Statue of Ramses II at Abu Simbel. Broad noses and full lips were commonly
featured on both colossal and life-size Egyptian statues.(http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/abu_simbel/abu-sim6.jpg)
Ta_Seti, a premier online African-centered discussion group!
Statue of Ramses II at Abu Simbel. Broad noses and full lips were commonly
featured on both colossal and life-size Egyptian statues.
(http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/abu_simbel/abu-sim6.jpg)
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 08:06:36 -0700
Message-Id: <199605231506.IAA09464@dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com>
From: polmansl@ix.netcom.com (paul manansala)
Subject: Fwd: The "One drop of black blood rule"
To: athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Sender: owner-athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
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Regarding earlier posts stating that modern racism did not begin until
the 19th century, I have a post from another list showing that such
ideas were around much earlier.
---- Begin Forwarded Message
From: F Leon Wilson
Organization: CODE One Communications
Subject: The "One drop of black blood rule"
The "One drop of black blood rule"
The much discussed "one drop of black blood" rule deems that any
person who has one drop of black blood will be classified as Black
(not African American). The rule of "one drop of black blood" has
its formal origins in provisions of the Code Noir (the "Negro Code")
of 1685. This Code Noir is more than a plantation owner/slavemaster
attempt to preserve the "purity" of the white race by ferreting out
all who had "tainted" blood. It is a scientific attempt to
"control" and "manage" the growing concern of miscegenation as a
threat to the global system of white supremacy. The threats of
miscegenation were identified long before Europeans began to imported
Africans to be used as slaves in the Americas.
The union of European and African stock posed both moral and
philosophical dilemmas for those trying to better their lives through
the establishment of a non-white slave system.
Throughout history, there has been many attempts to solve the moral
and philosophical dilemma. Ranging from the religious level with the
biblical story of HAM, to the use of the (white created) legal system
to legislate what race is and is not, the nomenclature by which racial
classifications were established was set forward.
The degree of genetic mixture from the various unions of non-white
people with white people, or people who classified themselves as
white, were no longer calculated merely by simple visual observations,
as was done in the Spanish Americas or Brazil. The methods became
mathematically exact.
Individuals were thought to be composed of 128 separate units, which
is to say that the ethnic admixture was traced to the eight
generation, thus providing a system of classifica-tion which permitted
no ambiguity, and made possible equations such as the following:
WHITE Non-White
------------------------------------------------------------------
64 parts + 64 parts = mulattre
72 parts + 56 parts = sacatra
88 parts + 40 parts = marabou
96 parts + 32 parts = quarteron
127 parts + 1 parts = sang melee
One could, however, play with combinations. For example, a quarteron
need not result solely from the mulattre union of a "128 parts" white
mating with a mulatto. The same result could also be obtained as
follows:
72 parts white + 56 black mating with 120 parts white + 8 parts
black = quarteron
Or again:
88 parts white + 40 black mating with 104 parts white + 24 parts
black = quarteron
However, in practice, many persons not sufficiently adept at such
calculations took to applying the nomenclature somewhat more
loosely, and took, for example, to describing as a quarteron not only
individuals resulting from the union of pure white with mulatto, or
the mathematical equivalent, but also the result of mixing "128
parts" white and sacatra ( that is, darker than a certified quarteron
), as well as the result of mixing "128 parts" white and marabou
(that is, lighter than a certified quarteron). Human nature required
quicker terms of reference than the law provided, even at the cost of
oversimplification. Hence the "one drop of blood rule."
There is obviously much more that could be added to this short
discussion. If you have information/documentation that collaborates
or refutes the origins, development and use of the "one drop" rule,
or the above information, please direct that information to my
attention.
For an full discussion of The Code Noir, race and how it was/is
determined see "The Rise of the Colored Races" by Keith Ivine ( W.
W. Norton & Company, Inc. -- New York -- 1970). Part of this
discussion refers to chapter 5, "Manifest Destiny": The European
Occupation of the Americas. Specifically pages 99 - 102.
Additional documentation and reference available upon request. Please
e-mail your requests to me directly and not to the list.
F. Leon
CODE1@delphi.com
----------------
Thu, 23 May 1996 18:19:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: ThomABD@aol.com
Received: by emout07.mail.aol.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id SAA16551 for athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com; Thu, 23 May 1996 18:19:26 -0400
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 18:19:26 -0400
Message-ID: <960523181926_497347835@emout07.mail.aol.com>
To: athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: "One drop of black blood" rule
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Dear Doug,
Although I agree with you that the Code Noir did not rest on a sound
scientific basis and that in Latin America and the Caribbean its application
often tended to legitimize through marriage many interracial children, I must
disagree with you in reference to its application in the southern United
States.
