Foundational Lesson
Power and Hegemony - What is power? Who has it and who doesn’t? How does one get it?
Lessons on Race
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What is race? How do we know someone’s race? How does the government know our race?
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Is race biological? - “The Power of an Illusion”
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What’s the (brief) history of race and racism in the US? – Colonial America
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Legalizing Racism, Creating Race in Legal Writing
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Who’s a citizen? Who is White? - US Census Then and Now, Here and There
Foundational Lesson
Power - What is power? Who has it and who doesn’t? How does one get it?
Constructing Power in Sculptures - Using tables, chairs, and other objects, students create sculptures to represent power. For example, one student might place two chair on a table and a water bottle on top of one of the chairs, and the class examines and discusses the sculpture, projecting their own ideas of a power onto it. After sufficient discussion, the sculptor would explain the meaning behind their work, answering the questions: “Where is the power in this model? Who has it and who doesn’t? Where do such models of power exist in the real world?” As different students create their sculptures for the class to analyze, discussion will quickly turn from abstract notions of power to examples of power dynamics in the real world, and no doubt race and racism will be introduced. We conclude this activity by raising the question, “Is power a good thing or a bad thing? Can it be both?”
Follow My Hand: Playing with Hegemony - In this activity students are in pairs and take turns leading their partner, and being led, by following their partner’s hand with their own face. While the activity itself is entertaining and fun for students, it is in the debrief that the real learning occurs. The question is posed: “Which role—the leader or the follower—has more power?” While students are at first likely to respond that the leader has more power, with prodding, students realize that the follower actually has quite a bit of latent power in their ability to refuse, to not follow the hand, to not play the game. While in reality, we may not be able to refuse the hegemonic game of racist (or for that matter, sexist, ableist, classist, etc.) domination and subordination, it is in our learning of these paradigms as not natural, but rather constructed for the purpose of privileging some at the expense of oppressing others, that we begin to refuse the game. Furthermore, by studying the historic and ongoing movements to resist racism by people of color and some whites, we find examples of people refusing the game, serving as our own guide for resistance. This activity is done prior to the study -isms/-phobias, namely racism, as a basis for viewing all of these histories and their implications as constructions rather than innate conditions, and to remember—and seek—the resistance that is a response to oppression.
Lessons on Race
1. What is race? How do we know someone’s race? How does the government determine and regulate our race?
Enduring understandings:
Race is a complicated and multifaceted concept that takes shape through a number of different factors, including physical traits, ancestry, culture, and lived experience, all of which play a role in our own racial identity, our assumptions/understandings of others’ races, and finally, the governments’ classification of their citizens’ races.
Activity:
Students will work in groups of 2 – 4 to create a concept map that answers the question: what are all the ways you know your own race and another person’s race. Students will share out to create a class concept map on race. Examples of people who defy certain racial definitions (whether physical, ancestral, cultural, or experiential) will be shown to emphasize the importance of these various factors functioning together to contribute to one’s racial identity. Concluding this activity, the question of how the government defines its citizens’ races will be raised, and while no clear answer will be offered, the discussion should conclude with the fact that the government’s definition has changed significantly throughout history and across borders, and its attempt to regulate race is done so through codes, laws, acts, and the US census.
Physical Traits:
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Skin color
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Eye color
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Hair texture
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Different facial features
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Different body features
Ancestry
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Family (parents, grandparents, siblings, etc.)
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History of enslavement
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History of displacement
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History of profit from others’ enslavement or displacement
Culture
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How languages and vernaculars in which one speaks
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How one dresses
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Who one is friends with/in relationship with
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The interests one has
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The foods one eats
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Where someone was raised and who they were raised by
Lived Experience
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Discrimination (lack of opportunities/access)
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Micro-aggressions
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Privileges
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Narratives about people (history, media, culture)
How does the government/state determine and regulate people’s race?
