Mixed Race Studies

Rare Visit Underscores Tangles in Obama’s Ties to Africa

The New York Times
2013-06-26

Michael D. Shear, Nicholas Kulish and Lydia Polgreen

DAKAR, Senegal — As a freshman senator from Illinois, Barack Obama told a packed auditorium in Kenya’s capital, “I want you all to know that as your ally, your friend and your brother, I will be there in every way I can.”

But he will not be there. President Obama, who Wednesday began his second trip to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office, will skip his father’s homeland once again, a reflection of the many challenges that his administration has faced in trying to make a lasting imprint across the continent.

Despite decades of American investment to promote stability in the volatile region of East Africa, Kenya just elected a president indicted by the International Criminal Court, accused of bankrolling death squads driven by ethnic rivalry. It was the outcome that Washington had desperately tried to avoid, and Mr. Obama’s advisers determined that a photo op of the American president shaking hands with a man awaiting trial was not one they needed.

“It just wasn’t the best time for the president to travel to Kenya at this point,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser.

For Africans across the continent, the election of an African-American president signaled a transformative moment in their relationship with the United States, one that would usher in a special understanding of their hopes and needs…

Read the entire article here.

Gilberto Freyre: The Reassessment Continues

Latin American Research Review
Volume 43, Number 1, 2008
pages 208-218
DOI: 10.1353/lar.2008.0002

David Lehmann, Reader in Social Science
University of Cambridge

Gilberto Freyre e os estudos latino-americanos. Edited by Joshua Lund and Malcolm McNee. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, Universidad de Pittsburgh, 2006. Pp. 399.

Casa-grande e senzala. By Gilberto Freyre. Critical edition by Guillermo Giucci, Enrique Rodríguez Larreta, and Edson Nery da Fonseca. Madrid: Acordo Archivos ALLCA XX, 2002. Pp. 1297.

Gilberto Freyre: um vitoriano dos tropicos. By Maria Lúcia Garcia Pallares-Burke. São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2005. Pp. 484.

Casa-grande e senzala was published when Freyre, born in 1900, was only thirty-three years old. This precocious book dealt with a vast range of themes and a variety of sources, and its largely non-Brazilian intellectual precursors were beyond the physical and even intellectual range of Freyre’s contemporaries, few of whom had traveled to the United States or even to Europe, as Freyre had done in the early and late 1920s. The mere length of the book, as Thomas Skidmore has noted, put off established publishers. Casa-grande probably drew on all the then-published historical writing on Brazil in Portuguese, English, and French, as well as on comparative medical and anatomical studies, travel literature, ethnographies of different parts of Africa, and published colonial reports, plus a sprinkling of quasi-ethnographic personal reminiscence. Already at that age, Freyre, though himself from an urban professional, rather than landholding, family, deployed his trademark patrician assuredness. He invented his own genre—a propensity for ex cathedra pronouncements and self-glorification, combined with an intellectual curiosity at once undisciplined and creative.

At first, as the essays in the volume edited by Lund and McNee often remind us, Freyre’s book had the effect of an earthquake, though admittedly in a very small intellectual elite. In 2001, Antonio Candido recalled a friend from the left-wing branch of a prominent political family going to the mirror on reading it and musing, “Acho que sou mulato!” (Lund and McNee, 10). Lilia Schwarz elaborates by reminding us in the same collection that the Estado Novo itself fell under the influence of Freyre, implementing official projects in which mestiçagem (racial mixture) was recognized as “a verdadeira nacionalidade,” Brazil’s true nationality (314), although on this one might also find contrary evidence, notably the notorious case of the sculpture “O homem brasileiro,” by Celso Antonio.

Whatever individuals’ disposition toward the black population and the poor, the climate of public debate in Brazil at the time started from the assumption that the black skin and African descent of a large portion of the population was in some sense a problem; Freyre on the contrary told them it was a solution. Freyre had little knowledge of or interest in the recent European immigrants who were fl ooding into the South; for him the Portuguese were not white at all, their mestiço heritage shaped by centuries of Arab presence among them. Clearly Casa-grande is written by a confident member of the Northeastern elite, but is it written by a “white man”? In a telling passage quoted by Neil Larsen (Lund and McNee, 382), Freyre evokes almost voluptuously the black influence in “everything that is a sincere expression of life . . . the tenderness, the exaggerated mimicry, the Catholicism that indulges our senses, music, language, gait and the lullabies . . . the escrava who nursed us and fed us and told us our first children’s horror stories, the mulata who so deliciously extracted the first splinter from our feet and, finally and inevitably, the woman who initiated us into the delights of physical love and gave us our first sense of male completeness, to the creaking sounds of the chaise lounge” (Freyre, 301, my translation). Who is—or are—this “us”? The writer is reflected impersonally in the text like the artist in Velázquez’s Las Meninas.

