Plecker in 1935 at the Bureau of Vital Statistics (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
Walter Plecker (1861-1947), a White American eugenicist, was the mastermind of the state of Virginia’s Act to Preserve Racial Integrity (1924). The law was an instrument of Jim Crow and did considerable damage to Native American tribes. It led to Loving v Virginia (1967), which made mixed-race marriages legal across the US.
Plecker was born the son of a slave owner ten days before the start of the Civil War. He became a country doctor, then a county public health officer and then, from 1912 to 1946, the head of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics.
He was a pioneer in public health. He cut infant mortality among Blacks nearly in half and reduced blindness among Blacks and Natives.
As a eugenicist he believed in “race improvement”, so his concern for public health extended to keeping the White race “pure”:
“Unless this can be done, we have little to hope for, but may expect in the future decline or complete destruction of our civilization.”
To that end he pushed for the Act to Preserve Racial Integrity:
“the most perfect expression of the white ideal, and the most important eugenical effort that has been made in 4,000 years.”
It was not completely overturned till 1974.
Under the law, his Bureau recorded the race of every person born in Virginia, as either “white” or “coloured”, using the One Drop Rule. When you got married, you had to go through the Bureau, which either knew your race already or required proof of it. This prevented mixed marriages, like the Lovings.
It went beyond marriage: you could not go to a good school or a good hospital unless you were White.
Plecker wrote to one White mother:
“This is to inform you that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white. You will have to do something about this matter and see that this child is not allowed to mix with white children. It cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.
“It is a horrible thing.”
He was a devout Christian:
“Let us turn a deaf ear to those who would interpret Christian brotherhood as racial equality.”
Because many Virginia lawmakers counted Pocahontas as an ancestor, they made an exception to his White ideal: you could be up to 1/16th Native and still count as White.
To close this loophole, Plecker said that all Natives were “mixed-blooded negroes,” that he could prove that with state records going back to 1830.
Because some Natives could pass for White, he made lists of common Native names, like Branham, public.
Families were torn apart: many Natives left Virginia to escape Plecker’s world.
Natives were recorded as “coloured” (Black) under Plecker. In part because they had disappeared from state records as Natives, the US government sees Virginia as having no tribes. So Virginian tribes do not receive the rights and money granted to other tribes.
It will take an act of Congress to undo the damage, something tribes have been pushing for.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
- Native Americans
- Black Americans
- 1920s racism
550
Abagond 
Wth?! This douchebag refers to a half black and half white child as “it”?
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Wow – thanks for all that you share. I feel sick to my stomach and so sad. I have heard about most of this, but with it served up as a biography of one sick individual it is eye opening. Can you imagine relying in this guy to save your baby?
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@ mbdinbarber
Who knows what how many of these kinds of assholes work in the medical field since they don’t screen for this stuff. There may very well be many that will send you to your grave and enjoy while doing it.
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Excellent post a usual, Abagond!!! I just started reading “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward Baptist and he starts the book with maps and charts of exactly the information you provided about the Native American tribes. It’s a little over 400 pages, but with so much going on right now, I’m sure I won’t be done soon! Thanx for keeping us educated and them honest!😉
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“Stupid Confederate. This asshole was not a Christian at all.”
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lom, ever heard that quote regarding, Sunday mornings are the MOST SEGREGATED hours in Amerika?? (Probably not!) I guess that would make most Christians not Christians, but assholes, right mirkwood?
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This is telling of how our mentality molds who we are from cradle to grave. Where we are or where we have been does not have to correlate where we are nor where were going, even in the face of cause and effect. As we move into 2016, so much of our past seems to dictate our future, but let it be in collaboration with liberation, peace, and grace in a time or turmoil, unrest, and uncertainty. Happy and productive 2016!
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I believe Jefe and Linda may have spoken at length on how Natives would be identified as colored during that time. Quite interesting thing to note when doing genealogy.
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The policies of John Powell and Plecker hurt Indians more than any other group. (Well, separate tribes are now working together instead of fighting with each other because of these policies to gain federal recognition.)
But I think Plecker saw himself as an enlightened and learned Christian for his time.
Even when he admitted that he was guessing or bluffing in many of his accusations as to someone being not purely ‘white’ (which was probably true in most cases – who is?) he probably thought that it was the morally white thing to do.
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Abagond,
you are not giving Plecker the credit he is due for being one of the fathers of 20th century Apartheid in the United States
You need to Explicitly state who and what Walter Plecker was:
He was one of the founder and engineer of the modern day “One Drop Rule”
The Racial Integrity Law of 1924 is the Official name of the “One Drop Rule”
They are one and the same.
Plecker was a Eugenicist, whose state Eugenics group was in alliance with the “National Eugenics Group” (ERO), a department of of the Carnegie Institute of Washington.
The ERO was an important part of the eugenics movement in the United States – it supported Eugenic members who started local State Eugenics organizations
(Walter Plecker helped to found Virginia’s Eugenics group, the Anglo-Saxon Club of America in 1922)
The ERO’s Director, Harry Laughlin, created and successfully passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 through US Congress:
“In 1911, Immigration Restriction League President Prescott Hall asked his former Harvard classmate Charles Davenport of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) for assistance to influence Congressional debate on immigration.
Davenport recommended a survey to determine the national origins of “hereditary defectives” in American prisons, mental hospitals and other charitable institutions.
Davenport appointed ERO colleague Harry Laughlin to manage the research program. In 1920, Laughlin appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization.”
The law capped immigration quotas for all nations at low levels (2%) and especially slowed the migration of the foreign born from places such as eastern and southern Europe (Russia, Poland, Italy, and the Balkans). According to Laughlin, the unfit and insane constituted an excessively large proportion of the national population in these regions. The act all but ended immigration from East Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.
https://library.missouri.edu/exhibits/eugenics/immigration.htm
this law stated that “Only White Caucasians” could become US citizens and it designated which Ethnic group/country the US government saw as “White”
This is the reason Indians (from India),west and east Asians, Lebanese, Levants/Arabs, North Africans that lived in the USA
Sued the USA government, seeking to be called “Caucasian/White” and not “Coloured”
this was the reason behind Bhagat Singh Thind’s lawsuit.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/bhagat-singh-thind/
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Pleckers “1924 Racial Integrity Law” led to Sterilization Laws
and these laws were adopted by 15 other States in the USA.
and also please note, the Germans worked with ERO and Harry Laughlin to set up their own Racial Purity laws.
The Nazis, Hitler/Himmler did not come up with or create their Racist laws alone
they just perfected what they learned from the American eugenicists and took it to heights that Plecker could only have wet-dreams about !!
http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/the-black-and-white-world-of-walter-plecker/Content?oid=1381080
“Plecker dined at the New York home of Harry H. Laughlin, the nation’s leading eugenics advocate and an unabashed Nazi sympathizer.
In 1932, Plecker gave a keynote speech at the Third International
Conference on Eugenics in New York. Among those in attendance was
Ernst Rudin of Germany who, 11 months later, would help write Hitler’s
eugenics law.
In 1935, Plecker wrote to Walter Gross, the director of Germany’s Bureau of
Human Betterment and Eugenics. He outlined Virginia’s racial purity laws
and asked to be put on a mailing list for bulletins from Gross’ department.
Plecker complimented the Third Reich for sterilizing 600 children in Algeria who were born to German women and black men. “I hope this work is
complete and not one has been missed,” he wrote. “I sometimes regret that
we have not the authority to put some measures in practice in Virginia.”
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[…] Sourced through Scoop.it from: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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My grandmother used to tell me that when she was growing up in Mississippi that African Americans, Native Americans and Chinese Americans were all listed as “colored” in the records and no distinction was made of their heritage. This was in the 1930s and now I see from this article the idiot behind this strategy.
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“Ignore Fan, ignore Fan, ignore Fan…Hail Mary..”
.
Hey Mirkwood,
Yes. Do ignore what I’m about to say as it’s likely to cause you some upset.
There’s nothing new about that.. anywho –
Did YOU know that Margaret Sanger was a contemporary of, and probably most likely a follower of our dear Mr. Walter Plecker?
You do know who Margaret Sanger is, don’t you?
In case you don’t, she was an ACTIVIST, much like you like to think you’re an activist/ally. She was also an ally for Whiteness, or white-supremacy. Gasp!
Her activism evolved into helping to establish Planned Parenthood Federation of Amerika. She was a female version of that wonderful stalwart of huemanity, Mr. Walter Plecker! But I bet you already knew that, you sly operater, didn’t you? You probably also know that she died in 1966, and is widely regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement.
She is (in part) known for saying this:
“we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Still ignoring me?
Margaret Sanger was born Margaret Higgins. Her father was born in Ireland.
Her mother was also born in Ireland. They were BOTH Catholics. Oh, did I neglect to say Irish-AMERICAN Catholics? You know, that group of WHITE people you love to exalt and hold high above the dastardly deeds of purposed racism, like the NYC Draft Riots! The same people you’re forever spouting off some gibberish or another regarding how they (the Irish) did some magnanimous service to Black people during the Civil War?
I’m just wondering regarding your sage expertise on “assholes” and such, is Margaret Sanger, in your opinion, born from two Irish-Catholic American people – an “asshole,” too?
Of course, like most of the sane questions put to you my the sane commenters here, I expect you to ignore this! It’ll just go down as another unanswered question Mirkwood simply cannot answer.
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I understand that it was because once all the reservations were removed, the people with Native American background were first relabeled as “Free People of Colour”, then later as “mulatto” whether or not they were part black/African or not (right at around 1830-1840). That is how Plecker somehow “proved” that they were part black whether they actually were or not.
I don’t see this as very happening. Even the BLACK Congressional Caucus voted against recognizing tribes in Virginia because of their policy regarding relationships with blacks during Jim Crow (mostly because of Plecker’s policies in the first place). In general, if recognizing them were solely in the hands of Congress, Congress would have gotten rid of Federal recognition of Native Americans long ago.
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@Uglyblackjohn
When I first read that, I thought it read “morally right thing to do”. I guess both one and the same. LOL
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@ Jefe
White is right! I did a whole post on that:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/white-is-right/
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@ Jefe
That sounds like a Plecker move, but add to it that he almost certainly knew what mulatto meant back then.
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@dorisjean23
This is how I attribute the origin of the rift between blacks and Native Americans and Chinese in states like Virginia and Mississippi. Native Americans and Chinese Americans formulated policies to distance themselves from blacks, not so much because they were anti-black but in order to maintain some ethnic integrity. People like Plecker were bent on making them all colored.
If you look at what else Plecker did, he actually went back into the state records, crossed out people’s racial identity and replaced it with “colored”.
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@Abagond
Based on all that I have read, learned and studied about the Natives in Maryland and Virginia, the US Government policy has always been about seeking ways to obliterate the Native American. If they couldn’t kill them all off, then at least call them something else and send their kids to boarding schools.
I really don’t see any difference in the general policy today.
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@ Linda
He was for sterilization and agreed with Nazis on certain things, but as a eugenicist, that should go without saying. I do need a post on eugenics, though.
He did not invent the One Drop Rule or US apartheid. He was just more honest and open about it. He laid bare what was always there – and is still there.
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@ Jefe
Me neither.
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Oh those census jerks couldn’t make up their minds either – every ten years they’d change my grandmother’s racial “status”. So as a little girl she was listed as “Indian” then ten years later she was listed as “mulatto” then ten years later “colored” and finally “Negro”.
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“Your ancestor(s) – enslaved by that same Southern monster until Northern victory in the Civil War freed them.”
.
There’s no difference between the Southern monster or the monster of the North. They’re both monsters. Monsters do monstrous things. And now their progeny (YOU!) make excuses for monsters, or deflect to other monsters elsewhere. Say things like, the monsters are the WASP Republicans, or other bullsh!t like B Sanders is the solution to your problems.