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US Census
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US Constitution
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Court Decisions
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Codes/Laws/Acts
2. Is race biological? - “The Power of an Illusion”
Enduring understandings
: Though it was once claimed to be, race actually has no biological basis, but rather is a social idea that uses skin color to assign meaning, divide people, and to legitimate enslaving blacks.
In the 1700s, scientists and anthropologists began working on a project to classify humans into different species, and some began to pose pseudo-scientific theories of biological differences among races, and with it a theory of racial inferiority and superiority. Many scientists considered these theories strictly speculative, attributing differences in skin color and other phenotypical traits to climate alone, and concluding there was otherwise racial equality. American scientist Samuel Stanhope Smith stated that: “‘It is impossible to draw the line precisely between the various races of men,’ he says, ‘or even to enumerate them with certainty,’ and it would be ‘a useless labor to attempt it.’”
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Despite the overall scientific skepticism around innate racial differences, in 1786 in his
Notes on Virginia,
Thomas Jefferson made a different claim: “I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and of mind”
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While the nineteenth century saw the rejection of the polygenist theory, the notion of a single human species accomplished little in debunking the myth of racial superiority. In fact, this era saw the rise of various evolutionary theories and psuedo-scientific studies that served to solidify claims of racial difference and hierarchy, which deemed nonwhites as inferior. Racialized studies of crania, brains, hair, and even body lice—though admittedly, even by the scientists themselves, deemed inconclusive and fallacious—took hold, fueling the racism and legitimation of domination, which had spawned the pseudo-scientific studies in the first place. In particular, in this highly politicized antebellum period when slave revolts and abolition was on the rise, these scientists were central to the protection of white supremacy. That is, these scientists saved this new nation founded upon “all men are created equal” from the hypocrisy of admitting that those they had enslaved were actually human, and thus they legitimated the dehumanization and enslavement of black people. These theories of the racial superiority of whites, though again entirely false, still took hold throughout and beyond the era of slavery in the US. That is, while Reconstruction and the Progressive Era are remembered as times for advancement in thought about race, they occurred amidst the American eugenics movement, which sought to perpetuate ideas of biological racial inferiority.
However, the movement against this thinking was also gaining influence, lead by anthropologists and historians like Franz Boas and W.E.B. Du Bois. Of the former, Lee D. Baker writes:
He effectively directed the anthropology of race away from theories of evolution and guided it to a consensus that African Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color were not racially inferior and possessed unique and historically specific cultures. These cultures, he argued, were particular to geographic areas, local histories, and traditions. Furthermore, one could not project a value of higher or lower on these cultures—cultures were relative.
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Similarly, in 1896, Du Bois conducted significant research and produced a 400-page report in which he “utilized innovative sociological and anthropological methods to demonstrate that poverty, segregation, and lack of health care, not racial inferiority, disposition toward criminal activity, and bad morals were the root causes of Negro degradation.”
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While it took some time for the ideas of these prescient thinkers to take root, their leadership in this movement was critical, and the victory over Nazi Germany was the nail in the coffin of the eugenics movement and notions of biological racial hierarchies.
Despite this history, many continue to believe that race is a biological phenomenon. Thus, the next activity is meant to anchor our studies in not only debunking this myth, but also in the essential act of naming our own assumptions and misconceptions. Perhaps even more importantly, though, is the study of a history and a society in which pseudo-science can be developed and deployed to serve the purposes of white supremacy.
Activity
: Students are asked to stand next to the person or people with whom they believe they have most in common, biologically or genetically. Students are likely to stand next to people whose skin color or race they share, and when asked why they chose to stand where they did, they answer simply and clearly: “Because we are the same race.” This is the essential starting point: that many people believe this pseudo-scientific myth, and that indeed there is a reason—a history—that convinces people of it. The following quotes will be read and posted for students to hear and read, and after each quote they will be given time to write or draw as a personal reflection, and then to discuss with partners.
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“Humans are 99.9% identical genetically.”
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“We can’t find any genetic markers that are in everybody of a particular race and in nobody of some other race. We can’t find any genetic markers that define race.
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“There’s as much or more diversity and genetic difference within any racial group as there is between people of different racial groups.”
