Posted: Mon 27 Aug 2007 04:12 Post subject: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
Cecil Adams spreads myths about the ODR. He confuses the maternal descent rule with the "one drop" rule, claiming that "black blood" alone was enough to make a slave out of a white or mulatto person. He repeats the black myth that all male European ancestors of mulattoes were uncaring studs, and is ignorant of the freedom and economic security white fathers often provided their mixed children.
He claims that the modern ODR is enforced by whites and doesn't mention black support of it. He treats Hispanics as a separate race and doesn't mention their African ancestry, though it seems obvious that he is aware of the Hispanic "escape hatch."
Also, note the ridiculous cartoon supposedly portraying the "white lover sucks a drop of light mulatto woman's tainted blood" scene from "Showboat." The woman is supposed to be white enough to "pass" yet the cartoon presents her as totally African in phenotype.
My girlfriend is half black and half white. While she was filling out a form recently I noticed when it came to the question of race she checked "black." I asked her why she didn't mark white since she is as much one as the other. She replied that in America one is considered black if the amount of black parentage is one eighth or greater. Is or was this true? Why? Since I am a Mexican male, what will the white establishment consider our children? Not that it matters, but I'd like to know what is in store for us. --An in-love but mixed-up couple, Los Angeles
Cecil replies:
Lord knows. My advice is, if anybody asks, tell 'em the kids are Phrygian. Nobody will have any idea what you're talking about and you'll be able to divert the conversation to some less stupid topic.
These days there's not much official guidance on who's black and who's white. The census bureau has adopted the sensible policy of letting you be whatever you mark down on the form. You can look like Snow White and talk like George Plimpton, but if you want to be a Fiji Islander, by God you're a Fiji Islander as far as the census is concerned.
Things are only marginally more rigorous when it comes to stuff like affirmative action. A spokesman for the Small Business Administration says they'll basically take your word for what race you are, although conceivably they might ask for a birth certificate or passport in the rare event there was some question.
Unofficial standards are a different story. Experts on race relations agree that up until very recently, and to some extent even today, white America held to the "one-drop" rule: if you had one drop of black blood in you--any detectable African ancestry at all--you were black. This peculiar attitude may well be unique in the world; even South Africa acknowledges the existence of people of mixed race.
Quote:
The one-drop rule didn't reach its full flowering until after World War I but its roots go back to before the Civil War
. Prior to 1850, mulattoes--people of mixed race--were widely recognized as being distinct from full-blooded African slaves. In fact, in some parts of the south, notably South Carolina and Louisiana, free mulattoes were a (relatively) privileged class, with money, prestige, and sometimes slaves of their own.
After 1850, however, southern whites became obsessed with the idea of racial purity and white superiority. If you had any black blood at all, you were supposed to be out back choppin' cotton. White planters who got female slaves pregnant willingly enslaved their own children. Far from being scandalized, other southerners complained that some mulattoes remained free to pollute the gene pool.
Defeat in the Civil War only intensified these feelings. States not just in the south but throughout the Union passed increasingly strict antimiscegenation laws--laws that weren't struck down by the Supreme Court until 1967. The one-drop rule was actually enacted in only seven states (Virginia did so in 1930); more commonly the cutoff was one-eighth black. But according to historian Joel Williamson (New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the U.S., 1980), the one-drop rule was the de facto standard throughout the country.
Williamson relates an episode from the 1920s musical Showboat in which a white boy in love with a mulatto actress is accused by a Mississippi sheriff of violating the state's antimiscegenation law. Thinking fast, the white guy pricks his beloved's finger with a knife, swallows a drop of the blood, and says, hey, I'm no white man, I've got Negro blood in me. The sheriff lets him off.
So where does that leave you? Hard to say. No question the one-drop rule still prevails for a lot of white folks. But since even racists don't have the nerve to ask for proof of pedigree these days, what matters most is what you look like. The fact that you're Hispanic is the perfect smokescreen. Your kids probably won't pass for Swedish but they'll be able to declare themselves black or Hispanic as the whim moves them. Better yet, have them say it's nobody's damn business.
ANOTHER SUGGESTION
Dear Cecil:
In your column on racial designations, you omitted what was to me the most important alternative. For 40 years the only response I have ever given to questions on my race put to me by anyone under any circumstances has been human. There are no other races.
Back in 1959, the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles (or whatever it was called back then) sent me a questionnaire for renewal of my driver's license. In response to a question on race, I answered "human." They returned the form to me on the ground that I had provided an improper or unacceptable answer to the question.
