Susie Woo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479889914
- eISBN:
- 9781479845712
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479889914.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter looks at what happened to the Korean women and children who remained in South Korea. It sets the stage by describing how President Rhee’s 1953 directive to remove children with American ...
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This chapter looks at what happened to the Korean women and children who remained in South Korea. It sets the stage by describing how President Rhee’s 1953 directive to remove children with American fathers to the United States heightened the vulnerability of those who stayed. The South Korean government worked closely with Harry Holt and in 1954 established Korea’s first welfare agency, Child Placement Service, expressly to remove mixed-race children. The chapter describes how US racial identification practices used to determine which children were “part-black” were introduced to and became institutionalized in South Korea. It also describes how Korean women were erased in this process. They were coerced to give up their mixed-race children and were offered no support from either government. For the children, solutions ranging from segregated schools to welfare reports that pathologized them as “social handicaps” relegated this population to the margins. The chapter ends with a consideration of how mixed-race children and the mothers who fought to raise them navigated the ongoing legacies of US militarization in South Korea.Less
This chapter looks at what happened to the Korean women and children who remained in South Korea. It sets the stage by describing how President Rhee’s 1953 directive to remove children with American fathers to the United States heightened the vulnerability of those who stayed. The South Korean government worked closely with Harry Holt and in 1954 established Korea’s first welfare agency, Child Placement Service, expressly to remove mixed-race children. The chapter describes how US racial identification practices used to determine which children were “part-black” were introduced to and became institutionalized in South Korea. It also describes how Korean women were erased in this process. They were coerced to give up their mixed-race children and were offered no support from either government. For the children, solutions ranging from segregated schools to welfare reports that pathologized them as “social handicaps” relegated this population to the margins. The chapter ends with a consideration of how mixed-race children and the mothers who fought to raise them navigated the ongoing legacies of US militarization in South Korea.
Caroline Rody
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195377361
- eISBN:
- 9780199869558
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195377361.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This epilogue examines the history of mixed‐race characters in Asian American fiction, so as to consider the meaning of the generation of mixed‐race fictional children born to the protagonists of the ...
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This epilogue examines the history of mixed‐race characters in Asian American fiction, so as to consider the meaning of the generation of mixed‐race fictional children born to the protagonists of the novels centrally considered in this study. After a brief discussion of the legacy of “tragic” mulattoes and other mixed‐race characters in U.S. fiction, and then of the increasing public acceptance and even affirmation of mixed‐race identity in popular and literary discourse, it goes on to trace a line of troubled mixed‐race Asian figures, with special attention to the melancholic predicament of visually indeterminate race, in texts by writers including Frank Chin, Jessica Hagedorn, Heinz Insu Fenkl, and Don Lee. Patricia Chao's Mambo Peligroso and Jiro Adachi's Island of Bicycle Dancers present more affirmative if problematic portrayals of mixed characters and societies. But the mixed children in Chang‐rae Lee's Native Speaker, Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land, and Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange should be seen as suggestive projections of an emerging interethnic consciousness.Less
This epilogue examines the history of mixed‐race characters in Asian American fiction, so as to consider the meaning of the generation of mixed‐race fictional children born to the protagonists of the novels centrally considered in this study. After a brief discussion of the legacy of “tragic” mulattoes and other mixed‐race characters in U.S. fiction, and then of the increasing public acceptance and even affirmation of mixed‐race identity in popular and literary discourse, it goes on to trace a line of troubled mixed‐race Asian figures, with special attention to the melancholic predicament of visually indeterminate race, in texts by writers including Frank Chin, Jessica Hagedorn, Heinz Insu Fenkl, and Don Lee. Patricia Chao's Mambo Peligroso and Jiro Adachi's Island of Bicycle Dancers present more affirmative if problematic portrayals of mixed characters and societies. But the mixed children in Chang‐rae Lee's Native Speaker, Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land, and Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange should be seen as suggestive projections of an emerging interethnic consciousness.
Kori A. Graves
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479872329
- eISBN:
- 9781479891276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479872329.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Social History
In 1949, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize–winning author Pearl S. Buck established Welcome House, the first permanent foster home and adoption agency for mixed-race children of Asian descent born in the ...
