This essay has been very hard to write because some might see it as blaming Blacks for the Jim Crow wave of terror or claiming that Whites were victimized by it. That is not my intent, of course, but I am compelled to report the facts as I found them. I would be especially grateful for John's criticism, since he is extraordinarily sensitive to this sort of thing. Tyrone's thoughts would also be appreciated.
Thanks,
Frank W. Sweet
Last edited by fwsweet on Wed 09 Feb 2005 11:20; edited 1 time in total
By the way, all members are invited to post essays here for discussion, like the above. To do so, just follow these three steps:
1. Save your essay (illustrated, if you wish) as MS-word (.DOC), Adobe Pdf (.PDF), or web page (.HTM or .HTML).
2. Upload your essay to the OneDropRule forum following the instructions in the topic Uploading and Downloading under the section Announcements from Management to Members.
3. Open a topic in the appropriate section that references your new essay by copying the following syntax (which I used above), and then changing it to reflect your own material. Specifically, change file name from Draft5.htm to whatever you uploaded. Change title from Jim Crow Triumph of the One-Drop Rule to whatever you like. Here is the syntax:
... the following draft essay, <A HREF="http://backintyme.com/forum/store/Draft5.htm">Jim Crow Triumph of the One-Drop Rule</A>.
It offered a viewpoint shift to reveal that the one-drop rule targeted only Whites, not Blacks. It showed that members of the African-American ethnic community, especially its leadership, embraced and enforced the one-drop rule within their constituencies.
As I have stated in other contexts, saying that the one-drop rule only targeted whites is true only in the narrowest sense. The color line and the invention of the strict rule of "either/or" which Frank describes served a larger purpose.
Frank has, in the past, sought opinions about what the larger purpose was; my "economic" analysis was that in the absence of legalized slavery and the continued need for reliable labor in a plantation economy, there was a pressure to create a caste that provided that labor. The racial nature of slavery in the U.S. became the basis for the transition from slavery to segregation, a/k/a "slavery light".
Now, I would like to add another thread to this inquiry. I have been reading a couple of books about religion. One is called "Constantine's Sword," which traces the 2,000 year history of the relationship between Christianity and the Jews.
The other is "The Battle for God" which is a book about how modernization affected and continues to affect three of the world's religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
One of the striking things about Constantine's Sword is the discussion about the connection between Spanish anti-Semitism and the birth of the idea of race.
The author of that book states that when the Spanish Crown united Spain in 1492, it did so by defeating Muslims at Granada and then giving both Muslims and Jews the option of converting to Christianity or expulsion.
The Spanish Inquisition had as one of its main objects the determination of whether those Jews who had converted to Christianity had "backslid" and were practicing Judaism in secret.
Eventually, even the tests of torture which were used in the Inquisition were insufficient to calm the fears that some "conversos" were secret Jews. So, the Spanish imposed a "blood" test for persons who held various offices. I believe that one had to have "christian only " ancestors going back three generations to be free of the taint of "jewish blood."
Thus, the Spanish transformed what had been a strictly religious hatred (which one could be free of by converting), into a hatred that was based upon a vague biological trait which no amount of religious faith could dispel.
Now, one could say that the Inquisition was only targeted at "conversos" and not Jews who did not convert. And, indeed, those who did not convert left Spain for Islamic countries or Eastern Europe. However, the impact of Spanish policies, by setting in motion the idea of being a Jew by "blood" set the stage for the later adoption of that concept in late nineteenth century Europe and, with lethal results, by the Nazis in 20th century Germany.
The author of Constantine's Sword also recounts the suspicion by Spanish authorities that Jews who were non-conversos were attempting to "lure" conversos back to Judaism in the years before the Jews were expelled from Spain.
And, the author of the Battle for God recounts how Jews struggled to re-define their faith in the face of the assaults of Europeans.
So, like the black community which Frank depicts in his essay, Jews in Europe could be seen as complicit in the development of the racial idea of Jewishness by failing to protest and by stubornly clinging to the idea of Judaism and eventually applying the "blood" idea to themselves.
However, given their relatively weak position and their interest in preserving Jewish faith and culture, their lack of protest probably should not be interpreted as support for the "blood" idea so much as acquiescence in one more wrong-headed idea spawned by those who had little interest in or knowledge of what they were all about.
