Andrew Koppelman
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300113402
- eISBN:
- 9780300135138
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300113402.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter describes legal precedents from the controversy over interracial marriage. It covers polygamy cases; the functions of the miscegenation taboo; and three classes of choice of law problems ...
More
This chapter describes legal precedents from the controversy over interracial marriage. It covers polygamy cases; the functions of the miscegenation taboo; and three classes of choice of law problems involving interracial marriages: evasion cases, extraterritorial cases, and migratory cases.Less
This chapter describes legal precedents from the controversy over interracial marriage. It covers polygamy cases; the functions of the miscegenation taboo; and three classes of choice of law problems involving interracial marriages: evasion cases, extraterritorial cases, and migratory cases.
Christina Simmons
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195064117
- eISBN:
- 9780199869565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195064117.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, Social History
Novelists as well as reformers in the interwar period depicted three competing versions of companionate marriage. The most widespread was “flapper marriage,” which modernized but did not really ...
More
Novelists as well as reformers in the interwar period depicted three competing versions of companionate marriage. The most widespread was “flapper marriage,” which modernized but did not really confront male dominance. Its proponents acclaimed flapper wives who had rejected demure styles of femininity, but they demonized powerful matriarchs and independent career women. African Americans imagined “partnership marriage,” in which marital roles were less distinct, wives were often employed, and marriage was more anchored in wider kin and community networks. Black and white feminists sought “feminist marriage,” in which not only sex but also paid work and household labor involved greater equality between women and men. Although all versions accepted more individual freedom in style and public behavior than Victorian mores allowed, only African Americans seriously supported individual freedom to choose marriage partners across racial lines.Less
Novelists as well as reformers in the interwar period depicted three competing versions of companionate marriage. The most widespread was “flapper marriage,” which modernized but did not really confront male dominance. Its proponents acclaimed flapper wives who had rejected demure styles of femininity, but they demonized powerful matriarchs and independent career women. African Americans imagined “partnership marriage,” in which marital roles were less distinct, wives were often employed, and marriage was more anchored in wider kin and community networks. Black and white feminists sought “feminist marriage,” in which not only sex but also paid work and household labor involved greater equality between women and men. Although all versions accepted more individual freedom in style and public behavior than Victorian mores allowed, only African Americans seriously supported individual freedom to choose marriage partners across racial lines.
Carlos A. Ball
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199977871
- eISBN:
- 9780199383306
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977871.003.0002
- Subject:
- Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Forensic Psychology
This chapter places the current marriage debates in a historical context by explaining how supporters of earlier class-based marital restrictions enacted in decades past (such as interracial marriage ...
More
This chapter places the current marriage debates in a historical context by explaining how supporters of earlier class-based marital restrictions enacted in decades past (such as interracial marriage bans, disability marriage prohibitions, and the differential treatment of nonmarital children), like opponents of same-sex marriage today, defended their policy positions by relying on particular understandings of how individuals should exercise their procreative capacities and how they should form families and rear children in order to promote the social good. The chapter argues that these highly problematic precedents in American marital policy history should make policymakers, courts, and the general public highly skeptical of efforts to impose or maintain class-based marital disqualifications or limitations in order to (ostensibly) promote the social good in matters related to procreation and child-rearing.Less
This chapter places the current marriage debates in a historical context by explaining how supporters of earlier class-based marital restrictions enacted in decades past (such as interracial marriage bans, disability marriage prohibitions, and the differential treatment of nonmarital children), like opponents of same-sex marriage today, defended their policy positions by relying on particular understandings of how individuals should exercise their procreative capacities and how they should form families and rear children in order to promote the social good. The chapter argues that these highly problematic precedents in American marital policy history should make policymakers, courts, and the general public highly skeptical of efforts to impose or maintain class-based marital disqualifications or limitations in order to (ostensibly) promote the social good in matters related to procreation and child-rearing.