What would you say today to those Black people whose ancestors were looted, beaten, tortured, raped, lynched, shot, set on fire and killed by WHITE Irish Amerikan Catholic laborers during the NYC Draft Riots? It’s not that bad because us Irish are oppressed just as much as, too!
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Lord of Mirkwood
I think it is safe to say only you have shown to be the fool. Most people that went to war back then had no darn choice. So your uncle likely was little more than a male of age and sent off to war or went for money. Not because he believed in the great good of freeing slaves.
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Happy New Year everyone.!!!
I would like to see Abagond do a post on eugenics.
Mirkwood the early progressives made eugenics fashionable. It wasn’t just white southern racists.
Stop derailing every thread.
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“I’m wondering if YOU know who Margaret Sanger was.”
I know enough. She was like you, a pretender/poser – born as an Irish (WHITE) American Catholic – again like you. The same people you keep telling us that are in no way racist, ad nauseam! Because, according to YOU, the only people who aren’t racists are Irish Catholics,
(Never mind the overwhelming evidence to the contrary found in people like Margaret Sanger AND YOU, who has far more empathy for a lion killed in Africa than you have for a dead Black man murdered in Amerika)
I’m done derailing this thread with you.
May this New Year smite your incredibly stupid belief in your progressive B/S!
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The point is Mirkwood there was no North/South divide in eugenics. No liberal, no progressive, no conservative outcry against enacting laws based on pseudo science.
It was not about class either, just the preservation of the white race, INCLUDING the IRISH, and the elimination of non white who were seen as “human weeds”.
Eugenics was accepted science by ALL Americans. You keep pretending that white supremecy doesn’t excist. That the U.S. wasn’t founded on white supremecy.
Eugenics originated within America and Hitler borrowed the “science” and some American funding went to Nazi research.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
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Edit. Eugenics was accepted by ALL white Americans.
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Margaret Sanger is like a patron saint in some white feminist circles.
Hillary Clinton recieved the Margaret Sanger award and stated “I admire Margaret Sanger enormously,” Hillary Clinton had said in March, “her courage, her tenacity, her vision . . . And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her”. (Quote from National Review)
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LOM
Perhaps you need to re-evaluate history and not the one you twist and make up. Most of the Irish did not enlist for various reasons and those that did mainly did so for money. Not some great good to free slaves. In fact the amount of Irish to enlist was under-represented.
“Despite the large numbers of enlistees flocking to the Irish regiments in 1861 and 1862, initially aided by high unemployment caused by the secession crisis, many Irish held back, concerned by what they saw as the rising influence of abolitionism in the Republican Party.”
http://www.historynet.com/americas-civil-war-why-the-irish-fought-for-the-union.htm
Even in the article you presented, it notes that of the Irish that joined the army in general none had to do with helping or saving blacks so much as themselves.
So what part was pulled put of Uranus? Nevermind it appears to be from your post.
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Lord of Mirkwood
You could claim victory on your straw man, but you would look even more foolish. ROFL
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Lord of Mirkwood
You’re slow. My claim states: Most people that went to war back then had no darn choice. So your uncle likely was little more than a male of age and sent off to war or went for money. Not because he believed in the great good of freeing slaves.
This is your claim dear “the Irish enlisted for economic motives only.”
Your source actually just refutes you as well as the source I posted. Which shows that money was a factor in Irish enlistment. Not only that it shows the role of the draft in enlistment and the fact that the Irish did not do it for freeing slaves as per my quote. 🙂
The new year has just made you even more pathetic.
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The only thing you’ve won here is the Dufus prize for simply refusing to answer basic questions.
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting on what you would say to those Black people whose ancestors were looted, beaten, tortured, raped, lynched, shot, set on fire and killed by WHITE IRISH Amerikan Catholic laborers during the NYC Draft Riots?
And why you feel more compassion/empathy for a dead lion in Africa than you do for a Black man murdered in Amerika by another WHITE person who enjoys the same WHITE privilege as you?
How many times have YOU been stopped or pulled over for driving while Irish? Oh, that’s right, you’re not answering Sharina’s question, either. Or Kiwi’s, or Abagond’s, or Michaeljonbarker’s. You only answer questions you make up in your little head, then you appoint these questions to people who never asked them. There’s a word for that … STRAWMAN.
Not only are you an embarrassment to your more sane brethren (as said by another Irish commenter here) you have a knack for making even fools and dimwits look like geniuses.
After months of pushing your progressive ideologies, still no one here is buying your crap. That’s the real lose-lose. It’s a horrible way for you to begin the New Year, bellowing the same nasty vomit you threw up in 2015.
Or, maybe you just thoroughly enjoy being trounced at every turn and move you make.
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LOM
“Well, we established that my ancestor enlisted TWO YEARS before the draft.”‘—You have not established that. If your relative enlisted in 1861 and the draft was enacted in 1862 then please explain this two years?
“The motives could have been economic, but they could have been idealistic as well. We don’t know.”—–Actually we do know. The source I presented references open letters stating many reasons behind why they did it and none was for slavery. You can’t claim we don’t know, but still claim they did it for a cause you think they did.
“I was objecting to your insistence that there was NO WAY it could have been about abolitionism.”— Either you can’t read or your straw man is a signature move. I never said it was no way, but sources don’t support that as the reasons why.
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LOM
Read and weep.
http://www.etymonline.com/cw/draft.htm
I read your source, but that is not what your source is saying. Your source is saying the Irish fought because of their own interests. Not about slavery. It mentions one guy who commended blacks as Irish, but not much else.
“And, by the way, none of the soldiers in the source are my ancestor, so you can’t conflate him with them.”—-That is not a problem that I have, but one you have. You seem to idolize this idea on every thread that because your grandpa did it for x reason, then let us assume the majority or even all did it for the same. Nothing supports that.
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I read birth control activist and sex educator Margaret Sanger was an advocate of eugenics especially in regards to black people. I don’t know how true it is but i saw on a social media site Hilary Clinton allegedly quote she admired Margaret Sanger, this is problematic for me since i was considering casting my vote for her. The subject of eugenics is also introduced on Cinemax’s The Knick directed by Stephen Soderberg. The show is a very insightful look at the early 1900’s America and it’s treatment of immigrants arriving from boats to Ellis Island in New York. The show addresses how black people and others who are identified as non white are seen as animals and looked down upon and this subject of eugenics is huge in the second season of the show. How blacks and the mentally challenged and the Jews and Italians and Asians be extinguished.
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I always laugh when these racist beast always call themselves “Christians” But then again that photograph of the hooded KKK in the church with the banner behind them quoting “Jesus Saves” has always been hilarious too me. So this Walter Plecker thought he was a Christian. M’kay. SMH. This was an insightful post.
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Walter Plecker would have fit right in with the Nazi’s in Hitler’s Germany.
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Lord of Mirkwood
Just because you decided you want to change it to Federal does not remotely mean it refutes what I said on drafts, which I did not specify federal or state. So how does the dirt on the ground taste?
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LOM
“Actually, it tastes like victory,”—–Or bs as it is a taste you should be use to by now.
“because you have still failed to prove a damn thing about the soldiers who enlisted in 1861”—-Actually my source and yours proved it. Just because you want to not read it to remain in denial does not mean it was not proved. It just means you want to claim ignorance.
“you are desperately introducing state call-ups when you knew I was talking about national-level conscription.”—-Considering I brought up drafts to begin with, if you are trying to deflect and pigeon hole the conversation to Federal only then you only support aND prove how intellectually dishonest you truly are. 🙂
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“And I’m still waiting to hear what you have to say to my ancestor, who made sure that YOURS were freed from SLAVERY. Maybe a “Thank you” would be nice!”
Mayhaps when hell-fire freezes!
Why would the Irish riot in NYC killing, raping, maiming, looting, burning, lynching Black people and then turn around and put their own lives at risk for the sake of the same people they would NEVER ALLY themselves with (for the sake of joining the WHITE CLUB) and run out of NYC?
Just like you don’t make any sense, neither does the above scenario. Whatever your Irish grandpappy died for, it wasn’t for the sake of freeing any of MY ancestors! You can believe that crap. I know better. So do more people than you think!
You should know this history about your own neck of the woods:
“New England slaves numbered only about 1,000 in 1708, but that rose to more than 5,000 in 1730 and about 13,000 by 1750. New England also was the center of the slave trade in the colonies, supplying captive Africans to the South and the Caribbean island. Black slaves were a valuable shipping commodity that soon proved useful at home, both in large-scale agriculture and in ship-building.”
http://slavenorth.com/slavenorth.htm
You talk about how the South did this and that while ignoring the historic (Black slave based) economic beginnings of your own community. What a hypocrite.
You need to stop lying about about how the South is evil and the North is good. God don’t like liars! Or utter stupidity.
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Walter Plecker harassed and discriminated against Melungeons and their communities in Virginia and beyond. Here’s an article regarding Melungeons:
Walter Plecker and His Melungeon Hitlist
Walter Plecker’s writings on Melungeons and his infamous Melungeon name list:
To Read, Click Here!!
Do bear in mind that Melungeons were just one among his many targets. The cultural damage — and documentary genocide — he inflicted upon Virginia’s Indians continues to haunt them to this day:
Richmond Times Dispatch
1-29-1926
CHIEF COLLAPSES AS HE PLEADS FOR RACE PROTECTION
PAMUNKEY LEADER FALLS OUT AFTER SPEECH ASSAILING RACIAL INTEGRITY BILL
SAYS JOHN SMITH SPIRIT IS MISSING
Chief Cook Denies Kin With Heathen Race — No Action Taken
By William G. Southall
Chief Cook of the Pamunkey Indians last night literally fell on the field of battle in a verbal clash with his paleface neighbors.
The aged man took the floor to protest before the House Committee and General Laws against the provision of the Norris racial integrity bill which classified as colored all Virginians who are not pure white.
“I am a sick man,” he said. “I left a sick-bed,” he said to come here for the speech I shall make. It may be that I shall go down in the effort. It makes no difference. I told my people that I would be in Richmond for this hearing if it meant that I should be carried back home in a baggage. I would die for the Pamunkey tribe.
A Natural Orator
The chief is a natural orator. His is an inherited gift. Indians have been noted for their picturesqueness of speech since they took over the language of the white man, The leader of the Pamunkeys last night was impressive as he stood in the Virginia Capitol and pleaded for the preservation of his tribe. His voice broke at time but always he recovered it and continued his impassioned address.
After he had concluded he went slowly back to his seat in the rear of the hall. An advocate on the other side of the question propounded an inquiry. The chef did not answer. Two or three men came to his side discovered that he was exhausted and assisted him to a long seat upon which he might lie. Aromatic spirits of ammonia were administered, and the Pamunkey leader finally regained his lost strength.
At times the chief’s speech was tinged with bitterness.
“You talk of granting us land” he cried. “Do you bring with you from across the sea on foot of soil? Was not all Virginia ours when you came here? Some of you boast of being F. F. V’s. I do not. I say that I come from the First Families of America.
God Fearing Folk
“Tell me, would you blot out a nation? God forbid! The charge has been made that we were from the heathen race. I deny it from the bottom of my soul. We come from God-fearing folk. Long before we new the palefaces the Great Spirit brooded over us and died in the belief that we should join our brothers in the Happy Hunting Grounds.”
“Who would have thought.” he concluded dramatically, “that the heart of Captain John Smith, who would “have destroyed all the Pamunkeys, beat in the breasts of the palefaces of this day.?”
Defines White Person
At 12:30 o’clock this morning the committee rose without taking any definite action.