One also should not discount the impact which "scientific" racism had on the idea of race, adding the stamp of approval on that idea from an "objective" source. The credibility of such scientists as Darwin and his interpreters (like Spencer) had an impact both on those who benefited from the idea as well as those who were injured by it.
In the context of black America, the support for a one-drop rule seems to have been ambiguous and contradictory, which is evident from the material in Frank's article.
On the one hand, the idea of becoming white seems to have been treated as treason to the group; on the other, those who could have "passed" but decided not to were often the objects of ridicule or criticism.
If there had been unbridled support for the idea of the one-drop rule among blacks, I would not expect that kind of ambiguous response.
Also, one should not forget the dispute between Marcus Garvey and DuBois during this period, with Garvey claiming superiority over DuBois based on "blood."
And, DuBois himself was not above making similar distinctions, as when he distanced himself from Walter White on the grounds that White was, in all relevant respects, a white man. Was that not a rejection of the one-drop rule by DuBois?
So, it would seem to me that the black response to the one-drop rule was not unbridled support. Instead, the conflict over this change, which was accomplished after black disfranchisement, was internal to the black community and a subject which is still being debated within that community today.
As I have stated in other contexts, saying that the one-drop rule only targeted whites is true only in the narrowest sense.
I agree. But it is only this peculiar and admitedly narrow aspect of it that I am here addressing. I shall try to craft a couple of qualifying sentences to show that I understand the narrowness of this focus.
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Frank has, in the past, sought opinions about what the larger purpose was; my "economic" analysis was that in the absence of legalized slavery and the continued need for reliable labor in a plantation economy, there was a pressure to create a caste that provided that labor. The racial nature of slavery in the U.S. became the basis for the transition from slavery to segregation, a/k/a "slavery light".
Yes, but I defer causality to another essay. It seemed easier to me to write one piece on who, what, when and where; and a separate piece entirely on why. In the why essay (which I shall submit to the groups scrutiny in a few weeks), I do give prominence to Johns labor-preservation hypothesis, and credit John with originating it. (Although it is not the only theory presented.)
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Quote When the Spanish Crown united Spain in 1492, it did so by defeating Muslims at Granada and then giving both Muslims and Jews the option of converting to Christianity or expulsion. ... Eventually, even the tests of torture which were used in the Inquisition were insufficient to calm the fears that some "conversos" were secret Jews. So the Spanish imposed a "blood" test for persons who held various offices. ... Thus, the Spanish transformed what had been a strictly religious hatred (which one could be free of by converting), into a hatred that was based upon a vague biological trait which no amount of religious faith could dispel.
James Carroll is very accurate. I cannot say that the Spanish obsession with limpieza de sangre is the only example of the pre-Enlightenment notion of invisible hereditary otherness. But it is certainly one that is in direct line with our own ideas today. It resonates on several levels with us today.
For example, the Church sold limpieza de sangre certificates to political candidates, whatever their ancestry. Free-market capitalism at work. It benefited the buyer by letting him legally hold office. It benefited the seller because the Church grew rich on the proceeds. The gullible masses swallowed the bait as their hypocritical leaders fattened on public ignorance. Plus ça change...
Incidentally, for a graphic picture of life in earlier (ninth-century) Spain, when tolerance was the law of the land under the Almoravids, I recommend my favorite book by Jacquess dad, An Odor of Sanctity. IMHO, Frank Yerby was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
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However, given their relatively weak position and their interest in preserving Jewish faith and culture, their lack of protest probably should not be interpreted as support for the "blood" idea so much as acquiescence in one more wrong-headed idea spawned by those who had little interest in or knowledge of what they were all about.
That is an excellent point. When ethnicities form under a hegemonic mainstream society, they adopt mainstream values. Today, for example, when people of any U.S. ethnicity are asked what makes their particular group unique and different from the others, close family ties and respect for education always top the list. Every ethnicity claims to uniquely embrace these two values. In fact, they are internalized from the mainstream and contradicted by the historical record. (Immigrant Irish, for example, forbade their children to learn to read and write.) And so, complicit or not, Black Yankees absorbed the one-drop rule from the surrounding mainstream society. I shall add a few sentences explaining this.