Susan Zeiger
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814797174
- eISBN:
- 9780814797488
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814797174.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter discusses how the interracial “war bride” marriages factored into issues of race and race relations in the United States as the nation stood on the cusp of the civil rights movement. The ...
More
This chapter discusses how the interracial “war bride” marriages factored into issues of race and race relations in the United States as the nation stood on the cusp of the civil rights movement. The personal had become political for war brides and American soldiers as they confronted the machinery of discrimination in the military and at home during the late 1940s and 1950s. Out of this experience, some individuals or families came to embrace the cause of civil rights. The equality revolution would not coalesce for another decade and a half, but a nascent civil rights movement gathered momentum in the wake of the war. Voices of resistance to racism were heard in the press, among scholars, artists, and writers, and among activists and reformers. For some groups and individuals, the interracial war couples of World War II were an important touchstone, a symbol of racial transformation.Less
This chapter discusses how the interracial “war bride” marriages factored into issues of race and race relations in the United States as the nation stood on the cusp of the civil rights movement. The personal had become political for war brides and American soldiers as they confronted the machinery of discrimination in the military and at home during the late 1940s and 1950s. Out of this experience, some individuals or families came to embrace the cause of civil rights. The equality revolution would not coalesce for another decade and a half, but a nascent civil rights movement gathered momentum in the wake of the war. Voices of resistance to racism were heard in the press, among scholars, artists, and writers, and among activists and reformers. For some groups and individuals, the interracial war couples of World War II were an important touchstone, a symbol of racial transformation.
Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807832684
- eISBN:
- 9781469605906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807894170_smith-pryor.11
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter focuses on the importance of race in marriages during the 1920s. Concerns over race and concerns about marriage often converged when it came time to choose a marriage partner. By 1927, ...
More
This chapter focuses on the importance of race in marriages during the 1920s. Concerns over race and concerns about marriage often converged when it came time to choose a marriage partner. By 1927, twenty-nine states outlawed marriages between different races. Race also mattered for marriage in northern states like New York, where no laws forbade interracial marriages.Less
This chapter focuses on the importance of race in marriages during the 1920s. Concerns over race and concerns about marriage often converged when it came time to choose a marriage partner. By 1927, twenty-nine states outlawed marriages between different races. Race also mattered for marriage in northern states like New York, where no laws forbade interracial marriages.
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226451008
- eISBN:
- 9780226451039
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226451039.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
This chapter considers the choice-of-law problem that state courts will face. It addresses the question of interstate marriage recognition by developing an analogy with the most profound disagreement ...
More
This chapter considers the choice-of-law problem that state courts will face. It addresses the question of interstate marriage recognition by developing an analogy with the most profound disagreement in American history over marriage recognition, the conflict of laws over interracial marriage. Until 1967, when the Supreme Court invalidated them, many state laws prohibited such marriages. Like same-sex marriage, interracial marriages involved an exceedingly strong public policy: the Southern courts regarded marriages between blacks and whites as “connections and alliances so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them.” The statutes prohibiting such marriages were worded at least as strongly as those of the recent state laws against same-sex marriage: they usually declared such marriages void and punished their celebration with criminal penalties. Yet even in this charged context, the courts rejected the blanket rule of nonrecognition. In every case that did not involve cohabitation within the forum, and in some that did, the Southern courts recognized interracial marriages.Less
This chapter considers the choice-of-law problem that state courts will face. It addresses the question of interstate marriage recognition by developing an analogy with the most profound disagreement in American history over marriage recognition, the conflict of laws over interracial marriage. Until 1967, when the Supreme Court invalidated them, many state laws prohibited such marriages. Like same-sex marriage, interracial marriages involved an exceedingly strong public policy: the Southern courts regarded marriages between blacks and whites as “connections and alliances so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them.” The statutes prohibiting such marriages were worded at least as strongly as those of the recent state laws against same-sex marriage: they usually declared such marriages void and punished their celebration with criminal penalties. Yet even in this charged context, the courts rejected the blanket rule of nonrecognition. In every case that did not involve cohabitation within the forum, and in some that did, the Southern courts recognized interracial marriages.