The bill under consideration last night differs from the law enacted at the 1924 session of the Assembly principally in that it defines a white person as one who has not one drop of other blood in his veins, except that persons who trace themselves back to a marriage union between a white person and an Indian contracted prior to 1619, or who have in them an admixture of the blood of Indians belonging to the civilized tribes of Oklahoma or Texas, shall be regarded as white. All others are to be classified as colored.
This is the objection raised to the bill by the Pamunkey, the Chickahominy, the Mataponi and the Rappahannock tribes. They would consent, they said, to a law forbidding any intermarriage among the races and providing the severe punishment for violation of the statue.
Opponents of the measure before the House Committee proposed an amendment which would define white, Indian and colored persons. This suggestion met determined opposition from Dr. W. A. Plecker, Registrar of Vital Statistics, and John Powell; who has labored indefatigably for several years in the cause of racial integrity. They made the point that thousands of persons whom they regard as mulattos would come forward with the claim of Indian descent, all of whom must be investigated. Such a burden, they said, would be too much for the department to carry and function efficiently the while.
Recognition of also three races would be out of line with the policy obtaining elsewhere, and would serve no other purpose than to throw out of joint all the machinery of classification.
Dr. Plecker Opens Discussion
Dr. Plecker who holds that there is no Indian in Virginia who does not carry in his veins some negro blood, opened the discussion with a brief explanation of the bill. Speakers on his side of the question included Delegate Warren, of Portsmouth: Mrs. Fothergill, who was presented as a genealogist; John Powell and Major E. S. Cox.
Representing the opponents of the measure where Senator Douglas Mitchell, who appeared in behalf of the Pamunkeys; Manley H. Barnes, for the Chickahominies George Haw, also for the Chickahominies; Judge Fleet for the Rappahonnocks; M.D. Hart, Roger Gregory, Rev. Mr. Sudduth, Chief George Nelson of the Rappahannocks, and James H. Johnson, a member of that tribe.
Not only he’s racist, but a mean-spirited racist. However, he’s not the only one. There were many leaders and elitist outside of the South as well as Democrats and, yes, Republicans endorse Mr. Plecker’s racist, classist, and eugenicist policies. His legacy endures today.
SB
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@ abagond
@ Linda
@ stephaniegirl
Thank you for providing the details of this sordid history. I’m learning a lot from reading this.
@ LoM
You could be descended from Charles Sumner or Thaddeus Stevens and it still wouldn’t mean anything about who YOU are. What your ancestors did reflects on them. You can’t ride on their coat tails.
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@Leigh204
I would bet that the child’s father was one of those triracial white/black/Indian people where Plecker was forcing the child to be registered as “mulatto”. Even though the child might almost be able to pass as white, Plecker is telling the white mother that her child is colored (presumably as the child had one of the targeted surnames).
The quote did not say if the mother married the father or not. Maybe not, as that would have broken the law.
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What do any of the comments from LoM in this thread have to do with Walter Plecker?
People who willfully derail one discussion after another are labeled as …
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But instead of offering an actual rebuttal, you resorted to underhanded ad hominem attacks.
I love ad hominem attacks! I find them to be entertaining! The wittier the better! Carry on!
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The Black-and-White World of Walter Ashby Plecker
By WARREN FISKE, The Virginian-Pilot © August 18, 2004
Lacy Branham Hearl closes her eyes and travels eight decades back to
what began as a sweet childhood.
There was family everywhere: her parents, five siblings, nine sets of adoring
aunts and uncles and more cousins than she could count. They all lived in a
Monacan Indian settlement near Amherst, their threadbare homes circling
apple orchards at the foot of Tobacco Row Mountain.
As Hearl grew, however, she sensed the adults were engulfed in deepening
despair. When she was 12, an uncle gathered his family and left Virginia,
never to see her again. Other relatives scattered in rapid succession, some
muttering the name “Plecker.”
Soon, only Hearl’s immediate family remained. Then the orchards began to
close because there were not enough workers and the townspeople turned
their backs and all that was left was prejudice and plight and Plecker.
Hearl shakes her head sadly.
“I thought Plecker was a devil,” she says. “Still do.”
Walter Ashby Plecker was the first registrar of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital
Statistics, which records births, marriages and deaths. He accepted the job
in 1912. For the next 34 years, he led the effort to purify the white race in
Virginia by forcing Indians and other nonwhites to classify themselves as
blacks. It amounted to bureaucratic genocide.
He worked with a vengeance.
Plecker was a white supremacist
and a zealous advocate of
eugenics – a now discredited
movement to preserve the
integrity of white blood by
preventing interracial breeding.
“Unless this can be done,” he
once wrote, “we have little to
hope for, but may expect in the
future decline or complete
destruction of our civilization.”
Plecker’s icy efficiency as racial
gatekeeper drew international
attention, including that of Nazi
Germany. In 1943, he boasted:
Walter Ashby Plecker, the first registrar of
Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics, starting in
1912, forced Indians to classify themselves as
black. The tribes, he said, had become a
“mongrel” mixture. Courtesy Richmond TimesDispatch
“Hitler’s genealogical study of the Jews is not more complete.”
Plecker retired in 1946 at the age of 85 and died the following year. The
damage lives on.
From the grave, Plecker is frustrating the efforts of Virginia tribes to win federal
recognition and a trove of accompanying grants for housing, health care and education.
One of the requirements is that the tribes prove their continuous existence since 1900.
Plecker, by purging Indians as a race, has made that nearly impossible. Six Virginia
tribes are seeking the permission of Congress to bypass the requirement.
“It never seems to end with this guy,” said Kenneth Adams, chief of the
Upper Mattaponi. “You wonder how anyone could be so consumed with
hate.”
It’s likely that Plecker didn’t see himself as the least bit hateful. Had he not
been so personally aloof, he might have explained that he believed he was
practicing good science and religion. Perhaps he would have acknowledged
that he was influenced by his own heritage.
Walter Plecker was one of the last sons of the Old South. He was born in
Augusta County on April 2, 1861. Ten days later, the cannons at Fort
Sumter sounded the start of the Civil War. His father, a prosperous
merchant and slave owner, left home to fight for the Confederate Army with
many of his kin.
Some 60 years later, Plecker would recall his early days in a letter to a
magazine editor expressing his abhorrence of interracial breeding. He
remembered “being largely under the control” of a “faithful” slave named
Delia. When the war ended, she stayed on as a servant. The Pleckers were
so fond of her that they let her get married in their house. When Plecker’s
mother died in 1915, it was Delia “who closed her eyes,” he wrote.
Then Plecker got to his point. “As much as we held in esteem individual
negroes this esteem was not of a character that would tolerate marriage
with them, though as we know now to our sorrow much illegitimate mixture
has occurred.” Plecker added, “If you desire to do the correct thing for the
negro race … inspire (them) with the thought that the birth of mulatto
children is a standing disgrace.”
Plecker graduated from Hoover Military Academy in Staunton in 1880. He
became a doctor, graduating from the University of Maryland’s medical
school in 1885. He moved around western Virginia and the coal fields of
Alabama before settling in Hampton in 1892.
Plecker took special interest in delivering babies. He became concerned
about the high mortality rate among poor mothers and began keeping
records and searching for ways to improve birthing.
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The Black and White of Walter Plecker (Continued)
Public health was first being recognized as a government concern at the
turn of the last century, and Plecker was a pioneer. In 1902, he became
health officer for Elizabeth City County (today, Hampton). He recorded
details of more than 98 percent of the births and deaths in the county – an
amazing feat during a time when most people were born and died at home.
When lawmakers established the state Bureau of Vital Statistics in 1912,
they asked Plecker to run it.
Plecker’s first 12 years on the job were groundbreaking and marked by
goodwill. He educated midwives of all races on modern birthing techniques
and cut the 5 percent death rate for black mothers almost in half. He
developed an incubator – a combination of a laundry basket, dirt, a
thermometer and a kerosene lamp – that anyone could make in an instant.
Concerned by a high incidence of syphilitic blindness in black and Indian
babies, he distributed silver nitrate to be put in the eyes of newborns.
Plecker was all work. He did not seek friendship. Although married most of
his life, he did not have children. He listed his hobbies as “books and birds.”
“He was a man you could sometimes respect and admire, but never love,”
said Russell E. Booker Jr., who grew up in Plecker’s neighborhood,
delivered his newspaper and worked in the Bureau of Vital Statistics from
1960 to 1994, spending the last 12 years as director. “He was a very rigid
man,” Booker added. “I don’t know of anyone who ever saw him smile.”
Plecker was tall, bone-thin, had wavy, white hair that was neatly combed
and a trim mustache. He took a bus to work and lunched every day on just
an apple.
He was a miserly taskmaster. Plecker scraped glue pots, mixed the gunk
with water and sent it back to employees for use. Booker said that,
according to office legend, “You didn’t get a new pencil until you turned in
your old one, and it better not be longer than an inch and a quarter.”
Plecker never looked before crossing streets. “He just expected the cars to
stop for him,” said Booker, who still lives in Richmond. “One time a woman
grabbed him just as he was about to be hit, and he laid her out like she’d
just touched God.”
Plecker was a devout Presbyterian. He helped establish churches around
the state and supported fundamentalist missionaries. Plecker belonged to a
conservative Southern branch of the church that believed the Bible was
infallible and condone d segregation. Members of Plecker’s branch
maintained that God flooded the earth and destroyed Sodom to express his
anger at racial interbreeding.
“Let us turn a deaf ear to those who would interpret Christian brotherhood
as racial equality,” Plecker wrote in a 1925 essay.
Plecker described himself as a
man of science. And at the turn of
the 20th century, eugenics was
internationally heralded as the
thinking man’s science.
The term “eugenics” was coined in
1883 by English scientist Francis
Galton, a cousin of Charles
Darwin, a year after Darwin’s
death. Galton defined it as the
science of “race improvement.” It
was viewed as a practical
application of Darwin’s theories of
evolution and natural selection.
The early aim of Galton and his followers was to promote selective
marriages to eliminate hereditary disorders. It wasn’t long, however, before
they focused on perpetuating a superior class of humans.
As the science swept across the Atlantic, it picked up more ominous tones.
Eugenicists began espousing mandatory sterilization of “wicked” and
mentally retarded people to eliminate their bloodlines.
All the major colleges, including the University of Virginia, taught the
science. It was embraced by such great minds as Alexander Graham Bell,
George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Margaret Sanger won support for
legalizing contraception by arguing it would lower the birth rate of
undesirables. Winston Churchill unsuccessfully proposed sterilization laws
for Great Britain in 1910. As governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson
signed that state’s first sterilization law in 1911. The next year, he was
elected president. Virginia’s gentry embraced the fad. Eugenics was the
perfect way to deal with race and the underclass.
Walter Ashby Plecker
“Virginians thought of themselves as more progressive than their neighbors
to the south,” said Gregory M. Dorr, a University of Alabama history
professor who is writing a book on eugenics. “There was a feeling that we
don’t need to do lynching or the KKK. We’re not savage. We can handle our
problems in a rational way.”
The leader of the state movement was John Powell of Richmond, an
internationally acclaimed pianist and composer who would work closely with
Plecker for more than a quarter of a century. Powell was rich, wellconnected
and a compelling speaker.
Kenneth Adams, chief of the Upper Mattaponi tribe,
visits his grandfather’s grave. The worst thing about
Plecker’s work, he said, was that it tore families
apart. “People just left,” he said, to seek out life in
other states that did not deny Indians their heritage.
Lisa Billings
Plecker stayed behind the scenes, supplying Powell with copies of all the
major correspondence of his office and drafting racial separation bills for the
legislature’s consideration.