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On the one hand, the idea of becoming white seems to have been treated as treason to the group; on the other, those who could have "passed" but decided not to were often the objects of ridicule or criticism. If there had been unbridled support for the idea of the one-drop rule among blacks, I would not expect that kind of ambiguous response. ... So, it would seem to me that the black response to the one-drop rule was not unbridled support. Instead, the conflict over this change, which was accomplished after black disfranchisement, was internal to the black community and a subject which is still being debated within that community today.
Yes. I agree. The one-drop rule was enforced by some Blacks and by some Whites. But it was also contested by some Blacks and by some Whites. To focus only on evidence of Black support of the ODR and ignore evidence of opposition is to write like the evil twin of Ronald Takaki (to whom all Whites are bigots and all minorities are saints of tolerance). The example of Du Bois taking one side against Garvy but then switching sides agains White is precious. Du Bois wrote so inconsistently regarding how much of Africa there is in African-Americans, that he can be quoted on both sides of every such issue. Let me try again to better depict intra-Black contestation.
Posted: Wed 29 Dec 2004 01:21 Post subject: Please comment on a draft essay.
Questions and comments on "Jim Crow Triumph of the One Drop Rule"
1) What happened to the families who lost their court battles to be declared white? I would guess that they simply moved to other states where they were not known. I'm sure they did not give up and move to the "black" neighborhoods and marry "colored." That is what most Melungeons seemed to do, given that the vast majority of them are white-identfied. What happened to Susie Phipps? I'm sure she didn't give up and declare herself "black."
2) Why stricter rules of racial purity for "white" classmates as opposed to "white" marriage partners? Where did most people find their mates? Most Southerners probably married someone they went to school with. If you went to the "white" school, it automatically meant that you socialized with whites and would marry white. If you went to the "colored" school, you were excluded from white society and would probably marry colored unless you were determined not to do so (willing to both move away and leave the "colored" identity behind). The tough rules for schools were probably designed to nip the "purity" problem in the bud. If someone is already self-identified as white and claims the right to marry another white, it is too late to "blacken" them. They can just go where they are not known. If a white but tarbrushed child could be forced into a "colored" school, however, the internalization of a "colored" or "Negro" identity would likely cause the child to self-police himself (countless anti-passing lectures and tales) and thus protect white "purity" far better than laws designed to restrain an adult already socialized to consider himself white.
3) Mullins v. Belcher, 1911 Kentucky. "Mullins" is a very common Melungeon name. Have you asked Brent Kennedy or Wayne Winkler if they know more about this case?
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In January of 1943, Plecker sent a circular to all public health and county officials in Virginia, listing, county by county, the surnames of all families suspected of having African ancestry. The cover letter stated that they were mongrels and were now trying to register as white. The names listed in the southwestern Virginia counties included Collins, Gibson, Moore, Goins, Bunch, Freeman, Bolin, Mullins, and others described as Chiefly Tennessee Melungeons.
4) Moreau et al. v. Grandlich et. ux., 1917 Mississippi. In The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War by Victoria E. Bynum, the author cites a case where the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in favor of a member of a community of mixed ancestry (descendants of Newt and Rachel Knight) who was arrested for "miscegenation." The court ruled that he was white. I believe that was in the 1940s.
5) Railroad Company v. Ritchel, 1912 Kentucky. Miss Ritchel was fortunate in that she was a member of a highly organized, politically active ethnic group (Jews) willing to mobilize to protect their status as "whites." Most victims of these "one drop" laws were, in a way, too "white" to have in power. I mean that their logical "ethnic" groups were Scots-Irish, "WASP." or some other groups that were not "oppressed" as a group and therefore unorganized. The blackening of a small number of their members did not threaten the entire group, so individuals threatened by the ODR usually fought alone. Imagine if they had resisted as a group. Walter Plecker had tried to ban American Indian blood from the white race in his original draft of Virginia's "Racial Integrity Law." The white elite descendants of Pocahontas mobilized against him. One Indian tribe fought him in court, claiming that he had no legal authority as head of the state Bureau of Vital Statistics, to play judge and jury in determining the "race" of the state's citizens. Plecker backed off. He later confessed that his great fear was a legal challenge to his authority, because he knew that he was on shaky legal ground. He was told by Virginia's attorney general that the "Racial Integrity Act" was in danger of being struct down if were really challenged in court. Plecker was lucky. (I believe this is in The Eugenic Assault on America: Scenes in Red, White, and Black by J. David Smith). The shame of being called "Negro" instead of "white" was enough to keep most people quiet.