Paul Finkelman
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195112436
- eISBN:
- 9780199854271
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195112436.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
In the beginning of the period of European settlement, sexual activity in the South was multiracial. In the first years of the Virginia colony almost all the settlers were male. This was generally ...
More
In the beginning of the period of European settlement, sexual activity in the South was multiracial. In the first years of the Virginia colony almost all the settlers were male. This was generally true in other southern colonies as well. This first colony led the way in stigmatizing and criminalizing love, and sometimes sex, between the races. The success of laws punishing race mixing seems clear. Hostility to interracial marriage and children of mixed ancestry grew during the 18th century. So too did the female population. The social norms and legal prohibitions that Virginia created in the 17th century remained viable for more than two centuries in the Old Dominion and throughout the South. Virginia's early laws criminalizing interracial marriages proved to be the most durable legacy of the colonial response to race.Less
In the beginning of the period of European settlement, sexual activity in the South was multiracial. In the first years of the Virginia colony almost all the settlers were male. This was generally true in other southern colonies as well. This first colony led the way in stigmatizing and criminalizing love, and sometimes sex, between the races. The success of laws punishing race mixing seems clear. Hostility to interracial marriage and children of mixed ancestry grew during the 18th century. So too did the female population. The social norms and legal prohibitions that Virginia created in the 17th century remained viable for more than two centuries in the Old Dominion and throughout the South. Virginia's early laws criminalizing interracial marriages proved to be the most durable legacy of the colonial response to race.
Maria Höhn
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604737844
- eISBN:
- 9781604737851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604737844.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Recent research on the American military occupation in West Germany has addressed issues of gender and race by exploring the African American GIs’ sexual relationships with German women. This chapter ...
More
Recent research on the American military occupation in West Germany has addressed issues of gender and race by exploring the African American GIs’ sexual relationships with German women. This chapter examines the German and American debates on interracial relationships and how black soldiers stationed in Germany began to challenge interference in their relationships or the de facto segregation of bars and restaurants to GIs. It argues that African American GIs were defining civil rights not only in terms of political and economic equality, but also in terms of social equality. The chapter considers the irony of an American government that forced the abolition of the Nuremberg Laws and a ban on marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans, but tolerated the many state laws banning interracial marriages. It also comments on the attitudes of black soldiers who felt less racism and discrimination in U.S. military bases in Germany than in America, and, finally, discusses the debate about the propriety of racial mixing in Germany and its implications for democracy.Less
Recent research on the American military occupation in West Germany has addressed issues of gender and race by exploring the African American GIs’ sexual relationships with German women. This chapter examines the German and American debates on interracial relationships and how black soldiers stationed in Germany began to challenge interference in their relationships or the de facto segregation of bars and restaurants to GIs. It argues that African American GIs were defining civil rights not only in terms of political and economic equality, but also in terms of social equality. The chapter considers the irony of an American government that forced the abolition of the Nuremberg Laws and a ban on marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans, but tolerated the many state laws banning interracial marriages. It also comments on the attitudes of black soldiers who felt less racism and discrimination in U.S. military bases in Germany than in America, and, finally, discusses the debate about the propriety of racial mixing in Germany and its implications for democracy.
Angela Onwuachi-Willig
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300166828
- eISBN:
- 9780300166880
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300166828.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This book looks at what it means to be a multiracial couple in the United States today. It begins with a look back at a 1925 case in which a two-month marriage ends with a man suing his wife for ...
