How We Know Quiz

By law, any amount of African ancestry defined an individual as Black in the U.S., even as late as the 1970s in some states. Why the different attitude toward Indians and Blacks? U. S. citizens coveted Indian land; by limiting the number of Indian landowners, more land could be made available to settlers. The legal definition of "Black" had its roots in slavery, wherein Black slave labor was instrumental to the plantation economy. Before the late 17th century, most laborers on plantations were White indentured servants. The small number of African laborers were held in various degrees of servitude for limited periods of time and had legal rights. Throughout the 18th century and beyond, the plantation economy expanded with the increased availability of African slave labor, and the proportion of Africans in the population increased relative to Whites. Africans were deprived of legal rights and hereditary lifetime service was imposed. The threat of slave revolts encouraged greater control, and dehumanization of slaves was rationalized by ideas of racial inferiority. Laws made marriage between Whites and Blacks illegal, and the children of mixed-race parentage were classified as Black. These mixed-race people could never have a standing in law higher than Blacks (unlike elsewhere on the continent where three-tiered racial systems developed). Thus, the "one drop" rule was intended to insure that White domination persisted and the maximum number of people could be held in slavery. For a more detailed discussion, see Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black, 1982 (2nd ed.)

The general public uses the term "race" to categorize individuals according to presumed biological differences that are thought to be evident from physical appearance (especially skin color in the U. S.). Often, these "biological differences" are associated with intellectual and moral differences that are ranked (referred to as "racism"). For biologists, race refers to a geographical or socially isolated breeding population within a species. This population would develop genetic characteristics that differentiated it from other breeding populations. The human species lacks these isolated breeding populations because populations interbred over tens of thousands of years. Moreover, genetic variation occurs even in a rather isolated human population. For a more detailed discussion, see Matt Cartmill, "The Status of the Race Concept in Physical Anthropology," American Anthropologist 100, 3, 1998.

From the 1400s through the 1600s, colonists used cultural (not color) descriptions. The term "red man" came into frequent use in the late 18th century when European naturalists began using color to label four "basic human groups": white, red, yellow, black. Red became a universally accepted color label for American Indians in the early 19th century, perhaps because Americans became familiar with European writings. See Alden T. Vaughn, "From White Man to Redskin," American Historical Review 87, 1982. See also Nancy Shoemaker, “How Indians Got to be Red,” in American Historical Review 102, 1997. She argues that the category “Red” could have been a response to “White”—both metaphors for assumed social positions (this was generally the case in the Southwest, and Europeans could have applied the “Red” and “White” categories elsewhere). Also some peoples associated the category “red men” with origin stories (for example, Fox and Sauk), and Europeans might have generalized this identification.