Freyre is often credited—or blamed—for coining and spreading the myth of “racial democracy.” It is repeated with particular insistence, near unanimity, and no small dose of righteous indignation among those whom Brazilian writers describe as Brazilianists—not, note, Brazilianistas—as well as by several Brazilian authorities. In a 1996 article, George Reid Andrews (the quality of whose work on race in Brazil is otherwise not in doubt) seems to refer the reader to the 1946 English translation of Casa-grande in support of the claim that Freyre coined the term, but I could find no such thing on the page quoted! More recently, to take but one of innumerable examples, Robin Sheriff states that Casa-grande “reconstituted the country as a democracia racial.”  Thankfully, in a 2002 paper published on the Internet, Levy Cruz provides the results of what must be the most exhaustive effort so far to uncover whether and when Freyre used the expression. The results are a testimony to Cruz’s archaeological talents on the one hand, and unfortunately, on the other, to the capacity of academics sometimes to believe and propagate a malign fiction, like a slow-motion lynch mob. Cruz first reminds us not only that the belief has been attributed to Freyre that Brazil is a racial democracy, but also that he has been blamed for perpetuating racial discrimination in Brazil on account of the false consciousness engendered by the myth! But then he goes on to show decisively that there is not a single instance where Freyre stated that Brazil is a racial democracy. He did state several times, though mostly in lectures and statements for English-speaking audiences, that Brazil might be on a path toward an “ethnic or racial democracy,” and in the English translation of Sobrados e mucambos, he inserted in an additional final sentence the statement that “Brazil is becoming more and more a racial democracy, characterized by an almost unique combination of diversity and unity.”  The nearest he gets in Portuguese is in an interview from 1980 published very obscurely in Recife, when he says that Brazil is far from a pure democracy in any sense (“racial, social or political”) but “is the nearest thing in the world to a racial democracy.” It is worth noting that here he uses the expression democracia relativa, which had figured in the vocabulary of the military government during its prolonged and tortuous “decompression” of the mid- to late 1970s. Freyre might have helped his own reputation on the left—if that had mattered to him—and among social scientists generally had he taken more care with his use of terms; but let us not forget how much he became a political animal, more concerned to navigate different currents of opinion than to achieve analytical coherence. Indeed, one source of the “racial democracy” imbroglio is his practice of projecting different personae at home and abroad: a study of Freyre’s management of his translations and of his persona outside Brazil (para inglês ver . . .) would be of great interest. Overall, however, one can well sympathize with Hermano Vianna’s outburst about “the myth of the myth of racial democracy” (quoted in Lund and McNee, 40)…

Read the entire article here.

Podcast interview with Paisley Rekdal, poet and 2013 UNT Rilke Prize winner

University of North Texas, Denton, Texas
2013-04-29

Julie K. West, Publications Specialist
Office of Research and Economic Development

Poet Paisley Rekdal is the 2013 recipient of the University of North Texas Rilke Prize. The $10,000 award, named for the great German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, recognizes a book written by a mid-career poet and published in the preceding year that demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision. Paisley visited the UNT Department of English in April 2013 to accept the award for her prize-winning collection of poetry, “Animal Eye,” published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She joins Julie West, publications specialist with the UNT Office of Research, in an audio podcast interview to discuss her poetry and the creative writing process.

…JW: But yet that does seem to be somewhat of a theme running not only through this work but you, yourself, as a Chinese-American with Norwegian ancestry … surely you are used to switching lens …

PR: doubled

JW: … and having that doubled perspective, and I’m just now thinking of that, even, as I hear you read this last poem.

