{"id":4721,"date":"2010-01-25T01:55:47","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T01:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=4721"},"modified":"2017-03-12T16:33:46","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T16:33:46","slug":"%e2%80%9cshameful-matches%e2%80%9d-the-regulation-of-interracial-sex-and-marriage-in-the-south-before-1900","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=4721","title":{"rendered":"The Slave SouthThe racial character of American slavery and the commitment to white supremacy fostered a widespread antipathy toward race mixture in southern society."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Slave South<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The racial character of American slavery and the commitment to white supremacy fostered a widespread antipathy toward race mixture in southern society.\u00a0 Whites feared that sexual relations between blacks and whites, if not controlled, could undermine the institution of slavery and the racial order.\u00a0 Children of mixed European and African ancestry, in particular, blurred the sharply demarcated boundaries between the races essential to slavery in the South.<\/p>\n

The restrictive policy toward intermixture that emerged before the Civil War<\/a>, however, was not all-encompassing.\u00a0 Miscegenation<\/a> laws sought not so much to eliminate interracial sexual contacts as to channel them.\u00a0 Those in power employed these laws, as well as laws against fornication and adultery, mainly to keep white women and black men apart.\u00a0 The legal process exhibited a degree of toleration for white males who had sexual relations with black females, as long as the liaison was kept casual and discreet.\u00a0 This sort of illicit intercourse\u2014between men of the higher-status racial group and women of the lower\u2014reinforced rather than challenged the existing system of group stratification in the South\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026Maryland<\/a>\u2019s miscegenation law, in short, was directed primarily at white women, black men and, their mulatto offspring.\u00a0 Recognizing that only the reproduction of \u201cpure white\u201d children of white women could maintain the fiction of a biracial society, the legal system was particularly determined to keep white women from interracial sexual unions.\u00a0 This preoccupation, combined with the custom of lumping mulattoes<\/a> and blacks into the same category, provides a crucial insight into the social and legal construction of reproduction.\u00a0 Under the social rules that operated in the South, a white woman could give birth to a black child\u2014thus the need for strict legal regulation of her sexual behavior.\u00a0 But under the same rules, a black woman could not give birth to a white child.\u00a0 Such a construction of reproduction clearly served the interest of white men in the South, allowing them to roam sexually among women of any color without threatening the color line.<\/p>\n

A similar thrust characterized miscegenation legislation in Virginia<\/a>.\u00a0 The colony\u2019s assembly decided in 1662 that interracial fornication demanded special penalties; the fine it imposed for this crime was twice that stipulated for illicit intercourse between persons of the same race.\u00a0 Legislators moved at the same time to clarify the status of mulatto offspring of interracial unions.\u00a0 Declaring that the child of a black woman by a white man would be \u201cbound or free only according to the condition of the mother,\u201d the assembly broke with English common law<\/a>, which stated that the status of a child followed that of the father.\u00a0 Virginia lawmakers thus ensured that the transgressions of white men would lead to an increase in the population of the slave labor force, providing a powerful economic incentive to engage in interracial sex even as criminal sanctions were imposed for such behavior.<\/strong>\u00a0 To say the least, this new legislation delivered a mixed message to white males\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026The fact that mulatto children derived their status from their mother also helps explain why southern lawmakers struggled to prevent sexual relations between white women and black men.\u00a0 Although mulatto children of black female slaves were subject to enslavement, mulatto offspring of white females could no be placed in slavery.\u00a0 The free mulattoes threatened the racial caste system ideologically, if not practically, because their presence could lead to the blurring of the distinction between slave and black, on the one hand, and free and white on the other\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bardaglio, Peter. \u201c\u2018Shamefull Matches\u2019 Regulation of Interracial Sex and Marriage in the South before 1900\u201d, In Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History<\/a><\/em>, edited by Martha Hodes, 113, 115-116.\u00a0 New York, New York: New York University Press<\/em>, 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The restrictive policy toward intermixture that emerged before the Civil War, however, was not all-encompassing.\u00a0 Miscegenation laws sought not so much to eliminate interracial sexual contacts as to channel them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[962,1889],"class_list":["post-4721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-new-york-university-press","tag-peter-bardaglio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4721","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=4721"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52369,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4721\/revisions\/52369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}