I wrote back saying I was not about to be instructed on scientific matters by a bunch of two-bit bureaucrats; that I had given the only legitimate answer to the question; that they were suborning perjury by pressuring me to provide any other answer on an official government form.
They issued the license with a conventional racial designation on it. I erased the designation (licenses were then on heavy paper, not encased in plastic as now), and wrote them saying I had done so on the ground that I would not permit an official document relating to me to bear false information.
They wrote back telling me that altering an official document made me subject to criminal prosecution with a possible $300 fine and 10 days in jail.
I wrote back and said, "I dare you." pointing out that the trial would be latched on to by the then-emergent civil rights struggle and could cause the department considerable embarrassment. Nothing further ensued, and a few years later they redesigned the whole license, deleting any references to race and introducing picture driver's licenses.
Recently a retired D.C. official involved in these matters said in an interview that "only four or five" people had objected to racial designation. I am proud to have been one of them. After a respite of some years from racial questions they have again become widespread, ostensibly for the acquisition of demographic data. I continue to advise that such questions be answered "human." I strongly believe that if everyone were to respond in this fashion to questions on race, ours would be a far happier society. --Franklin E. Kameny, Washington, D.C.
Dear Franklin:
Hear, hear, brother. For those who find "human" a bit smartass, I advise just leaving the question blank. If anybody is dumb enough to come after you, Cecil will be pleased to contribute to your defense.
THEN AGAIN, YOU COULD SAY THE KIDS ARE ALBARAZADOS
Dear Cecil:
I found your column on racial designations interesting and thought I could help clarify or confuse the issue even more by sending you the Mexican list of names for the possible mixtures of races. These are the basis of the caste system in Mexico. There is also a series of paintings to accompany this, so that those unable to read could at least get an idea of the racial features. The pictures also give an idea of the kind of work assigned to a person of that caste. -- Brother Edward Loch, S.M., San Antonio, Texas
1. Dear Bro Ed:
Holy cow. The list, which is from Las Castas Mexicanas by Maria Concepcion Garcia Saiz (1989), gives names for more than two dozen racial/ethnic combinations. These range from the well-known mulatto (white/black) and mestizo (white/Indian) to zambo (Indian/black or mulatto), morisco (white/mulatto), and albino (white/morisco). Then you get into ahi te estas (mulatto/mestizo coyote--don't ask), albarazado, barcino, calpamulato, cambujo, and on and on. Clearly Americans aren't the only ones obsessed with their neighbors' pedigrees.
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 03:17 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
Powell wrote:
He repeats the black myth that all male European ancestors of mulattoes were uncaring studs, and is ignorant of the freedom and economic security white fathers often provided their mixed children.
Define "often". Do you honestly believe that more slaveowners gave feedom and economic security to their mixed children ? If so do you have any supporting documentation? And what is a black myth? Is that better/worse or the same as a white myth?
Powell wrote:
] He claims that the modern ODR is enforced by whites and doesn't mention black support of it.
ODR was a concept invented and promoted by whites. Black Americans turned what was initially viewed as a negative into something positive. Black is beautiful, Say it loud I'm black and I'm proud are two examples of how African Americans embraced their background and reveled in it. Perhaps you are confusing black support of the ODR with pride in oneself.
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 03:56 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
anonymouse wrote:
Do you honestly believe that more slaveowners gave feedom and economic security to their mixed children? If so do you have any supporting documentation? And what is a black myth? Is that better/worse or the same as a white myth?
(1) Yes, I honestly believe that. (2) For documentation see Mark R. Schultz, “Interracial Kinship Ties and the Emergence of a Rural Black Middle Class,” in Georgia in Black and White: Explorations in the Race Relations of a Southern State, 1865-1950, ed. John C. Inscoe` (Athens GA: University of Georgia, 1994), 141-72. (3) In this context, a "myth"“ is a counterfactual belief taught to the young in order to exemplify social standards that they will be expected to follow in adulthood. A "Black" myth presumably is one taught by the African-American community to its children. (4) Discussion of "better or worse" are not allowed in this forum. Please consider this a first warning.
anonymouse wrote:
ODR was a concept invented and promoted by whites. Black Americans turned what was initially viewed as a negative into something positive.
(1) Not so. Black Yankee political leaders promoted the ODR from its inception. It was thoroughly rejected by slaveowners. See Why Did Northerners Invent a One-Drop Rule?. (2) Discussion over whether a myth is positive or negative is not allowed in this forum. Again, this is a first warning.