PR: I think that’s very true. I think that’s a really good point. What’s funny though, is the doubled-ness of my vision is not cultural because I grew up in America. So, to a certain extent, the doubled-ness of my vision is something that’s been placed on me. The ways in which — depending on who’s looking at me — I’m either potentially Chinese, or White, or a mixture of both … when people are interested in my ancestry and they’ll ask me questions about that. For me I feel like there’s a real — even though any self contains multiplicities and complexities — I feel like there’s a real unity to my vision. But the experience of being biracial in America means that I do recognize how I can appear two ways and what I mean can mean multiple things. So the willingness and the interest in playing with multiple perspectives — moving in and out of different bodies — I think reflects that, for sure, what you’re just pointing out — that experience of being biracial. But it doesn’t actually reflect my own identity, if that makes any sense. How biracialism exists outside of me, even though I, myself, am biracial…

Listen to the podcast here. Read the transcript here.

Some Thoughts on Biracialism and Poetry

Boston Review
2013-06-13

Paisley Rekdal, Associate Professor of English
University of Utah

To be a biracial and female writer might suggest one of two things: first, that my gender and race are the subject matter of my work or, second, that the forms of my writing reflect my identity. Between these two possibilities–race and gender as theme versus race and gender as enacted form—a tension exists, perhaps arising from our current distrust of both narrative and identity politics. To write from the first position—race and gender as theme—boils a poem down to the recounting of experience, most likely the narrator’s marginalization. It is an easy poetry to identify, and it is a type whose detractors (rightfully and wrongly) criticize as an attempt to engender in the reader both sympathy with and catharsis through the personal revelations of the narrator. It is a poetry that at its worst risks becoming performative cultural “kitsch” through its manipulation of readers’ sensitivities to race and racism but, at its best, illuminates some part of the complexity currently surrounding ideas of racial authenticity and identification.

The second option—identity as enacted form—is harder to pinpoint, relying as it does as much on the writer’s stated objectives for the work, as on readers’ stereotypes about what kind of poetic form female biracialism could take. On the surface, we might expect “biracial” forms to be highly skeptical of an imaginatively coherent first person. They could be poems that rely on fragmentation, that are deeply engaged with critical theory regarding perception and language. They could be ironic, self-reflexive, suspicious of catharsis, engaged more with the playful destruction of archetypal myths of identity than in reifying them. In short, they would be hard to distinguish from much of contemporary poetry today…

Read the entire article here.

Census Bureau Names Ann Morning to National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations

Newsroom, News Release: CB13-R.30
United States Census Bureau
2013-06-26

Public Information Office, Phone: 301-763-3030

Note from Steven F. Riley: Ann Morning is the author of book The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (University of California Press, 2011) and the chapter “New Faces, Old Faces: Counting the Multiracial Population Past and Present,” in the book New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century (SAGE, 2002).  To read more of Dr. Morning’s discourses, click here.

The U.S. Census Bureau today announced 10 new members of its National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations, and has named Ann Morning from New York University as a member of the committee.

The National Advisory Committee advises the Census Bureau on a wide range of variables that affect the cost, accuracy and implementation of the Census Bureau’s programs and surveys, including the once-a-decade census. The committee, which is comprised of 32 members from multiple disciplines, advises the Census Bureau on topics such as housing, children, youth, poverty, privacy, race, ethnicity and sexual-orientation issues.

“The committee has helped us meet emerging challenges the Census Bureau faces in producing high-quality statistics about our diverse nation,” said Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director. “By helping us better understand a variety of issues that affect statistical measurement, this committee ensures that the Census Bureau continues to provide relevant and timely statistics used by federal, state and local governments as well as business and industry in an increasingly technologically oriented society.”

The National Advisory Committee members, who serve at the discretion of the Census Bureau director, are chosen to serve based on their expertise and knowledge of the cultural patterns, issues and/or statistical needs of “hard-to-count” populations. The new members will be seated on Aug. 1.

Morning is an associate professor at New York University’s Department of Sociology. She completed her Ph.D. in sociology at Princeton University. Prior to becoming an academic, she worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as a U.S. Foreign Service officer based in the American Embassy in Honduras. Her research interests are race and ethnicity, especially racial classification; multiracial population; demography; sociology of knowledge and science; immigration; and economic sociology. Morning received the prestigious Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association in 2005 and received a Fulbright scholarship to spend the 2008-09 academic year at the University of Milan-Bicocca.

