Creating Race in Colonial America

[Electronic God-Man]

Everyone has heard that "race is a social construct" as well as how racism is defined by most modern sociologists:

Sociologists Noël A. Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern define racism as “...a highly organized system of 'race'-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/'race' supremacy.

That is to say that racism is a system of power in a society where one group of people discriminates against another group of people, who are believed to be different.

Most often I have heard "Race Studies professors" say that they can literally tell me the date and place where race was created. The answer is Virginia in the late 1670's following Bacon's Rebellion (if anyone can find the specific date of the law, please do.). Following Bacon's Rebellion the large plantation owners and wealthy families of Colonial Virginia feared another uprising of the poorer white Virginians. They passed a law(s) shortly thereafter giving poor white's the right to more lands, giving more land to whites who had finished their time in indentured servitude, and most importantly for this theory, banned free Blacks from owning guns.

Supposedly this was the first time ever where we can say that free blacks and whites were given different rights by law. (EDIT: Actually, this would have to also mean it was the first time any two different groups of people whatsoever were given different rights by law in order to call it the first appearance of racism.)

I've recently come across another more complicated theory that seeks to demonstrate how much of the definition of race occurred in legislation about sex and marriage that defined blacks and whites differently and sought to control their interactions. The basic idea is that Virginians needed to maintain their labor force. Poor white indentured servitude was obviously not working out as was witnessed in Bacon's Rebellion. It is important to know that laws had previously been passed stating that slavery (or non-slavery) was inherited through a child's mother.

All of the following quotations are taken from Colonial American History by Kirsten Fischer and Eric Hinderaker.

Previous legislation making slavery heritable through the mother had made it possible for white women to disconnect slavery from race by bearing children of African descent.

That is, if a Black man were to procreate with a White woman the child would legally be free even though he was a mulatto.

But with the colonial legislature's exclusion of slave's from white definitions of marriage and legitimacy came new imperatives to maintain racial distinctions beyond the immediate needs of the labor system. What began with legal initiatives to defend the boundaries of slavery expanded to incorporate protections for legal concepts of race. Some of these legal constructs of racial identity filtered into popular attitudes toward racial difference and illicit sexual behavior...The concern with the "foul crime" of white fornication had been replaced with attempts to punish bastardy, especially the "spurious issue" of interracial unions.

As Virginia lawmakers began to delineate one sexual standard for its white population and another for its enslaved population, they seemed unsure of how to handle the anomalies of interracial and free black unions.

Before 1662, incidents of interracial fornication were treated criminally in much the same way as all fornication cases, although they may have been regarded as more sinful. The General Court's denunciation of Hugh Davis's fornication in 1630, for example, contained stronger language than that normally used to describe the sexual offense of two English people. Davis was accused of "abusing himself to the dishonor of God and shame of Christianity by defiling his body in lying with a negro." The main difference between the treatment of Davis's case and that of other fornication cases was the description of his sin as defiling, a term justices would not have used to describe the sexual interaction of two English people. Despite this difference, however, interracial activity received roughly the same legal treatment as illicit unions between white people.

The colonial government first treated interracial sexual intimacy, race relations, and regulation of the labor force as related concerns in 1662. The Assembly passed two measures in that year that addressed the issues of slave children's status and interracial sexual activity and redefined slave motherhood and paternity. The first declared that the children of slave women should follow the condition of their mother. This act redefined slave motherhood and vitiated the legal foundation of slave paternity, thereby making distinctions between legitimacy and illegitimacy legally irrelevant for enslaved people.

The second clause of the 1662 statute emphasized distinctions of race rather than of status. Attempting to distinguish between "christians" and "negroes," the law differentiated between the illicit sexual acts of two white people and those of an interracial couple: "And that if any christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act."

The doubled fines mandated by the second clause of the 1662 law for cases of "christian" - "negro" fornication had three main legal consequences. First, and most obviously, the law intensified the criminality of transgressing racial boundaries in its attempt to discourage potential white offenders from seeking sexual unions with women and men of African descent. Second, the law specifically targeted the white partner of an interracial couple and did not mention any new punishments for the black partner, perhaps under the assumption that the African people in question would be enslaved and incapable of paying fines or serving extra time. Third, and most significantly, not all white people were equally affected by this law. Irrelevant slave paternity and growing emphasis on bastardy, in which the birth of a child constituted "proof" of sexual misconduct, meant that white women bearing mixed-race children were the most easily prosecuted under this legislation.