In the American South, in order to make certain that most children born as a
result of interracial relationships would inherit the status of slaves, most
states passed laws which required that any children born in these states
would inherit the racial distinction, and thus the legal status, of their
mothers. Because southern lawmakers realized that most interracial births
resulted from relationships, often forced, between male masters and female
slaves, passing such laws was a way to nullify any racially-based claims to
freedom that the proliferating number of such children might have otherwise
been able to make. These laws also made it unnecessary, and even illegal
(especially when combined with other anti-miscegenation laws), for white
masters to "legitimize" their racially mixed offspring by marrying their
childrens' mothers. In some southern states in the late antebellum period,
it even became illegal for masters to free ANY of their slaves (whether they
were their own offspring or not) without first meeting certain
"guidelines"--that the slave could provide for him/herself and would not
become a "vagrant" or "burden to society" after being freed, etc.
Thus, the "One drop of black blood rule" was applied in different ways in
different areas of the New World. And, as shown above, its application in
the antebellum southern U.S. differed greatly than its application in Latin
America and the Caribbean. These differences were based on many
things--prevailing racial attitudes in each area; male-female ratios of
people of European descent in each area (English and other colonists who
migrated to North America were more likely to migrate with their families, or
to bring their wives and/or families over later. In the Caribbean and Latin
America, colonists were predominantly single males, and thus European females
were often very scarce, and so European men were more likely to take wives of
non-European heritage); and the nature of the crops grown in each region (in
the Caribbean, the prevailing crops grown were rice and sugar, and the brutal
nature of the work was more conducive to the use of predominantly male field
hands--thus there were not proportionally as many female slaves present as
there were in the southern U.S. In the American South, female slaves were
more common because work in the tobacco and cotton fields, although very
hard, was not as consuming and deadly as work on sugar and rice plantations).
Also, as mentioned before, with the growing abolitionist threat and the
approach of the Civil War, anti-miscegenation and anti-manumission laws
became stronger and more frequent in the southern U.S. than in the Caribbean
or Latin America, thus making it even more likely that children of mixed
racial heritage would retain, for life, the status of slaves.
Respectfully,
Cathleen Thom
Marquette University
Thomabd@aol.com
----------------
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 08:23:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joycelyn Landrom-Brown
To: David Meadows
cc: Mary Lanser , athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: One posting at a time
In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19960503102254.23af21c4@inforamp.net>
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On Fri, 3 May 1996, David Meadows wrote:
>
> At 09:49 5/3/96 EDT, Mary Lanser wrote:
> > The idea is for Africans in America to learn and tell the global African
> > experience in their own voices from their own perspectives. That is what
> > Lefkowitz and you and others are so damned uncomfortable about. My God, just
> > look at the rise of the modern university and the history of intellectual
> > thought that had so few black voices that they are relegated to the status
> > of curiosities--the evidence, the orthodoxy, the heresy. Afrocentrists are
> > in no way any kind of unique threat to truth in the academy.
>
>
> Hi Mary,
>
> It's not that ML and I and others are uncomfortable with the "global African
> experience" and all that. What we are uncomfortable with is with one
> particular aspect of Afrocentrism, namely, with the way it has portrayed the
> ancient world. For my part I'm all for different perspectives in academe, as
> long as they live up to the same standards that I have live up to. That's
> the whole point of NOA and it's something I've repeatedly try to get through
> to the list. In regards to the ancient world, the Afrocentrists whom I've
> been focussing on, simply don't live up to the same standards that are
> expected of myself. In regards to other disciplines, I am in no position to
> comment and wouldn't presume to.
This is one of the points I am uncomfortable with. Their is an
expectation that all scholarship conform to standards and norms that have
been used to exclude and suppress information that does not validate
the positions of those in power who have established the standards.
The interesting thing to me is that those who buy into the notion that
Blacks couldnt possibly have created a civilization, philosopy or science
and influenced Whites, consistently reject any scholarship that does not
support their evidence. The trick is that this rejection is said to be
based on "lack of scholarship"....which in actuality means that the
scholarship was not rubber stamped by those whites (who for the most
part) have established these standards.
Is it possible that the standards for scholarship might be *tinted* or
biased by conscious or unconscious white supremacist and white
superiority beliefs.
Havent we found over and over that many so called scientfic "facts"
in social science are actually are biased. You can not seprate a researcher
from his/her consciousness, worldview, assumptions. These things confound most
"scientfic" investigations.... Your asssumptions shape the formation of
your research questions.
People want to talk about evidence..... however when evidence has been
distorted by changing names of people, places, visual representations....
taking a whole country out of a continent......then the evidence is biased.
Folks want to pretend like there has not been a systematic destruction of
evidence that does not support White superiority.
Throughout history, typically one of the first things conquerers did was
destroy the historical "evidence" of the conquered peoples greatness and
then claim the spoils as there own.
Even when White Scholars (Gerald Massey, Higgins, Churchward) make the
claims of Ancient Egypt influencing the development of Greek thought....
they are discredited by these same so-called standards established to
maintain a white supremact ideology.