Cherokee Phoenix: Remarks on the Report of the Committee on Indian Affairs in the House of Representatives

Cherokee Phoenix and Indians’ Advocate
New Echota, Georgia
Wednesday, 1830-03-30
Volume II, Number 50
Page 1, column 1b; Page 2, column 2b
Source: Hunter Library, Western Carolina University and Georgia Historic Newspapers

We have read that part of the report of the Committee on Indian Affairs in the House of Representatives, which describes the condition of the Cherokees, with feelings of indignation, and sincere regret that otherwise intelligent men should be prompted by self-interest, to the reiteration of studied and criminal misrepresentations.  We were aware, considering the political opinions of a majority of the committee, of the general principles which would be promulgated by them, still we did not in the least suppose that, to justify the policy of removing the Cherokees, such unfounded and untenable premises would be resorted to.  But it is even so.  As truth cannot be brought to second their design, misstatements and falsehoods, derived from interested and mercenary persons must be put in requisition.  It matters not what is sacrificed, so that the great arm of removing and destroying (as we do now verily believe) the Indians may be accomplished.  We can now no longer exercise charity for the advocates of Indian emigration, when it is apparent that their design is intended to be brought about by deception-this is the battery to demolish truth and justice, & with what skill and dexterity it is handled, may be learnt from the following extracts of the report.

The committee are constrained to believe, from the effects of the new institutions, [Cherokee Government]  and the sentiments and principles of most of those who have the direction of them that the Cherokee Indians of pure blood, as they did not understand the design, so they are not likely to profit by the new order of things.

The committee here hazard assertions gratuitously. How do they know in the first place, “the sentiments and principles of most of those who have the direction of these new institutions?”  By what process have they been led to the knowledge and  what are the sentiments and principles here spoken of?  Should they not in justice to themselves, have stated what they are?  The sentiments and principles of the Cherokees are contained in the written constitution long ago made public, which secures to every free man equal rights and privileges.- In the second place, how do the committee know that the full blooded Cherokees did not understand the design of these new institutions, and of course are not likely to be profited.  We take it for granted that they did understand them, for these new institutions were sanctioned by them, having been reduced into a written form by persons (some of pure blood too) elected for the purpose by their votes.
 
When the mixed race began to assert its superiority, may be dated the commencement of the deterioration of the mass of the tribe.

When the mixed Cherokees were admitted into the councils of the nations “may be dated,” the overthrow of Indian prejudices against civilization, and consequently the commencement of that improvement which has so justly distinguished the Cherokees, the assertions of the committee to the contrary notwithstanding.

That part of their ancient usages which secured an equal division of the presents and spoils which fortune threw in their way, has been slowly undermined.  Wealth has long since become the principal badge of distinction among them, and those who possess it constitute a distinct class.  However patriotic or public spirited some few individuals of those who were active in forming the new government may have originally been they have at last been compelled to yield to the general spirit of those around them; and the only tendency yet perceivable in the new institutions has been to enable those who control them to appropriate the whole resources of the tribe to themselves.  For this purpose, they have in effect, taken the regulation of their trade into their own hands.  They appear, also to have established something in the nature of a loan office or bank, in which are deposited the funds arising from the annuities payable by the Government; and these are lent out among themselves or their favorites.  The committee have not been able to learn, that the common Indians have shared any part of the annuities of the tribe, for many years.  The number of those who control the Government are understood not to exceed twenty-five or thirty persons.  These, together with their families and immediate dependents and connexions (sic), may be said to constitute the whole commonwealth, so far as any real advantages can be said to attend the new system of government.  Besides this class, which embraces all the large fortune holders, there are about two hundred families, constituting a middle class in the tribe.  This class is composed of the Indians of mixed blood, and white men with Indian families.  All of them have some property, and may be said to live in some degree of comfort.  The committee are not aware that a single Indian of unmixed blood, belongs to either of the two higher classes of Cherokees, but they suppose there may be a few such among them.  The third class of the free population is composed of Indians, properly so denominated, who, like their brethren of the red race everywhere else, exhibit the same characteristic traits of unconquerable indolence, improvidence, and inordinate love of ardent spirits.  They are the tenants of the wretched huts and villages in the recesses of the mountains and elsewhere, remote from the highways and the neighborhood of the wealthy and prosperous.