Their work paid off in 1924 when the General Assembly passed the Racial
Integrity Act and a mandatory sterilization law that would be invoked 8,300
times over the next 55 years.
Although 31 states would pass eugenics laws, none was tougher than
Virginia’s.
The Racial Integrity Act essentially narrowed race classifications on birth
and marriage certificates to two choices: “white person” or “colored.” The
law defined a white as one with no trace of black blood. A white person
could have no more than a 1/16th trace of Indian blood – an exception,
much to Plecker’s regret, legislators made to appease the descendants of
Pocahontas and John Rolfe, who were considered among Virginia’s first
families.
The act forbade interracial marriage and lying about race on registration
forms. Violators faced felony convictions and a year in prison.
Plecker strongly supported sterilization laws, arguing that feeble-minded
whites were prone to mate with Indians and blacks. He had no role in
administering the law, however.
The Racial Integrity Act, on the other hand, was his to enforce, and Plecker
went about it obsessively. Gov. E. Lee Trinkle, a year after signing the act,
asked Plecker to ease up on the Indians and not “embarrass them any more
than possible.” Plecker fired back an angry letter.
“I am unable to see how it is working any injustice upon them or humiliation
for our office to take a firm stand against their intermarriage with white
people, or to the preliminary steps of recognition as Indians with permission
to attend white schools and to ride in white coaches,” Plecker wrote.
The governor retreated.
Plecker saw everything in black and white. There were no other races.
There was no such thing as a Virginia Indian. The tribes, he said, had
become a “mongrel” mixture of black and American Indian blood.
Their existence greatly disturbed Plecker. He was convinced that mulatto
offspring would slowly seep into the white race. “Like rats when you’re not
watching,” they “have been sneaking in their birth certificates through their
own midwives, giving either Indian or white racial classification,” Plecker
wrote.
He called them “the breach in the dike.” They had to be stopped.
Many who came into Plecker’s cross hairs were acting with pure intentions.
They registered as white or Indian because that’s how their parents
identified themselves. Plecker seemed to delight in informing them they
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I have some other queries about this statement:
We have discussed on other threads about the idea of reparations for slavery, particularly in the form of money. Although it may be debatable whether money could fix the problem from that legacy, at least the idea should be put on the table. Money could form part of an overall plan of reparation perhaps.
However, where do you begin to find some sort of reparation for the 400+ years of destruction, esp. to the Virginia/Chesapeake tidewater region where it all began? Money would do very little to fix the problem.
One thing they could do is simply give federal recognition to them. This would cost the US government almost nothing to do (considering that each of those tribes has already spent many many millions of dollars applying for recognition – the costs borne applying for recognition has fallen on the tribes). But at each and every turn, it is blocked.
The only tribe in the region that received Federal recognition (in July 2015, no less) was the Pamunkey, The tribe of Pocahontas forms such a key part of US history and they have held reservation land since the 1600s and unerringly paid their tribute to the Commonwealth of Virginia every year since then.
Yet, in October, that was rescinded on an appeal. Why? Because the appellant insists that some of the people listed on the tribal rolls are not authentic Pamunkey. Why? Because of this Walter Plecker guy who reassigned their ancestors as “colored” (or maybe forced some to switch to “white” or leave Virginia).
Even with Walter Plecker dead and gone, we have many factions in US society h3ll bent on denying that they still exist and the US Congress is in bed with the interests of those factions. They have spent considerable effort and money in figuring out how to deny them recognition.
Admittedly, many American Indian self-identified people are also motivated by THEIR own personal self-interests, which may or may not be helping the cause of the tribes as a whole. A compromise needs to be worked out to balance the interests, even within tribes.
Of course, Virginia Indians (as well, as Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, etc.) will tell you that they do not need the Federal Government or even the State government to tell them who and what they are. But at the very least, recognition is a form of reparation that the government could do, and it would cost taxpayers very little, certainly a lot less than what the government has spent to deny tribal recognition.
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Here are several articles and blog post regarding that pox of a man:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-a-long-dead-white-supremacist-still-threatens-the-future-of-virginias-indian-tribes/2015/06/30/81be95f8-0fa4-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/poca/POC_law.html
http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/the-black-and-white-world-of-walter-plecker/Content?oid=1381080
https://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/walter-ashby-plecker%E2%80%99s-eugenics-attacks-on-blacks-and-indians-mirror-that-of-planned-parenthood-founder-margaret-sanger/
http://melungeon.ning.com/forum/topics/1943-surname-list-by-walter
http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/connections/52329c415c2ec5000000000c
Click to access Clare_Yearning_toward_Carrie_Buck1.pdf
https://books.google.com/books?id=88XKOocy4vIC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=walter+plecker+and+buck+v+bell&source=bl&ots=YNO9RotIEQ&sig=izONDCvGgiwQqGGERP9C1q3jdEM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiWhJTsiozKAhXEmh4KHSrADu04ChDoAQg8MAc#v=onepage&q=walter%20plecker%20and%20buck%20v%20bell&f=false
https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/VA/VA.html
I have more links to link up regarding that despicable male.
SB
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“Paper Genocide”
That is a good term.
How do we undo paper genocide?
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@Stephaniegirl,
What Plecker did destroyed families and communities. He was evil. Why is there NO mention of him in our textbooks?
I read the Washington Post article last July when I was reading up on the Pamunkey, since that is the closest tribe to Washington, DC that has ever been federally recognized. Looking at it again, I am reminded of this:
I swear my Alabama grandparents must have been one of his disciples – gave my brother and I demons that we have had to face for a lifetime.
@Abagond,
Yep, together with what he said in the quote above, the WP article reminded us:
So, yes, indeed, he knew EXACTLY what it meant.
The latter also explained why, even though we have always had multiracial Americans, that was never recognized until 2000. The legacy of his actions affected us well into the 1980s-90s. My first summer/ school break jobs were at the US Census Bureau (1979-1980) and I know that it was only permitted to check one box in 1980. It explains why Native Americans in the greater Chesapeake Bay region did not begin to apply for recognition until the 1980s (and why they still are not federally recognized today) and why it took primarily multiracial Asians to push for multiracial recognition in the 1990s (as prior generations of mixed white/black/Indian people had been taught that it was not allowed).
Having said this, I cannot say that other countries are necessarily any better.
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@Abagond,
Regarding your statement
and your comment here
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/national-museum-of-the-american-indian/#comment-298975)
There appears to be a concerted effort to obliterate the Lenape from New Jersey, I remember that Governor Christie declared some time last year that New Jersey has no more American Indians. I found an article (link below). Even in 2015, Federal and State governments are still trying to obliterate Native Americans.
Maybe New York city joined the conspiracy to remove any display on the Lenape from the NMAI in Manhattan.
(http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/lenni-lenape-tribe-sue-christie-new-jersey-over-alleged-civil/article_0e375558-2f1a-11e5-84b6-b3b6aa701db1.html)
Lenni-Lenape tribe sue Christie, New Jersey over alleged civil rights violations
It is not just Virginia.
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i)
When I began reading this post it appeared to me that Abagond had already written something about a White American doctor who became known because of his contributions to public health in the USA. I wondered if Abagond had become sloppy and was repeating himself!
In fact he was not repeating anything: the first case (I don’t remember the name of the doctor but it was someone who was able to handle a condition in women through recurrent attempts in Black women that enabled him to perfect some kind of method regarding that pathology) was one doctor and the second one is another doctor, Walter Plecker. But in both cases we have a notable contribution for public health and/or the medical science from individuals who harbor very strong feelings of disdain vis-a-vis Black people.
ii)
I sense a general feeling of anger of many people in this board regarding the belief and practice of eugenics and the attempt to maintain the racial purity of the White race. The idea and practice of killing or sterilizing people because they present some medical condition or have some specific vice, is inhumane and should shame their authors of followers. But I don’t feel the same anger towards people who believe that their race or kind or people is especial and try to keep them apart from other races or peoples. If some Whites want to preserve their race, that does not bother me that much. They should go tell their own children that they don’t want them to marry or have offspring with said “others” and I’m perfectly fine with that attitude. What they can’t, is to try to force their beliefs on the rest of the society.
When I was in Germany to further my studies in the 80’s, I remember an old woman who was teaching the German language to us (foreign students) prior to the semester where we were supposed to began our specific study’s subjects, once saying, more or less: “You can go out and take a German Mädchen (girl) with you; they are pretty aren’t they? But please do not make them pregnant because, then, you’ll have to assume a child who will not adapt easily neither here nor in your countries of origin. You’ll have the opportunity to raise a family and have beautiful children in your countries when you go back there after your studies.”
iii)
@ Jeff
This is how I attribute the origin of the rift between blacks and Native Americans and Chinese in states like Virginia and Mississippi. Native Americans and Chinese Americans formulated policies to distance themselves from blacks, not so much because they were anti-black but in order to maintain some ethnic integrity. People like Plecker were bent on making them all colored.
I have some questions to you Jeff regarding this paragraph.
First: do you consider that said Native Americans and Chinese Americans who had those specific reasons to distance themselves from Blacks, have turned themselves anti-Black racists (by induction, so to speak) or do you believe that they remained non-racist nevertheless. Look, Blacks should know with whom they can count in their battles against systemic racism.
I wonder if genetic surveys could not help establish that specific groups of individuals do share, in fact, a common ancestry, despite eventual mixing across generations, and, therefore, can be considered as belonging to a specific old ethnic or racial entity. This could give a turnaround for this conundrum! But I see that there are powerful forces at the level of the corporate world (big capital) and their representatives in the political world (Congress, etc) which don’t want to give Indians some pieces of land and, because of that, make everything possible to evade those questions.
I find interesting also that anti-Black racism is so widespread worldwide.
It seems that, indeed, the greatest fear of all, is the possibility of a contamination of the purest blood with droplets of Black blood!
This feeling seems to be almost universal and should alert Blacks that probably many more people outside the Black race, do see them as not fully human.
Turning back to my memories of Germany, I can remember that the German woman who was in love with me during that time and beyond, was clear in stating that the Nazis weren’t anti-Black but only anti-Jew for reasons that went back to their turbulent relationship in the past. I believed her at that time, but later I had the opportunity to read first hand Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (My Fight) and realize that part of the deep anger of Hitler regarding Jews was related to the fact that he saw them introducing Blacks (Senegalese soldiers and others, for example) in Rhineland with the ultimate evil intention of contaminating the pure German blood with Black blood! So, if Hitler was not directly anti-Black he clearly saw them as dangerously inferior to have around!
The ultimate mystery regarding the effects of all this contempt towards Black humanity seems to remain with God Himself who, despite all the defamation in the contrary, creates a space of curiosity, desire and affection in not few White women’s hearts towards Black males and, in doing so, works in the contrary direction of hate!
By the way, remember Adele’s new cry of love… Hello
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A)
P.S.:
Non-Black males – Whites, for example – show also curiosity, desire and affection for Black women! But you must go to certain spaces – African countries, for example – to confirm that!
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CORRECTION:
In my previous comment…
Instead of:
“shame their authors of followers”
should be:
“shame their authors or followers”
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@munubantu
I assume you were directing this question to me (jefe):
That is a loaded question and I don’t think there will be a straightforward answer to that.
First of all, the actions taken by American Indians and Chinese in places like Virginia and Mississippi were in reaction to their respective state policies in the 1920s-1940s. As you can see from this post, it impacted stuff like education, medical care, religious practice, housing, government services, voting, marriage and family, etc. as well as basic ethnic integrity.
So Indians in Virginia set up their own schools and forbid their tribal members to marry blacks. Some moved out of state. Chinese in Mississippi set up their own schools and distanced themselves from their families and relatives who had married black or who were part black. Some moved out of state. This is what happened under Jim Crow in an attempt not to be labelled as “colored” and not to subsume their identity to being black.
