Posted: Thu 11 Aug 2005 18:24 Post subject: Opposition to official "interracial" marriage by Mulattoes
Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., of course, looked "Aryan" enough to be on a Nazi recruiting poster. And yes, many Negro men wanted to marry white women - IF the woman was labeled "Negro." "Black" support for the "one drop rule" has a strong element of sexual desire in it. "Mulatto Elite" support for it has a tacit fear of being truly blackened and losing white racial and cultural characteristics.
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Tempest in Black and White: The 1924 Premiere of Eugene O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings
Glenda Frank
Fashion Institute of Technology
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the next issue, the editors turned up the heat and introduced a new interest group. The banner went "RACE STRIFE SEEN IF 'GOD'S CHILLUN' IS STAGED," and below it, "Negro Clergy Bitter at Play. 'Intensely Harmful' to His Race, Asserts the Rev. A. Clayton Powell." The headline was accurate. Reverend Powell, the father of the late U.S. Congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, and grandfather of the current New York City Councilman, was adamant in his opposition.
While some of the outcry seemed motivated by political ambition and some by the desire to sell newspapers, genuine apprehension was aroused within the black community. The play is harmful, Reverend Powell asserted, "because it intimates that we are desirous of marrying white women" ("Race Strife Seen" 13). In a confusion that indicated rumor rather than the script was the source of his information, he continued: "The kissing of a white woman by a big, strapping negro is bound to cause bad feelings. . . . For myself and my congregation, the largest colored Baptist Church in the city, I want to go on record as being opposed to Mr. O'Neill's play" (13). Reverend J. W. Brown, the pastor of Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, echoed Powell's sentiments: "This play . . . portrays the negro in the wrong light. No thinking colored man desires to marry outside of his own race. When so much good is now being done in the South by white women, improving school and living conditions for the colored people, nothing should be allowed to interfere or interrupt our advancement" (13). Brown's opinions were supported by the Chicago Defender, an influential black newspaper ("Problem to Administration").
The reaction was not surprising. African American authors had long felt the sting of unofficial, community-imposed restrictions. "To write [End Page 82] for a black audience in the twenties," observes Gerald Goodman in his study of the black theater movement, "meant that the black author could not avoid serving as a spokesman and champion for the entire race. This black audience, consisting for the most part of middle-class Negroes deeply concerned with acceptance and respectability, demanded that . . . [they] show the positive qualities of the race" (20).
Katie Campbell Lawrence, in her 1975 doctoral dissertation, draws a sharp distinction between black and bourgeois art during the Harlem Renaissance. The conflict split the literary community into two warring factions. W. E. B. Du Bois, a trained sociologist and the editor of The Crisis, called for Beauty, Truth, and "uplift" while Langston Hughes and other young writers demanded full artistic freedom. Respectability became a central issue: middle-class aspirations and working-class struggles vied with "the seamy underside of Black community life . . . where real, true-to-life bedbugs bite" for hegemony (Lawrence 7; Barksdale 338). In the March 1928 issue of Opportunity, a periodical affiliated with the Urban League, Countee Cullen demonstrated concern about the white audience: "Decency demands that some things be kept secret; diplomacy demands it; the world loses respect for violators of this code" (Watson 93; Cullen). The absent noun safety is written between the lines in capital letters.
Posted: Fri 12 Aug 2005 13:29 Post subject: Opposition to official "interracial" marriage by Mulattoes
There's another reason why mulattoes oppose official interracial marriage-it's assumed that white people who intermarry with blacks, especially if the person is a female, are low class. Carter Woodson thought interracial marriage attracted the "weaker" members of both groups.
In Lawrence Graham's book, Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class, he writes about many in the black elite (who can often be very light or white themselves) looking at the childen of such marriages with a little contempt. It was assumed on their part that the white women these men married were from the lower rungs of the white social and economic ladder, and therefore, their children were somehow tainted as a result. This is one of the reasons Graham himself is ambivalent about official interracial marriage, particularly black male/white (non-white) female official interracal marriage.
This attitude is not limited to the black elite. Many middle class and working class black folks feel the same way.
Posted: Sun 14 Aug 2005 05:43 Post subject: Opposition to official "interracial" marriage by Mulattoes
It's a sad example of an inferiority complex "passing" as pride. They are saying that they are not good enough for whites to marry. They join white racists in proclaiming that no self-respecting white would marry a "black" or someone they claim as "black."
