New England’s own regional twist on the national racial idiom of Manifest Destiny. It held that Indian “blood” was weaker than that of other races, meaning that the child of an Indian and a non-Indian became a “half-blood,” the child of that “half-blood” and another non-Indian became a “quarter-blood,” and then, eventually, all trace of the Indian vanished, which is precisely what whites who coveted Indian land wanted to happen. By contrast, white Americans thought of black blood as polluting, so that any degree of African descent made one black. It was not coincidental that such a formulation expanded the servile black labor pool to the benefit of white people. In other words, whites’ inconsistencies in reckoning Indian and black racial identities were not illogical at all. They were entirely in line with white colonial desires.
Silverman, David J.. This Land Is Their Land (p. 400). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
No comments:
Post a Comment