During slavery in the United States, mulatto women and biracial women were sexually exploited by slave owners during slavery because of their racial mix, but they were also despised by black women, who did not accept mulatto women because it was too white and despised by white women because they were too black. Mulatto women were considered a sexual object by many men, a woman who fulfilled the sexual fantasies of slave owners. Mulatto women are denied the right to racial self-identity by the arbitrary application of the one drop of blood rule during racial segregation and the Jim Crow laws.