Black & White: The Idea of Racial Purity
In recent weeks, Americans have been celebrating the election of their first African-American president. But Barack Obama is also the country’s first mixed-race president… that we know about. In this episode, we explore the gray areas of America’s past, and ask why in this country, a single drop of African blood makes you “black.” 2008 National Book Award-winner Annette Gordon-Reed discusses Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings. And historian Daryl Scott brings us closer to the present, arguing that despite the progress we’ve made, pre-20th-century racial thinking persists today.
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Related Links
Read up on the origins and history of the idea of race.
Preview the new book on the Hemings family by Annette Gordon Reed.
Watch Barack Obama’s March ‘08 speech about race.
Listen to the story of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that ended laws against intermarriage.
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The Great Man’s Dirty Linen | Encyclopedia Virginia: The Blog :
[...] Miscegenation is all the rage! It’s been the focus of a couple of entries on this blog and will, in the coming week, be a concern of the weekly history radio show BackStory. (If you’re interested in the topic, be sure to check out the episode description and then email the show at backstory[at]virginia[dot]edu. They’ll invite you on as a caller.) [...]
Reply -- June 24, 2008 @ 7:46 am -
Black & White: The Idea of Racial Purity « Ambiguous Ethnicity :
[...] 29, 2008 · No Comments Black & White: The Idea of RacialPurity [...]
Reply -- July 29, 2008 @ 11:08 am
My family BackStory begins with the Native Americans on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. I was excited to find so much information on my family in the courthouses, libraries and archives of Virginia. Through my research and documentation of my family history, I was able to write a book Notes And Documents of Free Persons of Color. It is a chronicle of my maternal lines in Virginia and Pennsylvania. I was born and raised in Eastern Pennsylvania, a place where my Virginia ancestors settled, when the fled persecution. I am ethnically African American, meaning a mixture of African and other races. My mother talked more about her family history, then anyone in my family. Most people thought that my mother (who was a devote Christian), was making up stories. I loved hearing her tell stories of the ancestors, because she left no stone unturned. Whether they were white, black, or native, my mom would pass their information on. One time she said that our family was connected to the Washington’s. When I asked her how, she could not tell me, but I still believed her. Later, I found our Washington connection through my ancestor Mary Bowden (born 1729 - died aft. 1810).
In 1972 while living in California my mother and I made a pact to document our family history. I had previously told her that people would not believe anything she said, unless it was documented. We started writing letters, and then my mother showed me one that started me searching in earnest. It was a letter from the Baptist Historical Society, and it pointed our search to Virginia. This was my mothers’ maternal grandmother, Louisa Maria Pinn-Ruth, birthplace, and the birthplace of her parents. The documents I started collecting on my ancestors, listed them as Mulatto. This was also a common listing for my mothers father, and his ancestors in Pennsylvania. Yet, my mother said that her family were Indian, and maybe Dutch (in Pennsylvania).
I began searching in Virginia, and ran into the categories of racial identity from the 1600’s. I traced my ancestry to the Wicomico Indians in Lancaster and Northumberland County. There they intermarried with Free Blacks, and were cautioned that they would be categorized as Negro. Around 1748, my direct ancestor, Charles Lewis was born in King George County Virginia. His father was a white man, John Lewis, and his mother an unnamed mulatto woman. Charles and his brother Ambrose were described as Mulatto Bastards in 1772, when they were placed in Indentured Servitude. Through DNA testing, I have traced my Lewis ancestry to Wales, and beyond. In 2003, I took a Maternal line DNA test through Family Tree DNA, my maternal lines were listed as 87% European, 8% Native, and 5% African. The reason the percentages were provided is that I believed my maternal lines were Native. Now I know why my uncle Charles Martin (and my grandmother) had blue eyes.