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“Human populations have not been isolated from each other long enough to evolve into separate sub-species. There just hasn’t been time for the development of much genetic variation except that which regulates some very superficial features like skin color and hair form.”
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“Race was never just a matter of how you look. It’s about how people assign meaning to how you look.”
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“We don’t realize that race is an idea that evolves over time, that it has a history, that it is constructed by a society to further certain political and economic goals.”
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3. What is the history of race and racism in the US? - European Colonization of the Americas
Enduring understandings:
The idea of race and racism as we know it has not always existed, and is not natural. It came into existence in a particular context—namely Colonial America—and toward a specific purpose that would serve the interests of owning class Europeans.
“Three separate histories collided in the Western Hemisphere half a millennium ago, and American history began.”
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These three separate histories of Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans are a necessary foundation to the story of the establishment of the United States. However, to reduce the histories and cultures to only three is limiting, as they were actually far more vast and nuanced than three distinct cultures or histories. This section is intended to illustrate to students, who were the many different people that formed the foundation of what is now America, how did their treatment of one another vary and change over time and across space, how did those enslaved and indentured resist, and how did those in power create laws to divide and conquer. Finally, how did this process and motives of profit all function together to create the concepts of racism and race?
Only a short while prior to the English invasion of North America, in the mid-sixteenth century, the English began to colonize Ireland. In
A Different Mirror,
the English views of the Irish are depicted:
The Irish were described as lazy, “naturally” given to “idleness” and unwilling to work for “their own bread.” Dominated by “innate sloth,” “loose, barbarous and most wicked,” and living “like beasts,” they were also thought to be criminals, an underclass inclined to steal from the English. The colonists complained that the Irish savages were not satisfied with the “fruit of the natural unlaboured earth” and therefore continually “invaded the fertile possessions” of the “English Pale”
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To maintain this power over the Irish and also to maintain the separation between the Irish English, the colonizers imposed laws preventing Irish from owning land, participating in government, carrying weapons, or marrying outside of the “Irish race.” In this case, “race” is used to define the Irish as a separate people, and bears no reference to skin color. Though it was not skin color—or what would be later understood as race—that divided them. Rather, it was linguistic, religious, and other cultural differences that the English used to legitimate their conquer of the Irish. Given this history, it is perhaps not surprising that it was Irish who were indentured servants in the New World, and also that they (among other European groups) were not immediately considered white as the color-based concept of race emerged in America.
Native Americans
Soon after, in a land far more distant and against a people more “foreign,” the English took on a similar task whose goal again was power and profit—and again using the linguistic, religious, cultural, and this time, also skin color differences to legitimate their conquer. As a backdrop to this narrative of European conquest over Native Americans and Africans, it is essential to note that at this time in history the idea of race had not yet developed into a cohesive or even clear concept. Quite the opposite, it was this very history that would lead to a construction of the idea of race. As Gossett explains:
Race theory, then, had up until fairly modern times no firm hold on European thought. On the other hand, race theory and race prejudice were by no means unknown at the time when the English colonists came to North America. Undoubtedly, the age of exploration led many to speculate on race differences at a period when neither Europeans nor Englishmen were prepared to make allowances for vast cultural diversities.
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As Alan Taylor writes of the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola (or what is now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), as a result of European disease, destruction, and deadly raids: “From a population of at least 300,000 in 1492, the Taino declined to about 33,000 by 1510 and to a mere 500 by 1548.”
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Regardless of intent, it was genocide, and it was not isolated to Hispaniola or the Caribbean. To give a sense of the scope, Howard Zinn summarizes, “When Columbus came to the Americas, 10 million Indians lived north of what is now Mexico. After the Europeans began taking that land, the number of Indians was reduced until, in time, fewer than a million remained.”
