could take days. A domestic slave’s hands would certainly be sore after a day of laundry. This work was not easy.

• Cooking: There were barely any pre-made foodstuffs in rural agrarian pre-industrial society, especially the typical antebellum southern plantation. Most food had to be made from scratch, with limited ability to preserve food. Working a kitchen was an all-day affair. Flour had to be prepared, kneaded, left to rise, then baked. To prepare meat, and animal had to be killed, bled, gutted, butchered, prepped, and cooked usually all within a day’s time. Meat spoils very quickly, especially in the hot and humid subtropical climates of the Antebellum South.

• Lawn and gardening: Vegetable gardens would need constant attention as well as the maintenance of the main yard. Aside from goats and some herbal pesticides, the only way to reliably maintain a lawn in pre-industrial times was literally pulling weeds by hand. Having a pristine, edged lawn with a flower garden in the Antebellum South was a real mark of wealth.

• Fire: The process of getting firewood was difficult, and a fire was needed anytime one needed to cook or just needed warm water. Finding a tree, cutting it down, hauling it back, chopping the wood, then stacking it to dry was a process that could take days.

• Cleaning: Years and years of getting on one’s hands and knees to deep clean and dry a floor could be literally backbreaking. Modern air conditioning has made housing much cleaner. In the Antebellum south, windows were often left open to catch the breeze so there would have been much more ambient dust in these homes (think about how armoires and dressers were probably some of your grandparents most prized furniture possessions)

Keep in mind that all of these labor-intensive jobs are continuous and ongoing.

All of this is on top of more ‘servial’ roles domestic slaves may have have taken part in; emptying chamber pots, helping owners get dressed, shaving and hair cutting, running mail to the post office or correspondence to other plantations miles away, hauling groceries by hand, dusting, polishing silverware, cleaning and setting plates and utensils,etc.

Something to consider is that many slaves did both jobs. Rural agrarian lifestyles are kind of similar to a college student, long periods of moderate work mixed in with short periods of very intense work (plowing, planting, harvesting - midterms and finals). Only the wealthiest of people (landowners) could afford slaves and even fewer would be able to afford a slave that didn’t work in the fields.

This question is outside of my historical purview and I can’t really speak for the specific attitudes agrarian field slaves may have held of domestic slaves (agrarian slaves may certainly have felt envy towards a domestic slave, but that’s not the same thing as betrayal). That said, I’m sure many did indeed feel resentment towards domestic slaves.

But what I have studied is labor... I just wanted to shed some light on what running a rural household in pre-industrial times was like. Domestic slave life was by no means a picnic, it was damn hard work and there is no academic basis of Malcom’s claim that black domestic slaves were somehow ‘inauthentic’ to the black experience of slave life in the Antebellum South, nor that domestic slaves were complicit in their own enslavement.