More
This book looks at what it means to be a multiracial couple in the United States today. It begins with a look back at a 1925 case in which a two-month marriage ends with a man suing his wife for misrepresentation of her race, and shows how our society has yet to come to terms with interracial marriage. The book examines this issue by drawing from a variety of sources, including personal experiences. It argues that housing law, family law, and employment law fail, in important ways, to protect multiracial couples. In a society in which marriage is used to give, withhold, and take away status—in the workplace and elsewhere—the book says interracial couples are at a disadvantage, which is only exacerbated by current law.Less
This book looks at what it means to be a multiracial couple in the United States today. It begins with a look back at a 1925 case in which a two-month marriage ends with a man suing his wife for misrepresentation of her race, and shows how our society has yet to come to terms with interracial marriage. The book examines this issue by drawing from a variety of sources, including personal experiences. It argues that housing law, family law, and employment law fail, in important ways, to protect multiracial couples. In a society in which marriage is used to give, withhold, and take away status—in the workplace and elsewhere—the book says interracial couples are at a disadvantage, which is only exacerbated by current law.
Kyle G. Volk
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199371914
- eISBN:
- 9780199371945
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199371914.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter reveals how racial amalgamation (racial mixture) became the third moral problem that provoked crucial debates about majority rule and minority rights in the 1840s. It shows how, ...
More
This chapter reveals how racial amalgamation (racial mixture) became the third moral problem that provoked crucial debates about majority rule and minority rights in the 1840s. It shows how, beginning in Massachusetts, abolitionists challenged the long-standing legal ban on interracial marriage and policies of segregating black and white children in public schools. Defenders insisted that these measures properly prevented amalgamation and were supported in true democratic fashion by the overwhelming majority. At town meetings, in courtrooms, in newspapers, and elsewhere, however, black activists and white abolitionists painted race regulations as markers of inequality. To them, equality was a hallmark of democracy that no majority, no matter how large, could contravene in public policy. This chapter follows the struggle from grass-roots challenges to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and eventually to the 1855 state law that ended de jure school segregation, the first in the nation.Less
This chapter reveals how racial amalgamation (racial mixture) became the third moral problem that provoked crucial debates about majority rule and minority rights in the 1840s. It shows how, beginning in Massachusetts, abolitionists challenged the long-standing legal ban on interracial marriage and policies of segregating black and white children in public schools. Defenders insisted that these measures properly prevented amalgamation and were supported in true democratic fashion by the overwhelming majority. At town meetings, in courtrooms, in newspapers, and elsewhere, however, black activists and white abolitionists painted race regulations as markers of inequality. To them, equality was a hallmark of democracy that no majority, no matter how large, could contravene in public policy. This chapter follows the struggle from grass-roots challenges to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and eventually to the 1855 state law that ended de jure school segregation, the first in the nation.
Karen Y. Morrison
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036637
- eISBN:
- 9780252093715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036637.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
This chapter examines the question of whitening as a process that required both family and nation to force ideological and behavioral commitments on individuals. Focusing on race-making behaviors in ...
More
This chapter examines the question of whitening as a process that required both family and nation to force ideological and behavioral commitments on individuals. Focusing on race-making behaviors in nineteenth-century Cuba, it interrogates the historical ambiguity of blanqueamiento, or whitening process, using a methodology that emphasizes the social construction of race. More specifically, it proposes the concept of “sexual economy of race” as a means to elucidate the conjunction between reproductive behavior and the social construction of race. It also explores the restriction of interracial marriages in Cuba as part of its whitening agenda, along with the ways in which racialized reproductive choices influenced the standard system of racial classification and fostered whitening in some cases and discouraged it in others. The chapter shows that whitening efforts in colonial Cuba were not as predictable or linear as previously theorized.Less
This chapter examines the question of whitening as a process that required both family and nation to force ideological and behavioral commitments on individuals. Focusing on race-making behaviors in nineteenth-century Cuba, it interrogates the historical ambiguity of blanqueamiento, or whitening process, using a methodology that emphasizes the social construction of race. More specifically, it proposes the concept of “sexual economy of race” as a means to elucidate the conjunction between reproductive behavior and the social construction of race. It also explores the restriction of interracial marriages in Cuba as part of its whitening agenda, along with the ways in which racialized reproductive choices influenced the standard system of racial classification and fostered whitening in some cases and discouraged it in others. The chapter shows that whitening efforts in colonial Cuba were not as predictable or linear as previously theorized.