In regard to the annuities, we have stated in a previous number of the Phoenix, that they are not divided among the people as in ancient time, but paid into the treasury of the nation and kept as a public fund for the support of the government and other public objects.  Do the committee suppose that these annuities are so large that they are the cause of much wealth and corruption to the “mixed class?”  ???_try do we can tell them better.  The whole amount of these annuities is very little over six thousand dollars and the sum paid yearly to each member of the council “mixed” and “pure blood” for services, is from seventy to one-hundred  dollars.- This small pittance is all they receive.- There is now no “loan office or bank” among the Cherokees.  When there was one, every person; “mixed’ or “pure blood” if he was able to pay, had the liberty of borrowing.  It is therefore false, positively false, when they say that “those who control the new institutions appropriate the whole resources of the tribe to themselves.”  It is a little surprising that the Indian committee in congress should indirectly advocate cold ignorant customs of the Cherokees; such as the custom of dividing among the individuals of the nation, the annuities, a dollar’s worth or so of goods to each, which could not possibly benefit them.  It is civilization which has changed the custom, and however the Hon. Committee may be disposed to impugn the motives of those who have been instrumental in bringing about the change, it is a triumphant instance of the civil improvement of the Cherokees.

But the most remarkable reasoning of the Committee is where they say that the number of those who control the Cherokee government does not exceed twenty-five or thirty.  What of that?  How many control the government of the United States of 12,000,000 inhabitants?  One Chief for 40,000 souls, while the avaricious, the despotic and wealthy “mixed” Cherokee is a representative of only a few hundred.  What did the committee mean?  Did they intend this as an objection to the new institution?

If the committee are not aware whether a single unmixed Cherokee belongs to either of the higher classes, it is because they did not seek testimony from a proper source, or they did not wish to believe existing facts. The speaker of the council of last year was of “pure blood.”-the Clerk of the Council was of “pure blood.”…

Read the entire article here or here.

Guest: The fury over a Cheerios ad and an interracial family

The Seattle Times
2013-06-24

Ralina Joseph, Associate Professor of Communication
University of Washington

The response to a Cheerios TV ad exposes American discomfort with interracial families, writes guest columnist Ralina Joseph

A RECENT Cheerios television ad has all of the elements that viewers usually glaze over because of their sheer ubiquity: a light-filled, eat-in kitchen with an attractive mother checking off tasks at the table, a button-down shirt and slacks-wearing father indulging in a quick after-work nap and a chubby-cheeked, curly-haired 6-year-old girl with a lisp.

But instead of disappearing into the ether, as TV spots tend to, this particular nuclear family advertisement has sparked such fury that Cheerios’ YouTube channel was forced to disable its comments section.

Why? Because the mother is white, the father is black, and the girl appears to be their biological, mixed-race child…

…Anti-miscegenation laws, on the books in some states in this country from 1661 to 1967, were justified by fear of such couplings and their result. In the 1930s, Washington state led the country in striking down attempts to ban interracial marriage…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

When Cars Assume Ethnic Identities

The New York Times
2013-06-21

Glenn Collins

Coming to a showroom near you for 2014: the first sport utility vehicle in its class equipped with a 9-speed automatic transmission. It’s also the first to offer a parallel-parking feature. And, in 4-wheel-drive models, the rear axle disconnects automatically, for fuel efficiency.

Oh, yes: its name is the Jeep Cherokee.

Hold on — wasn’t that model name retired more than a decade ago? Wasn’t it replaced by the Jeep Liberty for 2002?

Yet now, in a time of heightened sensitivity over stereotypes, years after ethnic, racial and gender labeling has been largely erased from sports teams, products and services, Jeep is reviving an American Indian model name. Why?

“In the automobile business, you constantly have to reinvent yourself, and sometimes it’s best to go back to the future,” said Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of Landor Associates, a brand and corporate identity consultancy.

Jeep, a division of the Chrysler Group, explained that its market research revealed a marked fondness for the name. The 2014 version, said Jim Morrison, director of Jeep marketing, “is a new, very capable vehicle that has the Cherokee name and Cherokee heritage. Our challenge was, as a brand, to link the past image to the present.”

The company says it respects changed attitudes toward stereotyping. “We want to be politically correct, and we don’t want to offend anybody,” Mr. Morrison said. Regarding the Cherokee name, he added: “We just haven’t gotten any feedback that was disparaging.”

Well, here’s some: “We are really opposed to stereotypes,” said Amanda Clinton, a spokeswoman for the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. “It would have been nice for them to have consulted us in the very least.”