6) Duvigneaud v. Loquet et al., 1912 Louisiana. Great emphasis was apparently placed on Abelard's brother having been a City Court judge. Did you examine class status in determining who was judged white or Negro? Were people of higher class status more likely to be ruled white or have the benefit of the doubt while poor or working class people were more likely to be sacrified to the black side?
7) Rollins v. State, 1922 Alabama. I presume that Alabama had no community of Sicilians or Italians. Otherwise, labeling Edith Labue as nonwhite would have been seen as an attack on the entire group.
Negro and Mulatto Elite Complicity. Compare the standard anti-passing story with the actual court cases:
Anti-passing stories such as Pinky, Imitation of Life or The Human Stain usually often show the "passer" as having no white or white-looking relatives at all. The audience is apparently meant to see him or her as a mutation or genetic freak produced only by Negroes, thereby giving apparent "logic" to the disconnect between physical whiteness and Negro status. Compare them to the movie "Stella Dallas," in which the white working class mother rejects her daughter so the latter can live with her upper class father and have a better life. It is emphasized that others will assume that the upper-class stepmother is the daughter's birth mother, so "passing" is involved. This is "white" mother love. "Black" mother "love," however, is "proved" by trying to stop the daughter from rising in caste and having a better life.
The schoolteacher's 1910 diary quote about the "talented tenth." She is clearly stating the Mulatto Elite distress about being forced into the "Negro race" and their knowledge that they were culturally more like whites or their class than the blacks. The hatred of "passing" was probably linked to a fear of losing white genetic material and being absorbed into the black population. Did the "passer" really start out as an accused "traitor" to the "mulatto elite," by inadvertantly forcing them to accept more blacks as marriage partners? When you read actual autobiographies of "black whites," they often claim that they had (and have) far more trouble convining people of both main racial castes that they are "black" than vice versa. So was the ODR produced by muatto elites and upwardly mobile blacks who aspired to marry into mulatto families? If some individual you don't even know refuses to identify with blacks, where is the tragedy for the "Negro race"? A loss of brains? Beauty? White genetic material? White genetic material is assumed to be precious. James Weldon Johnson tried to tell us that the "Ex-Colored Man" would have been a leader of "the race" if he had identified with them. Why? Because of education or white blood? Or was it impossible to psychologically distinguish between the two?
Posted: Wed 29 Dec 2004 15:36 Post subject: Please comment on a draft essay.
Too bad the authorities did not decide to call the bluff of the parents who refused to send their children to school if the Kirby children were allowed to attend the "white" school. It's a good chance their bluff could have been called. The integration of the South following the 1964 Civil Rights Act, for example, was far more law-abiding than most "experts" on "race" would have predicted.
I'm reminded of an episode from the autiobiography of leftist hitorian Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train. When he was an officer in WWII (before becoming a leftist and politically active), some Negro soldiers came into the meal tent (mess?) and a white Southern enlisted man immediately demanded that Zinn order the Negro soldiers to leave because it was intolerable for him to eat with "niggers." Zinn, who was just a confused Northerner who couldn't understand the crazy Southerners, told the white Southerner that he had the choice of sitting down to eat or leaving and going hungry. The soldier sat down and ate.
__________________
Frank's account of being declared "Negro" by asssociation reminded me of another story from the Zinn autobiography. Zinn's son went to visit a department store Santa with his Negro friends. The confused white "Santa" looked at him and asked "Boy, you colored or white?" The Zinn boy looked totally white, but he was interacting with "colored" people in a friendly, egalitarian way. This made his racial identity suspect.
Posted: Thu 30 Dec 2004 16:31 Post subject: Re: Please comment on a draft essay.
Powell wrote:
What happened to the families who lost their court battles to be declared white?
I do not know. In only a few court cases have I chased down the subsequent lives of the protagonists, using census and school records. For instance, I did this for Spencer v. Looney 1914 Virginia. (This was the case where the lawyer asked the witness Did you ever hear it reported that he had negro blood about him? The old man thought a moment and then replied, I might have heard it, and I might not.) I would like to pursue later lives for more cases, but it is so time-consuming that I have only done a few.
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Why stricter rules of racial purity for "white" classmates as opposed to "white" marriage partners? ... the internalization of a "colored" or "Negro" identity would likely cause the child to self-police himself... and thus protect white "purity" far better than laws designed to restrain an adult already socialized to consider himself white.