Janet McIntosh
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520290495
- eISBN:
- 9780520964631
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520290495.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines close relationships between white and black Kenyans. It explores interracial sex, marriage, and integration in portraying a complicated social landscape that is only in part ...
More
This chapter examines close relationships between white and black Kenyans. It explores interracial sex, marriage, and integration in portraying a complicated social landscape that is only in part informed by Kenya's history of interracial relations and racism. The chapter describes the social geography of interracial distance, citing the more frequent instances of interracial marriage among expats and how this contrasts with those among the settlers. Many settler descendants interviewed for this study cleave to their cultural comfort zones, and this, in conjunction with their geographic choices, often amounts to self-segregation. Trying to capture the quality of segregated integration among white Kenyans, one respondent sums it up: “You mix, but you don't end up really mixing.”Less
This chapter examines close relationships between white and black Kenyans. It explores interracial sex, marriage, and integration in portraying a complicated social landscape that is only in part informed by Kenya's history of interracial relations and racism. The chapter describes the social geography of interracial distance, citing the more frequent instances of interracial marriage among expats and how this contrasts with those among the settlers. Many settler descendants interviewed for this study cleave to their cultural comfort zones, and this, in conjunction with their geographic choices, often amounts to self-segregation. Trying to capture the quality of segregated integration among white Kenyans, one respondent sums it up: “You mix, but you don't end up really mixing.”
Heidi Kim
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190456252
- eISBN:
- 9780190456276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190456252.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The Melville Revival of the 1950s, by critics of varied political persuasions, reinstated Herman Melville as one of the most important American authors. As many modern critics have discussed, these ...
More
The Melville Revival of the 1950s, by critics of varied political persuasions, reinstated Herman Melville as one of the most important American authors. As many modern critics have discussed, these critics used Moby-Dick as a frame narrative for the Cold War, but the discussion of totalitarianism and individualism still relies on the comfortable use of the Asian figure, whether loving or diabolical, as mythic and symbolic. The interest in Melville is inseparable from the larger interest in the Asia-Pacific region postwar, as well as the role of the Asian in the discussion of interracial marriage and intimacy. Leslie Fiedler’s infamous hypothesis of the “innocent homosexuality” between the white and black man in American literature explicitly includes the Asian/Pacific Islander, this chapter argues, and represents the anxiety over homosexuality in this period but also the concern with white-Asian marriages, particularly war brides, as a stand-in for the larger fears of white-black interracial marriage.Less
The Melville Revival of the 1950s, by critics of varied political persuasions, reinstated Herman Melville as one of the most important American authors. As many modern critics have discussed, these critics used Moby-Dick as a frame narrative for the Cold War, but the discussion of totalitarianism and individualism still relies on the comfortable use of the Asian figure, whether loving or diabolical, as mythic and symbolic. The interest in Melville is inseparable from the larger interest in the Asia-Pacific region postwar, as well as the role of the Asian in the discussion of interracial marriage and intimacy. Leslie Fiedler’s infamous hypothesis of the “innocent homosexuality” between the white and black man in American literature explicitly includes the Asian/Pacific Islander, this chapter argues, and represents the anxiety over homosexuality in this period but also the concern with white-Asian marriages, particularly war brides, as a stand-in for the larger fears of white-black interracial marriage.
Michael Grossberg
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198268208
- eISBN:
- 9780191683442
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198268208.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
This chapter places the last fifty years of United States family law in historical context in order to help introduce a series of substantive analyses of particular aspects of contemporary ...