In 1691, legislators explicitly addressed the problem presented by these relationships by refashioning older traditions for regulating servant sexuality to fit newer concerns with race. Expressing their anxieties about the sexual activities of white women in a preamble to the new statute, lawmakers noted the danger presented by the "abominable mixture and spurious issue which hereafter may encrease in this dominion, as well by negroes, mulattoes, and Indians intermarrying with English, or other white women." Provoked by the threat of a growing population of racially indeterminate people, Virginia's planters took radical steps to enforce racial difference: "Whatsoever English or other white man or woman being free shall intermarry with a negroe, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever."

Perhaps most significantly, the legal attempt to separate Anglo-Virginians sexually from Indians and people of African descent marked the first use of the term "white" in the Virginia statutes. "Englishmen" and "Christians" had become white in the context of a law that redefined the nature of illicit sexuality.

By the last decade of the seventeenth century, legal definitions of racial difference and the sexual regulation of white women had become intertwined bases of patriarchal power. Laws banning interracial unions defined white participation as the transgression, imparting to black sexuality the power to taint. Perceived by the courts as the population most likely to blur racial boundaries and incur expenses for masters, white servant women bore the brunt of many of the new regulations.

All comments welcome.

I'll likely post more here mostly about how I personally fail to see how these things "constructed race" for the first time in history even though they do show how the slave system in the British colonies became focused on those of African descent, which would follow the definition of racism as given to us by "professional academics".

[Psychonaut]

While I do view the idea of race as a construct of sorts, that doesn't at all mean that it cannot be a valuable construct. As a strictly logically consistent, scientific theory, our current view of race is not tenable. That's not to say that we cannot discern a sub-Saharan African from a Scandinavian through a myriad of scientific means. What this says is that hard and fast lines between the White, Black and Yellow races are not hard and fast. If anything (like so many other theories), logical consistency can be slightly improved if we view race as a fluid continuum rather than a set of rigidly divided rooms. If we imagine a color spectrum which is pure White on one end and pure Black at the other it is quite easy to see that most people will cluster at one end or another (particularly in artificially mixed societies like the US), but in historically intermediate regions like North Africa, colonial concepts of race cease to be a useful fiction since these are a people that can neither be honestly called White or Black. There are classificatory schemes that are more detailed and delineated to encompass more than just the colonial experience, but they all fail if you attempt to view them as rigid compartments. If we're to honestly utilize race as a tool, I think that it will aid us to acknowledge it's nature as a fiction (as are all taxonomic schemes). Ideational constructs can be of great value so long as we do not commit the heresy of mistaking the map for the territory.

[Electronic God-Man]

What this says is that hard and fast lines between the White, Black and Yellow races are not hard and fast. If anything (like so many other theories), logical consistency can be slightly improved if we view race as a fluid continuum rather than a set of rigidly divided rooms.

Yes, of course. What I have found is that these leftist (I don't even know what I would call them) academics are really just attacking the most base thoughtless ideas of race. In fact, I don't believe many people ever thought that you could draw a line on a map and say here is Whitedom and here is Blackdom and they have never crossed their respective boundaries.

A lot of the arguments they use are aimed at stopping these views, which frankly most people don't even abide by, not even people on such horrible sites as this one . The problem is that many times they then jump from this conclusion, that there is no definite White, Yellow, Black, or Red race, and make all sorts of unsupported claims.

A classic example of this sort of leap of logic they employ is the Ben Franklin "Germans are not White" quote. If I may re-post an old post of mine from Skadi:

It only becomes leftist propaganda when you attach their meaning to it. No doubt the leftists do use this quote to "deconstruct" racism. Their line of thinking would be:

1. Germans are widely considered "white" today
2. This was not always the case, as is seen with our cherry-picked B. Franklin quote.
3. "White" must not be a fixed biological term if these Germans were at one point "non-white" and later were considered "White".
Conclusion: Race doesn't exist and neither do any differences exist between population groups other than meaningless external phenotype.

The only thing wrong here is the conclusion...obviously the most important part. It does not follow from the preceding parts.

EDIT: Post 200!

[Psychonaut]

The problem is that many times they then jump from this conclusion, that there is no definite White, Yellow, Black, or Red race, and make all sorts of unsupported claims.

Definitely. However, I see so many "race realists" responding to this criticism in the wrong way by trying to prove the exact opposite, which is not provable.

[Electronic God-Man]

The idea that Colonial Virginia circa 1676 is the place and time where both "race" and "racism" were created for the first time just doesn't hold for me.

