On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Richard E. Dixon wrote:

> In a message dated 3/30/2002 4:50:19 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> > the term "mulatto" was applied loosely
> >  in the 19th century to individuals and groups who were not African
> >  American but Native American.
> In Virginia, the term mulatto was defined in a 1785 statute as "every such
> person, who shall have one fourth part or more of negro blood, shall in like
> manner be deemed a mulatto." Revised Code of 1819, c 111, 11.
> ____________________________________________________________________

Legal definitions were not terribly helpful--at
least those in Virginia were not. A few problems with the one quoted
above: 1) who was a "negro"? 2) every "negro" having "one fourth part or
more of negro blood" was by definition also a "mulatto"; and 3) the person
with one "negro" grandparent and three Indian grandparents was, by this
definition, a "mulatto." The law, in short, was vague, and it did not
begin to capture the complex realities of the day.

What we are dealing with are shifting notions about how best to ascribe
certain advantages, privileges, and rights to persons with the proper
ancestry, while denying the same to persons without that ancestry--all in
circumstances that were making the actual description of ancestry more and
more complicated with each passing generation. This reached a nadir of
absurdity in the so-called "one-drop" rules of the 1920s and 1930s.

Doug Deal
History/SUNY-Oswego
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