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Housekeeping:
Agenda:
Defining Race, Sex, and Citizenship in the Americas
American identity was defined with WORDS. Imagination is so important to our concepts of national identity because the United States began with an idea: "We believe that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
This was an unprecedented move!
Now, making this statement did not make it SO, but making this statement has historically allowed American citizens to imagine and pursue a world where these unalienable rights are protected and ensured for everyone!
Similarly, what we imagine in fiction - or fail to imagine - shapes the real possibilities in our world. The failure of imagination is a dangerous thing. BOTH stories and definitions shape what is possible! Before we can look at the stories generated by centuries of ethnic authors, we need to look at the definitions of the words related to race, sex, and citizenship in ethnic literature.
Building Blocks of Social Constructions
"Social Construction of Race".pdf
Definitions are the building blocks of social constructions. Social constructions - such as race and citizenship - are not things that occur naturally. In fact, it could be argued that "race" and "citizenship" have real consequences but are not "real" in the same way that gravity or sunshine or humanity is "real." Words create these social categories and shape our ideas about them.
Group Work:
What did our reading today say about the social construction of race? Take five minutes to list the five main points of the article.
Legal Definitions: Anti-Miscegination Laws and the Creation of Race in the United States
Race, as we understand it in the United States today, was created with a legal definition in the 1690s to prevent revolts.
Slavery and Indentured Servants
Cumberland Landing. James Gibson, photographer, 1862. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-DIG-cwpb-01005 (b&w copy scan).
bibliographic record |
Before the Civil War, slaves and indentured servants were considered personal property, and they or their descendants could be sold or inherited like any other personalty. Like other property, human chattel was governed largely by laws of individual states. Generally, these laws concerning indentured servants and slaves did not differentiate between the sexes. Some, however, addressed only women. Regardless of their country of origin, many early immigrants were indentured servants, people who sold their labor in exchange for passage to the New World and housing on their arrival. Initially, most laws passed concerned indentured servants, but around the middle of the seventeenth century, colonial laws began to reflect differences between indentured servants and slaves. More important, the laws began to differentiate between races: the association of “servitude for natural life” with people of African descent became common. Re Negro John Punch (1640) was one of the early cases that made a racial distinction among indentured servants.35
Virginia was one of the first states to acknowledge slavery in its laws, initially enacting such a law in 1661.36 The following year, Virginia passed two laws that pertained solely to women who were slaves or indentured servants and to their illegitimate children. Women servants who produced children by their masters could be punished by having to do two years of servitude with the churchwardens after the expiration of the term with their masters. The law reads, “that each woman servant gott with child by her master shall after her time by indenture or custome is expired be by the churchwardens of the parish where she lived when she was brought to bed of such bastard, sold for two years. . . .”37
The second law, which concerned the birthright of children born of “Negro” or mulatto women, would have a profound effect on the continuance of slavery, especially after the slave trade was abolished—and on the future descendants of these women. Great Britain had a very structured primogeniture system, under which children always claimed lineage through the father, even those born without the legitimacy of marriage. Virginia was one of the first colonies to legislate a change: Act XII
Negro womens children to serve according to the condition of the mother.
WHEREAS some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a Negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any christian shall committ ffornication with a Negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the ffines imposed by the former act.38
Most slave colonies or states enacted similar laws. After the slave trade officially ended, many slave owners tried to ensure that sufficient numbers of slaves were available to work their plantations. Slave women of childbearing age became more valuable. There are a number of court cases concerning slave women who either killed their masters who forced them to have sexual relations or killed the children rather than have the children enslaved.39
Miscegenation laws (or anti-miscegenation laws), forbidding marriage between races, were prevalent in the South and the West. Because English masters had had little regard for indentured servants of non-Anglo ethnic groups, they allowed and sometimes encouraged commingling of their servants. Being seen in public or bringing legitimacy to these relations, however, was not lawful. This is evinced by a court decision from 1630, the first court decision in which a Negro woman and a white man figured prominently. Re Davis (1630) concerned sexual relations between them, the decision stating, “Hugh Davis to be soundly whipt . . . for abusing himself to the dishonor of God and shame of Christianity by defiling his body in lying with a Negro, which fault he is to actk. next sabbath day.”40
Virginia passed its first miscegenation law in 1691 as part of “An act for suppressing outlying Slaves.”
And for prevention of that abominable mixture and spurious issue which hereafter may encrease in this dominion, as well by negroes, mulattoes, and Indians intermarrying with English, or other white women, as by their unlawfull accompanying with one another, Be it enacted by the authoritie aforesaid, and it is hereby enacted, that for the time to come, whatsoever English or other white man or woman being free shall intermarry with a negroe, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever. . . .41
Another section of the law closed the loophole created by the 1662 birthright law, which mandated that children born of a free white mother and Negro father were technically free. This amendment stated that a free white woman who had a bastard child by a Negro or mulatto man had to pay fifteen pounds sterling within one month of the birth. If she could not pay, she would become an indentured servant for five years. Whether or not the fine was paid, however, the child would be bound in service for thirty years.