I've recently been thinking about the Reconquista of Spain and the subsequent obsession in Iberia with limpieza de sangre (cleanliness of blood). I don't think that this is the beginning of race or racism either, but it certainly appears, to me atleast, that this would be an example that pre-dates British Colonial America.

The following quotes are just some found at Wikipedia that get the idea across.

After the end of the Reconquista and the expulsion or conversion of Sephardim (Jews) and Mudejars (Muslims), the population of Portugal and Spain was all nominally Christian. However, the ruling class and much of the populace distrusted the recently-converted "New Christians," referring to them as conversos or marranos if they were baptized Jews or descended from them, or Moriscos if they were baptized Muslims or descended from them. A commonly-leveled accusation was that the New Christians were false converts, secretly practicing their former religion as Crypto-Jews or Crypto-Muslims. Nevertheless, the concept of cleanliness of blood came to be more focused on ancestry than of personal religion. The first statute of purity of blood appears in Toledo, 1449, where an anti-Converso riot bans Conversos from most official positions. Initially these statutes were condemned by the monarchy and the Church. In 1496, Alexander VI approves a purity statute for the Hieronymite Order.

Notice that it's not just about being anti-Jewish or anti-Muslim as religious beliefs but it is also very much about not sharing blood with Jews or Arabs/Moors.

This stratification meant that the Old Christian commoners could assert a right to honor even if they were not in the nobility. The religious and military orders, guilds and other organizations incorporated in their bylaws clauses demanding proof of cleanliness of blood. Upwardly mobile New Christian families had to either contend with their plight, or bribe and falsify documents attesting generations of good Christian ancestry. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions was more concerned with repressing the New Christians and heresy than chasing witches, which was considered to be more a psychological than a religious issue, or Protestantism, which was promptly suffocated.

The "stratification" described here where "Old Christians" have more rights and are honored in society above those with Jewish/Moorish blood recalls the fact that Whites in Virginia were given special privileges that Blacks were denied. It was this situation which has led sociologists to say that this is where race and racism were created, but why not in Iberia at an earlier date?

Robert Lacey explains the genesis of the blue blood concept:

It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat's blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin—proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy. (Robert Lacey, Aristocrats. Little, Brown and Company, 1983, p. 67)

The following quote came as a surprise to me. I had, of course, heard of mulattoes/mestizos and figured that the Spanish had concepts similar to what used to be called Quadroons and Octoroons as well, but this system of hierarchy is quite extensive. All of this is a direct consequence of the Reconquista and the goal of limpieza de sangre in Iberia. The European discovery of the New World came the very same year as the Reconquista ended, 1492. The laws passed then regarding limpieza de sangre were taken along to the Western Hemisphere.

Limpieza de sangre was a very important concept among Spaniards who settled in the Americas. The Laws of the Indies repeatedly banned descendants of Conversos and those reconciliated with the Inquisition of settling in the Americas (the reiteration suggests that the laws were often ineffectual). The philosophy led to the separation of the various peoples in the colonies and created a very intricate list of nomenclature to describe one's precise race and, by consequence, one's place in society. To illustrate how complex this nomenclature became the following list was in use in New Spain (Mexico) during the eighteenth century:

* Spaniard and Indian = Mestizo (50% European and 50% Native American)

* Mestizo and Spanish woman = Castizo (75% European and 25% Native American)

* Castizo woman and Spaniard = Spaniard (87.5% European and 12.5% Native American)

* Spanish woman and black man = Mulatto (50% European and 50% African)

* Spaniard and Mulatto = Morisco (75% European and 25% African)

* Morisco woman and Spaniard = Albino (87.5% European and 12.5% African)

* Spaniard and Albino woman = Torna atrás (lit. "turn back") (93,75% European and 6,25% African)

* Indian man and Torna atrás woman = Lobo (50% Native American, 46,875% European, and 3,125% African)

* Lobo and Indian woman = Zambaigo (75% Native American, 23,4375% European, and 1,5625% African)

* Zambaigo and Indian woman = Cambujo (87.5% Native American, 11,71875% European, and 0,78125% African)

* Cambujo and mulatto woman = Albarazado (43.75% Native American, 30,859375% European, and 25,390625% African)

* Albarazado and Mulatto woman = Barcino (40.43% European, 21.87% Native American, and 37.7% African)

* Barcino and Mulatto woman = Coyote (45.215% European, 10.935% Native American, and 43.85% African)