I agree. I shall get into this in the "Why" essay that will follow this one (Who, What, When, Where, and How).
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Mullins v. Belcher 1911 Kentucky. "Mullins" is a very common Melungeon name. Have you asked Brent Kennedy or Wayne Winkler if they know more about this case?
Thank you. I had not thought of that. You are probably correct that it was their Melungeon surname that roused suspicion of their Whiteness. I shall ask Wayne if he knows anything about them. Click here Mullins v. Belcher if you would like to read the case record.
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In The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War by Victoria E. Bynum, the author cites a case where the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in favor of a member of a community of mixed ancestry (descendants of Newt and Rachel Knight) who was arrested for "miscegenation."
Yes. The case was unique in that both sides' lawyers (defense and prosecution together) jointly asked to have the decision overturned. The lead witness obviously perjured himself by claiming to have known Rachel Knight, even though the undisputed record showed that she had died in 1889 and he (the witness) was born in 1890. Click here Knight v. State if you would like to read the case record.
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Were people of higher class status more likely to be ruled white or have the benefit of the doubt while poor or working class people were more likely to be sacrified to the black side?
I believe so, but it gets harder to demonstrate as you get into the 20th century. Nineteenth-century judges (and earlier), especially in the lower South, had no problem ruling that money talks; it was natural and accepted in their society. But their writings became more circumspect after Northern egalitarianism was internalized by the South after Reconstruction. And so, I tend to hammer on a class-based rule of group membership when discussing antebellum life, but am more cautious in asserting its importance in the mid-20th century. Obviously it was, though, as you can see in Bennett v. Bennett 1940 South Carolina, the case that opens my essay on The Rate of Black-to-White Passing.
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Rollins v. State 1922 Alabama. I presume that Alabama had no community of Sicilians or Italians. Otherwise, labeling Edith Labue as nonwhite would have been seen as an attack on the entire group.
It may have been seen as such an attack, but Italian-Americans in the South then were not yet in any position to do anything about it. Before World War II, many Italian-American children in the South were forced to attend segregated schools for children of the Black endogamous group. Eleven Italian-Americans who tried to pass as White were lynched in 1891 New Orleans and five more were lynched for the same reason outside the Madison Parish, Louisiana, courthouse in 1899. It was not until the depression era that Italian-Americans began to be seen as White in the South.
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[Did the Black elite support the one-drop rule because] White genetic material is assumed to be precious? James Weldon Johnson tried to tell us that the "Ex-Colored Man" would have been a leader of "the race" if he had identified with them. Why? Because of education or White blood? Or was it impossible to psychologically distinguish between the two?
To be honest, I lack the psychological training and the evidence to be able to argue that the supposed intellectual inferiority of "Black blood," which was a major element of U.S. popular culture for most of the 20th century, was internalized as self-doubt by the Black community. Many, if not most, Black studies scholars seem to think that this is the case. For one thing, it explains colorism among Blacks, as well as the sale of cosmetics that make one look more European. On the other hand, I cannot find contemporary anti-passing writings that explicitly blame Black-to-White passers for causing a Black brain-drain. On the contrary, passing is simply said to be "treason" or "betrayal" of some sort. In short, you may be right, but I cannot prove it one way or the other.
Posted: Thu 30 Dec 2004 21:41 Post subject: Please comment on a draft essay.
Quote:
To be honest, I lack the psychological training and the evidence to be able to argue that the supposed intellectual inferiority of "Black blood," which was a major element of U.S. popular culture for most of the 20th century, was internalized as self-doubt by the Black community. Many, if not most, Black studies scholars seem to think that this is the case. For one thing, it explains colorism among Blacks, as well as the sale of cosmetics that make one look more European. On the other hand, I cannot find contemporary anti-passing writings that explicitly blame Black-to-White passers for causing a Black brain-drain. On the contrary, passing is simply said to be "treason" or "betrayal" of some sort. In short, you may be right, but I cannot prove it one way or the other.
If you read black denunciations and actual personal insults directed against people accused of "passing" (the letters written over the years to "Interracial Voice" would be a good start), most of the concern seems to be about mate selection and enjoying social interactions with whites as fellow whites. You recall that Southern segregationists used to claim that the ultimate goal of Negroes was to marry whites. Given the favored status of mulattoes as mates within "Negro" communities, it was a stereotype that was based on a grain of truth (although the ideal in mulatto elite society to marry someone with physical whiteness and without legal whiteness).