More
This chapter places the last fifty years of United States family law in historical context in order to help introduce a series of substantive analyses of particular aspects of contemporary Anglo-American domestic relations law. It argues that a series of fundamental changes in the United States family law during the early years of the era transformed American domestic relations by ending a nineteenth-century regime of family governance. The changes are worth recovering and analysing because they have framed subsequent legal practice and disputes. At the same time, however, the nature of the new domestic relations regime was determined not simply by change, but also by continuities in family law and by reactions to the transformations. This chapter thus documents a range of family law changes ranging from maternal preference to bans on interracial marriage, fault-based divorce laws against abortion and birth control, refusals to accept charges of marital rape, circumscribed juvenile rights, and even basic legal definitions of families.Less
This chapter places the last fifty years of United States family law in historical context in order to help introduce a series of substantive analyses of particular aspects of contemporary Anglo-American domestic relations law. It argues that a series of fundamental changes in the United States family law during the early years of the era transformed American domestic relations by ending a nineteenth-century regime of family governance. The changes are worth recovering and analysing because they have framed subsequent legal practice and disputes. At the same time, however, the nature of the new domestic relations regime was determined not simply by change, but also by continuities in family law and by reactions to the transformations. This chapter thus documents a range of family law changes ranging from maternal preference to bans on interracial marriage, fault-based divorce laws against abortion and birth control, refusals to accept charges of marital rape, circumscribed juvenile rights, and even basic legal definitions of families.
Heather Miyano Kopelson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479805006
- eISBN:
- 9781479814268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479805006.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter focuses on the irregular appearance of race and specific religious affiliation in English colonial laws in Bermuda and Massachusetts regulating sex. The 1662 Virginia statute doubled the ...
More
This chapter focuses on the irregular appearance of race and specific religious affiliation in English colonial laws in Bermuda and Massachusetts regulating sex. The 1662 Virginia statute doubled the fine for fornication between “any Christian” and “a negro man or woman,” while the 1691 statute outlawed interracial marriage. Massachusetts divided potential offenders into “Christian” and “Negro or other slaves” in a 1705 law but paid less attention to an inherited Christianity than Virginia. Bermuda's 1723 law governing interracial sex used no religious categories and instead confined its differentiation to racial labels. This chapter considers interracial sex as a specific concern in Massachusetts and Bermuda laws as well as the debate about whether Africans and Indians could become Christians.Less
This chapter focuses on the irregular appearance of race and specific religious affiliation in English colonial laws in Bermuda and Massachusetts regulating sex. The 1662 Virginia statute doubled the fine for fornication between “any Christian” and “a negro man or woman,” while the 1691 statute outlawed interracial marriage. Massachusetts divided potential offenders into “Christian” and “Negro or other slaves” in a 1705 law but paid less attention to an inherited Christianity than Virginia. Bermuda's 1723 law governing interracial sex used no religious categories and instead confined its differentiation to racial labels. This chapter considers interracial sex as a specific concern in Massachusetts and Bermuda laws as well as the debate about whether Africans and Indians could become Christians.
Wendy Webster
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- February 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198735762
- eISBN:
- 9780191799747
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198735762.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter focuses on what I call ‘sexual patriotism’, to describe what much popular opinion demanded of British women—the avoidance of sexual relationships with all men who were not native-born ...
More
This chapter focuses on what I call ‘sexual patriotism’, to describe what much popular opinion demanded of British women—the avoidance of sexual relationships with all men who were not native-born Britons. These rules were generally female-only—British men’s relationships with non-British women attracted little attention. Women’s responses to the demands that they should be sexually patriotic were varied—many flouted the rules that popular opinion laid down for them. Within diverse popular attitudes, interracial mixing—including mixing between white British women and black men—was not only accepted but also championed by a significant strand of popular opinion. British people thought of themselves as tolerant, in contrast to the intolerance of white Americans. But on interracial sex and marriage and the birth of mixed-race children, the views of the American authorities, the British government, and much of British public opinion converged—they were beyond the pale.Less
This chapter focuses on what I call ‘sexual patriotism’, to describe what much popular opinion demanded of British women—the avoidance of sexual relationships with all men who were not native-born Britons. These rules were generally female-only—British men’s relationships with non-British women attracted little attention. Women’s responses to the demands that they should be sexually patriotic were varied—many flouted the rules that popular opinion laid down for them. Within diverse popular attitudes, interracial mixing—including mixing between white British women and black men—was not only accepted but also championed by a significant strand of popular opinion. British people thought of themselves as tolerant, in contrast to the intolerance of white Americans. But on interracial sex and marriage and the birth of mixed-race children, the views of the American authorities, the British government, and much of British public opinion converged—they were beyond the pale.