Posted: Mon 15 Aug 2005 13:40 Post subject: Re: Opposition to official "interracial" marriage by Mulattoes
Powell wrote:
It's a sad example of an inferiority complex "passing" as pride. They are saying that they are not good enough for whites to marry. They join white racists in proclaiming that no self-respecting white would marry a "black" or someone they claim as "black."
I don't think that is necessarily the case. Firstly, most obviously mulatto-looking, black-identified people are not white looking, so the issue of passing pride doesn't really come into play here.
Secondly, their assumption that all or most whites (and possibly non-whites)-especially white women-who marry blacks are of a lower socioeconomic class relative to the black person they are marrying has nothing to do with negative views of themselves. They don't see themselves as not being good enough to marry whites (or other non-blacks); they see the whites-especially white women-who marry blacks as not being good enough for them.
Thirdly, this false assumption is also shared by many whites (and non-blacks) with respect to members of their community who marry blacks. White women who get involved with black men are often assumed to be trashy, loose, low class or emotionally unstable by many whites. A good friend of mine, who is involved in a serious relationship with a black man, was told by her father that if she ever broke up with him, no white man would ever want her. She would be seen as damaged goods so to speak. Sadly, he seemed to think his daughter was damaged goods too.
Black woman/white male relationships are often viewed with a different set of assumptions, which often leads both blacks and whites to look at these relationships more favorably.
Author Lawrence Tezner published a book, which unfortunately is no longer in print, analyzing black and white attitudes about interracial relationships. He found that whites and blacks looked more favorably on black female/white male relationships (for whites especially if the black woman was considered attractive).
In contrast, both whites and blacks were less accepting of black male/white female relationships. Whites were especially intolerant of relationships if they found the white woman attractive, but less intolerant if the found the white woman unattractive.
Posted: Mon 15 Aug 2005 14:19 Post subject: Re: Opposition to official "interracial" marriage by Mulattoes
G-Man wrote:
White women who get involved with black men are often assumed to be trashy, loose, low class or emotionally unstable by many whites.
Several years ago, when I was publishing a lot of intermariage data drawn from the U.S. decennial census, an Interracial Voice reader asked if interracial marriages were more likely to involve spousal class differences than intraracial marriages and, if so, whether the wives in interracial marriages tended to be of lower class than the husbands. I looked into it and posted the data. I could retrieve and post it here, if anyone is interested.
The short answer is that there is no such correlation. Socioeconomic class is very hard to measure with census data, since it is unrelated to differences in earnings. (Even socialite wives might earn little or no personal salary.) So I used educational level, which is easy to measure, as a surrogate for class.
The upshot was that the spouses in all U.S. marriages tend to have very similar educational levels. High-school dropouts marry high-school dropouts, Ph.D.'s marry Ph.D.'s, bachelors' degrees marry bachelors' degrees, and so on, all up and down the line.
There is a correlation between spouses' educational level and intermarriage in one sense. Intermarriage is more common among the more educated population, and the higher the educational level, the higher the intermarriage rate. But there were few marriages with a spousal "education gap." And those few were no more prevalent among interracial than among intraracial marriages.
I defer to Powell and G-man on whether the old-wives tale that White women who marry Black men are losers in some sense, is more strongly believed by Blacks than by Whites. I have no data on this. But I can definitely say that, regarding educational level at least, it is an old-wives tale unfounded in objective reality.
Last edited by fwsweet on Tue 16 Aug 2005 13:08; edited 3 times in total
Even though Blacks more often than not vioce their displeasure about White people in general without specifying class differences, they CAN tell the difference between what is considered "White trash" and those considered "rich White folks". Most of the rage about interracial dating comes from the belief that Black women are NOT losing their men to "rich" or physically desirable White women. Instead most of their competition is coming from "White trash" (women they feel SHOULD BE socially "below" them ) and would be, if it were not for their White skin.
Now it could be in REALITY more like Frank suggests and these couples are actually on more similar playing field than both sides care to admit! But it is still the preception of interracial dating!
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Tue 16 Aug 2005 01:03 Post subject: Whitewashing the rich
girlfromthenc wrote:
I have to agree with G-man here!
Even though Blacks more often than not vioce their displeasure about White people in general without specifying class differences, they CAN tell the difference between what is considered "White trash" and those considered "rich White folks". Most of the rage about interracial dating comes from the belief that Black women are NOT losing their men to "rich" or physically desirable White women. Instead most of their competition is coming from "White trash" (women they feel SHOULD BE socially "below" them ) and would be, if it were not for their White skin.
