Nevertheless, the colonial legislators pressed relentlessly towards a two-tier system of black/white relations. In a two-tier system the mixed individual is considered black. This being the case and because the features and skin color of mixed individuals vary so greatly, the precise dividing line between the two races became a critical issue. For mixed individuals it meant the difference between freedom and enslavement. For whites it was crucial to maintaining the purity of the white race. By the end of the 17th century, colonial America’s system of indentured servitude had been completely replaced by chattel slavery, focusing almost exclusively upon blacks and mulattoes. Whites were no longer kept as servants. Furthermore, there was no longer any perceivable distinction between slave and servant. Black and mulatto slaves/servants alike were required to serve in perpetuity.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
thanks for this, nomad. sorry my mind is a bit ‘otherwise engaged’, but i did fetch this good poem; i really like the poet. and the man.
MULATTO
I am your son, white man!
Georgia dusk
And the turpentine woods.
One of the pillars of the temple fell.
You are my son!
Like Hell!
The moon over the turpentine woods.
The Southern night
Full of stars,
Great big yellow stars.
What’s a body but a toy?
Juicy bodies
Of nigger wenches
Blue black
Against black fences.
O, you little bastard boy,
What’s a body but a toy?
The scent of pine wood stings the soft night air.
What’s the body of your mother?
Silver moonlight everywhere.
What’s the body of your mother?
Sharp pine scent in the evening air.
A nigger night,
A nigger joy,
A little yellow
Bastard boy. Naw, you ain’t my brother.
Niggers ain’t my brother.
Not ever.
Niggers ain’t my brother.
The Southern night is full of stars,
Great big yellow stars.
O, sweet as earth,
Dusk dark bodies
Give sweet birth
To little yellow bastard boys.
Git on back there in the night,
You ain’t white
The bright stars scatter everywhere.
Pine wood scent in the evening air.
A nigger night,
A nigger joy. I am your son, white man!
A little yellow
Bastard boy.
~ Langston Hughes
Reminds me of my own word of mouth family history. My mother was light skinned. The story was that her great grandmother (I think it was) was a ‘light skinned woman sold into slavery”.
ooof. then the graphic works for you? i’d meant to ask, but i spent a hella lot of time searching for one, and indeed learned a few things along the way. had your post been about the One Drop Rule, i’d have been tempted to use the Taoist symbol; know what i mean?
Hmmm. Images of blacks from this period (in western hemisphere) were almost impossible to find when I was writing this, so I am not surprised that that still is the case. I got nothing. But just for fun I want to try posting here
my favorite slave selling pic to see if I can post it using your suggestion. It’s actually 19th century, but again it is the sale of a mulatto.
yeah, the precise time period made it hard. cool painting, though.
yeah. white slave owner, selling his mulatto son
i like how the artist have both father’s and son’s head facing same direction making it easier to note family resemblance.
and the paper currency on the floor…just to the right of the son’s bare feet. note the single bill closest to him. evocative.
Oh, yeah. Hadn’t noticed. Probably why it’s called The Price of Blood, (1868, TS Noble)
While “the colonial legislators pressed relentlessly towards a two-tier system of black/white relations” the English supremacists masked their innovation, the coolie-trade, behind corporations. They anticipated the use of corporations to legitimate subjugation.
The supremacists will exploit opportune “original sins” and then blame the gullible for allowing them the opportunity …
“Beer Summit” notable Louis Henry Gates has some interesting details on the three-caste and two-caste systems that go into so strange byways of American ideology at the turn of the 19th century.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/free-blacks-lived-in-the-north-right/
He is talking primarily about free blacks of the period, some of whom retained their freedom up to the Civil War. The key points that I noticed of relevance are these:
Free blacks in the Upper South (essentially the diffusion of settlement from Virginia) were often manumitted on the basis of religious of ideological commitments of a few owners and tended to be darker in complexion. Some were the products of the few free marriages of white women and black men. They tended to remain in rural areas.
Free blacks in the Lower South (essentially the diffusion of settlement from South Carolina and Georgia) tended to be lighter and congregated in the cities of the lower South.
His curiosity in his article is why free blacks stayed in the South.
Slaves who were mulattoes tended to be the offspring of rape, even if it was perceived as goldbricking patronage. Duress takes many forms.
After the Nat Turner rebellion in 1830, states began to pass fugitive slave laws that de facto permitted the internal slave traders (international slave trade ended in 1808, inflating the price of slaves and creating an internal market from the coastal South to the Old Southwest Lower South) to kidnap free blacks and mulattos, transport them westward, and sell them into slavery. That put pressure on legislatures in the Lower South to end the third tier of free mulattoes. Those discussions likely were in the 1840s and 1850s, which also included the defenses of slavery that appealed to the latest anthropological science and philological studies available. And the assumption of white supremacy was embedded from the beginning in both of those, producing appeals to Aryan or Nordic linguistics and the physical anthropology of the caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid races, Interest in the “scientific racism” of that time was strong in Southern university natural history faculties. The broad history of ideas is presented in this Wikipedia article on scientific racism, which ends with defenses by Pinker and Jenner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
I found this to be very interesting concerning the one-drop rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
Legislation of the one-drop rule was not passed until the 1920s (post “Birth of a Nation”) mainly because of the situation that South Carolinian George D. Tillman argued when the idea came up during the passage of the 1895 Jim Crow South Carolina Constitution:
veryveryvery interesting. thanks. explains that phrase passed down in my family history: ‘sold into slavery”
Calculated MINIMUM Reparation Due to Slave Descendants: $1.5 Million to Each Black Citizen of the USA by the truth speaker, Denis Rancourt.
No wonder the sadists want to reduce (minimum) wages.
Comes Hilary Beckles, chair of the Caricom [Caribbean economic Community] Reparations Commission, before The Right David Cameron
Clever strategy, no? Personalize the debt and the wolf-dominoes will fall.
No. !0’s response:
Maybe George Soros will pay Jamaica for following this toolish approach?
I could use a few hundred thousand.
You need a band of pirates to get Soros’ public conscience money.
O. And then there is the question of what every other repaired person would do with the money. Would it circulate like IMF money (and other first world scams) largely back to banks and Wall Street?
What say you, comrade nomad?
I’d buy predator drones. Don’t ask what for.
Ah, just what marketing wanted.
Soros is Grand Capitalist Rehabilitator for Compradors For Reconciliation.
HA HA HA HA HA HA.
“Perceptible”, not “perceivable”.
ha; are you nomad or axe? anyway, hope you’re doin’ okay.
who is axe?
oh, comrade x, sometimes axe, other similar iterations. how are you doing, then? are you still hanging out at washington’s blog? dagnabbit, i keep forgetting to check in there these days.
why make that change after all these years? and any comment on my recent diaries?
no I dont do washingtons blog much. as for how im doing i literally almost died a couple of weeks ago. still in the hospital. got some some blog posts with the details at aisle c.
yes, i keep your posts in view. but been off on other tangents of our collective dilemma.
https://aislec.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/o-death/
well surely it’s a good thing that you’re out of danger? and i’m tickled that you chose that tune; it’s a good un, as is that film. do you have a support system for your recovery? apologies, but i’ve forgotten (if i ever knew) what your family situation is like. thanks for leaving you blog’s link.
my best to you, nomad. if there’s ever any way i can offer you support, you know my address.
thanks, wendy. got great family support.
how wonderful to know, nomad, and that you’re so fortunate as well. hope you get to leave the horse-pital soon. ;-)