A few correspondents claim that multiracial and mixed whites should embrace a "black" identity in order to solve the numerous problems of blacks. For the most part, however, an American black wants to know about an accused passer's sex life, marriage, children, etc. They almost never ask about party affiliation or voting. There is a great strangeness in a people who hate "whites" as a group but desperately want to claim the descendants of whites for their "race." It could be that misery loves company. It could be that white blood is tacitly viewed as a source of beauty (especially for females; note how mulatto females are teamed with black males in television programs, advertising, movies, etc.). Given the superior educational opportunities traditionally given to mulattoes, it is possible that white ancestry is still associated with superior intelligence. The truth is probably a combination of all of these. Still, blacks are aware that they need force to put a "black" label on all the people they WANT to claim. Note the remarks quoted here from Eleanor Holmes-Norton:
http://www.webcom.com/intvoice/liam4.html
I was troubled finding that Frank discussed history of the color-line throughout as if the "different races" Jim Crow legally divided in racial "colors" truly exist. Frank's paper implied the biological "difference" of the "races" right along with their ODR-constructed historical legal existence. Mentioning a former "two-line" system which was the Free Colored in-between "race" (e.g., Creole of Color), "passing," and lost Southern racial permeability does not challenge the hypnotic mentality classifying racial "difference" as some sort of great biological "essence." And I think it would be helpful to expose the African-American Complicity as warmed-over Jim Crow -- same "blood biology." Despite their post-Kwansaa insistence their "black ethnicity" is socially constructed, it nonetheless depends on exactly the same hook-line-&-sinker of "any black ancestry" that was Jim Crow's ODR.
I realize Frank's purpose was history, not a treatise on inheritance biology. Nonetheless, the saliency of racial "difference" is not shaken here. And it needs to be shaken -- undermined. Frank is positioned for this.
George
About my essay implicitly reifying bio-race, I shall take a closer look at this. I appreciate the observation because my essays sort of run together. In each, I subconsciously assume that the reader has read all of the others. So I often fail to summarize material from one into another. (As evidenced by John correctly noticing that I did not make clear in this essay that 1830 White northerners invented ODR and Black northerners then internalized it, because this point was the subject of an entire other essay on the 1830s North.)
Posted: Thu 06 Jan 2005 01:58 Post subject: Frank's latest essay, The Invention of the Color Line: 1691
Frank eruditely discusses the partus sequitur ventrem statute (Va. colony, 1662), but he later states Virginia's one-eighth blood-fraction rule (1705) was "the first instance in history of legalized hypodescent." I was not able to find the essay, Features of the Endogamous Color Line for an explanation of this term coined by Marvin Harris. (Fn. 33.)
My way of looking at it is, after the 1705 one-eighth blood-fraction rule the U.S.A. had two hypodescent rules on separate but converging tracks. The 1662 partus rule was hypodescent slavery (regardless of "color"). The 1705 VA one-eighth blood-fraction rule was hypodescent "blackness." Hudgins v. Wrights, 1806 (VA following Gobu v. Gobu, 1802 N.C. trial ct.), made pure African racial "blackness" for the first time a presumption of inherited slave status. The hypodescent notions thus were united in one when slavery ended in 1865. (Might they have cross-fertilized?) The 1910-1967 statutory ODR simplified the blood-fraction rule to "[e]very person in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood ...." (Va. Code Ann. § 1-14 (1960).)
Is the hypothesis that partus hypodescent slavery long posthumously cross-fertilizing racial "blackness" (& the ODR) supported by the fact antebellum Virginia doubled its "black blood" tolerance with a one-fourth blood-fraction rule in 1787; this remained Virginia's law until 1910? (See Wadlington pp. 1193-94, 1196 & fns. 31, 53, 54.) I think a one-fourth blood-fraction rule is only half the hypodescent-bias of a one-eighth fraction rule. Of course, we know that Virginia's most draconian hypodescent rule was its ODR enacted in 1924 -- 59 years after slavery's end.