See (https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/chinese-americans-in-mississippi-under-jim-crow/)
In Mississippi, after Chinese were finally admitted to white schools, Brown v. Board ended school segregation. However, by the mid-late 60s, they set up segregation academies that only admitted whites. Again, Chinese were put into a quandary. Some were already leaving due to the dropping black population, but most of the others left as soon as their kids finished school. I talked to one of my elder cousins last year about going to school in Mississippi, and she told me that she finished high school at the public schools before they set up the segregation academies, but her younger sister transferred later to the segregation academy and graduated there. This was a problem as most of their customers were black. Most families left the State in the 1970s.
Segregation Academies: (https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/segregation-academies/)
During the 1950s-1960s Civil rights movement, some Native Americans and Asians joined the black civil rights movement directly (eg, the Black Panthers), but at the same time, the American Indian Movement came into full swing, particularly to call the Indians in the East and the South to revive their Indian identities that had been subsumed into “colored”. Asian American activist groups (eg, I wor Kuen) formed also modeled after the Black Panthers and partially in response to the dehumanization under the Vietnam War, and reparations for the WWII internment experience.
I went to school in PG county, MD, the largest school system in the USA ever subject to forced racial desegregation (1970s). Prior to desegregation, In my school were several dozen students who were from communities whose racial identities were not clear to me, as well as about 6-7% black. They were not black and not white but something else. Later, I learned they identified with the Piscataway Indian community of Southern Maryland. Most were triracial and a bit ambiguous looking, but many looked like they had at least some black ancestry. During Jim Crow, many were forced to go to colored schools, but some went to an Indian school for a while. After Brown v. Board, most went to majority white schools. Anyhow, after desegregation, my school’s black population increased by about 20-25% (to about 27-30% or so) and the new arrivals had come from the all black schools. They were looking for some allies in the school to combat the hostility from the white students, but when they went to the “Indian” students, they found that they were unwilling to identify themselves as black. In fact, they were facing their own issues about getting recognized as Indian. Consequently, the black students became very hostile with them. I was facing my own battles, but I did notice this going on in my school. Tell me, how does one begin to “ally” with any of these problems when I was facing some other ones of my own.
So, Asians and Native Americans have joined at times with blacks to fight their racial battles, but at other times, they went and fought separately.
Which brings me to 2 points:
I. White America STILL today formulates policies that separate off different groups from each other.
Native Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Asians all have to navigate that sort of society, which sometimes pits them against each other or against blacks. They still have to fight racism, and it is not always in the context of anti-Black or pro-black.
II. Why is the battle against systemic racism seen as a black issue, or as one that requires alliance solely with black political interests?
How much do blacks join in THE OTHERS’s fights against systemic racism? For example, in the example of recognition of Virginia Indian tribes, black groups have been among the most vociferous in opposing their recognition (partially due to policies those tribes formed during the Plecker era). Now, should Virginia Indians view blacks as teaming up with white corporate interests to oppose THEM? It certainly looks that way.
The Perpetual Foreigner stereotype is very damaging to Asians. Yet do many blacks ally with Asians to fight this stereotype, or do they seem to ally with white interests to perpetuate that stereotype? Asians have been in North America longer than Africans, so it is really disconcerting that *some* blacks have imbibed white stereotypes and racist practices against other groups in alliance with whites.
I wouldn’t ask the question about who can count on whom. There is an even bigger problem out there that we need to address.
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Thanks jefe for taking the time to answer so thoroughly my question (Yes, the question was directed to you!).
I always enjoy reading your comments because you combine anecdotal evidence (personal observations, sometimes family stories, etc) with an attempt of putting those data in an over-arching framework. This is educative and if I come here to this blog is really to learn, to open my views on those issues of race relations and others.
One of the things that I learned in this blog is that Apartheid as a concerted set of ideas about how to regulate the interactions of descendants of Europeans (so called Whites) and the peoples in the periphery of Europe grew first on American soil. Clearly the experience of Whites in other places – Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania – lead them to some practices with regional variations and already forming an embryo of the system that came to be known as Apartheid, but it turned clear to me when I read some posts and comments here, that its first thoroughly systematization was achieved in America due to the efforts of a few individuals (Plecker, Grant, etc).
The system that those guys devised is like an b>Apartheid in grand scale when compared to the social system that historically retained this designation. One can see clearly the immense human suffering that those ideas brought to so many people for so long (and still burning!).
As Ali Mazrui aptly coined the Apartheid concept and practice: humanity in fragments!
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@munubantu
I am not sure if this comment was directed at me either:
In the USA, this might not tell you very much.
(Sorry for the long answer, but I want to give some insight into why genetic testing would not solve any of the problems.)
In rural southern counties, it was discovered that the black and white populations often shared a large bit of ancestry, ie, much of the white population had small amounts of African ancestry and most of the black population shared some of the same European ancestry. They both had some small amounts of Native American ancestry from mixed individuals who had stayed behind or assimilated into the black or white populations. You can do a DNA test and determine if an individual derived primarily from which continental origin, but that might not tell you what race they identify (eg, 30% of black male Y-haplogroups trace back to Europe). Those tests also show that the white and black populations are not entirely separate breeding populations. If they used the same genetic analysis techniques applied to wild animal populations, they would find out that the black and white populations human populations in the same place (eg, in a rural Georgia county where the same people have been living for centuries) do not satisfy the statistical tests demonstrating that they are separate breeding populations, as too much gene history has been exchanged.
Examining American Indian origin by genetic tests is even more problematic, as there are few if any individuals left whose ancestry is derived from a single tribe, or even adjacent related tribes. I have read about the southern Maryland Algonquians which are just across the river from the Virginia Algonquians (some of the Piscataway communities in southern Maryland are just 1/2 hr drive from some of the Virginia ones, eg, the Pattawomeck and the Rappahannock). They faced a similar situation of being labeled “Indian” then “Free People of Colour”, then “Mulatto”, then “Colored” then “Indian” again just like the ones in Virginia (Maryland copied Virginia and even Plecker to some extent). Their population coalesced from a refugee population of over a dozen tribes, each of which maybe only had a few dozen members each. There was no way that they they could have remained 100% endogamous and they formed some sort of pan-Indian clusters of communities. In the colonial period, some also married / formed families with either blacks or whites. By the late 1700s, they were already a mixed community of over a dozen different tribes, as well as European and African. As the colour line hardened in the 19th century, they kept apart from both whites and blacks and clustered around their own communities. Among those communities, they did remain highly endogamous to maintain their separate identities and close kinship ties, at least until the Jim Crow era. However, some exogamous marriages did occur (eg, with a non-Indian mulatto, bringing more white and black ancestry into their communities).
Even if you could do a DNA test, and found out that a specific Indian-identified individual was 25% Native American from 4 different tribes, 40% European from 4 different regions in Europe and 35% African primarily from 4 different ethnic groups in Africa, how would that tell you anything about their ethnic, racial or tribal identity? Say the individual’s cousin was found to be 20% mixed Native American, 50% mixed European white and 30% mixed African black. Let’s say that the test revealed that although they are first cousins, they do not share 12.5% of DNA with each other, but statistically 18% of DNA, revealing a high degree of inbreeding (due to the endogamous practice of the group). What would that tell you? They are “family”?
Now, let’s say a sister of the first person who shared the same ancestry, had kids with a local black-identified man who was 77% African, 18% European and 5% Native American from local tribes. He shared some of the same markers as the first person, indicating some possible shared African, European and Native American ancestry with the Indian-identified person. Now their kid would be approximately 56% African, 29% European and 15% Native American with a family tree that intersected with the blacks, whites and Indians in the same region. Some of the kids would look more black, some triracial, and some ambiguous. However, that is not enough to determine membership in a tribe. The child would have to satisfy some rules demonstrating descent and their relationship to the tribe, and not based on a DNA test.
Likewise, if the original individual had another sister who married a local white person who was 92% European, 3% native and 5% black, their kid would be 66% European, 14% Native and 20% black. What would their DNA test tell you about their tie to a racial or ethnic community? Some of the fully identified Indians, even some white identified persons, could have the same racial make-up.
A DNA test will tell you nothing about how the person identifies, how they function as socially or how they “pass” as in the local community, or how they would pass if they left that community.
Keeping a Native American tribe alive has nothing to do with keeping it racially pure, if that were even possible. DNA testing would tell you little. When they left their local rural communities to work in the cities (ie, Richmond, Norfolk, Washington, DC, Baltimore), they often “melted” into either the white or black communities there (usually the latter, but not always) after one generation. The close maintenance of kinship ties is what binds those communities to each other, not their DNA percentages.
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Jefe, thanks for the reply about my suggestion on genetic surveys and the possibility of reestablishment of Indian tribes in some quarters of the USA.
After your last statement:
The close maintenance of kinship ties is what binds those communities to each other, not their DNA percentages.
I conclude that you think that genetics can’t help because the genetic pool of the local original Indian tribes is already so diluted in the population at large that one cannot go back now to identify what set of genetic markers could tell them apart from each other.
I see also that Indians have not the luxury that European, Asian and African descendants have, namely, the continued existence of original populations somewhere, against which their current genetic profile can be compared.
I’m not sure if some loophole remains that could be exploited for their benefice in that regard. But as comparison…
How did the Jews managed to constitute the state of Israel based partially on a biologically existent population of Jews for centuries even despite the fact that they, too, mixed to a large extent with “foreign blood” for years? Yes, I know that they constitute a population also defined by a religion, but fact is that there is a racial component in the definition too. This is merely a point of reflection.
The problem of a definition merely based on kinship – or I could say, culture (maybe?) – is that it is open to exploitation by opportunists who could claim the belonging to a specific tribe, but with a view of gaining benefits that such membership would confer (if such benefits are already clearly stated and are on the open).
I would like to use this opportunity to put some personal reflections of what race constitutes to me, based on observations of society.
I think that there are at least 3 ways to look at race:
* by looks or appearance (your race is defined by how you look; I would say that this is the first or original method);
* by genealogy (your race is defined by who are your ancestors to a certain degree);
* by genetics (your race is extracted from certain patterns seen in your DNA)
No definition is totally unambiguous and foolproof and, therefore, can be agreed upon by everybody in everyday practical use. Moreover, despite the fact that the second and third were derived from the first (for example: geneticists certainly used their eyesight to choose individuals to construct the initial databases upon which we depend now to compare our individual genetic profiles and establish percentages of belonging to this or that group) sometimes discrepancies occur in the classification extracted from one and the classification extracted from another method. For example, in Brazil, where race mixing is already pretty advanced, there are individuals who are seen as White by the society at larger (appearance-wise) but their genetic profile shows them to be less than 50% European descendant (if this makes any sense?).
Because race is a notion that works as an operating factor for many societies, and because the appearance is what people see first, I think that this is the aspect more relevant for practical considerations, contrary to what many genetic-apologists seem to believe. Our eyes do not see the genes after all!
The genetic based criteria would become closer to the appearance based ones, if they tried to narrow the set of genetic markers used to classify individual persons, to the ones that really are related to the outward design of the body (hair texture, skin pigmentation, eye color or form, etc) instead of many other genes that probably are more related to internal body functions and other parts of the DNA that are considered not-coding segments.
Race mixing turns the picture more fuzzy and the definitions even more difficult to handle!
End of personal ramble!
P.S.:
For Black Americans and the question of reparations (or better: the question of who could get reparations) is easier. For practical purposes, you could establish a genetic threshold (percent-wise) to define who really is Black and is a rightfully recipient of such a reparation (with some specific provisions to exclude newcomers for Black Africa, naturally!).