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 04:31 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
fwsweet wrote:
anonymouse wrote:
ODR was a concept invented and promoted by whites. Black Americans turned what was initially viewed as a negative into something positive.
(1) Not so. Black Yankee political leaders promoted the ODR from its inception. It was thoroughly rejected by slaveowners. See Why Did Northerners Invent a One-Drop Rule?. (2) Discussion over whether a myth is positive or negative is not allowed in this forum. Again, this is a first warning.
I read your article, Frank, but I don't see how that couple or the five black dudes that re-kidnapped the mixed girl were "Black Yankee political leaders". What led you to refer to them as political leaders? They could have been some rogue band of radicals, right?
Also, I find it SO hard to believe that the one drop rule originated up North in the "free States" and then later found a home down South in slave States. I mean, really. Are you saying that prior to 1830 mixed children in the South were freed? treated as well as whites? believed to not have African blood? Just because words like mulatto and quadroon may have been used, that doesn't necessarily mean the spirit of the one drop rule was not being practiced down South prior to 1830. My understanding is that the words that were used, such as Negro, mulatto, etc. all designated a person with African blood in them as a certain category less than white. Just because a word like "black" evolved and was eventually forced on all of those people of color, it does not mean that "one dropping" didn't exist prior to this occurrence.
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 05:05 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
OTHER wrote:
I read your article, Frank, but I don't see how that couple or the five black dudes that re-kidnapped the mixed girl were "Black Yankee political leaders". What led you to refer to them as political leaders? They could have been some rogue band of radicals, right?
You read only the opening anecdote. You did not bother to read the essay. This is a first warning per rule 3.1.4. ("Before posting an opinion on any specific journal article or book you must show that you have read it."} As explained in the section "African-American Ethnic Solidarity Benefited," the "political leaders" referred were Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney. To learn more about the political leadership of Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney, just google those two names.
OTHER wrote:
Also, I find it SO hard to believe that the one drop rule originated up North in the "free States" and then later found a home down South in slave States.
That is either a strawman or a gross misunderstanding. No reputable historian claims that the ODR ever found a home in the slave states. It first appeared in the South long after the war. Indeed, as late as the 1880s (1895 in SC), southern states' courts consistently ruled against the ODR.
OTHER wrote:
Are you saying that prior to 1830 mixed children in the South were freed?
No. Slave status was matrilineal throughout North America from the 1660s on. You were a slave if your mother was a slave, not matter what your ancestry. You were free if your mother was free, not matter what your ancestry. For details, see How the Law Decided if You Were Black or White: The Early 1800s. Please read the entire essay, not just the opening anecdote.
OTHER wrote:
[Are you saying that prior to 1830] mixed children in the South treated as well as whites? believed to not have African blood? Just because words like mulatto and quadroon may have been used, that doesn't necessarily mean the spirit of the one drop rule was not being practiced down South prior to 1830. My understanding is that the words that were used, such as Negro, mulatto, etc. all designated a person with African blood in them as a certain category less than white. Just because a word like "black" evolved and was eventually forced on all of those people of color, it does not mean that "one dropping" didn't exist prior to this occurrence.
This is a first warning as per rule 3.3.10. Please define your usage. You are evidently using "ODR" to mean something other than the site-standard denotation. That is: "the idea that a person of utterly European appearance and White self-identity is involuntarily Black due merely to having “one drop” of known African ancestry, no matter how ancient, and is merely “passing for White.” Judging by the above paragraph, you may possibly be using "ODR" to denote what the site-standard definition refers to as "hypodescent." Or you may be trying to express"racism." "colorism" or something else entirely. It is hard to say because your examples are so broad.
Regarding your opinions as to the veracity or reliability of the information presented in the essays (which summarize the content of Legal History of the Color Line), please see rule 3.1.5. If you have any contradictory evidence you are sincerely encouraged to present it. If not, please restrict your unsubstantiated opinions to the political advocacy forums.
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 05:15 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
fwsweet wrote:
OTHER wrote:
I read your article, Frank, but I don't see how that couple or the five black dudes that re-kidnapped the mixed girl were "Black Yankee political leaders". What led you to refer to them as political leaders? They could have been some rogue band of radicals, right?