The same people who were pushing for racial purity were intermixing with slaves and Natives. Yet, they were able to make this something that those dark or other people wanted. The concept of race was solidified in the Colonial South. That was when it became an economic advantage to be of European origin. God was then incorporated into the equation, and some folks still buy into the theory that “blacks” are cursed. If there is a pure race it would be the Africans, who are the original humans. All other races are mutations of the original African man and woman. While looking at those colonial records, I saw the pattern set forth, and how it crystallized into laws and institutions. There are people who made fortunes off of these views, and are vested in the theory of racial purity. If there is a pure race, it is the Africans , since the rest of us are mutations of these original people.
Americans are changing their views on race and what it means or does not mean. It seems to me that the people who are more vested in the views these days are those who see some return in being European. Many of these folks are upwardly mobile minorities, who espouse views that oppose even their own histories. So it would appear that we are, as a society, coming full circle on the issue of race.
ReplyI have a question for your historians. I own a red, white and blue quilt that has hearts on it and the following words: ‘pure blood applied, loyalty to God’. It was found in the Cincinnati/Kentucky region.
ReplyIt was definitely made by a group of people (differing levels of workmanship) but I don’t know what group made it. Was it a group such as the KKK proclaiming racial purity (’pure’ is on white fabric) OR a religious group referring to the pure blood of Christ?
When I first took a job in the federal government in 1994 and was asked to fill-out the Office of Personnel Management form, there was no category for someone like me who of two races or ethnicities. I said I wouldn’t fill it out for that reason which caused the HR assistant to consult with her supervisor. She returned saying if I didn’t fill it out they would, to which I replied it will be either 50% or 100% wrong, depending on which category they choose to mark. I had a similar experience at the Smithsonian in 1998 which given all the histories and heritage programs they offer seemed incongruous, but then it is part of the federal government too.
In 2000 I was grateful that the 2000 census included the category other. I thought here’s progress we’ll see in other sectors. Alas not. Why has this not crossed-over? Is it a states’ rights issue?
Now I work in a state institution and continue to be asked to complete such applicant or employee forms that have no flexibility for someone like me not wanting to use the standard categories when there is no Other etc. When I didn’t fill it out my boss was asked to respond on my behalf. Fortunately he had the good sense to realize that was not right and I would be unhappy if he did so.
Why does all this matter to me? One, it seems so arbitrary even if an organization is reporting to meet certain requirements. Second, many employees have no sensitivity when someone like me will not answer if there is no option for Other, Biracial, or select all that apply. They seem to think I am trying to make their jobs harder. Third, my son who is many ethnicities and has many heritages (American with English, Malaysian, Chinese, German, etc.), or ¾ white and ¼ Asian, may very well not look like a minority (using the typical distinctions of physical characteristics) but he is still not one to be categorized singularly. Fourth, as a society we will see only more such questions and situations, and will need flexible institutions, processes, and people to respond accordingly. Fifth and most importantly the form is dehumanizing when no such suitable option exists for an individual like me to respond to honestly and personally.
ReplyI want to congratulate you on an excellent topic! One of my favorite classes in college was the History of Race in the US, in the biological anthropology department. Since then I’ve enjoyed challenging people with the idea that a biological definition of race does not exist! Every trait that we might associate with one race or another (eye color, skin color, nose shape, hair type) reacts to unique environmental factors and they are independent of the other traits. I’m not saying that race does not exist–it certainly is real, but as a cultural construct and not a biological gene.
Fast forward six years and my East European-immigrant husband is taking a “minorities in the US” college history class, and he’s lamenting the treatment of African Americans (and other minorities) here in the “land of equality”. It has been a struggle for him to get disillusioned that all they hear about America (we’re free, we’re equal) isn’t necessarily reality.
Kudos for not backing away from a potentially sensitive subject!
ReplyWhat similarities and differences do you see in today’s discussions about DNA and genetic mapping versus the eugenics discussions of fifty to a hundred years ago?
Should the race-based educational discrimination that Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall fought be compared to the types of education offered to most African Americans, Mexican Americans and others in this country today? Why or why not?