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@ Jefe
Thanks for the info. I am not surprised about Christie. But in general, like you said, the government wants the tribes to disappear by hook or crook. Not just because of land claims, but because they are the evidence of the crime.
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@munubantu
Hence the proliferation of fake Indians.
But “kinship” is a better measure than “culture”. Anyone can adapt to a culture. Kinship will be harder to fake, as you must demonstrate that you are related to the tribe by descent or adoption (or perhaps in some cases, at least by marriage). Normally they also require ongoing participation in the tribe’s activities.
For many of these tribes, it is not going to work very well. Even with DNA testing, the most we can tell is that a group of people are related to each other (since marriage to 2nd or 3rd cousins in these groups was common). It won’t tell us that it was specifically Native American DNA binding these people together.
Few of the American Indians in the Eastern USA are obviously Native American purely by appearance and records were destroyed in the Civil War and later by Plecker. That option will not work either.
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@munubantu
If we were to determine who is eligible for slavery reparations by that method, it would be almost as problematic as who is entitled to enroll as a tribal member based on blood quantum or DNA testing.
For one, about half of descendants of slaves now identify as white. Should Bliss Broyard be entitled to reparations based on ancestry? How about white supremacists like Craig Cobb (14% African)?
Next, what about descendants of West Indians? Is the US government responsible for history of THEIR slavery?
Next, what % of slave ancestry is required? For example, should the kids of Kimora Lee Simmons and Djimon Hounsou be eligible for monetary reparation for slavery? Her kids could pass as black and they have some black slave ancestry on their maternal grandfather’s side, but would it satisfy any test? Barack Obama has some slave ancestry on his white mother’s side. Does that pass the test? Should Tiger Woods get compensation? Vin Diesel?
Are Native Americans who got relabeled as “colored” (eg, under Plecker) eligible for reparations for slavery? How about people like Don Cheadle, whose ancestors were slaves under the Chickasaw nation? Should the US government be exempt from giving money to descendants of slaves or to freedmen of Native American tribes?
Something should be done to make reparations for slavery, but any system devised will be fraught with political complications, esp. since we are 5-7 generations removed from the Civil War.
For me, for Native Americans, it can be as simple as recognizing they still exist as well as their history. Don’t just erase them.
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In region 3 below plus New Jersey, there is not a single federally recognized Indian tribe.
From Metro NYC to Virginia Beach, west to the Ohio River, there has never been a single tribe recognized by the US government, and lobby groups and Congress has sought to block each and every one, dating back to colonial times.
This is also the region where the Indians were heavily impacted by
– Segregationists, like Plecker
– Indian Boarding schools, like in Carlisle, PA
– Anti-gaming groups and their white corporate sponsors (which happen to promote their personal gaming interests), eg, MGM Casinos.
Somehow, I think they are just too close to the power centres of New York and Washington that it is too much a blemish on US history to acknowledge what happened.
I grew up and lived in this area and the information about them (since the early colonial period, at least) had been completely wiped out of the history books. We were taught that they were all gone.
I am beginning to think the removal of any Lenape exhibition from the NMAI in New York is not just an oversight. People might start asking questions, “Where are they now?”, a question that Governor Christie and MGM resorts and Casinos does not want anyone to ask.
Has any 2016 Presidential candidate addressed that? Trump would surely stamp them out once and for all from the East Coast. To his credit, I think Obama has been one of the more “Native-friendly” presidents we have ever had.
I can see why Maryland Indians love Martin O’Malley.
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Odd that of the three choices given to Native Americans (Genocide , Assimilation and Relocation) that the first TWO would lead to the demise of Indians in America and the practices of acts such as the Trail of Tears and the forming of reservations would ultimately save the proof of existence for many tribes.
@munubantu – I am Native/Hispanic (Tribal number, benefits and all) on my mom’s side and Creole on my dad’s.
I think the experiences of tribes vary depending upon the amount of exposure to some European cultures.
The French didn’t wipe out the tribes as much as many just had kids with Blacks, Natives and other Europeans – creating a Creole culture in southern Louisiana and parts of Texas.
My mom’s family were forced to live on a reservation in Oregon. The Modoc War broke out and many were killed or sent to Oklahoma. Our reservation seems to be in a constant battle with the Bureau over rights agreed upon in previous treaties. Even though I am only 1/4 Indian, I am still accepted as being of the tribe by other members.
@ jefe – How does one begin to ‘ally’?
Easy, just do it.
In high school I was hanging out with a group of Black football players at a basketball game. As we approached the white ‘in group’ football players one of the kids said, ‘That’s alright John, you can go hang out with them’. ‘Eff that. You guys are just as popular as them, you know each other,c’mon.’, I replied. A simple act began series of more integrated parties, games, lunches and friendships. (We only went to that game because our Asian homeboy was getting his first varsity start)
College was more of the same. Our school was on a trimester system so our breaks weren’t at the same time as most of my friend’s. I’d often fly home to visit my homeboy at USC during some of my breaks. He was living in the College-Uni dorms at the time so I’d sit through some classes and hang out on campus during others. I’d hang out on The Row and always come back with party invites. A few of his white suite-mates were from affluent families from New Orleans, Chicago or San Francisco, or whatever and had been popular in their towns but they couldn’t really assimilate into So-Cal culture. ‘Dude, YOU don’t even know HOW to be white.’, I said at dinner in the cafeteria. They lacked what would today be called ‘swagger’. We’d scoop up our boy Tony at Pepperdine and hit the town. After graduation, these dudes would fly back to town to come to my birthday parties for years.
Making allies is easy.
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@Uglyblackjohn
Odd that you see them as choices.
Indian removal programs started in the early 1600s and continue today. The Trail of Tears was just one of the removal programmes among many. It was a concerted effort of all three efforts that have contributed to the demise.
And given the state of many of the reservations, the mere fact of tribal existence does not mean there was no demise. Esp. for the ones who do not run casinos. And whether they do or not, the “trust” relationship with the US government has not turned out well for many tribes either. Unfortunately, individual greed within tribes have also helped lead to their demise, even since the 1600s.
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@Uglyblackjohn
It seems like you completely misunderstood the point, It is not about making social connections and integrating with certain groups or factions.
We are talking about conflict of social and political interests. For example, from the viewpoint of Virginia Indians, it looks like both whites and blacks have teamed up against them (for different reasons) to protest their recognition. Who do the Virginia Indians ally with to deal with that? Neither blacks nor whites cared about it during Plecker’s time and they don’t care today.
If you want me to go back to High School, I was bullied by both whites and blacks. Then I saw blacks trying to ally with the Indian identified people to resist the hostility from white students. Yet, those people were working to assert their Indian identity, and how they were NOT black. Blacks became hostile to them. Whites were already hostile to them for not accepting being grouped with blacks. I think it took a great deal of courage at that time for them to say, “I am Indian.” Now, how would anyone in my position ally oneself with any of those 3 different positions? I was more concerned about how to navigate not getting beat up.
I actually joined one of the black social groups in school as I felt very alienated by the white “school spirit” groups that no blacks (and no Indians) joined. No one was hostile to me in the black group, but I wasn’t really very welcome either. If you look at the pictures in my high school, all those groups stayed separated despite the mandatory integration.
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@ Jefe
For one, about half of descendants of slaves now identify as white. Should Bliss Broyard be entitled to reparations based on ancestry? How about white supremacists like Craig Cobb (14% African)?
Jefe, the critical word is threshold, genetic threshold.
This is an abstract exercise, right?
What I had in mind is an operational definition of Black that could be used for the purpose of identifying individuals who rightfully could be considered recipients of reparations.
For that purpose you define an appropriate percentage (the threshold) and you accept individuals who reach that percentage as possible recipients and others you reject. I think that 14% African admixture could be too low. Some value equal or greater than 50% could be appropriate.
Look, I know that it can appear somewhat silly to play around such numbers when we are dealing with human affairs. It can appear unfair that somebody is lucky to be over 60% (for example) and receive the compensations (or whatever the mechanism of reparations) and somebody didn’t get them because it turns out to be slightly below (let’s say: 59%), but this is similar to many other things in life like the 100 km/hour speed limit in certain roads, or the age of consent for sexual engagement. You have to define some sensible threshold and then proceed to apply it logically.
Really this discussion reminds me now similar discussions that I saw in Brazilian blogs where at some point people discuss if they agree or not with the application of affirmative action in Brazilian public Universities to help Black Brazilians. Many object fiercely such things exactly arguing, as you are doing here, that nobody can even define what a Black Brazilian is for legal purposes, because of centuries of mixing between races. But others argue – and I co-sign – that society operates already in a way that everybody knows who are those Black Brazilians, when it comes to discriminate them or act with less respect or even violence against them. These are exactly the people that an affirmative action program should try to benefit most and first.
In the case of reparations in the USA environment, I want to stress a few things (I’m not an American citizen, and therefore what I’ll say must be read as a suggestion or food for thought only):
– 1st)
A comprehensive concept of reparations vis-a-vis the Black American population should take in account that this specific segment of the American people, is descended from people who worked for generations as slaves (therefore without pay). So, they should receive something in return for what their ancestors did and went through in American soil. But, furthermore, even after the end of slavery, some of their ancestors and they, themselves, went through a period of racial discrimination that amounts to countless loss of opportunities to re-initiate their life and accumulate wealth. They should receive reparations also because of that.
If people ask who are those Blacks then, I would ask them in return if they cannot see who are the people that are discriminated most, who “are the last to be hired and the first to be fired“. Is that so difficult to identify them? Honestly, I don’t think so. The ones whose ancestors, at some point, were able to pass as White, leaving behind the slavery and racial discrimination against them, do not count because they have already received they share part of the American wealth by entering the White club, so to speak. So the use of an appropriate genetic threshold could be the sensible thing to do.
– 2nd)
I said earlier that newcomers from Black Africa should not be considered to apply for those exercise of reparations. We must not forget what the target population is: the descendants of Black slaves in the USA. So some provisions could be taken to assure that opportunists coming from other corners did not try to take what isn’t rightfully theirs. I don’t think that Barack Obama descended from slaves in any meaningful way. Certainly not from his father’s side and neither from his mother’s side. Even if his mother had some small Black admixture (like the first lady has some White ascendancy) this would be too small to reach the kind of threshold defined earlier.
Descendants of Black Europeans would be left out too.
The only outside Blacks who could be considered for reparations maybe (this is polemical indeed!) could be the today’s citizens of the Caribbean and a few Central and South American countries. The larger ones should try to address similar problems by themselves and not export them to the USA. I think that the descendants of Blacks slaves in small Caribbean, Central and South American countries could be accepted because the White system that brought suffering to their ancestors in the Americas is basically the same and interconnected.
I’m African and I think – something many people haven’t realized yet – that Africa is indeed the place where Black people have potentially the best opportunities to develop fully as individuals and as collective entities in the medium to long term. African people have territories and oft natural resources which they can mobilize to grow rapidly. Leadership problems can hinder that immense potential, but only for awhile. Certainly not forever!
So Africans should opt to find the solutions for their problems in Africa and not insist or attempt to eat the meal (reparations) that other Blacks with so much effort and through many obstacles (would) have secured for themselves.
Eventually Africans can think also about receiving reparations themselves. But this is in regard to their former colonial powers (European powers). And this is something that their own governments must discuss with those European powers, on their behalf. Hence, this is totally another issue.
What I’m saying has nothing to do with trying to damp international migrations. People can migrate as they like but should refrain to apply to certain rights in the receiving countries that only belong to certain classes of citizens of those countries.
Note: I think that so much is already said here about reparations for Black Americans in this thread. I think that another thread was created already where such issues were/are discussed.
