Transcription
I want to share with you this presentation, which shows the beginnings of "white" being used legally to refer to people and how this category was carefully constructed by English lawmakers, who largely contributed to the outcomes of certain groups here in America and also in the way that people in America still identify themselves today. And so, this presentation is by Dr. Jacqueline Balora, who is an attorney and also a professor of Sociology at St. Xavier University in Chicago. So, here we go.
"White people did not exist before 1681. Again, white people did not exist on Planet Earth until 1681. Number two, any claim that this group called white people, um, any claim that that group is rooted in biology or derived, um, from genes or biology or is innate or is from nature, is a lie. Third and final point, as a matter of foundational law, actually, let me say it this way: White supremacy has been embedded in the United States of America from its founding as a matter of law."
Now, I don't expect you to buy all that, to get all that, to believe all that, at least not now. But my job is to share with you the, um, legal history that proves each of those three claims that I begin with. So, let's go. Let's get started.
We have to begin this conversation in colonial North America, specifically in the colonies, the British colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Both were British colonies and both shared a number of particular characteristics. First, their economy was rooted in tobacco farming. If you know much about tobacco farming, it requires tremendous human labor, lots and lots of workers. So, those who owned large plantations, um, big landholders, constantly needed laborers to do the work, to grow the tobacco. In addition to sharing an economic base, both colonies had an incredible gender imbalance, roughly 10 men for every woman.
Now, let's understand a little bit about the folks who constitute the people in these two colonies. Oh, and by the way, let me give you a, um, a year. Uh, we're in the early 1600s, okay? The early part of the 17th century. Colonial North America. England had, uh, for some bizarre reason that today demographers cannot explain, there was a population boom in England in the early 17th century. So, there were lots and lots of poor British people who were on the public dole, who couldn't find a way to make a living, who couldn't feed themselves. So, the king in England was quite happy to have them sign a contract of indenture to then go work, um, in the British colonies. And that is what happened.
Both indentured and enslaved persons, according to historian Edmund Morgan, were sold and traded like cattle. But of course, not all laborers stand equal in terms of their labor agreement or lack thereof. Those who came under a term of indenture worked for a term of years, and presumably, this indenture was an agreement that they chose to enter into. The terms of indenture were largely protected by British law, although the terms that took form in colonial North America were quite different than those that existed in, um, England. For example, in England, indentured servants could marry, because that was viewed as the way to produce the next group of workers. In this country, indentured servants were prohibited from marrying, and if women were unfortunate enough to get pregnant during their term of indenture, they added usually about seven to nine years onto their term of indenture and one year to the father.
Slavery, of course, was a status that came with life work for life. There was neither British law nor international law to prohibit or restrict slavery. And this was specifically for those who the European colonists named black people. That's who this was primarily used for. What we do know is that at this time period in colonial North America, there were free persons of African descent. Um, we know that landholders, um, freed slaves. They did so in wills, they did so by allowing them to purchase their own freedom or the freedom of a family member.
The vast majority of workers, laborers, um, in colonial North America at this time were British men, British workers. The vast majority. Um, there were some women, there were some European laborers from Portugal, Dutch, um, folks from Ireland and from Scotland are also revealed in the, um, records. But the vast majority were British men. There were small numbers of persons of African descent, and there were even smaller numbers of members of native tribes. Um, but in this slide, I'm trying to capture the socioeconomic ladder, and really, that ladder should be about as long as this room. Um, the landholding elite are, in today's parlance, that's the 1%. And the vast majority of folks, um, who were in the colonies, um, were laborers. Again, they were British, other Europeans, Africans, and members of native tribes.
Here's what I find folks have the most difficult time with. We tend to really struggle with getting a good picture of social life, the social context at this juncture. We're very good at understanding the social relations that exist later, and we'll talk about those in a moment. But pre-Bacon's Rebellion society is something that we generally in this country struggle to grasp. Um, so I'm going to do my best to paint a broad-stroke picture, um, of this time period.
