Date: Wednesday, May 23, 2001 4:13 PM
From: “George Winkel”
Subject: Letter to the Editor
Re: Rhinelander Case
I enjoyed reading the Bliss Broyard review, “Color Blind,” of the Lewis & Artizzone book on the Rhinelander case. It’s especially fascinating seeing a Broyard review, in light of the “passing” accusations that were levied against Bliss’s deceased father. But I wish Bliss had not gotten the “one drop rule” mixed up historically with “hypodescent” (the automatic “black” racial identity of slaves). Because “one drop” was the issue at the core of Bliss’s review, and she should have tried to be more accurate discussing it.
It was not “one-drop,” but “hypodescent” dates back to the beginnings of lifetime “black” chattel slavery in Continental America. (Btw, I think the 17th century hypodescent law originally was pushed by “white” planters’ wives, and the Church. “White” wives had incentive to prevent their husbands’ Mulatto children by slave mistresses from having “white” social equality with the wife’s own “white” children. To me, the explanation that “white” men contrived hypodescent to deliberately “breed” their own children for slaves sounds questionable – bizarre.) Anyway, as Bliss wrote, “race” definition was a muddled matter up to 1924, with each state using different “blood fractions,” some surprisingly tolerant. However, that fateful year (1924) the Virginia Racial Integrity Act substantially ended the “muddle” by nailing down the strict “one drop rule” that we know today. Thereafter, all the Mulattos (millions) “disappeared” – forced into identifying “black” on the 1930 census, and other government documents. I have read that Hitler sent Nazi officers to study this American form of “classificatory genocide.”
All this is ancient history to today’s youngsters (it should be so, that is). In 1967 Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) overturned the Virginia Racial Integrity Act as unconstitutional. That meant all the “anti-miscegenation” laws were overturned, all across the land. The nature of “race” and sexual access are so intertwined – being such interdependent ideas – that “race” could have been declared abolished that day, June 12, 1967. But the great civil rights movement of the ’60’s showed no interest in the Loving v. Virginia case. It was just Mr. & Mrs. Loving alone, appealing their conviction, assisted by the “white” ACLU. “Black” civil rights leaders then carefully avoided the subject of “miscegenation.” They didn’t want to further inflame “white” opposition to racial integration. Fear of “race-mixing” drove the “white” opposition. The whole purpose of Jim Crow segregation had been preventing “race-mixing.”
I think one of the great tragedies of the 20th century was, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., apparently failed to recognize the significance of the Loving v. Virginia decision. Anyway, King never stood on the U.S. Supreme Courthouse steps proclaiming the end of “race” the end of “black & white.” He had the nationwide moral leadership. He could have. And the quiet submission by which “white” America accepted the Loving decision proves the magnitude of Dr. King’s persuasive victory. By meekly submitting to the Loving decision, “white” America showed it had been so moved by King’s charismatic protest that it was willing to surrender its “race.” After all, “white” was defined by “purity” which no longer can be preserved in the wake of Loving. Is that option still open? In the whole country can a leader still be found with the charisma to mount those Supreme Courthouse steps, issue that historic proclamation – make those church bells ring, all across the land?
And Clearly Alice Jones had herself an effective lawyer. The lawyer making her disrobe before the jury sounds shocking to us today, but it may have been a routine trial strategy in an era when the issue was what “race” did a “white” man’s fiance reasonably appear to be. The jury needed to see enough of Alice to decide – a reasonable view – as a fiance might be expected to have. At that time, nearly 60 years after the Civil War, I doubt very many jurors remembered anything about female slaves on auction blocks. A sympathetic all-male jury I can believe, though. I’ve heard Bliss (like her Dad), doesn’t identify “black.” Maybe she identifies liberal? She should get her history straight about “one drop.”