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@ Jefe
If the Natives in Virginia still forbid members of their tribes from marrying Blacks, then I can see why the Black Congressional Caucus rejected recognizing them. Heck, even if they don’t, just knowing they used to will make black people think twice about empathizing with their plight.
Black people may be contributing to the oppression of native people in Virginia, but natives practiced the same racist law against black people as whites did. It seems spiteful, but history makes everyone bitter.
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@munubantu,
I was extremely busy with work last week and could not reply to you. Sorry for the delay.
First of all,
Yes, there is a whole post and thread devoted to that. If you want to discuss reparations to blacks only, it might be better to be put there.
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/ta-nehisi-coates-the-case-for-reparations/)
I would like to concentrate here more on the reparations to Native Americans, esp. those directly affected by Plecker in Virginia or in neighboring states that copied Virginia’s practices.
But a couple things should be addressed re: reparations for blacks that have implications for reparations for Native Americans.
This can be summarized as follows:
1. Basis for determining who is eligible for slavery reparations
Some suggestions offered (and this could be considered in the context of Native Americans also):
a. Genetic testing (your suggestion)
b. Self-reporting in the most recent Census (Abagond’s preferred method)
c. Verified descent from actual slaves (before 1865) (One I tend to favor, but recognize is also fraught with complications).
2. Reparations for discriminatory effects that followed slavery (eg, land loss, Jim Crow, voter disenfranchisement, mass incarceration, exclusion from programs that benefited white people)
3. Implications for Native Americans
1. Basis for determining who is eligible for slavery reparations
a. Genetic testing
Assuming that DNA ancestry to continent of origin is testable and that the government agrees to pay for mass testing, genetic thresholds could be set. Of course the threshold is arbitrary, but you suggested starting with 60%. This might capture over half the target recipients.
It will not identify:
i. persons who are descendant of immigrants post-slavery who are not descendant of US slaves, esp. the post-1965 African and West Indian brain drain.
ii. persons who are fully or almost fully descendant of slaves, but whose DNA is less than the threshold (regardless of where it is set).
iii. Persons who identify as black, and whose ancestors trace back to slavery days, but who are not actually of African descent.
It may catch (perhaps erroneously):
i. persons who do not identify as black, but whose DNA tests above the threshold.
ii. persons descendant of Free People of Colour, who were not enslaved during the Civil War.
iii. Persons descendant of slaves of non-Americans (eg, Cherokee Freedman, or slaves of foreigners)
These are not small matters.
Water Francis White, the past president of the NAACP was recorded to have 5 of his 32 great great great grandparents to be African, yielding about 16% African ancestry. yet, BOTH of his parents were born as slaves, so he is 100% descendant of slaves. Slavery reparations based on genetic thresholds will exclude millions who might be 100% descendant of US slaves and identify as black.
Homer Plessy was an octoroon (ie, 12.5% African ancestry) and of Creole descent, but nevertheless cemented the state sanction of racial segregation post-Civil War in Plessy v.Ferguson (Supreme Court case). He would be excluded by this method.
It would exclude people like Condoleeza Rice or Henry Louis Gates, Jr.as they might not meet the genetic threshold, but who have uncontestably been functioning as black people.
They would be denied reparations according to most genetic thresholds, yet, were fully affected by the implications of US slave society and history. If the threshold is dropped low enough to include them, then we would end up including millions of people who now identify as white or something else, eg, Native American. There is no way to divide the population according to genetic threshold.
It might also cause siblings to be treated differently. Say the threshold was 60%, and a pair of fraternal twins was tested. One came out as 62% African, the other as 58%. So, one would be accepted, one rejected. It is even possible that the one who is 58% African actually might “look” more African than his twin, but not test out that way.
b. Self-reporting in most recent Census
Abagond favors this he cites a precedence of identifying Japanese Americans via Census records to implement the WWII internment.
I think that this is problematic also as
i. We all know that Census records are often WRONG (or changed, just like what Plecker did)
People could also jockey their identity to get Federal or private benefits (and we have examples of blacks, American Indians, even Asians who do this today).
ii. The precedence is one for civil rights disenfranchisement, not monetary repararations.
To say that we can use government records to determine this is tantamount to suggesting that it was OK for the government to use Census records to determine where one could attend school, if one could vote, whom one could marry, etc. The better precedent for reparations is one that was used for actual reparations, ie, actual victims. The Japanese Internment reparation was provided only to actual residents of the internment camps. Unfortunately, we have no more pre-civil war slaves still alive today, so this method would no longer work.
iii. It would provide a windfall for people who identify as black, but who are not descendant of slaves (eg, children of post-1965 brain drain immigrants).
c. Verified descent from actual slaves (before 1865)
This method would catch people like Walter Francis White, who was 5/32 African, but 100% descendant from Civil War slaves.
It might not catch Homer Plessy as he was creole.
After 6-8 generations of post-Civil war intermarrying, we could now find people, say, who had 23 of 32 great great great grandparents who were slaves. Should they be eligible? We could set a threshold here, say, at least 15 of one’s 32 great great great grandparents had to be slaves during or before the Civil War. It would catch Walter White, and people who might be mixed slave-descendant and post-Civil War immigrant blacks, and even some Blasians and post-Loving biracials. It would exclude Obama, Tiger Woods, children of post-1965 African or West Indian immigrants, etc.
We could apply the fractional amounts to determine fractional benefits. For example, one who had who had 23 of 32 great great great grandparents who were slaves could receive 23/32 of the full benefit.
It might include the few people who are not African at all, but descendant of slaves. I read last year of a man who was of Asian Indian descent who had thought he was black, but only learned that he was not African after an DNA test. Still, if his great great grandparents were slaves, he might still qualify.
It would include some of the triracial Native Americans but exclude most of them.
It would still include a large number of people who identify today as white.
Problems:
1. Reparations for Slavery are for conditions affecting victims post-Civil War
(and thus affected those who were not descendant of slaves, or at least not fully). What about them?
2. Records
We all know that Census records are often wrong or even lost.
It would end up as a dead end for millions of people.
3. Fairness
This would definitely been seen as not fair, as this has only indirect implication regarding how an individual is affected today.
2. Reparations for discriminatory effects that followed slavery (eg, Jim Crow, voter disenfranchisement, mass incarceration, exclusion from programs that benefited white people)
If you look at Coates’s arguments, his argument is largely not based on the unpaid wages during slavery, but the post-Civil War effects on black society, many of which affected people who were not descendant of slaves. Should we then even be calling it a reparation for slavery? Should it be a reparation for Jim Crow? or for voter disenfranchisement?
Many of those disenfranchisements affected people who were not “black” per se, but “colored”. Some of the civil rights disenfranchisement may even include matters that affected others more than blacks, eg., segregation as “colored” people, expulsion pogroms, aliens ineligible for citizenship, etc. In the case of Virginia Indians, it could include the removal of their tribal identities and their land rights and access to an education.
If we say it is for slavery, but not about slavery, then what is it about?
3. Implications for Native Americans
The main reason for bringing up reparations for blacks, esp. in connection with slavery is to help frame how we look at reparations for Native Americans.
Reparations could include:
1. Federal Recognition (and the rights and benefits that come with that)
2. Land (which includes actual land (eg, reservations) as well as land rights, eg, hunting and fishing rights, ceremonial rights)
3. Monetary Payments (for land or assets seized by the government or for the economic effects of broken treaties)
4. Cultural Support (to restore any of the cultural heritage, language, ancestral human remains, artifacts, traditional spiritual grounds, etc. destroyed by governments, or the destruction of which was sanctioned by governments)
This differs from reparations for slavery which are almost always discussed in monetary terms to individuals. However, if reparations were about monetary compensation for being labeled “colored” during Jim Crow (instead of unpaid wages during slavery) and suffering those effects, then those reparations would go to many individual Native Americans as well as some Asians and Latinos.
It also differs from slavery reparations, as most of it would go to the tribe as a whole, not to individuals.
So determining who is eligible, and who is not is altogether a different matter than it is for blacks. Genetic testing has never been suggested (as tribal identity is not based on genes), and it also would not really work either, as we would never be able to set a threshold that would be able to be applied. Some of the most ardent Indian tribe members who identity fully with a tribe might be, say, 1/4 Native American, 3/8 white and 3/8 black. Another person with the same racial mix might identify as black or as white or even something else altogether.
The Dawes Act was used in the past to use blood quantum to determining eligibility for federal benefits. But, in retrospect, one of the main purposes of that was to determine who or who was not white during Jim Crow (and to find excuses to remove or assimilate Native Americans). In more recent years, the onus was shifted to the tribe to determine who was eligible for tribal membership (which it should). However, most tribes have also incorporated blood quantum in their membership rules. This departs from the more traditional way of determining relationship based on kinship.
The objections from Federal and State Governments and from lobbying groups have focused on how tribes have non-authentic people on their member rolls. In particular, Stand Up California lodged the appeal to Federal Recognition of the Pamunkey in Virginia (as well as the other Chesapeake Bay tribes) based on the fact that the ancestors of some of the members were recorded as “COLORED”, and therefore, they are African-American and not authentically Indian. It should be obvious that this can be traced directly back to Plecker and his ilk.
But we even find State Governments like New Jersey which insist that their tribes do not exist. I cannot help but think that they are being pushed into this corner by white corporate interests (such as Casinos).
This is straying off topic, but this was also mentioned in the Mercutio Southall thread. Some people think that certain groups of Americans (eg, Asians or Jews) can go back to their “homelands” whereas blacks cannot. My response to that is that the homelands of Asian and Jewish Americans are now the USA, the same as for blacks, and the fact that some might go overseas to develop their lives is equally open to black Americans. I do think that black Americans should consider seeking opportunities overseas as some other Americans have done. That option is open to everyone.
The one that this option spits the most in the face is that of Native Americans. I would not advocate that they should consider developing their lives overseas as a response to oppression at home – the very act of leaving their homeland to develop themselves overseas is an act of self-destruction. In fact, developing oneself overseas works best for people who see themselves as perpetual transplants, who don’t see themselves as from a particular homeland, but who are willing to make a new homeland anywhere they go.
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@Joan
They gave up prohibiting their members from marrying blacks many decades ago, but this is a very common argument Blacks use to deny recognition of Virginia tribes, actually not only Virginia tribes, but the East Coast and SE region and the nation as a whole. It is very understandable why such an objection is raised, but it should also be put in context.
Regarding the Pamunkey (and other Chesapeake Bay region tribes), they passed tribal rules after the Racial Integrity Act to prohibit tribal members from marrying blacks. Those that did marry blacks would be expelled from the tribe. The tribes have abolished these rules, and have not practised them for decades, but they used to be on their tribal rules, even overlapping with the periods when they began to apply for Federal recognition.
However, it should be clear that it was in response to Plecker, not to keep the purity of any “Indian race” as they had been intermarrying with blacks and whites for centuries. Some even married blacks in the late 19th century when they were sent to be educated together at colored schools or training institutes. Originally there was no tribal objection to marrying blacks.
American Indians who married blacks not only threatened their own individual racial labeling, but also those of the rest of the tribe. Plecker was already intent on trying to get them all labeled as colored anyway. If even a single one married black, the State of Virginia could easily respond by saying that it is impossible to determine which Indians were part black and which were not as the whole tribe was somehow “mongrelized”. This would lead to the dissolution of any recogntion of the Indian tribes altogether. In fact, the tribes that did not set up some kind of self-segregation and rules against marrying blacks are NO LONGER with us today. Tribes like the Pamunkey and the other extant Virginia tribes knew that their entire tribal integrity depended on it.
So, if the choice was to maintain tribal integrity or not, even if the choice required setting up rules against marrying blacks, what would you do? It is not an easy choice as many of those tribes did have relatives that identified as black.
