[Talking about Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, 2 vols. (London: Verso, 1994)] ... This book really gave me a new look at things. ...
Have you read it?
Happy New Year Mr. Sweet.
I have read this book a few years ago and was astounded. It fed right into into my Blue blood is Black blood discoveries/research. Would you like to point out something I might have missed?
Would you like to point out something I might have missed?
Not at all. I also use the book heavily in my research. It is very useful.
I was curious because its two volumes make it quite long, and the author is more than a little bit Marxist. But Allen is one of the few (along with Bennett, Smedley, and Gossett) who meticulously examine the motives of, and the arguments made by, the political leaders who invented the U.S. endogamous barrier in 1691 and then persuaded the colonial authorities to enforce it.
When you think about it, the very idea of making a holy sacrament (matrimony) a serious felony is bizarre. And yet not only did Gooch, West, and the others come up with the notion (adapted from prior policy in Ireland), but they managed to convince everybody, rich and poor, that it was necessary. Allen tells the story better than most.
Would you like to point out something I might have missed?
Not at all. I also use the book heavily in my research. It is very useful.
But Allen is one of the few (along with Bennett, Smedley, and Gossett) who meticulously examine the motives of, and the arguments made by, the political leaders who invented the U.S. endogamous barrier in 1691 and then persuaded the colonial authorities to enforce it.
Well, I love anybody who is ‘a little bit Marxist.’
With sources I find that one has to return to them often to mine them for things which did not register at first view. So I will read them again.
But do you have an idea why the Colourline came into force in 1691. What is this terrible thing the Blacks did to piss off the Whites so much, that we still feel the aftershocks, today? I mean; the White and Black masters were humming along just fine, enslaving both Whites and Blacks and shtubbing the beautiful wenches as often as they could. It must have something to do with what was going down in Britain at this time. The article of The Colourline by F. Sweet does not come out clearly about where these ‘Black’ masters came from. I would assume they were Africans who were never enslaved, but they were mostly Black Europeans, like that John Hanson guy.
If we can find an answer we can deconstruct racism and get out of this horrid mess.
But do you have an idea why the Colourline came into force in 1691. What is this terrible thing the Blacks did to piss off the Whites so much...?
Nobody was pissed off. The criminalization of marriage between colonists of Afro and of Euro descent was not a punishment against Blacks. Indeed, the very concept of "White" versus "Black" that seems obvious to modern-day Americans was a long-term consequence of the policy's enforcement, not its cause. The policy was intended only to split the colony (primarily, the thousands of forced laborers) into two groups and keep them separated.
As to the "why" of it, the best source is the extensive correspondence among the parties involved in the decision. There were two main factions. The governor and the local gentry argued that an intermarriage barrier was essential to save the colony from another forced-laborer insurrection (Bacon's Rebellion came within a whisker of succeeding due to solidarity among all forced laborers). The colony's attorney-general and the crown argued that criminalizing a sacrament would cause future problems. You can read the details in Allen 2:241-42. That long-ago debate is also described in Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 2nd ed. (Boulder, 1999), 145, and also in Lerone Bennett Jr., The Shaping of Black America (Chicago, 1975), 39-57.
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