What we know is that British and African laborers worked, ate, and slept together. Furthermore, the evidence from this period, um, which covers the first three quarters of the 17th century, that the anecdotal evidence reveals that they lived under similar conditions and faced the same, the same opportunities and chances to make it once one was free of their term of service, whether free of enslavement or free of indenture.
So, let's review. British laborers constituted the vast majority of the populations in both colonial Maryland and colonial Virginia. All men, of course, because the law of coverture. Let me tell you something about that law of coverture. Um, the law of coverture is derived from British common law, and it, um, structures marriage. And this is how, um, Barrister Blackstone famously described the law of coverture: In marriage, the man and the woman become one, and the one is the man. You didn't have the right to retain your own wages, you couldn't, um, create estate planning, wills, or trusts without the approval of a man. So, all men who were free of indenture or enslavement faced the same opportunities in these colonies as a matter of law. For example, free men of African descent could own servants or slaves, and they did. And they did. And even later on down the years, there were others of recent African descent who became free people, and they did also own other negro slaves too, right? And they didn't care one bit about someone sharing a somewhat similar physical appearance, right? And so, you have to stop falling for these pits that the English elite set up, right? With this being one of them, thinking that people are all the same people just because they share some similar resemblance, right? That's a pit, and you got to wake up and come back to reality.
They could vote, and they did. They could marry persons of the opposite sex. God, and I love that I have to make that qualification. Now, woo! They could marry persons of the opposite sex regardless of national origin, and they did. In fact, marriages between men of African descent and women primarily of British descent were not uncommon at all. In one county, one half of the free men of African descent were married to a European woman. There was a challenge to these marriages, but it did not come from the masses. It came from elites. The elite were the people who had the master plan. These were the people who had all the time in the world to do what no one else can do, and that's to sit back and think, right? And to create new ideas that they want to introduce into this society that they're setting up, right? And so, we're going to find out some of these ideas that they came up with, and that's what we're going to talk about next.
All right, this little depiction, um, is meant to be a depiction of the, um, lawmakers in Maryland, colonial Maryland lawmakers. Um, they passed a law in 1664 punishing, and I quote, "British and other Freeborn women who marry enslaved negro men." The punishment for entering into these marriages, um, was that the woman herself would be enslaved for the, her husband's life, and any children they have would be enslaved into their 20s. Hm. Now, imagine that. You are a plantation owner. That's not a bad deal. I get more property. I like that. And that is exactly what happened. Rather than deter these marriages, which is the express intent of the law of 1664, um, rather than deter them, these marriages were encouraged, um, by property owners, because that, in fact, that such a marriage increased their property value.
This law, this law of 1664, represents, if not the first, certainly the precursor to anti-miscegenation law. These are laws that punished or prohibited marriage between, notice that white people didn't exist yet in 1664, um, at least as referenced in that law. But most generally speaking, anti-miscegenation law prohibited and punished marriages between a white person and a specific non-white person or persons. Let me be really clear. I read all the time in history books, in academic texts, um, and I hear, I read anti-miscegenation law described as prohibiting interracial marriage. That's not correct. For example, a person of a member of a native tribe could marry a person of Chinese descent. Both were understood as racially distinct, but never did anti-miscegenation law prohibit such kinds of marriages. The only marriages that anti-miscegenation law prohibited were those between a white person and always a person of African descent, and sometimes various other groups. Okay? So, just so we're really clear about anti-miscegenation law and its link, um, to whiteness.
Now, think about what the lawmakers are doing when they're creating these types of laws, because they're not just doing this for the fun of it, right? The law is a tool to aid in producing a certain result in society by telling people what they can do and what they cannot do, and then having penalties for breaking those laws, right? And just like any other law that needs to be written down, they come from humans, and humans have specific agendas. And so, what exactly is the agenda of these lawmakers? Think about it. A couple of other things to note about anti-miscegenation law: It's not derived from British law. Anytime, um, we look at law and study history, and you see a break from British common law, you always want to pay attention because it tells us something about the needs and desires of those who wielded power, um, in the colonial context. So, anti-miscegenation law was one of these laws. They, they were passed colony by colony, and then state by state. It's a really important area of law, um, for a number of reasons, um, but for our purpose this morning is because it's where this human category called "white" first appears on planet Earth, the first time. In addition, anti-miscegenation law is important because it lasted more than 300 years. These anti-miscegenation laws literally shaped the faces of this group of more than 2,000x number of people that I'm looking at today.