You read only the opening anecdote. You did not bother to read the essay. This is a first warning per rule 3.1.4. ("Before posting an opinion on any specific journal article or book you must show that you have read it."} As explained in the section "African-American Ethnic Solidarity Benefited," the "political leaders" referred were Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney. To learn more about the political leadership of Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney, just google those two names.
My apologies. I thought there were several articles on one page. I did not realize those were subtitles. I was under the impression that I read ALL of what you were referring to. Apparently not.
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 05:52 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
fwsweet wrote:
This is a first warning as per rule 3.3.10. Please define your usage. You are evidently using "ODR" to mean something other than the site-standard denotation. That is: "the idea that a person of utterly European appearance and White self-identity is involuntarily Black due merely to having “one drop” of known African ancestry, no matter how ancient, and is merely “passing for White.” Judging by the above paragraph, you may possibly be using "ODR" to denote what the site-standard definition refers to as "hypodescent." Or you may be trying to express"racism." "colorism" or something else entirely. It is hard to say because your examples are so broad.
Quote:
3.3.10 one-drop rule — The principle that membership in the U.S. Black endogamous group is based upon having any African ancestry at all, no matter how distant or invisible. Specifically, it is the idea that a person of utterly European appearance and White self-identity is involuntarily Black due merely to having “one drop” of known African ancestry, no matter how ancient, and is merely “passing for White.” The one-drop rule is the most extreme manifestation of hypodescent. Hence, all cases of one-drop rule are also examples of hypodescent, but the reverse is not true; not all cases of hypodescent (calling a first generation biracial invidivual “Black,” for example) are examples of the one-drop rule.
I was using it the way it is stated in the site definition, only I was using it in the way the first sentence reads, which I have emboldened, and not the more "specific" example which refers to white-identified, European-looking people with "one drop" of African ancestry. Is the site definition worded incorrectly? I have started a thread in "Commentary on the Rules" for that discussion.
Yes, I was referring to the part of hypodescent that overlaps with the one drop rule. Hence, I was referring correctly to the one drop rule, right?
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 07:14 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
OTHER wrote:
I was using [ODR] the way it is stated in the site definition, only I was using it in the way the first sentence reads, which I have emboldened, and not the more "specific" example which refers to white-identified, European-looking people with "one drop" of African ancestry. Is the site definition worded incorrectly? I have started a thread in "Commentary on the Rules" for that discussion. Yes, I was referring to the part of hypodescent that overlaps with the one drop rule. Hence, I was referring correctly to the one drop rule, right?
Sorry. My fault. The definition seemed a lot clearer when I wrote it, but I now agree that it is murky (see "Commentary on the Rules").
Until I can fix the definition, I must interpret your remarks (and anonymouse's) as referring to the notion that if you have even slightly visible African phenotype, you are considered Black (in the endogamous color line sense).
With this understanding, anonymouse's statement becomes, "[the notion that if you have even slightly visible African phenotype, you are Black] was a concept invented and promoted by whites." Anonymouse is correct. The notion was created by the gentry in the mid 1600s to deter slave insurrection. Anonymouse's follow-on statement, "This Black Americans turned what was initially viewed as a negative into something positive," still improperly injects moral judgement.
With this understanding, your statement becomes, "I find it SO hard to believe that the [notion that if you have even slightly visible African phenotype, you are Black] originated up North in the "free States" and then later found a home down South in slave States." You are correct to find this hard to believe. That notion originated in the mid-1600s Chesapeake and did not reach New England until around 1710 (they were all slave states back then). See The Invention of the Color Line: 1691 and Why Did Virginia’s Rulers Invent a Color Line? for details.
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 15:43 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
fwsweet wrote:
anonymouse wrote:
Do you honestly believe that more slaveowners gave feedom and economic security to their mixed children? If so do you have any supporting documentation? And what is a black myth? Is that better/worse or the same as a white myth?
(1) Yes, I honestly believe that
And I believe that was more of an exception rather than the norm. I believe that most slaveowners who had sexual relations with their slaves that resulted in births did not give freedom and economic security to their slave children.
fwsweet wrote:
(2) For documentation see Mark R. Schultz, “Interracial Kinship Ties and the Emergence of a Rural Black Middle Class,” in Georgia in Black and White: Explorations in the Race Relations of a Southern State, 1865-1950, ed. John C. Inscoe` (Athens GA: University of Georgia, 1994), 141-72.
I will get a copy of that book and read it. But remember Georgia is only one state.
fwsweet wrote:
(3) In this context, a "myth"“ is a counterfactual belief taught to the young in order to exemplify social standards that they will be expected to follow in adulthood. A "Black" myth presumably is one taught by the African-American community to its children.