The laws that restricted slaves or indentured servants generally addressed the owners and penalized them for breaking the law. Laws governing slaves allowed masters to beat or kill them under certain circumstances. Nor could they go to court to seek redress. A person of color was not permitted to testify against a white Christian, as illustrated by the 1717 Maryland law:
II. Be it Therefore Enacted, by the right honourable the Lord Proprietary, by and with the advice and consent of his Lordship's Governor, and the Upper and Lower Houses of Assembly, and by the authority of the same, That from and after the end of this present session of assembly, no Negro or mulatto slave, free Negro, or mulatto born of a white woman, during his time of servitude by law, or any Indian slave, or free Indian natives, of this or the neighbouring provinces, be admitted and received as good and valid evidence in law, in any matter or thing whatsoever depending before any court of record, or before any magistrate within this province, wherein any christian white person is concerned.42
Against these overwhelming restrictions, there were a number of court cases in which slaves filed suit seeking their freedom or freed Negroes claimed property that had been inherited from their former owners. Elizabeth Freeman (1732/ 34-1829), a slave, presented her case for freedom in a Massachusetts court pro se in 1783 and won.43 In addition there were cases where the slave or freed person was the defendant; Celia, a Slave is a narrative account of such a trial in Missouri in 1855.44
Retrieved from the Library of Congress: American Memory Project.
These laws will not be ultimately overturned until Loving v. Virginia.
Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857): Constructing Citizenship with the Exclusion of Race
This Supreme Court case further ruled that African-Americans could never become U.S. citizens. Thus race becomes one of the criteria in the definition of citizenship: social construction stacked upon social construction.
Literary Definitions in Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the most popular novel of the nineteenth-century in the English language. The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law inspired Stowe's work. However, her good intentions were not as far reaching or long lived as some of her racists or racialist ideas (these are two good terms for the definition project).
In Uncle Tom's Cabin, there is a cankerous old white woman from Massachusetts (like Stowe - only MA character in the text, to my recollection). This character is a staunch abolitionist, but she won't touch Topsy (the African-American child). Topsy calls her out on her hypocrisy and she admits it. She is a clearly flawed (but developing) character. I wonder if Stowe would identify with that character!
One of the central problems with Uncle Tom's Cabin is Stowe's racism (or racial essentialism) and her white perspective. Just like these posters she, she speaks about a group with which she has little contact (and little identification).
Racial Essentialism
The term racial essentialism means defining races as having essential characteristics. In your passage from Stowe, the interracial character George Harris becomes the mouthpiece for racial essentialism. How does George Harris define race?
Group Work: Literary Definitions
Break into groups of three and find PASSAGES from the text where Stowe (through characters like George Harris) articulates her racial essentialism. Mark those passages and be prepared to share one with the class.
Race, Definitions, and Hate Language
The term mulatto originated in the Spanish and Portuguese language, evolving from the term mula, which means mule. A term once used to describe an animal bred of two distinct species transformed into a term denoting an individual’s interracial heritage; literally “a person having one white and one black parent” (OED Online). As the child of a white man and a black woman, frequently a slave-owner and a slave, the mulatto was often born of rape and coercion, as seen in such texts as In Miserable Slavery (1999) by Douglas Hall (148). Thus the term mulatto is part of a history of racial exploitation that is permeated with anxieties about establishing and maintaining racial categories in the various American slave societies.
In Mulatto America (2003), Stephan Talty notes: “[f]or whites, then, black men and women in chains were as much a part of the southern landscape as magnolia trees or livestock. But lighter-skinned captives stood out; they could disrupt slave auctions and unnerve an entire town.” Interracial individuals could “unnerve” a system of slavery with their liminality by demonstrating that the racial categories of black and white are not exclusive.
Discussion Questions:
- How do interracial individuals break the category of race defined in the United States?
- Why are these characters threatening to the idea of the United States even in fiction?
- Stowe cannot imagine a United States with interracial individuals. How does this relate back to definitions - both legal and literary?
Thinking Beyond Remembering
ThinkWell-w-Money-2014.FINAL_.pdf
A great deal of the work you do through high school depends upon memorization (or remembering). Memorization will get you a 50-60% on my exams and a 0% on my papers. In college (and in life) you need to think beyond remembering. Let's go through this chart together and see how we can apply this approach to the material we've learned so far.
International Power of Everyone's Favorite Protest Novel: Stowe on Stage
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Stowe traveled around the world as a protest drama. As a drama, it took on a new life. But it also took on new stereotypes. American dramas of Uncle Tom's Cabin often became "black-face" (i.e. racist) comedies, especially after the Civil War.
We're beginning our study of ethnic literature with Stowe because she was incredibly influential. Her novel traveled around the world, and it carried her racial essentialism with it.
The stereotype of the mulatto (or tragic mulatto) is a fiction created primarily by white authors, such as Stowe. This is why this course is important! It is important to hear what diverse authors say about their own experiences and how diverse individuals define themselves.
In a democracy of WORDS, it is important that everyone have an equal VOICE!
What's Coming Around the Bend:
- Read Louis Sachar's Holes for Thursday.
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