The Maryland legislature, um, sought to correct for the encouragement of marriages that they described in that previous law of 1664 as "a disgrace," unquote, "to the British people," as an indication that the "British or Freeborn woman must be forgetful of her status as free," end quote. So, they passed the law of 1681, and in this law, it made it illegal for British and other white women from marrying a negro slave. Uh oh. For the first time, the word "white" was legally used to describe people. This is in 1681. Now, look at the slide right here, and you can see how, uh, the wording of this law changed over time. It starts with "English or or Freeborn" in 1664. Then, all of a sudden, in 1681, what does it do? It changes to "Freeborn English and other white women." That's when they started cracking the code after years of meeting together and thinking about how they're going to set up the society to benefit them, right? And how they're going to trap the minds of the other people in these ideas that they have created for the people. And furthermore, the law punished any landholder who encouraged the marriages and any religious authority who performed it. This law equals the invention of the human category "white."
Did these group of laborers, some of whom were from Portugal, some, um, from Holland, some from Ireland, Scotland, did, did they have a little genetic transformation that occurred right after the General Assembly in Maryland met, creating a genetic sludge that we can now call "white"?
Virginia passed its first anti-miscegenation law in 1691. In Virginia, the law prohibited both white men and white women from marrying, um, African, pardon me, a person of African descent or a member of a native tribe. Um, but lest I leave you thinking that gender equality, um, was being created in this law, let me quickly dispel that. Studies of antebellum courts reveal that, in fact, anti-miscegenation law, um, was that at least in the language of the law, prohibited these marriages for white men and white women. But here's what we know from antebellum court cases: um, we know that plenty of white men married and or engaged in intimate sexual relations, um, with prohibited women. However, very rarely were they brought to court and punished under the anti-miscegenation law. Very rarely. So, here, pay attention to this. This law, in its enforcement, is largely focused on in, on controlling the relationality and the sexuality of white women and non-white men. Furthermore, think about, um, the enforcement practices that come out of this, um, particular law. What, what's the result? Who becomes more available for whom? We see a, a further step in locking patriarchal power squarely among and within white men.
We've talked about the law of 1664 and the amendment to that law in 1681, and we've noted that the key difference between those two is the reference to the group who's, um, of concern. The language has shifted from "British and other Freeborn" to "British and other white women," um, in that particular law. So, the question becomes, well, what the heck happened between 1664 and 1681? And the answer is Bacon's Rebellion. This was a, a massive revolt in the colony of Virginia that lasted more than a year. Let's talk, let me give some background, um, of the seeds of this rebellion, what helped give rise, um, to this violent outburst.
Those who were enslaved, um, I don't think it's, it's hard to imagine, were, by definition of their status, disgruntled laborers. And remember that pool of readily available workers from England who were poor, um, and happily sent off in the guts of ships? Well, they dried up. That population surge, um, ended, and there was no longer a pool of laborers from, um, Britain available to handle the work on the, um, plantations in the colonies. The result is they began to impose harsher punishments on indentured servants who were already here. So, that relatively minor infractions would result in significant extensions to their years of service. Those who completed their term of indenture or who were released from their status as enslaved were frustrated. They were frustrated because the king of England gave almost all of the farmable land to his buddies, um, and even if they could find land to grow tobacco on, prices dropped and taxes went up. So, land and other opportunities, um, became much more limited.