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However, to complicate this image of European conquer and genocide of Indians across the Americas:
What happened in America in the actual encounters between the Indians and the English strangers was not uniform. In Virginia, Indian savagery was viewed largely as cultural: Indians were ignorant heathens. In New England, on the other hand, Indian savagery was racialized: Indians had come to be condemned as a demonic race, and their dark complexions signifying indelible and inherent evil. Why was there such a different between the two regions? Possibly the competition between the English and the Indians over resources was more intense in New England than in Virginia, where there was more arable land. More important, the colonists in New England had brought with them a greater sense of religious mission than the Virginia settlers.
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This demonstrates that the English views of the Native Americans were not monolithic. Furthermore, this is to say nothing of the varied treatment of different Native American tribes across North America by other European conquerors, namely the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and French. The significance of this is not to elevate one European group over another—the French, for example, for their more tolerant interactions with Natives, where even inter-marriage was not uncommon—but rather to demonstrate that European views of Native Americans were not rooted in singular notions of race, as they are today: “Though Virginia was anything but egalitarian in its treatment of the Indians and its labor policies, it nevertheless connected the concepts of slavery and race only gradually.”
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Africans and White Indentured Servants
In the early years of the American colonies, namely in Virginia, poor Europeans and Africans alike were purchased for labor. Furthermore, in this time period, Africans were a small fraction of the population. “In the early days of the Virginia colony, most workers were white indentured servants. In fact, 75 percent of the colonists came as servants during the seventeenth century.”
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This history, perhaps because relatively short-lived—soon the importation of Africans would rise drastically, as white indentured servitude would decrease—is misremembered. Also forgotten is the critical history of African and white indentured servants’ unity: “Its [Virginia’s] early African laborers sometimes worked for a term of service alongside similarly indentured Europeans. Black and white indentured servants shared alcohol, sex, marriage, death, and escapes across what would only later, after slavery, be called the ‘color line’.”
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They not only shared these aspects of their lives, but also their dissatisfaction with their living conditions and their plots of rebellion. As Roediger summarizes:
[ . . . ] in the two decades from the 1661 Servants’ Plot, when indentured servants rose up in rebellion over inadequate food rations, to the tobacco riots of 1682, when “cutters and pluckers” destroyed their crops and those neighbors to protest overproduction, at least ten popular revolts shook Virginia. Like everyday life among the poor, insurrections brought together Africans and Europeans.
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With the rise of post-1660’s rebellions, the distinction between African and European indentured laborers changed quickly through the implementation of various codes and laws created to divide the two groups and reduce their power against owning class whites. It is in this era, that the numbers of Africans brought to the colony increased rapidly, from 405 in 1650, to 9,345 in 1690, and 16,390 just ten years later in 1700, and 220,582 in 1780, more than twice as much as any other colonies’ African population.
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Meanwhile, whites were given a set of newfound privileges in exchange for their loyalty to their wealthier white counterparts and their betrayal of their fellow African laborers.
Activity:
This section on the history of Colonial America will be taught using a timeline, which captures the changes in population across space and time. This is meant expose students to the various groups of people who were fundamental to the founding of America and the race/racism that was instrumental to it. Timelines can be created simply by printing out the information and creating a large timeline in the classroom, or by creating a technological version of it, for example using Prezi. Video resources (see appendix) are recommended as a teaching tool that can bring to life these dates and figures. One recommended timeline and video resource is The Story of Race from:
http://www.understandingrace.org/history/timeline_movie.html
4. How did racist legal documents create race? - Slave Codes, Naturalization Acts, and Court Decisions
Enduring understandings
: Within the context of Colonial America, and in particular the rebellions of the white and black indentured servants, owning class Europeans began creating codes, laws, and acts that would protect their interests by dividing European and African indentured servants, offering privileges to the former and punishments to the latter, thereby solidifying the concept of race through legal documents and lived realities.
Activity:
Given what students learned in the previous lesson, the context of the uprisings of the late 1600’s, students will work in groups to predict the types of codes and laws that owning class Europeans created to protect their interests. The real laws and codes will then be revealed, and students will discuss how these functioned to create race and institutionalize racism.
a) Virginia Slaves Codes/Laws/Declarations
1640 — 1660: The Critical Period: Custom to Law when Status Changed to "Servant for Life"
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1639/40 - The General Assembly of Virginia specifically excludes blacks from the requirement of possessing arms
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1642 - Black women are deemed tithables (taxable), creating a distinction between African and English women.