Katja Garloff
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501704963
- eISBN:
- 9781501706011
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501704963.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter jumps to the turn of the century, when the rise of racial antisemitism fostered a new Jewish self-awareness and rendered “interracial” love and marriage central to the public debates ...
More
This chapter jumps to the turn of the century, when the rise of racial antisemitism fostered a new Jewish self-awareness and rendered “interracial” love and marriage central to the public debates about German Jewish identity. It analyzes three German Jewish writers of different and paradigmatic political orientations, who used love stories to diagnose the reasons for the faltering of emancipation: the assimilationist Ludwig Jacobowski, the Zionist Max Nordau, and the mainstream liberal Georg Hermann. Their works, including Jacobowski's Werther the Jew (1892), Nordau's Doctor Kohn (1899), and Hermann's Jettchen Gebert (1906), show how love stories potentially escape the ideological constraints of increasingly racialized models of identity. On the one hand, the love plot affords an opportunity to expose the obstacles encountered by Jews seeking integration in times of rising antisemitism. On the other hand, the open endings of most love stories and the ambiguous use of racial language allow the authors to eschew a final verdict on the success or failure of integration. The chapter argues that the love plot generates a host of equivocations between the social and the biological, and the particular and the universal, creating a metaphorical surplus that opens up venues to rethink the project of Jewish emancipation and assimilation.Less
This chapter jumps to the turn of the century, when the rise of racial antisemitism fostered a new Jewish self-awareness and rendered “interracial” love and marriage central to the public debates about German Jewish identity. It analyzes three German Jewish writers of different and paradigmatic political orientations, who used love stories to diagnose the reasons for the faltering of emancipation: the assimilationist Ludwig Jacobowski, the Zionist Max Nordau, and the mainstream liberal Georg Hermann. Their works, including Jacobowski's Werther the Jew (1892), Nordau's Doctor Kohn (1899), and Hermann's Jettchen Gebert (1906), show how love stories potentially escape the ideological constraints of increasingly racialized models of identity. On the one hand, the love plot affords an opportunity to expose the obstacles encountered by Jews seeking integration in times of rising antisemitism. On the other hand, the open endings of most love stories and the ambiguous use of racial language allow the authors to eschew a final verdict on the success or failure of integration. The chapter argues that the love plot generates a host of equivocations between the social and the biological, and the particular and the universal, creating a metaphorical surplus that opens up venues to rethink the project of Jewish emancipation and assimilation.
Kathryn Talalay
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195113938
- eISBN:
- 9780199853816
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195113938.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter focuses in the early life of Philippa Duke Schuyler. She was born during the Great Depression, on August 2, 1931, at her parent's home in Harlem. Her father, George Schuyler, was a black ...
More
This chapter focuses in the early life of Philippa Duke Schuyler. She was born during the Great Depression, on August 2, 1931, at her parent's home in Harlem. Her father, George Schuyler, was a black journalist for one of America's oldest black newspapers, making his absence a sad necessity to Philippa's early days. Her mother, Josephine Schuyler, however kept a detailed scrapbook of Philippa's development for George to see when he came home. Philippa's family lived in an apartment on the fourth floor of Park Lincoln, with Colonial Park near by and as a child, Philippa would spend many hours playing there. Philippa's birth was talked about in all the black newspapers. It was broadly known that she was the product of the first interracial celebrity marriage of the 20th century.Less
This chapter focuses in the early life of Philippa Duke Schuyler. She was born during the Great Depression, on August 2, 1931, at her parent's home in Harlem. Her father, George Schuyler, was a black journalist for one of America's oldest black newspapers, making his absence a sad necessity to Philippa's early days. Her mother, Josephine Schuyler, however kept a detailed scrapbook of Philippa's development for George to see when he came home. Philippa's family lived in an apartment on the fourth floor of Park Lincoln, with Colonial Park near by and as a child, Philippa would spend many hours playing there. Philippa's birth was talked about in all the black newspapers. It was broadly known that she was the product of the first interracial celebrity marriage of the 20th century.