(4) Discussion of "better or worse" are not allowed in this forum. Please consider this a first warning.
A statement was made and promoted as a "black myth" a term I have never heard before. I asked what was a "black myth" and was it better worse or different than a "white myth". And for that and I get a warning?
Last edited by anonymouse on Tue 13 Nov 2007 16:01; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 15:59 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
anonymouse wrote:
I asked what was a "black myth" and was it better worse or different than a "white myth". And for that and I get a warning?
That is correct. You asked two things: one okay, and one not okay.
Asking what is a "black myth" (given that someone used the phrase) is praiseworthy. Requesting clarification in this way is encouraged by the rules. Specifically, rule 2.3 says, "Make sure that you understand what the other person is saying before replying." Please feel free to ask for clarification at any time and in any forum.
On the other hand, asking whether [anything] is better or worse than [anything else] in a technical and scholarly forum is asking the other person to violate rule 1.3, "Do not say how things should be or argue that a particular course of civic action is desirable, undesirable, just, or unjust anywhere in the site but in the forums where political advocacy is allowed." Asking a question which trips the other person into violating a rule is discouraged. You should avoid asking for (or expressing) moral judgment outside of the political advocay forums.
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 16:14 Post subject: Re: "The Straight Dope" spreads myths on the ODR
anonymouse wrote:
But remember Georgia is only one state.
If you are interested, I can provide similar studies for South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and a few other states. I guess it is time to ask the $64 question implied by rules 3.6.3 and 3.7. What evidence would convince you? Specifically, what would convince you that: (1) Most interracial procreation was the result of formal marriage, (2) Most interracial marriages were BM/WF, (3) Non-marital WM slaveowner / BF slave procreation, especially in the Lower South, often (if not usually) resulted in the father manumitting and providing financially for his mixed children?
Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 1763 } Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Posted: Tue 13 Nov 2007 16:45 Post subject:
fwsweet wrote:
(3) Non-marital WM slaveowner / BF slave procreation, especially in the Lower South, often (if not usually) resulted in the father manumitting and providing financially for his mixed children?
I can attest to this personally. My grandmother who was born in 1909, more than 40 years after slavery though, her father was "white". Her mother was the product of 2 mulattos. My grandmother in my cousins words, "could've been in the Ku Klux Klan and they wouldn't have known the difference". What I'm getting at here is that according to mu uncle, my great grandmother worked for the man who fathered her 4 kids. They were never married, but during the day it was if they were. At night she would go home. My grandmother and her 2 younger brothers went to a school named, Calhoun Colored School in Calhoun, Alabama. It was a boarding school. Most of the students were from well to do families. I asked my uncle how a maid could afford to send her kids there. My uncle said that he is certain that her "white" father was the one who fit the bill. Then again, my great grandmothers father was a property owner in Alabama. She owned a house in Montgomery and in Hayneville, Lowndes County, along with property. I have pictures of all these folks in the Pictures Forum.
(3) Non-marital WM slaveowner / BF slave procreation, especially in the Lower South, often (if not usually) resulted in the father manumitting and providing financially for his mixed children?
Do we really know how many slave children of White fathers were manumitted and how many were not?
Also how do we quantify "providing financially" in either case? I see freeing, educating and providing land/money to children as reflective of the father's means at one end of the spectrum and allowing them to be slaves that were slightly less mistreated than the average slave on another. It seems to me that there is plenty of evidence that slave children of White and free mixed fathers were left to fend for themselves, or suffered after a downturn in luck or death of the father who failed to protect them. It's this last scenario that is particularly poignant to me as I am currently reading Cane River, a somewhat fictionalized account of a real cross-color line (CCL) family in Lousiana.
Lastly, given the racial theories of the time, what evidence is there that White men who created non-White families usually treated their children equally no matter whether the mother was a White woman, free woman of any status or a slave? How did the changing laws inhibit their inclination to provide, and what did they do when "the squeeze" was on after the Civil War and the rise of state sponsored anti-Black terrorism after Reconstruction?
The contrast to Haiti post-slavery would be interesting to me in terms of contrasting a society in which CCL marriage was legal after slavery was abolished. My great-great-grandfather actually married my great-great-grandmother in the late 1800s. I'm not sure whether it was a non-event or a break in the chain of keeping non-White women on the side with illegitimate children in our family, but the difference in behavior is striking when I think about it.