Now it could be in REALITY more like Frank suggests and these couples are actually on more similar playing field than both sides care to admit! But it is still the preception of interracial dating!
Hi,
That's interesting. It is a phenomena of whitewashing !
It sounds familiar to me.
Poor blondie blue-eyed women in Latin America usually can cross very easily social barriers in here because of their looks.
Poor blond men can also be the target of rich widows.
It seems rich people want to buy "whiteness" for whatever reason.
White Americans usually have more opportunities of "good" marriage in Latin America than in the U.S.
With time, Rich people become wither than they would be if not "selective breeding" had intervined.
Blonds are so fascinating for upper classes Latinos that they even go abroad to get their brides.
Poor blondie blue-eyed women in Latin America usually can cross very easily social barriers in here because of their looks.
I disagree. If they are attractive they can sell their beauty - like Anna Nicole Smith etc. If they are fat and /or ugly, I don't believe they can cross social barriers so easily - especially if inarticulate. And even if attractive quite often social barriers are not crossed so easily. It happens in the extremes - like in Hollywood. But I don't believe it happens that often otherwise - assuming you mean trailer trash -
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Poor blond men can also be the target of rich widows.
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Any attractive man or woman can sell their beauty. Yes blondness adds another rung but it is not necessary.
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It seems rich people want to buy "whiteness" for whatever reason.
I can't say i agree with that. They already have enough whiteness all around them.
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White Americans usually have more opportunities of "good" marriage in Latin America than in the U.S.
All Americans - indeed all people from first world countries have more opportunity for a good marriage partner in Latin America than in the U.S.
B
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Last edited by Liana on Wed 17 Aug 2005 22:39; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Wed 17 Aug 2005 02:26 Post subject: Blonds and money
Liana wrote:
I assume you meant "Poor blond blue-eyed women - since "Blondie" is a somewhat disrespectful 'catcall' way of referring to a blond woman unless there's "confianza" -
Anyway, I disagree. If they are attractive they can sell their beauty - like Anna Nicole Smith etc. If they are fat and /or ugly, I don't believe they can cross social barriers so easily - especially if inarticulate.
Hi Liana,
I agree with you!
I just was describing a sort of fascination with the object-women of the rich Latinos. The "plant" women, as we say, because it serves as decoration
In my case I preffer Morenas (brunettes)
However I am far from being rich.
However, I never lost my hope. I play lotto every single week.
Posted: Wed 12 Oct 2005 09:09 Post subject: Re: Opposition to official "interracial" marriage by Mulatto
Powell wrote:
Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., of course, looked "Aryan" enough to be on a Nazi recruiting poster. And yes, many Negro men wanted to marry white women - IF the woman was labeled "Negro." "Black" support for the "one drop rule" has a strong element of sexual desire in it. "Mulatto Elite" support for it has a tacit fear of being truly blackened and losing white racial and cultural characteristics.
How are you coming upon this conclusion from the article posted??? I dont see where your getting this from..
....in addition i wasnt aware ACP Sr. looked "Aryan"...in the photos i've seen he has ambiguous looks
Well I saw the movie! It was cast by Adam Clayton Powell's son. So they chose the actor to portray their father in the movie!
I also watched the commentary about the movie "Keep the Faith". The Powell sons said that they knew that they had to do a movie because their father's name was becoming lost through time.
2 things that struck me as odd in the movie: was how they totally failed to mention that Adam Powell married a Puerto Rican woman (Powell the 4ths' own mother) who later was a key witness in his Congressional trial. They focus on his first marriage to Vanessa Williams' character the whole time. Also interesting was the part in the movie where he says that Civil Rights leaders at the time didn't invite him to the March on Washington because he would have 'shown out' Martin Luther King Jr. himself.
Well I saw the movie! It was cast by Adam Clayton Powell's son. So they chose the actor to portray their father in the movie!
I also watched the commentary about the movie "Keep the Faith". The Powell sons said that they knew that they had to do a movie because their father's name was becoming lost through time.
2 things that struck me as odd in the movie: was how they totally failed to mention that Adam Powell married a Puerto Rican woman (Powell the 4ths' own mother) who later was a key witness in his Congressional trial. They focus on his first marriage to Vanessa Williams' character the whole time. Also interesting was the part in the movie where he says that Civil Rights leaders at the time didn't invite him to the March on Washington because he would have 'shown out' Martin Luther King Jr. himself.
did they ever explain who ACP Sr.'s real father was.....and who ACP jrs mother was??
'
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