So, this guy, Nathaniel Bacon, the guy pointing his arm, um, he didn't have to search very far for disgruntled laborers. Both those who were enslaved or indentured faced worse treatment, and those freed faced less ability to make a future for themselves. Persons of European and African descent fought, um, in the first phase of Bacon's Rebellion against members of native tribes, and then in the second phase of Bacon's Rebellion against the British ruling elite. Nathaniel Bacon ultimately died from wounds that he received in a battle, and England sent troops, um, into the colony and that eventually quashed the rebellion, but not without having made a significant impression upon those who wielded authority and were threatened by this rebellion. Remember, this rebellion lasted over a year, and records from lawmakers in Virginia to the legal oversight authority in England revealed that over 30% of the population were in support, um, of the rebellion.
Here were the lessons from Bacon's Rebellion: A united labor force is a threat to the form of capitalism taking hold within the colonies. Virginia lawmakers wrote letters to the oversight authority in, um, London, explaining that they intended to pursue a divide and conquer strategy in order to prevent future rebellion. It's only after Bacon's Rebellion that we see the emergence of white people as a group of humanity.
Let's think about this for a minute. 1681. Some lawmakers invent a new label for a group of people. Imagine if you will, just for a second, for fun, here, that I'm a lawmaker and I just passed a law claiming that three-quarters of in this room are "Crunchies," okay? So, three-quarters of you are Crunchies, and the other quarter of you are not. Who gives a damn? Who would care? Some silly lawmaker came up with a label for you. It's really unlikely that it would mean much. But let's say I follow it with this: Those who are Crunchies, you can pay no more than $25 a night for that hotel. No more. Those who are Crunchies are the first to come into any room at this conference and the first to leave, the first in line at the bathroom at lunch, at any other line that forms, and the first to get to leave. And that these privileges and advantages that come by virtue of this label that I asserted upon you as a lawmaker, maker, continues when you walk out these doors, that it shapes how you are treated and what you get to do for years and years to come. Imagine you're one of the Crunchies. Imagine how you might start to feel. Wow, I must be special. She's given an analogy to show how perks and benefits were afforded to those who were labeled as white. They were given the label, and then they were legally and socially afforded extra benefits that others who did not have that white label did not get, right? And on a deeper level, what we're seeing is how the lawmakers, or the elite English, were carefully crafting a society and molding the worldview of the people so they would see themselves in a way that they never saw themselves before. So, we're not talking about fools who are doing this right now. We're talking about brilliant people, at least in this specific area here, who were responsible for doing this, right? And they had hot knowledge that most people have no clue about, which is why centuries later, they're still stuck in the pit that these lawmakers created. Imagine you're not a Crunchy. Wow, what's wrong with me? This is not fair.
Let's return to the divide and conquer strategy. Laborers, prior to and through Bacon's Rebellion, were united. They lived the same darn lives. They faced the same opportunities, rights, and privileges once they were freed from enslavement or free from indenture. That's about to change. A slew of laws were passed in the decades after Bacon's Rebellion and continued to get passed into the first quarter of the next century. The first slew of laws included the prohibition of free blacks from holding public office, the prohibition of blacks and native tribal members from marrying whites, the requirement that whites, upon completion of their terms of service, be paid goods including guns and gunpowder, a prohibition of free blacks possessing a weapon. We're going to come back to that. You see how they use the law to break down the blacks and to uplift the whites? What we're looking at is parts of the roots of why people who were labeled as black ended up in the pits of society. Those colonists slapped the legal fire on them, and the effects of what they did could still be seen many centuries later. The prohibition of blacks testifying against whites. These laws began to give different meaning to these labels that prior to this moment just referenced, where your nation of origin was not anymore.