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In 1949, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize–winning author Pearl S. Buck established Welcome House, the first permanent foster home and adoption agency for mixed-race children of Asian descent born in the United States. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Buck innovated an institutional model and rhetorical strategy to increase adoptions of US-born and foreign-born mixed-race children of Asian descent. Buck’s strategies were controversial because they represented a break from adoption standards that child welfare professionals devised to promote the best interest of adoptees. Professionals associated with the US Children’s Bureau, the Child Welfare League of America, and International Social Service were critical of Buck’s adoption work and her support of proxy adoptions. But white adoptive families responded to her reframing of mixed-race children as beautiful and intellectually superior hybrids that were model adoptees. Yet, Buck’s efforts to increase African Americans’ adoptions of Korean black children were less effective. Her awareness that transnational adoption would not be a solution for many mixed-race Korean children, and especially Korean black children, led Buck to establish the Pearl S. Buck Foundation and an opportunity center in South Korea to assist mixed-race children and their mothers.Less
In 1949, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize–winning author Pearl S. Buck established Welcome House, the first permanent foster home and adoption agency for mixed-race children of Asian descent born in the United States. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Buck innovated an institutional model and rhetorical strategy to increase adoptions of US-born and foreign-born mixed-race children of Asian descent. Buck’s strategies were controversial because they represented a break from adoption standards that child welfare professionals devised to promote the best interest of adoptees. Professionals associated with the US Children’s Bureau, the Child Welfare League of America, and International Social Service were critical of Buck’s adoption work and her support of proxy adoptions. But white adoptive families responded to her reframing of mixed-race children as beautiful and intellectually superior hybrids that were model adoptees. Yet, Buck’s efforts to increase African Americans’ adoptions of Korean black children were less effective. Her awareness that transnational adoption would not be a solution for many mixed-race Korean children, and especially Korean black children, led Buck to establish the Pearl S. Buck Foundation and an opportunity center in South Korea to assist mixed-race children and their mothers.
Susie Woo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479889914
- eISBN:
- 9781479845712
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479889914.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
The war resulted in over three million Korean deaths and an estimated 100,000 children left homeless. The scale of need opened the door wide to nongovernmental US citizens who flooded South Korea to ...
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The war resulted in over three million Korean deaths and an estimated 100,000 children left homeless. The scale of need opened the door wide to nongovernmental US citizens who flooded South Korea to spearhead recovery efforts. American missionaries led the call. They set up over five hundred orphanages by the war’s end and administered care in a country that, unlike the United States, did not have an established national welfare program. The chapter examines how US officials initially welcomed the work of missionaries because they helped to resolve the civilian crisis while promoting Cold War visions of American benevolence, but were soon at odds with missionaries who openly criticized US servicemen for abandoning their mixed-race children in Korea. What began as a humanitarian and proselytizing effort in South Korea turned into an adoption movement that spanned the Pacific. Missionaries like evangelist Harry Holt and internationalist Pearl Buck connected constituencies back home to Korean children, imbuing Americans with a perceived First World responsibility over Third World children. The mobilization of Americans interested in seeing these adoptions through pressured the US and South Korean governments to create permanent adoption laws that set the stage for large-scale transnational adoptions the world over.Less
The war resulted in over three million Korean deaths and an estimated 100,000 children left homeless. The scale of need opened the door wide to nongovernmental US citizens who flooded South Korea to spearhead recovery efforts. American missionaries led the call. They set up over five hundred orphanages by the war’s end and administered care in a country that, unlike the United States, did not have an established national welfare program. The chapter examines how US officials initially welcomed the work of missionaries because they helped to resolve the civilian crisis while promoting Cold War visions of American benevolence, but were soon at odds with missionaries who openly criticized US servicemen for abandoning their mixed-race children in Korea. What began as a humanitarian and proselytizing effort in South Korea turned into an adoption movement that spanned the Pacific. Missionaries like evangelist Harry Holt and internationalist Pearl Buck connected constituencies back home to Korean children, imbuing Americans with a perceived First World responsibility over Third World children. The mobilization of Americans interested in seeing these adoptions through pressured the US and South Korean governments to create permanent adoption laws that set the stage for large-scale transnational adoptions the world over.
Catherine Ceniza Choy
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814717226
- eISBN:
- 9781479886388
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814717226.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter examines the roles played by race and rescue in the early history of Asian international adoption in America. It begins by discussing how the post–World War II US occupation of Japan ...