Specifically, what would convince you that: (1) Most interracial procreation was the result of formal marriage.
What convinces fsweet that this is true?...especially considering evidence that points in the other direction: mis-matched Y/mtDNA being the opposite of marriage patterns, and the recorded mulatto slave population far outnumbering the free mulatto population.
What convinces fsweet that this is true?...especially considering evidence that points in the other direction: mis-matched Y/mtDNA being the opposite of marriage patterns, and the recorded mulatto slave population far outnumbering the free mulatto population.
The mismatch in the ratio of Y versus mtDNA continent-of-ancestry markers in the U.S. population is skewed about 60-40 towards Euro male/Afro female. This is in the opposite direction from the marriage records. The discrepancy shows that illegitimate relationships were strongly skewed towards Euro-male/Afro-female. But it does not show that there were more illegitimate pairings than marriages.
To see this, imagine that the observed marriage records (60-40 in favor of Afro male/Euro female) represents just ten marriages: six with Afro husbands and four with Afro wives. The question is, how many illegitimate pairings, entirely Euro male/Afro female, would it take in order to turn the ratio upside-down for the total? The answer is four. If you add four illegitimate Euro male/Afro female parings, it gives a total of six Afro male/Euro female parings (the six original legitimate marriages) and now eight Euro male/Afro female pairings (the four legitimate marriages plus the four illegitimate parings) for a total of fourteen. This neatly reverses the skewed ratio to what is actually observed. In short, it took only four illegitimate Euro male/Afro female pairings out of the fourteen pairings in all (29 percent) to invert the ratios to match what we observe in both the marriage records and in the DNA continent-of-ancestry mismatch.
Of course, you might say that the illegitimate relationships might not have been entirely Euro male/Afro female. They might have been, say, 80-20 in favor of Euro male/Afro female. In such case, the number of illegitimate pairings would have to have been just as numerous as marriages in order to produce the observed result. But this hypothesis would double the gene-flow admixture of African markers actually observed in the White population, thus again being shot down by the evidence.
All I am saying is that I agree that the mismatch in the ratio of Y versus mtDNA continent-of-ancestry markers in the U.S. population is skewed about 60-40 towards Euro male/Afro female. And I agree that this is in the opposite direction from the marriage records. And I agree that this shows that illegitimate relationships were strongly skewed towards Euro-Male/Afro-Female. But it does not show that there were more illegitimate relationships than marriages. In fact, any estimate that reasonably fits the Afro autosomal markers observed in White Americans suggests that illegitimate relationships contributed only a small fraction to today’s Afro-Euro admixture.
If anyone is interested, Phil345 has made this argument several times before and has been answered several times before. The most thorough discussion of this topic was in http://onedroprule.org/viewtopic.php?t=3420,
Do we really know how many slave children of White fathers were manumitted and how many were not?
No. The only studies I have seen (cited above) tackle it from the other direction: most well-off or middle-class African-American families in the South owed their status to an ancestor who was sired by a slaveowner having been manumitted and given a money (or land) startup stake. But what fraction of slaveowner fathers did this is a different question entirely. What we do know suggests that it was common. But we do not know if it was 10 percent, 90 percent, or anythere in between (and, of course "staking an offspring" is also, as you say, a continuum).
sagascend wrote:
Lastly, given the racial theories of the time, what evidence is there that White men who created non-White families usually treated their children equally no matter whether the mother was a White woman, free woman of any status or a slave? How did the changing laws inhibit their inclination to provide, and what did they do when "the squeeze" was on after the Civil War and the rise of state sponsored anti-Black terrorism after Reconstruction?
With a few exceptions I have found in court cases, the evidence suggests that fathers in general have seldom treated illegitimate children the same as heirs. The crux of the matter, I think, is that intermarriage was frowned on in the U.S., even in the brief periods here and there when it was legal, and so most children of Euro male slaveowners (or former slaveowners) and Afro female slaves (or former slaves) were probably illegitimate.
sagascend wrote:
The contrast to Haiti post-slavery would be interesting to me in terms of contrasting a society in which CCL marriage was legal after slavery was abolished. My great-great-grandfather actually married my great-great-grandmother in the late 1800s. I'm not sure whether it was a non-event or a break in the chain of keeping non-White women on the side with illegitimate children in our family, but the difference in behavior is striking when I think about it.
Precisely. You see the same thing in post-slavery Jamaica or post-Slavery Cuba. Indeed, you see it in post-slavery everywhere except the U.S.
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