As for partus hypodescent slavery -- I think it became an attenuating blood-fraction rule, too, after slave-import trade was banned in 1808. Legislation sparing "Christians" from slavery not "of their own complexion," had been enacted a full century earlier (1705). By 1865 (slavery's end) the "black" ancestral line presumed elemental to slave status was in many instances an invisible blood-fraction in a "white" slave. (E.g., Mark Twain's Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson.)
George
I was not able to find the essay, Features of the Endogamous Color Line for an explanation of this term coined by Marvin Harris. (Fn. 33.)
Sorry about that. The essay mentioned is still under construction and not scheduled for release until later this year. What it says about hypodescent is the following:
Features of the Endogamous Color Line wrote:
This term hypodescent was coined in 1963 by the late University of Florida anthropologist, Marvin Harris. It means that U.S. society assigns individuals with known mixed Afro-European heritage to the Black endogamous group, even though they might be of mostly European descent. This essay considers the one-drop rule of invisible blackness as hypodescent taken to its most absurd conclusion. In lands where other forms of Afro-European racialism exist, the preponderance of appearance determines a persons racial label.
As source, the under-construction essay cites Marvin Harris, Patterns of Race in the Americas (Westport CT, 1964), 37. Again, I apologize for getting ahead of myself.
winwinkel wrote:
The [two] hypodescent notions [of slavery and Blackness] thus were united in one when slavery ended in 1865. (Might they have cross-fertilized?)
I think that George has come up with a powerful and intellectually fertile formulation here. We all know that many (about half a million) Blacks were not slaves and that many (probably several tens of thousands, as a guess) European-looking people were slaves. But the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of Americans who looked at least partly African in 1860 (about four million) were slaves. And the overwhelming majority of those who looked European were free. By mid-century, slavery and race were inextricably intertwined for most Americans. Both depended on nonsensical rules of infinite regress or recursion (one traced maternally, the other by blood fraction). Each concept (legal slave status and biological race status) helped define the other.
When slavery ended, the race notion was left hanging and went off in search of a new partner, so to speak. The North/South reconciliation movement of the Gilded Age [See David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge MA: Harvard University, 2001)] saw the race notion bind itself to the ethnicity notion. That the former concept is ascribed and the latter voluntary makes their joining a bit mismatched, but Americans swallowed the coupling anyway.
Today, Americans who have thoroughly internalized the paring honestly cannot distinguish between bio-race and ethnic choice, thus mystifying (and repelling) Hispanics as well as immigrants from Africa or from the West Indies. The idea that racialism has not stood unsupported, but has always paired up with some other social myth (slavery before 1865, ethnicity after 1865), to their mutual impact, is definitely one that deserves more thought.
winwinkel wrote:
Is the hypothesis that partus hypodescent slavery long posthumously cross-fertilizing racial "blackness" (& the ODR) supported by the fact antebellum Virginia doubled its "black blood" tolerance with a one-fourth blood-fraction rule in 1787; this remained Virginia's law until 1910? (See Wadlington pp. 1193-94, 1196 & fns. 31, 53, 54.) I think a one-fourth blood-fraction rule is only half the hypodescent-bias of a one-eighth fraction rule. Of course, we know that Virginia's most draconian hypodescent rule was its ODR enacted in 1924 -- 59 years after slavery's end.
Paul Finkelman wonders about the same thing: Why did Virginians become more liberal around 1785, as evidenced by their cutting in half the blood fraction needed to consign someone to the Black side of the color line? He hypothesizes that it was the egalitarian Revolutionary spirit that was in the air. (Thomas Paine, and all that.) But I disagree.
My reading of the court cases, before and after the 1785 law, was that they were merely seeking a blood fraction that would approximate physical appearance. They had no problem accepting White people with a trace of African ancestry as socially White. The problem was that the 1705 rule consigned too many such Whites to the Black side of the color line. So they switched to a 1/4 rule. Neighboring (1/8 rule) North Carolina considered switching too, but they decided that 1/4 would allow too many African-looking quadroons into the White side. There is no solution to this dilemma, of course. As everyone from a mixed family knows, siblings can look very different.
On the other hand, I see Pleckers 1924 ODR law (and similar ones in other states) as reflecting a very different phenomenonan ideological notion of invisible race that had nothing to do with appearance (or even with realistic estimate of genetic admixture, for that matter). I really think of the ODR as something qualitatively different from blood-fraction rules. Of course, as Twains story points out, the long-accepted idea of invisible slave status made acceptance of invisible race easier for Southerners to swallow.
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