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This chapter examines the roles played by race and rescue in the early history of Asian international adoption in America. It begins by discussing how the post–World War II US occupation of Japan (1945–1952) and US Cold War involvement in the Korean War (1950–1953) created a population of mixed-race children fathered by American servicemen with Asian women. It then explains how international adoption and humanitarian rescue became inextricably linked during this period. It also reflects on the work of the ISS-USA (International Social Service-United States of America Branch) in facilitating Asian international adoptions, along with its emphasis on the important role of indigenous social services to alleviate the plight of mixed-race children. Finally, it considers the persistence of the plight of “GI babies” into the 1960s and 1970s in the context of the Vietnam War and the US military involvement in the conflict.Less
This chapter examines the roles played by race and rescue in the early history of Asian international adoption in America. It begins by discussing how the post–World War II US occupation of Japan (1945–1952) and US Cold War involvement in the Korean War (1950–1953) created a population of mixed-race children fathered by American servicemen with Asian women. It then explains how international adoption and humanitarian rescue became inextricably linked during this period. It also reflects on the work of the ISS-USA (International Social Service-United States of America Branch) in facilitating Asian international adoptions, along with its emphasis on the important role of indigenous social services to alleviate the plight of mixed-race children. Finally, it considers the persistence of the plight of “GI babies” into the 1960s and 1970s in the context of the Vietnam War and the US military involvement in the conflict.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226327594
- eISBN:
- 9780226328072
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226328072.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
What were the adoption histories of children who faced discrimination and exclusion from placement on the basis of race? When and why did white Americans deliberately begin to violate matching by ...
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What were the adoption histories of children who faced discrimination and exclusion from placement on the basis of race? When and why did white Americans deliberately begin to violate matching by incorporating mixed-race children, minority children, and children born in foreign countries into their families? This chapter begins to answer these questions. It describes efforts to locate adoptive homes for children born into minority communities, continues the story of transracial and transnational adoptions after 1945, and suggests that by the mid-1960s, a new strategy for achieving authenticity had emerged. Denying difference gave way to acknowledging it. This shift was especially controversial in the case of race, where matching continued to seem logical, natural, and absolutely necessary to many parents and professionals. Realness never lost its power as a goal for adoption, but the rules for getting there started to change.Less
What were the adoption histories of children who faced discrimination and exclusion from placement on the basis of race? When and why did white Americans deliberately begin to violate matching by incorporating mixed-race children, minority children, and children born in foreign countries into their families? This chapter begins to answer these questions. It describes efforts to locate adoptive homes for children born into minority communities, continues the story of transracial and transnational adoptions after 1945, and suggests that by the mid-1960s, a new strategy for achieving authenticity had emerged. Denying difference gave way to acknowledging it. This shift was especially controversial in the case of race, where matching continued to seem logical, natural, and absolutely necessary to many parents and professionals. Realness never lost its power as a goal for adoption, but the rules for getting there started to change.
Susie Woo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479889914
- eISBN:
- 9781479845712
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479889914.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Korean women and children have become the forgotten population of a forgotten war. Framed by War traces how the Korean orphan, GI baby, adoptee, birth mother, prostitute, and bride—figures produced ...