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1662 - Blacks face the possibility of life servitude. The General Assembly of Virginia decides that any child born to an enslaved woman will also be a slave.
1660 — 1680: Slave Laws Further Restrict Freedom of Blacks and Legalize Different Treatment for Blacks and Whites
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1667 - Virginia lawmakers say baptism does not bring freedom to blacks. The statute is passed because some slaves used their status as a Christian in the 1640s and 1650s to argue for their freedom or for freedom for a child. Legislators also encourage slave owners to Christianize their enslaved men, women and children.
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1668 - Free black women, like enslaved females over the age of 16, are deemed tithable. The Virginia General Assembly says freedom does not exempt black women from taxation.
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1669 - An act about the "casual killing of slaves" says that if a slave dies while resisting his master, the act will not be presumed to have occurred with “prepensed malice.”
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1670 - Free blacks and Native Americans who had been baptized are forbidden to buy Christian servants.
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1672 - It becomes legal to wound or kill an enslaved person who resists arrest. Legislators also deem that the owner of any slave killed as he resisted arrest will receive financial compensation for the loss of an enslaved laborer. Legislators also offer a reward to Indians who capture escaped slaves and return them to a justice of the peace.
1680 — 1705: Slave Laws Reflect Racism and the Deliberate Separation of Blacks and Whites. Color becomes the Determining Factor. Conscious Efforts to Rigidly Police Slave Conduct.
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1680 - Virginia’s General Assembly restricts the ability of slaves to meet at gatherings, including funerals. It becomes legal for a white person or person to kill an escaped slave who resists capture. Slaves also are forbidden to:
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arm themselves for either offensive or defensive purposes. Punishment: 20 lashes on one’s bare back.
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leave the plantation without the written permission of one’s master, mistress or overseer. Punishment: 20 lashes on one’s bare back.
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“…lift up his hand against any Christian." Punishment: 30 lashes on one’s bare back.
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1691 - Any white person married to a black or mulatto is banished and a systematic plan is established to capture "outlying slaves."
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If an outlying slave is killed while resisting capture, the owner receives financial compensation for the laborer.
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Partners in an interracial marriage cannot stay in the colony for more than three months after they married.
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A fine of 15 pounds sterling is levied on an English woman who gives birth to a mulatto child. The fine is to be paid within a month of the child’s birth. If a woman cannot pay the fine, she is to serve five years as an indentured servant. If the mother is an indentured servant, she faces an additional five years of servitude after the completion of her indenture.
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A mulatto child born to a white indentured servant will serve a 30-year indenture.
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A master must transport an emancipated slave out of Virginia within six months of receiving his or her freedom.
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1692 - Slaves are denied the right to a jury trial for capital offenses. A minimum of four justices of the peace hear evidence and determine the fate of the accused. Legislators also decide that enslaved individuals are not permitted to own horses, cattle and hogs after December 31 of that year.
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1705 - Free men of color lose the right to hold public office.
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1705 - Blacks — free and enslaved — are denied the right to testify as witnesses in court cases.
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1705 - All black, mulatto, and Indian slaves are considered real property.
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1705 - Enslaved men are not allowed to serve in the militia.
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1705 - In An act concerning Servants and Slaves, Virginia’s lawmakers:
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Increase the indenture of a mulatto child born to a white woman to 31 years.
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Determine that if a white man or white woman marries a black partner, the white individual will be sent to jail for six months and fined 10 pounds current money of Virginia.
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Determine that any minister who marries an interracial couple will be assessed a fine of 10,000 pounds of tobacco.
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Determine that any escaped slave who is unwilling or unable to name his or her owner will be sent to the public jail.