* Coyote woman and Indian man = Chamiso (22.6075% European, 55.4675% Native American, and 21.925% African)

* Chamiso woman and Mestizo = Coyote mestizo (36.30375% European, 52.73375% Native American, and 10.9625% African)

* Coyote mestizo and Mulatto woman = Ahí te estás ("there you stay") (43.151875% European, 26.366875 Native American, and 30.48125 African)

This list represents only some of the existing social and legal terms put in place by the colonizing Spaniards to firmly establish how far away one is from pure European blood. Every Spanish colony had its own, equally complex, system of determining one's racial genealogy. They did not block intermixing but placed the result of interracial relations in the caste system.

It seems very odd to me that historians of the colonial Americas would not pinpoint Iberia circa late 15th century as the originator of race and racism then if they were trying to actually do something like that. Again, I don't think this was the beginning of race and racism as concepts either. In my opinion it is probably as old as man. However, you would really think that this case would stand out quite blatantly if you were looking for the origins of race and racism.

I also wonder if the British colonies did not inherit the "one drop rule" from the Hispanic world. The obsession with purity stands out strongly in the Iberian case.

[Aemma]

Good thread Soten. I quite agree with you that racism is more than likely as old as the hills and I would also add that it crosses all racial lines. I think it interesting that such 'learned' people espouse racism's origins to be in Colonial America. It no more had its origins there in my opinion than it did on the moon to be quite frank. This pinning of blame on Colonial America appears to be just one more instance of the mentality of placing blame found in our society. However I digress....

I don't know since I've not studied the field of social anthropology, but I really do wonder how much some of these social scientists have examined racialist attitudes comparatively across a wider spectrum of racial groups. I do fervently believe that all peoples, no matter what culture, ethnicity or race in the end, have exhibited racist tendencies and will continue to do so. It is human nature to acknowledge difference or rather 'Otherness'. It is also human nature to feel more comfortable with the known as opposed to the unknown. And this notion simply flows out of the sense of Self vs Otherness. For academics to say that they can pinpoint an exact date or occurrence of this all-too-human sense of Self vs Other and its resultant sociological manifestations is absolute lunacy in the end imho.

Cheers Soten and All!...Aemma

[Jamt]

Snorri´s Rigsthula is kind of racist.

“10. One came to their home, | crooked her legs,
Stained were her feet, | and sunburned her arms,
Flat was her nose; | her name was Thir.”

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe14.htm

[Allenson]

I don't know since I've not studied the field of social anthropology, but I really do wonder how much some of these social scientists have examined racialist attitudes comparatively across a wider spectrum of racial groups. I do fervently believe that all peoples, no matter what culture, ethnicity or race in the end, have exhibited racist tendencies and will continue to do so.

Good stuff here, Aemma and thoughts very similar to some that I've had myself over the years. It truly seems that those who study racism only concentrate on, or even consider for that matter, the racism of Europeans and North American whites since the colonial period.

I suppose though, that it is the most recent, large-scele example of this human trait, it coincided with more and more history being written and archived and, perhaps most importantly, it overlapped with the modern concept of universal human rights and the abolishment of the practice of slavery in the Western world.

In short, it's the freshest bout of such a thing in the collective world consciousness, I reckon.

[Osweo]

Something I've always been curious about is the legal background to the very first instances of Englishmen taking, buying and using Black African slaves. How was this rationalised at the time? Why weren't the Africans at home in Africa treated as subjects of a foreign country, but as goods? Did anyone really ever bother thinking it through at the time? Were legal provisions made for the introduction of slave labour in our colonies? Were slaves legally property of their owners on English soil, and how?

[Æmeric]

Why weren't the Africans at home in Africa treated as subjects of a foreign country, but as goods?

Africans became slaves in Africa. They were exported, by African kings, to the New World - and in East Africa to the Arab countries - as slaves. Lets make it clear, the Africans were enslaved by other Africans. The European traders just didn't sneak up on unsuspecting Africans & kidnap them into slavery.

As for how the institution of slavery evolved in the New World, I'm not sure. The first Africans imported were more-or-less indentured servants. At some point in the 17th century the legalization of permanent & hereditary (in the female line) slavery evolved. It may be for the fact that the Africans did come here as goods (property) from Africa.

Many slaves in 17th America were actually Amerindians. Apparently the Cherokees participated in slaving other Indians & selling them to merchants in Charleston where many were shipped out to other colonies on the mainland or to the Caribbean.