{"id":24397,"date":"2012-07-17T05:02:30","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T05:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24397"},"modified":"2012-07-17T05:02:30","modified_gmt":"2012-07-17T05:02:30","slug":"a-problem-that-consistently-confronts-racist-law-makers-in-the-question-of-defining-who-is-%e2%80%9cnegro%e2%80%9d-and-who-is-%e2%80%9cwhite-%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24397","title":{"rendered":"A problem that consistently confronts racist law makers in the question of defining who is \u201cNegro\u201d and who is \u201cwhite.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

A problem that consistently confronts racist law makers in the question of defining who is \u201cNegro\u201d and who is \u201cwhite.\u201d In general, two schools of \u201cthought\u201d prevail is the United States on this issue. In about nine states a Negro is anyone who had a grandparent who was a Negro. The laws generally define such a person as \u201chaving one-eighth or more Negro blood\u201d or as an \u201coctoroon<\/a>.\u201d The other definition of Negro is used in at least six states: a Negro is any person who has \u201cany trace of Negro blood.<\/a>\u201d The circularity of these statements does not seem to trouble the opponents of miscegenation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Virginia provides an interesting example of racist legal gymnastics. Whites in that state can marry neither Negroes nor American Indians. In Virginia, a Negro is a person who has any Negro ancestor, and an American Indian is a person who had at least one Indian grandparent. If someone has one-sixteenth or less \u201cIndian blood\u201d then he is a white. But Virginia still hasn\u2019t decided what you are if you have one-eighth Indian heritage, i.e. one of your great-grandparents was an Indian. Furthermore, if a man is an inhabitant of an Indian tribal reservation and has at least one Indian grandparent and less than one-sixteenth \u201cNegro blood,\u201d then despite the state\u2019s definition of a Negro he may be regarded as an Indian on the reservation. Once he leaves the reservation, however, he undergoes a legal metamorphosis and becomes a Negro. Of course he can then move to Mississippi, where the \u201coctoroon\u201d requirement prevails, and thus become a Caucasian.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oklahoma courts have decided that American Indians are \u201cwhite\u201d and therefore may not marry \u201cany person of African descent.\u201d In Alabama, however, Indians are mulattoes<\/a>, according to the courts, and therefore cannot marry whites. Filipinos in Louisiana must be able to prove that they are \u201cnot basically negroid\u201d before they can marry whites. Indiana courts have revealed that \u201call Mexicans are not white persons and some of them are negroes,\u201d and therefore non-Negro Mexicans can marry either Negroes or whites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Peter Cumminos, \u201cRace, Marriage, and Law<\/a>,\u201d The Harvard Crimson<\/em>, December 17, 1963. http:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article\/1963\/12\/17\/race-marriage-and-law-pamerican-racism\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A problem that consistently confronts racist law makers in the question of defining who is \u201cNegro\u201d and who is \u201cwhite.\u201d In general, two schools of \u201cthought\u201d prevail is the United States on this issue. In about nine states a Negro is anyone who had a grandparent who was a Negro. The laws generally define such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11215],"class_list":["post-24397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-peter-cumminos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}