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b) Naturalization Act of 1790
After the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, claiming “all men are created equal,” the United States was born and it soon sought to name its identity. The Naturalization Act of 1790 was written to determine who would actually be considered a US citizen and be given the privileges that accompany that position. Roediger writes:
The naturalization act, as courts later emphasized, spoke even more powerfully about who was unfit for citizenship, implicitly placing not only slaves and Indians, but also people of color generally, in that category. The young were also excluded from naturalization, underlining that to be dependent was a bar of citizenship. For those male youths who would someday be “free, white, and 21,” that bar would be temporary; for slaves it would be permanent and inherited from generation to generation.
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The act states: “That any Alien being a free white person” is a citizen.
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It is noteworthy that the US citizen had to be both “free” and “white,” demonstrating that these two words were not (yet) necessarily interchangeable. This meant that white indentured servants could not be considered citizens until they were free. However, blacks and other non-whites, under this law, would never be citizens, evidence of the seeds of race and racism beginning to root in America.
c) 1921 Definition of White
While the definition of “white” in a 1790 context was not made clear, as waves of immigration to the US increased, toward the goal of exclusion, a definition for “White” became more necessary. A 1921 definition of white, written in the “Emergency Quota and Immigration Acts” states:
A White person has been held to include an Armenian born in Asiatic Turkey, a person of but one-sixteenth Indian blood, and a Syrian, but not to include Afghans, American Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Hindus, Japanese, Koreans, negroes; nor does white person include a person having one fourth of African blood, a person in whom Malay blood predominates, a person whose father was a German and whose mother was a Japanese, a person whose father was a white Canadian and whose mother was an Indian woman, or a person whose mother was a Chinese and whose father was the son of a Portuguese father and a Chinese mother.
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This definition demonstrates how mutable and arbitrary definitions of race—in particular whiteness—are in the United States, and the ways in which their determination are highly socially and politically driven.
5. Who’s a citizen? Who is White? - US Census Then and Now
Enduring understandings:
the US census, a federal government project, since its inception in 1790, has played a major role in documenting race, and through its documentation, it has also defined race in the US. As primary source analysis will demonstrate, the census’ consistently changing categories of race reveal the concept’s malleability. This is of critical importance because these categories, their definitions, and the meaning assigned to them determined people’s societal treatments, and access to opportunities and resources.
a) The US Census
The US Census has existed since 1790 and has been conducted every ten years since its inception. “U.S. censuses have always asked a race question, have always required Americans to be so categorized (either by enumerator or by self-selection), and have always offered a list of categories from which only one race was to be chosen.”
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This changed in the 2000 census when people were able to select more than one box for their race.
Activity 1:
Before students examine the actual census categories, it is important to discuss the purposes for which the census was collected and how the data has been used in ways that both discriminate and serve communities of color. Next, I plan to continue this lesson with an activity that demonstrates the limits of the census categories, by choosing three different census years (from the early, middle, and more recent censuses) and asking students to stand underneath the category that defines them. This activity is meant to illustrate the ways in which the census categories have not and do not include all racial identities, and furthermore, even if they do name us accurately, they do not tell our full racial identities.
Activity 2:
Students will analyze US Census categories and notice changes from 1790 through the present. The most significant observations I hope they will make include:
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The list of races—one that in 1790 begins with only Free White, All Other Free Persons, and Slaves—continues to change and grow, especially in the late 1800s.
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The treatment of Native Americans—termed Indians in the language of the Census—changes many times throughout the years of the Census. To begin, the first mention of “Indians,” begins in 1800, in their exclusion: “All Other Free Persons, except Indians Not Taxed.” This category continues for the next two censuses, and then disappears by 1830. In 1870 the category returns, but now only as Indian, which is how it remains.
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By the 1850 census, the categories of “Free” and “Slave” disappear.
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With the exception of the 1850 and 1860 censuses, White has always existed as a category, and it seems that all other racial groups exist only in relation to White. In fact, for the 1850 and 1860 censuses, “White” does not appear on the census, but the instructions indicate: “in all cases where the person is white leave the space blank,” illustrating the extent to which whiteness became a default—a normalized—race in the US.