I want to return quickly to the law that prohibited free blacks from possessing a weapon. What this law did was essentially strip black free black men of their ability to hold patriarchal power, because look, under the law of coverture, here's how things worked: men were in control, um, controlled women, um, their spouse, controlled their children, and had legal authority to do so, including severe beatings, um, all financial assets and land, the man had the control. But the exchange was that in exchange for that authority, he protects. That's the trade-off for patriarchal power. Stripped, made impossible, um, by virtue of this law. And then let's look at this law that prohibited blacks from testifying against whites. We, we will see that throughout U.S. history, Mexicans prohibited from testifying against whites, Chinese prohibited from testifying against whites, and then it just becomes "mongrels," the label, um, to include persons of Japanese descent and the like. Um, so that's a, a law that we see throughout U.S. history.
When you look at these laws, what's the message to white people? And let's uncover just one more layer beneath the surface. When you look at the name "white," what's the message to the people who were labeled as that? Then when you look at the name "black," what's the message to those people who were labeled as that? Right? And then when you look at them both together, the black and the white, what's the symbolic message that the labelers were intending to convey when they created these two people? That these, these two people were opposite and contrary to one another. And we can see this reflected in the laws that they made at that time. The blacks were stripped and denied the rights, and the whites, on the other hand, they were given the rights, right? It's a ridiculous and a simple system that they set up, but even as ridiculous as it is, it was extremely effective in serving the purpose that the English elite had in their mind, right? With these ideas that they had created and sold people on. Each one of these laws has a message to this new group of people called white folks on the one hand, and a message to those who it denies or restricts on the other. Each one of them.
This package of laws, first passed after Bacon's Rebellion, did something extraordinary. Let's imagine that that light up there represents the landholding elite, the 1%. And and this represents the socioeconomic ladder in, in the colony. Okay? And so, this hand over here represents this new group of laborers called "white ones." And this hand over here represents, um, laborers of African descent and members of native tribes. Before Bacon's Rebellion and through it, these laborers had the same lives, faced the same opportunities. And that changed. But when you look at these laws that passed that created this change, it divided these, created different meaning for this group versus this group. But it didn't do a whole lot to lift the economic status of white people closer to that of the white elite. Very little movement up. What it did do was it plummeted the bottom, created a new bottom to colonial society, and shoved persons of African descent and made members of native tribes there, called the pits, where the consciousness of the blacks and the natives went down to sour for a time, down in Egypt, where they became slaves. Understand now, listen. So, when the lawmakers changed the English into white people, they allowed the regular working-class whites to maintain certain basic legal rights, but they stripped those same basic rights from the natives and the blacks. So, as Dr. Balora mentioned, the elites, they were way up there on top of the ladder, right? Way above everyone else. And you have the rest of the working-class people, let's say they're down here. Well, she's saying equal. I'm not sure if that's exactly the truth, but for the sake of demonstration, we can assume that to be the truth, right? But when the lawmakers stripped these legal rights from the black and the natives, they fell down into the bottom of the pit, right? All the way down. And then right here at the bottom of the pit is where they developed a new sense of identity, a new way of seeing the world, and a new culture.
So, let's look at this group of humanity called white people. We learn from this history that white people were built upon the idea that British had of themselves as white, as Christian, as Freeborn, as deserving of rights and privileges from which others can be denied. To this day, white people have not been defined as a matter of law. To this day, this history teaches us that "white" is the tool by which laborers were divided. White is the tool by which the laborers were divided. Now, how many times have we talked about things being tools on this channel? Understand that people who are informed, they understand things to be tools, and tools that can be used to turn ideas into realities, right? And so, the lawmaking elite, they used this term "white" as a tool to divide, just like they used the term "black" as a tool to degrade and to enslave. And so, we have to understand tools. Those who shared the same living conditions, the same opportunities, now experience ourselves as more connected with Paris Hilton than with our African-American neighbor, even though our economic status is far more similar to that neighbor than to the lives of the 1%. But not only did this new organization of society create a new bottom to it, it created a link that heretofore had not existed, that connected this new group of laborers called white people with the elite. And what was that connection? This shared status called "white," embedded with the presumption of its superiority.