Put another way, Blacks object to recognize them because they had rules against marrying blacks. Whites object to recognize them because some of them had ancestors who were “colored”. It is a lose-lose situation, but if they had not had some kind of rule separating themselves from blacks, they would long be gone.
Maryland tribes had no formal recognition at all in the early 1900s, but as the colour line hardened there, they started to try to prevent members in their communities from marrying blacks in the 1930s-40s and segregated themselves from both blacks and whites. This is despite the fact that many members, if not the majority, did have at least some African ancestry.
When Chinese in Mississippi set up their own schools and churches in Mississippi in response to being kicked out of white institutions by Jim Crow, they did not invite their family members who had married blacks or who were part black to attend them. Because if any did, the state would force them to close all their schools and churches, prevent them from attaining service at white hospitals and make them attend everything with the rest of the colored people. If some married black (or even triracial black/white/Indian, as was common in Mississippi), how could you tell which Chinese were part black and which were not? Prior to the 1920s, the majority of them who got married at all, married “colored” people. That came to a screeching halt.
Yes, this was an ugly effect of Jim Crow. It caused 3rd race people to segregate themselves from both whites and blacks. Whites have been trying to obliterate Natives for over 400 years, and succeeded to obliterate most of them. Once they lost their land, what can they do? They settle into their own communities as landless tenants and keep whatever remnant culture they can. Each tribe only had small numbers of families, so to avoid marrying their first cousins, some had to marry blacks or whites (more often, mulattoes or other Free People of Color). Plecker had them relabeled as colored. Those that did not fight back are now gone. Simple.
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@ Jefe
I get that it was self-preservation, but isn’t that the argument against race-mixing as a whole? Some white people think breeding with black people (and other minorities) will lead to the disappearance of the white race. Some black people in America think the same thing which is why many now want to stop labeling mixed people as black.
It seems “racist”, but maybe they all have a point.
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@Joan,
You are thinking in terms of race. I don’t think the actions by the Virginia tribes had anything to do with race preservation. At least not back then. Until then they had no major qualms about “breeding” with blacks (or whites for that matter).
However, the tribes that did not eventually make some rules about marriage did in fact disappear in Virginia. I don’t mean disappear racially, but as a tribal identity. That is exactly what the state and US governments wanted to accomplish and they succeeded with the help of Walter Plecker. It is still the aim of the government today.
We all know about the One Drop Rule used during Jim Crow, but how much have we really thought about how it is used today (even in our subconscious)? My impression is that whites still practice it, but they are not as strict as early-mid 20th century, but some blacks are perhaps even more wedded to applying the one drop rule principle even more than some whites. I think that hails from something that was common during Jim Crow. Blacks were more accepting of mixed race people and usually welcomed them, as long as they agreed to identify as black. I think this might be another reason why Virginia Indian tribes (and others in the East coast and South) encounter some hostility from blacks (other than due to their past marriage bans). Some blacks are uncomfortable with people who are part black yet insist that they are Indian.
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“but how much have we really thought about how it is used today (even in our subconscious)? My impression is that whites still practice it, but they are not as strict as early-mid 20th century”—That is a very good question and from my standpoint….not much at all. I have seen blacks complain about how not black a person is based on mixtures, but have not purely analyzed or drew clear comparisons of the one drop rule then and now.
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@Sharina,
Please let me know if you run into any studies or analysis on the evolution of the one-drop rule post Jim Crow and post Loving. That would be interesting. Of course, officially, it no longer exists. We have a new set of racial categories that did not exist in 1965 and people can now check whatever boxes they want (not saying that the census bureau or a university won’t change them).
My humble take (just thinking aloud, not based on any deep research):
Whites still practice it, but not as strictly, ie, you could be 3/16 black or 1/4 Asian and be accepted as white as long as you pledge allegiance to the white club (just like how you could be 1/16 Indian and still be white in Virginia during Jim Crow).
Blacks actually are perhaps more committed to maintain it more than whites (or at least seem that way). Many do not understand how a person could be part black and not identify as such or pretend that they are something other than black. Of course, before 1970, they had no other choice but to identify as “colored”. I think the relaxation of the one drop rule and the growth of multiracial identity spells more perils to the maintenance of black identity than for any of the other racial groups.
Most Latinos are mixed race, or at least have relatives that are mixed race, but many still believe in the idea that “white” is better. Colourism within Latin American communities as well as pressure from race conscious US society might force them to segregate themselves into those that are more “white” (according to the new relaxed White One drop rule) and those that are not. This is why the next expansion of whiteness in the USA will likely be mostly “white” Latinos, as well as those who are at least 3/4 European and pledge allegiance to whiteness (see “white” above). So, I think Latinos will eventually split up into “white” and “brown”, and the white ones will join the rest of white America.
Asians, esp. East Asians (ie, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese) and maybe also Vietnamese are even much more conscious about racial purity than whites. Even, say, 3/4 or 7/8 Asians who can easily pass as Asian are regarded as “mixed” and not really Asian by other Asians unless they deny their other ancestry, or at least not talk about it (similar to how light skinned blacks passed as white last century by hiding or denying their non-European heritage). They might reclaim you if you are famous (eg, Bruce Lee). Yet we had a high out-marriage rate 1980s to 2000s (maybe is no longer growing). This is one reason why we had a Hapa movement since the 1990s. However, as we see more Asians intermarry with other Asians outside their ethnic group, as well as with Eurasians and Blasians, we might see this relax after 1-2 more generations and we might end up with a pan-Asian American consciousness for people of mostly multi-ethnic Asian descent who neither identify with Asia nor with being white.
Native Americans are just trying to survive and will play what racial game is necessary to do that. They might put pressure on their members to marry within their group to retain tribal integrity, but it is more about tribal integrity than racial integrity (as many Native Americans are rather mixed). However, some tribes still have a thing about marrying blacks. I am not sure if it is a legacy of losing their tribal identity by marrying blacks under Jim Crow, or because it is a way of concentrating the benefits of Federal recognition into a smaller pool of hands (by finding excuses to expel members). It is probably a combination of both.
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@ jefe
I’ve read with attention your last comments and want to say a few things as a reply:
1.
The question of defining appropriate criteria to identify rightfully recipients of reparations of slavery inside the Black American population is complex. Any method chosen will inevitably be incomplete and even riddle with contradictions. I’ve already recognized that, but I’m not convinced that it would not be workable given the necessary political will from different quarters. Probably a combination of genetic based methods, genealogy (ancestry) based ones and self-reporting ones could accomplish the optimum in that regard.
2.
The last comment from Joan:
I get that it was self-preservation, but isn’t that the argument against race-mixing as a whole?
and
It seems “racist”, but maybe they all have a point.
prompted me to go back to my original question above in this thread, namely:
Do you consider that said Native Americans and Chinese Americans who had those specific reasons to distance themselves from Blacks, have turned themselves anti-Black racists (by induction, so to speak) or do you believe that they remained non-racist nevertheless.
You have said many things that help contextualize things, understand motives of both Native Americans and Chinese Americans to behave as they do today, but I feel that you avoided to answer squarely, if you think that one can already say that they are, indeed, anti-Black racistsor not.
As a comparison let’s suppose that somebody explains to us that Adolf Hitler when young went to a Jewish prostitute, later became ill of some venereal disease and, after the event, developed a hate towards Jews in general. Did said explanation, “explains away” the racism in subsequent attitudes of Hitler regarding Jews, or, on the contrary, they merely identify the trigger of his racism without negating it?
Returning to the attitudes of said Native Americans (I’m fully aware that those attitudes vary regionally, for sure, in a country the size of the USA) if they, as a rule, avoid mixing with Blacks now (even if some have some past Black admixture!) do Blacks not have a reason to be suspicious of them? By the way, I don’t think that most Blacks know about all this history that you told us here (Most people live and don’t think much about why things around them are what they are!).
If the son of a Black man, let’s say Jesse Jackson’s son, fall in love with an Indian girl, the girl tries to present him to her family and there, they discover that her parents firmly oppose the continuation of their relationship, what do you think that Jesse Jackson and his son will think later when they try to process the story? And, furthermore, what they will think when later they discover that the girl later chose another boyfriend, this time a White one, and the parents didn’t object to that?
I saw the picture of the Burns Paiutes tribe thread and some, if not many, of the persons there looked White to me. Maybe my criteria to identify what a White person looks like is different from the one used in that part of the world. Or maybe, not every person in that picture is a member of the tribe, but mere friends of it. I don’t know, but I saw, many years ago, a source speaking about rates of exogamy in America and said source was quite clear that not few Indian tribes are champions of it (i.e.: many Indians marry outside their clan) when compared to other ethnic groups in that society. But if you says that some (or many?) of those tribes, actually, avoid mixing with Blacks, I must conclude that they like to marry outside their group but only with Whites (or better: preferably not with Blacks)
If this true can you see how a Black person and the Black community can feel regarding those attitudes?
Attitudes of those Native Indians could have been forced/shaped by outside forces in the past and even partially in the present days (Plecker, USA government, etc) but I really doubt that they haven’t become part of their way of feeling and thinking.
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@munubantu,
I did not try at all to avoid your question, but tried to address your question by saying that
– it is not an either-or situation, ie, anti-black racist or completely non-racist. That kind of dichotomous thinking confounds white attitudes about racism too. The best way to put it is there are some shared interests on which they can collaborate, and not everyone is going to feel the same anyhow. It is more like how countries might form alliances based on some shared interest, yet still have disputes in other areas. Not everyone living in those countries will agree with what their governments do.
In the past, for example, we saw Filipinos initiate the Chicano movement in the 1960s, or Asian Americans join militant black groups. We can trace that to shared interests. I can’t help but think that whites (esp. Republican sympathizers) invented stuff like the Model Minority stereotype, or blaming Asian quotas on Affirmative Action for Blacks and Latinos in an effort to dismantle those potential alliances. Liberal whites try to dismantle those potential alliances by pushing colour-blindness.
– fighting racism is not only about fighting forces hostile to black interests. How do blacks respond to anti-Indian racism, anti-Asian, anti-Muslim and anti-Latino racism in the USA? In fact, historical evidence in the USA has shown that sometimes blacks have treated the non-black non-white groups as surrogate whites, ie, instead of targeting the reaction to the white oppressors, they turn it towards other groups, esp. those who are perceived not to align completely with black interests.
Do you know of cases where blacks have joined forces to fight racism directed at non-black groups? Abagond is one of the few that has put an effort into at least understanding it. I am not saying it is easy either, but it certainly doesn’t happen much.
Re: Native Americans, you will undoubtedly find more European ancestry mixed in in places like Oregon or New England. You will find Chinese ancestry mixed in some tribes in British Colombia. You will find some Filipino ancestry is some of the ones in California and Mexican mixed in the ones in the SW. In the mid-atlantic and southeast, you will find both black and white ancestry in the Native Americans. In Oklahoma, you will find many combinations.
As you migrate further away from the deep south, you will find more European ancestry in the black population as well.
re: endogamy, it was definitely promoted during the Jim Crow era, and shortly afterwards, generally as a buffer against Jim Crow, but it certainly is not very strong today. Rates of exogamy are now high, and many Native American tribes might disappear through assimilation.
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I’d love to know about Mr. Plecker’s political affiliation. Was he a Republican or a Democrat?
SB
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Some positive news for 6 more state recognized tribes in Viriginia.
If they are successful, they would join the Pamunkey who were federally recognized in July 2015. Hopefully they will cross the hurdles the Pamunkey faced more easily.
Kaine and Warner push for federal recognition for 6 Virginia tribes
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/kaine-and-warner-push-for-federal-recognition-for-6-virginia-tribes/2017/03/20/cf7cb8ba-0d9f-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html
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