Carina E. Ray
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780986497315
- eISBN:
- 9781786944535
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780986497315.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Maritime History
This essay explores the difficulties faced by interracial couples - primarily West African men and British or German women - in gaining acceptance in society in the interwar years in Britain and West ...
More
This essay explores the difficulties faced by interracial couples - primarily West African men and British or German women - in gaining acceptance in society in the interwar years in Britain and West Africa. It considers the impact of the 1919 race riots in Britain during the postwar economic downturn that left maritime, immigrant, and working class communities particularly impoverished and led to a surge in racism and backlash against non-British labourers. West African men were accused of ‘stealing’ both jobs and women, and white women accused of betraying their nation through interracial marriage. This hostility led to efforts at repatriation to West Africa, which colonial governments would often prevent through legislation. The second half of this essay is a case study of West African husbands and German wives, who caused tremendous legal difficulties to governments looking to cease repatriation. The case studies demonstrate that notions of sex, gender, class, nationality, and religion informed colonial policies that heavily impacted the migration efforts of interracial couples.Less
This essay explores the difficulties faced by interracial couples - primarily West African men and British or German women - in gaining acceptance in society in the interwar years in Britain and West Africa. It considers the impact of the 1919 race riots in Britain during the postwar economic downturn that left maritime, immigrant, and working class communities particularly impoverished and led to a surge in racism and backlash against non-British labourers. West African men were accused of ‘stealing’ both jobs and women, and white women accused of betraying their nation through interracial marriage. This hostility led to efforts at repatriation to West Africa, which colonial governments would often prevent through legislation. The second half of this essay is a case study of West African husbands and German wives, who caused tremendous legal difficulties to governments looking to cease repatriation. The case studies demonstrate that notions of sex, gender, class, nationality, and religion informed colonial policies that heavily impacted the migration efforts of interracial couples.
Michael Bundock
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300207101
- eISBN:
- 9780300213904
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300207101.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter discusses the issue of interracial marriage in England within the context of Francis Barber’s marriage to a white woman named Elizabeth Ball. On January 28, 1773, Barber married Ball at ...
More
This chapter discusses the issue of interracial marriage in England within the context of Francis Barber’s marriage to a white woman named Elizabeth Ball. On January 28, 1773, Barber married Ball at the Church of St. Dunstan in London. Ball was seventeen or eighteen when she married Barber, who was then about thirty-one. The ceremony was in all probability a low-key affair. It was conducted by the Vicar, the Revd. Joseph Williamson. The witnesses were Thomas Twist and John Sales. It is not surprising to see Barber marry a white woman since there were considerably more black men than black women in London. This chapter examines British attitudes towards an interracial marriage during the eighteenth century. It also describes Barber’s role in Samuel Johnson’s life, along with the latter’s deteriorating health.Less
This chapter discusses the issue of interracial marriage in England within the context of Francis Barber’s marriage to a white woman named Elizabeth Ball. On January 28, 1773, Barber married Ball at the Church of St. Dunstan in London. Ball was seventeen or eighteen when she married Barber, who was then about thirty-one. The ceremony was in all probability a low-key affair. It was conducted by the Vicar, the Revd. Joseph Williamson. The witnesses were Thomas Twist and John Sales. It is not surprising to see Barber marry a white woman since there were considerably more black men than black women in London. This chapter examines British attitudes towards an interracial marriage during the eighteenth century. It also describes Barber’s role in Samuel Johnson’s life, along with the latter’s deteriorating health.