The other thing to note about the invention of white people and the meaning of white that this history reveals is that "white" constituted the center of patriarchal power. And we see that most clearly through anti-miscegenation law and specifically through its enforcement. We're going to move from the 17th century into the 18th century. The American Revolution has taken place, and the Congress of the United First Congress of the United States of America will meet for the first time. And when they meet, they will establish laws regarding citizenship in this new country. This is the building, actually, a new New York, where the first Congress met. Here are the men who represented the first Congress. These laws regarding citizenship include an area of law called naturalization law. Naturalization law provides the process by which one who is not born in a country can become a citizen. The first Congress of the United States determined in 1790 that in order to become a naturalized citizen of this new Republic called the United States of America, one had to be white. This was valid law in the United States until 1952. You had to be white to be a U.S. citizen. 1952.
Now, as is often the case, laws impact those who are gendered female differently than those who are are gendered male. No less true with the Naturalization law. For example, white women who were citizens, if they dared to marry a man who was ineligible for citizenship via the Naturalization law, in other words, he wasn't white, she loses her citizenship. These laws work to make white women most available to white men, and frankly, all women available to white men. The requirement of whiteness in Naturalization law has had a significant impact on various groups of people who've come to the United States of America. In fact, the Naturalization law was a significant piece of evidence used in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 to determine that U.S. citizenship status, and therefore the protections of the Constitution, were never intended to be applied to persons of African descent. Naturalization law assured that the masses of Chinese laborers, and then Japanese laborers, and then various other groups of laborers who came to this country would remain cheap, dependent labor. Why? Because even though they were significant in number, especially relative to their employer and landholders and railroad companies, if you're not white, you're not a U.S. citizen. If you're not a U.S. citizen, you don't vote. If you can't vote, you can't voice your political needs and desires, thereby reducing these groups of people to dependent, cheap labor.
In addition, Naturalization law was used to block persons of Chinese and Japanese and Filipinos, and we could go on and on, various groups. Um, not only did it result in them getting paid less for doing the same job, but all kinds of taxes got imposed upon them. So, there was a foreign wage tax, various laws were passed that blocked them from being able to work in the public sector, blocked them from being able to hold a managerial position. And then, of course, alien land laws were passed. These were laws that made it illegal for those ineligible for naturalization, i.e., not white people, made it illegal for them to own property. And so, what's, what's the result of these laws for white people? Right? Because we're real good about seeing the harm that these laws cause, um, for certain groups, but let's get the flip side of that coin. When I make land, when I make a whole group of people ineligible to purchase land, it makes more land available and cheaper for me, for white people. When you're the lowest paid worker and prohibited from moving up as a matter of law, then those positions that get paid more, that are more desirable, are more available to white people. So, we see just from this one law, and I could spend another hour with you at least going through these combinations of law, Naturalization law, anti-miscegenation law, and immigration policy, all that combined in these ways to continue to advantage, to give economic value, symbolic value to white people, to give us the unearned advantages that we continue to receive today.
I have a favor to ask. Um, would y'all close your eyes for a moment? Just let's close your eyes. Imagine, imagine a society where white supremacy is not embedded in our institutions. Sit with it. Think of the prison complex, think of our education system, think of church on Sunday, synagogue on Saturday, temple, mosque. Think about the organization of neighborhoods, think about the government of the United States, and how assets and resources would be distributed. Looks pretty different, doesn't it? White supremacy, you can open your eyes if you like, is institutionally embedded in the, the United States of America as a matter of foundational law.
So, what do we do? Whatever image you had of an institution, an example, a relationship that was free of institutionalized and personally held onto white supremacy, hold that. Which for us, free people of the free world, includes the removal of racial categories and also a focus on character development and connecting with people based on shared cultural values and shared cultural practices, right? And so, this is the end of this video. Um, uh, we want to thank Dr. Balora for, uh, her presentation and for the information that she has brought out. And hopefully, this has been able to help someone out there climb just one more rung on the ladder out of the pit to get into the free world where life is much better and it makes more sense. And so, I want to thank you for watching all the way into the end. My name is Brooklyn St. Michael, and I'll see you in the free world.