ReplyWhat I have often considered fascinating is the fact that when the concept of “race” was proposed by Eurocentrist cultures, the rest of the world appears to have accepted this social construction, originally premised in pseudo-science,as being completely valid…and the group most disenfranchised by it…Americans of West African descent…have often demonstrated the most profoundly reinforced committments to race-based constructions of reality…to their own collective detriment. Beyond the mere acceptance of racial categories themselves is the even more bizarre acceptance of the so-called “one-drop” rule which supposedly determines relative purity of “whiteness” by the intrusion of any “percentage” of ancestry other than “white”. It seems preposterous that people still actually believe these old wives tales with contemporary access to information…but.. and I live in the South…I see evidence everyday that such archane systems of social organization remain “real” to individuals trapped in a self-defeating quagmire of identity construction based in mutually unsatisfactory constructions of white-black-asian-indian-etc. I accept and acknowledge a pride in ethnicity and heritage..and cultural legacy..but finding a contemporary system for heritage identification, acknowledgement and “pride” or more appropriate perhaps..simple interest and intrigue…and avoiding the xenophobic constraints of racial identification may well be one of the more significant areas to address, in conceptual terms, in the 21st century. I don’t feel personally that this is so terribly difficult…but once race has been introduced into the matrices of culture as if it were a real, measurable category of being, people have begun to take it seriously and have reified it so that it is now a phenomenon which only exists in the minds of individuals…but still has powerful tangible social effects. Embracing ethnicity and heritiage without disseminating a concept of race as concrete is a solution..the manner of it possible implementation becomes problematic particularly because of the privileges associated with conceptual “whiteness”…..after having invented the construct of privileged “whiteness”…I sincerely doubt that people who consider themselves “white” will willingly relinquish that….so race and racism will probably be around for quite some time to come…..
ReplyThank you for this interesting program. Is ever important to recall, as one scholar noted in your online resources, that ‘race’ is a concept not derived from science or biology (as if something immutable) but rather, from a politics and economics of labor oppression, and reinforced by cultural, social and even religious/spiritual forces and functions, such as ‘who one might marry, or not marry’ (the control of marriage being one way to attempt to control ‘racial purity’). The Southern Poverty Law Center’s recent report on active hate groups finds the number of them growing in the US, with more than a few in Virginia, and at least two in the Charlottesville vicinity. For most of these hate groups, purity of the ‘race’ requires not only hating those who are not-White, but also hating, threatening and oppressing those who are not-Christian (meaning Protestant, or even certain varieties of Protestantism), and not-heterosexual. It is a shame that many who would today actively and vocally oppose the sort of suffering under the law and in society that the Lovings experienced while being prevented from marrying in Virginia, sit on their hands, and remain silent, at the suffering that lgbt Virginians, and others, face from being denied marriage in Virginia, suffering too the lack of health insurance for partners at UVA and other state institutions, suffering unjust discrimination in employment, housing, and in receiving services, suffering significant adverse consequences or discrimination (e.g. gay men earn 10% to 32% less than otherwise similar heterosexual men; gay couples earn about a third less than men in heterosexual marriages; etc), suffer threats and violence directed against them, and suffer the silence of otherwise ‘good society’ that refrains from speaking up. Lgbt people have recently been scapegoated as contributing to US decline, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Hurricane Katrina. Does history suggest that we will see even greater levels of discrimination and violence against lgbt people? What does history tell us about the relationships of hate and violence against various oppressed groups?
ReplyDon’t miss the great article on Dr. Gordon-Reed’s new book in the New York Times Book Review this week!
Reply“we americans have spent a lot more time protecting racial boundaries than challenging them.”
by americans do you mean white americans?
this is a line from your show, the first few minutes. i haven’t even finished listening but i’m already a little annoyed. i believe that you should actually do a show on how white people don’t talk about these things because so-called black people in this country always have because we were forced to. we were forced to have folk ranging from alabaster to blue black be regarded as black. white people are the ones who have maintained these boundaries and in fact put them into law. do you remember the one drop rule or jim crow laws?
white people why not examine who you really are? black people have always accepted that we are a mixed people (be it because of self-hate or a statement of fact). white people have not.
the past 30 years or so represent the first time that whites have accepted nonwhites as family. otherwise, these “mixed” people were throwaways. this is a history podcast. do some historical checking and keep it real.