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Korean women and children have become the forgotten population of a forgotten war. Framed by War traces how the Korean orphan, GI baby, adoptee, birth mother, prostitute, and bride—figures produced by the US military—were made to disappear. Strained embodiments of war, they brought Americans into Korea and Koreans into America, intimate crossings that defined, and at times defied, US empire in the Pacific. The book looks to US and South Korean government documents and military correspondence; US aid organization records; Korean orphanage registers; US and South Korean newspapers and magazines; as well as photographs, interviews, films, and performances to suture a fragmented past. Integrating history with visual and cultural analysis, Framed by War reveals how what unfolded in Korea set the stage for US power in the postwar era. US destruction and humanitarianism, violence and care played out upon the bodies of Korean women and children, enabling US intervention and fortifying transnational connections with symbolic and material outcomes. In the 1950s Americans went from knowing very little about Koreans to making them family, and the Cold War scripts needed to support these internationalist efforts required the erasure of those who could not fit the family frame. These were the geographies to which Korean women and children were bound, but found ways to navigate in South Korea, the United States, and spaces in between, reconfiguring notions of race and kinship along the way.Less
Korean women and children have become the forgotten population of a forgotten war. Framed by War traces how the Korean orphan, GI baby, adoptee, birth mother, prostitute, and bride—figures produced by the US military—were made to disappear. Strained embodiments of war, they brought Americans into Korea and Koreans into America, intimate crossings that defined, and at times defied, US empire in the Pacific. The book looks to US and South Korean government documents and military correspondence; US aid organization records; Korean orphanage registers; US and South Korean newspapers and magazines; as well as photographs, interviews, films, and performances to suture a fragmented past. Integrating history with visual and cultural analysis, Framed by War reveals how what unfolded in Korea set the stage for US power in the postwar era. US destruction and humanitarianism, violence and care played out upon the bodies of Korean women and children, enabling US intervention and fortifying transnational connections with symbolic and material outcomes. In the 1950s Americans went from knowing very little about Koreans to making them family, and the Cold War scripts needed to support these internationalist efforts required the erasure of those who could not fit the family frame. These were the geographies to which Korean women and children were bound, but found ways to navigate in South Korea, the United States, and spaces in between, reconfiguring notions of race and kinship along the way.
Katrina Jagodinsky
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300211689
- eISBN:
- 9780300220810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300211689.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This chapter explores how Indigenous women faced the laws that bound them to American masters and made them sexually vulnerable to male citizens' whims by chronicling the experiences of a Yaqui woman ...
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This chapter explores how Indigenous women faced the laws that bound them to American masters and made them sexually vulnerable to male citizens' whims by chronicling the experiences of a Yaqui woman in Arizona, Lucía Martínez, during the period 1854–1900. It narrates how Lucía endured an adolescence of servitude under a territorial Arizona senator, King S. Woolsey, whom she challenged as the putative father of her illegitimate children in civil court. Woolsey fathered three of Lucía's children and indentured two of them. Lucía sued Woolsey in 1871 for custody of her mixed-race children, becoming the first Native woman to use Arizona's legal system. This chapter discusses Lucía's child custody petition in the Arizona civil court as well as the transformation of her children from Martínez to Woolsey within a lifetime, which reflected a shift in Yaqui claims to whiteness and citizenship in Arizona Territory.Less
This chapter explores how Indigenous women faced the laws that bound them to American masters and made them sexually vulnerable to male citizens' whims by chronicling the experiences of a Yaqui woman in Arizona, Lucía Martínez, during the period 1854–1900. It narrates how Lucía endured an adolescence of servitude under a territorial Arizona senator, King S. Woolsey, whom she challenged as the putative father of her illegitimate children in civil court. Woolsey fathered three of Lucía's children and indentured two of them. Lucía sued Woolsey in 1871 for custody of her mixed-race children, becoming the first Native woman to use Arizona's legal system. This chapter discusses Lucía's child custody petition in the Arizona civil court as well as the transformation of her children from Martínez to Woolsey within a lifetime, which reflected a shift in Yaqui claims to whiteness and citizenship in Arizona Territory.
Katrina Jagodinsky
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300211689
- eISBN:
- 9780300220810
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300211689.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This book is the first to focus on Indigenous women of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and the ways they dealt with the challenges posed by the existing legal regimes of the nineteenth and ...
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This book is the first to focus on Indigenous women of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and the ways they dealt with the challenges posed by the existing legal regimes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In most western states, it was difficult if not impossible for Native women to inherit property, raise mixed-race children, or take legal action in the event of rape or abuse. Through the experiences of six Indigenous women who fought for personal autonomy and the rights of their tribes, the book explores a long yet generally unacknowledged tradition of active critique of the U.S. legal system by female Native Americans.Less
This book is the first to focus on Indigenous women of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and the ways they dealt with the challenges posed by the existing legal regimes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In most western states, it was difficult if not impossible for Native women to inherit property, raise mixed-race children, or take legal action in the event of rape or abuse. Through the experiences of six Indigenous women who fought for personal autonomy and the rights of their tribes, the book explores a long yet generally unacknowledged tradition of active critique of the U.S. legal system by female Native Americans.
Catherine Ceniza Choy
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814717226
- eISBN:
- 9781479886388
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814717226.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
In the last fifty years, transnational adoption—specifically, the adoption of Asian children—has exploded in popularity as an alternative path to family making. Despite the cultural acceptance of ...