But, she added, the Cherokee name is not copyrighted, and the tribe has been offered no royalties for the use of the name. “We have encouraged and applauded schools and universities for dropping offensive mascots,” she said, but stopped short of condemning the revived Jeep Cherokee because, “institutionally, the tribe does not have a stance on this.”…

Read the entire article here.

Library of Congress Appoints Natasha Trethewey To Second Term as U.S. Poet Laureate

News from the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.
2013-06-10

Trethewey Will Launch Project as Part of the PBS NewsHour Poetry Series

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed Natasha Trethewey to serve a second term as U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

“The Library and the country are fortunate Natasha Trethewey will continue her work as Poet Laureate,” said Billington. “Natasha’s first term was a resounding success, and we could not be more thrilled with her plans for the coming year.”

Trethewey’s second term will begin in September. She will follow previous multiyear laureates—such as Kay Ryan, Ted Kooser, and Billy Collins—and undertake a signature project: a regular feature on the PBS NewsHour Poetry Series. Trethewey will join NewsHour Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Brown for a series of on-location reports in various cities across the United States to explore several large societal issues, through a focused lens offered by poetry and her own coming-to-the-art.

The Poetry Series, featured on the PBS NewsHour, engages a broad audience through thoughtful, in-depth reports on contemporary poets and poetry. Online, the NewsHour features weekly poems on its Art Beat blog as well as on a special page dedicated to poetry.

Ms. Trethewey’s first term as the 19th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry was noteworthy for her “Office Hours,” during which she met with the general public in the Library’s Poetry Room—harkening back to a tradition established by her predecessors in the post from 1937 to 1986. For her second year, Trethewey will move beyond the capital to seek out the many ways poetry lives in communities across the country and addresses issues and concerns of Americans.

In that pursuit, she will draw on her own life experiences as a guide—visiting places she feels a personal connection to, such as a domestic violence center, an inner-city school, a prison or juvenile detention center, a nursing home, or places that have suffered natural or man-made disasters. The specific locations will be determined closer to the start of the Poet Laureate’s second term. In her travels to cities and towns for the series, Trethewey also intends to hold “Office Hours on the Road”—meeting with members of the general public as she did in the Library…

Read the entire news release here.

Barack Obama’s “Slave” Ancestor and the Politics of Genealogy

George Mason University’s History News Network
2012-08-02

Honor Sachs, Assistant Professor of History
Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina

On July 30, the New York Times broke a story about the Obama family’s ties to slavery. Not Michelle Obama. Her family connection to slavery has been extensively covered by the Times and documented in Rachel Swarn’s American Tapestry. Rather, the story revealed the history of Barack Obama’s ties to slavery through his mother’s side. The article announced that genealogists have traced the family history of Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, to seventeenth-century Virginia, where they claim it is possible she may have descended from an African servant named John Punch. Using ancestral databases and DNA evidence, researchers have linked Dunham’s history to the “mixed-race Bunch line,” a family who became wealthy colonial landholders and were racially considered white despite their ties to Africans like John Punch.

The story of John Punch occupies an important place in the history of slavery in North America. When the English imported Punch to the Virginia colony in the mid-seventeenth century, he became an indentured servant. The primary source of labor in the Virginia colony for the better part of the seventeenth century was servitude. The colony imported workers from Europe to work in tobacco fields. They had little interest in utilizing African slaves. African imports were comparatively expensive next to the cheap imports they could scoop off the streets or out of the jails of London. At the time John Punch arrived in the English colony, he was one of a relatively small population of Africans.

But something happened to John Punch in 1640 that signaled a transition in the way colonial officials thought about race and slavery. In 1640, Punch ran away from his Virginia employer with two white servants, one a Scot and the other a Dutchman. They escaped to Maryland where they were apprehended and returned home for punishment. All three runaways were whipped. The two white servants were punished with extended terms of service, but Punch received a far harsher sentence: he was made a servant “for the term of his natural life.” It was the closest thing to a slave the colony had yet known. Virginians would not fully embrace a system of slave labor for at least another four decades, but the willingness of colonial officials to distinguish a lifetime of servitude for Punch and not for his European counterparts suggests the beginnings of racial thinking that would ultimately equate slavery with people of African descent…

Read the entire article here.