>
> But it *is* in regards to the ancient world that Afrocentrism has grown into
> a threat to truth in the academy. When books, which are apparently used as
> textbooks, present things like the Aristotle/Library thing, or even just the
> Aristotle going to Egypt thing as indisputable fact when the evidence is
> otherwise, that's a threat to the truth in the academy and it has far
> reaching implications. Consider what might happen if this sort of thing
> begins to be tolerated not just with Afrocentrics, but with others. Imagine
> university professors teaching about jewish conspiracies to take over the
> world as fact. Imagine professors teaching the benefits of naziism with all
> sorts of `facts' to back them up. Imagine professors using books like the
> Bell Curve as standard texts. As ML astutely points out in NOA, there is a
> larger issue at stake here than the claims of a handful of Afrocentrists and
> that issue is academic standards and that issue has serious ramifications as
> to the purpose of a university education. Should universities be educating
> or indoctrinating?
>
Afrocentrism is a direct challenge to White Superiority beliefs and White
Supremacy. Folks want to hide behind the smokescreen that they reject it
because of "poor scholarship".... but I believe that many folks just
reject it because they have bought into the notion that Black folks just
couldnt possibly created a system that Europeans learned from and liked
enough to adapt and call it their own (with some key revisions I might add).
Be honest folks ...I dont see how any of us have escaped internalizing
the messages of White (European) cultural superiority.
How is that playing out in these debates.
Why is it so easy for some scholars to accept that the Greeks borrowed
ideas from everyone but Black folks........(could it be racism?)
I dont think folks are being honest about how racism is playing a big
part in why we are having this discussion at all.
There is more than one paradigm to operate from. I think Whites have
gotten scaired cause Blacks and other people of color are choosing to
change the paradigm from one that promotes White Superiority.
Then on the other hand folks want to use the idea that the Ancient
Egyptians werent Black....they were multi-racial.....They want to talk
about racial classifications in a vaccuum. They use the one drop rule to
define Black folks in America..... yet those same folks would be defined
differently in another part of the world....when it is politically
expedient and/or when it continues to support notions of White superiority.
So if the Ancient Egyptians (Menes, Imhotep..) were not Black..... who is
Black?
----------------
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 10:16:49 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: RE: Wrong Deal
To: ATHENA-DISCUSS@INFO.HARPERCOLLINS.COM
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My underlying question remains the same here: please give me the
words and expressions--from African languages--for *enslavement*. Having
someone answer "Yes," "Oui" or "Ja" to the German or French or English "Were
your people ever enslaved by others from other territories?" does not prove
that the spoils of war among African kingdoms and territory-states comes
anywhere near the psychodynamics of American slavery or of what Africans, who
have learned well from non-Africans, perpetrate today against one another.
As for Smitic *'abd*, of course it includes, as in Hebrew as well as
in Arabic, the sense of slave. And Arabic *jihad* means war. But in the case
of each of these words, respectively, *slave* and *war* are *[+Spiritual]*.
It has been the dis-spirited unspiritual non_african or non-Arab who imposed
the latter-day meanings of slave on 'abd and bloodshed on jihad.
Furthermore, in the cases where you will find *one* African chieftain
giving over other Africans to Europeans, you will find that that chieftain was
following a cultural sense and heritage of trade. So he, too, was being duped.
Surely, you can't seriously imagine that African trader-chieftains/generals
knew that black peoples from other territory-states were going to be
dehumanized. Think about it. If you needed repair done on your home today,
you would hire just anyone to do the job. WE don't make decisions this way.
Neither did European traders. They chose their Africans for the skills they
possessed--for the village, town, city motherwit that they were born with.
African chieftains were exchanging people as trade who they believed were
being traded for their skills.
[...you *wouldn't hire just anyone....] I meant.
Finally, I don't understand what the numbers have to do with anything.
The Africanists on this list seem to be implying that European-enslaved
Africans numbering in the millions means that the native generals and kings
village chieftains who traded them over also numbered in the millions.
You also seem to be suggesting that there no European raids not already
sanctioned by native leadership.
For African languages before the accommodation to modern practices
of dehumanization, the concept of slave or border or country or academy-with-
walls or step-child or half-brother--are not to be found. These are concepts
suggesting a eurocentric dynamic, well learned by now, of course, all over
the world.
=Mackie Blanton=
----------------
Subject: The Asieto
To: athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Sender: owner-athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
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THE ASIENTO
1713, March 26
The Asiento, or contract that formally grants the subjects
of Great Britain, the liberty to import *Negroes* into the
Spanish America. Signed by his Catholick Majesty in Madrid,
the 26th day of March, 1713.
-------------------------------------------
The statement above is the preamble to the contract known as
the Asiento. It shows again, the concept of race by color
existing before Blumenbach. Notice the use of the term
"Negroes" = "Blacks" rather than Africans or West Africans.
Also, in this statement, at least, it is assumed that Negroes
takes into its definition the meaning of "slave."
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