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In the last fifty years, transnational adoption—specifically, the adoption of Asian children—has exploded in popularity as an alternative path to family making. Despite the cultural acceptance of this practice, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the factors that allowed Asian international adoption to flourish. This book unearths the little-known historical origins of Asian international adoption in the United States. Beginning with the post-World War II presence of the US military in Asia, it reveals how mixed-race children born of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese women and US servicemen comprised one of the earliest groups of adoptive children. The book moves beyond one-dimensional portrayals of Asian international adoption as either a progressive form of US multiculturalism or as an exploitative form of cultural and economic imperialism. Rather, it acknowledges the complexity of the phenomenon, illuminating both its radical possibilities of a world united across national, cultural, and racial divides through family formation and its strong potential for reinforcing the very racial and cultural hierarchies it sought to challenge.Less
In the last fifty years, transnational adoption—specifically, the adoption of Asian children—has exploded in popularity as an alternative path to family making. Despite the cultural acceptance of this practice, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the factors that allowed Asian international adoption to flourish. This book unearths the little-known historical origins of Asian international adoption in the United States. Beginning with the post-World War II presence of the US military in Asia, it reveals how mixed-race children born of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese women and US servicemen comprised one of the earliest groups of adoptive children. The book moves beyond one-dimensional portrayals of Asian international adoption as either a progressive form of US multiculturalism or as an exploitative form of cultural and economic imperialism. Rather, it acknowledges the complexity of the phenomenon, illuminating both its radical possibilities of a world united across national, cultural, and racial divides through family formation and its strong potential for reinforcing the very racial and cultural hierarchies it sought to challenge.
Andrew K. Frank
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814757420
- eISBN:
- 9780814759851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814757420.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter explores the bicultural upbringing of mixed-race children produced via intermarriages between Creek Indians and southern colonists. On a daily basis, white and Native American parents ...
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This chapter explores the bicultural upbringing of mixed-race children produced via intermarriages between Creek Indians and southern colonists. On a daily basis, white and Native American parents struggled to find compromises and common ground in the socialization of their children, resulting in a bicultural upbringing. This process of middle-ground parenting defied and adhered to many of the norms that structured southeastern Indian society, but it almost always reflected the interests of Native society. Most fathers had the ability to influence the upbringing of their Creek children only when it suited their Indian mothers and families. Creek women and their matrilineal kin maintained the upper hand in this process, carefully regulating the actions of intermarried white men.Less
This chapter explores the bicultural upbringing of mixed-race children produced via intermarriages between Creek Indians and southern colonists. On a daily basis, white and Native American parents struggled to find compromises and common ground in the socialization of their children, resulting in a bicultural upbringing. This process of middle-ground parenting defied and adhered to many of the norms that structured southeastern Indian society, but it almost always reflected the interests of Native society. Most fathers had the ability to influence the upbringing of their Creek children only when it suited their Indian mothers and families. Creek women and their matrilineal kin maintained the upper hand in this process, carefully regulating the actions of intermarried white men.
Douglas J. Hamilton
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719071829
- eISBN:
- 9781781702321
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719071829.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This chapter discusses social problems in the West Indies during the second half of the eighteenth century. Just as Scotland experienced great challenges and stresses in the second half of the ...
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This chapter discusses social problems in the West Indies during the second half of the eighteenth century. Just as Scotland experienced great challenges and stresses in the second half of the eighteenth century so too did the West Indies. The most profound disjunctions lay between the free white residents and the communities of enslaved blacks and free people of colour and this manifested itself in the maintenance of a colour bar that determined the rights that were enjoyed or denied and the kind of employment that was undertaken. This chapter considers the scale of Scottish involvement in miscegenation and describes the ways in which Scots reacted to fathering illegitimate mixed-race children.Less
This chapter discusses social problems in the West Indies during the second half of the eighteenth century. Just as Scotland experienced great challenges and stresses in the second half of the eighteenth century so too did the West Indies. The most profound disjunctions lay between the free white residents and the communities of enslaved blacks and free people of colour and this manifested itself in the maintenance of a colour bar that determined the rights that were enjoyed or denied and the kind of employment that was undertaken. This chapter considers the scale of Scottish involvement in miscegenation and describes the ways in which Scots reacted to fathering illegitimate mixed-race children.
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 ...
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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.