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Beginning in 1890, rather than selecting a race (checking a box), citizens are asked to write in their “Color or Race.”
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In large part the categories growth in the 1800s and 1900s is a result of the delineation of various Asian groups, including Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, etc.
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Much of the growth of this list in the second half of the 20
th
century is a result of delineating Asian Pacific Islander groups.
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The terminology referring to black people changes from Slaves and Colored Persons, to Black and Mulatto, Quadroon and Octoroon only during the 1890 census, beginning in 1930 Negro, and beginning in 1970 Negro or Black. It seems the language to attempt to categorize black people in the US has always been a contentious one.
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The category of Other, allowing people to write in their race if it were not listed, began in 1910.
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Mexican is listed as a race for the first and only time in 1930.
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The word “color” was removed from the question of race in 1950, but returned in 1960 as “race or color,” and then “color or race” in 1970, and then again returned to just “race” in 1980 and beyond.
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In the 1970 US Census, Hispanic is introduced as a category, combining nationalities/groups including: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, Other Spanish, None of These.
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In 2000, two or more races becomes an option.
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Arab-Americans are considered white on the Census.
The essential questions to conclude with include:
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Is the census an accurate measure of race?
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Why do the census categories change from one census to the next?
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How do these changes make the census more or less accurate?
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How do you think the Census Bureau officials think about race?
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How does this impact how citizens think of race?
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Why even measure race?
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What impact does this data have on our society?
b) One drop rule
The focus of F. James Davis’ book,
Who Is Black?
, is the one-drop rule, which served to define race in America. Although the meaning and implementation of the one-drop rule changed from state to state and from year to year it was more or less ubiquitous in the US, whether de jure or de facto, for a significant number of years. Davis defines the rule: “that a single drop of ‘black blood’ makes a person a black. It is also known as the ‘one black ancestor rule,’ some courts have called it the ‘traceable amount rule,’ and anthropologists call it the ‘hypo-descent rule,’ meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group.”
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This definition itself demonstrates the lack of clarity and the inconsistency of definitions of race, drawing upon and vacillating between genetics, ancestry, and social status. Furthermore, as explored in the earlier section on biology, given there is no genetic basis to race, the notion of “one-drop of black blood” is artificial, revealing the fallacy of the laws used to determine race. Despite its lack of scientific basis, these laws had very real implications for people of color, in particular those who were defined as black. The one drop rule illustrates how race is a socially constructed idea, and in Barbara Fields’ words, the “absurdity” of the: “American racial convention that considers a white woman capable of giving birth to a black child but denies that a black woman can give birth to a white child.”
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c) Comparing US to other countries
“Not only does the one-drop rule apply to no other group than American blacks, but apparently the rule is unique in that it is found only in the United States and not in any other nation in the world.”
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That is, not only does the “one-drop rule” not exist in name in countries other than the US, but also the ways of defining race vary significantly from country to country. In his recent
Jacobin
article, “The Social Construction of Race,” Brian Jones writes about an interview in which the former Haitian leader, Francois Duvalier, referred to the “white majority population” of his country. This was very surprising and confusing to the American journalist who was quite certain the Haitian population was majority black. “The American journalist interviewing him didn’t understand, so they had to define to each other what makes somebody white or black. The American journalist explained that in the US, one metaphorical drop of black blood designates someone as black. And Duvalier replied, ‘Well, that’s our definition of white.’”
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Activity 3
: There are two online activities, which help illustrate the ways in which race varies significantly from country to country. The first is a survey in which students can give their opinions on which countries’ citizens are white. While there are no definitive answers to the questions—therein lies the point of the activity—students can compare their results to others, and see the variation in perceptions. The second activity involves students self-defining their race using recent censuses from ten different countries. The variation across these countries points to the differences in concepts of race across the world, illustrating that race is not a definitive concept, but rather a highly malleable and socially based one. Both activities can be found here:
http://www.understandingrace.org/lived/index.html