ReplySpeaking of the one-drop rule being “maintained” by white people [ml]–
OK explain to me why the African-American community by and large has embraced Barack Obama, whose father is African (not African-American) and whose mother (who raised him) is white?
Remind me, did thousands of African Americans weep when Colin Powell was named first black Secretary of State? Or Condoleeza Rice the first black female Sec of State?
I realize that Obama worked a lot to help the African American community after college. If he chose to self-identify as “white” based on his mother and his childhood, would he be accepted by any community?
I suggest that “racial identity” should be considered more like “cultural heritage”, which leaves room for multiple groups within one “skin color”. Not all Americans with dark skin are necessarily African-Americans (ex. Jamaican immigrants), and not all African-Americans are the same, likewise not all Americans with light skin should be associated with racial atrocities in this country! People who live in different regions of our country act differently, and I think it’s OK to believe that Joe in Lousiana and Jack in Seattle are not going to talk the same, eat the same, do the same hobbies, etc. I don’t see a need for pretending that “white America” or “black America” even exist as a national entity–because that in a way continues racism!
My family has been in this country for only 100 years, and I was raised, based on our heritage and our religion, to consider myself outside the majority. Undeservedly I have probably benefited somewhere because of my fair complexion, but the way I THINK and the way I ACT I hope set me apart. I just want to say I think it’s unfair for folks to assume that all white people are the same, just as it’s wrong to think all “black” people are the same. Thank you.
ReplyThe African American Community is by and large inclusive. Anyone who wants to get along with us, and join us is welcome. Barack Obama considers himself African American because of the way, he as a person of color was treated. He is also, by marriage now a part of the African American Community, as are his children. When people are racist, they usually shoot first and ask questions later. I remember going to school with a boy, who appeared to be African American, but he and his family were from Italy. He did not identify himself as An African American, but the white community treated him the same way they treated us. It is not about racial identity, it is about racism, which I believe is a sickness.
My Native lines are thousands of years old, and begin in Pennsylvania and Virginia. My European lines go to the beginning of the British Empire (259 AD), and my African lines are thousands of years old. I am proud of my heritage, and celebrate all three. African Americans are an ethnic group, and not a race, as many of us are mixed with other races. African Americans did not start classifying people by race, that was the role of government. The racial and color classifications were started during slavery, when Africans were being imported.
The Colonial Government set up a system based on the forced labor of Africans. The land that was stolen from the Indians cost nothing, so they had free land and labor, which equaled pure profit. Even the Bible was used to teach that African Slavery was ordained by God. This was the start of Capitalism, and is actually the definition of Capitalism. Now the cheap labor comes from Mexico, Indian, and Asia. Racism was built into the system, and although things are changing there are still people with those attitudes.
I believe that Americans are changing, and understand that there is a lot missing from history. Most white people want to compete fairly, and not be given an unfair advantage. There are some whites and blacks who feel entitled, because of past history. As a historian, it has pained me to see how much land, labor, and freedom was stolen from my Native and African Ancestors. The Native Community, opened their hearts and lands to Europeans, and have been subjected to massacres, disease, and removal to reservations. What kind of a visitor does that? My belief is that someday America will live up to the creed, “Of The People By The People, And For the People.” This means all of the people, not some of the people, some of the time.
ReplyRe: the Loving Decision in public consciousness.
I’m surprised no one mentioned the Showtime movie from 1996 about the Loving case.
Perhaps that’s because it wasn’t very accurate in the details, unfortunately.
But I thought it was a great movie!
Here’s the International Movie Database link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117098/
Reply