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RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION. In recent play in society. Over time, as Europeans encountered peo-
years, scholars have come to understand race not as a sta- ple who looked quite different from themselves, during the
tic, objective, or natural reality, but as a social construc- age of exploration and colonization, this lineage-based
tion. While human beings have exhibited tremendous concept of race as members of the same “stock” gradually
physical variation for millennia, the meanings and signifi- gave way to one based on physical characteristics. How-
cance attached to those differences are both culturally and ever, exactly when and why this happened has been a
historically specific, and constantly in flux. To be a woman source of major debate among historians since the 1950s.
or to be black has had a variety of connotations and ex- Africans and Europeans have interacted to some extent
pectations in different historical contexts, and across re- since antiquity, and European art, literature, and culture
gional and class lines. Throughout American history, one’s includes both positive and negative depictions of Africans.
educational, political, and economic opportunities have Some scholars have noted that the color black often
largely been prescribed or circumscribed on the basis of carried connotations of evil or darkness in early modern
gender and race, a matter of particular import for black European culture, associations that may have influenced
women. As historian Deborah Gray White notes, European perceptions of the darker-skinned people they
came across in their explorations. Travel narratives written
the uniqueness of the African American female’s situation is during this period have provided historians rich insight
that she stands at the crossroads of two of the most well-de- into those perceptions during initial colonial encounters.
veloped ideologies in America, that regarding women and that The reaction Europeans had to the Africans and Native
regarding the Negro. . . . As if by design, white males have
Americans they encountered on their expeditions were
been the primary beneficiaries of both sets of myths which,
complex and often contradictory, and much of their writ-
not surprisingly, contain common elements in that both blacks
ing focused on the bodies of women. European travelers
and women are characterized as infantile, irresponsible, sub-
missive, and promiscuous. sometimes described black women as exotically beautiful
(White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, p. 27) and innocent, other times as grotesque, bestial, savage, and
licentious. Both hinted at stereotypes of black women that
The social construction of race is fundamentally a story would further develop under slavery. However, these early
of power, in which those in positions of political, eco- negative portrayals of Africans were more a symptom of
nomic, and social authority create and recreate categories xenophobia than what we would call racism today: Euro-
of difference and assign meaning and value on the basis peans showed nearly equal dislike and distrust of most for-
of those categories to maintain and naturalize their own eigners, even other Europeans from different cultures. But
dominance. But it is also a story of resistance, in which chattel slavery is not the inevitable result of perceived dif-
African Americans have continually challenged pervasive ference. How and why Africans came to be enslaved in
inequality and negative stereotypes and in turn created America has caused considerable disagreement among his-
identities for themselves. torians for decades, in what has become known as the
The very concept of “race” as a means of categorizing “origins debate.”
people according to superficial physical characteristics is a At the center of the debate is the question of whether
relatively recent invention, one that both coincides with racial prejudice predated and precipitated slavery or vice
and shapes the history of America itself. In early modern versa. Because Virginia was the first of the American
Europe, race referred not to skin color and physical colonies to institutionalize slavery, its history has often
features—the characteristics it is most closely associated been at the center of this debate. Though Jamestown
with today—but to human lineage. In a culture in which colonists had purchased twenty Africans from Dutch
property rights and social status were inherited, bloodlines slave traders in 1619, the colony did not adopt slave laws
were the predominant way of categorizing people; descent until forty years later. The status of those Africans before
determined the life they would live and the role they would the slave laws were enacted in the 1660s and 1670s is

1
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2 RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

N INE A FRICAN A MERICAN WOMEN at Atlanta University.

From Negro Life in Georgia, compiled and prepared by
W. E. B. Du Bois (Vol. 4, No. 341). Du Bois’s albums of colonial society changed, did they become lifelong slaves.
photographs of African Americans were exhibited at the Conditions in the early colonies were harsh, and the labor
Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. (Daniel Murray supply began to dwindle. In an effort to attract more Eu-
Collection, Library of Congress.) ropeans to the colonies, their terms of indenture were
shortened, while Africans were increasingly held in ser-
vice for life. Furthermore, indentured servants of all
creeds were prone to running away before their indenture
unclear, though for centuries historians generally as- was completed, and there was often little to be done. The
sumed that Africans had always been enslaved upon ar- physical distinctiveness that set the African servants apart
rival in the colonies. Beginning with a 1950 article in the from their European counterparts thus provided an
William and Mary Quarterly by Mary and Oscar Handlin added impetus toward racialized servitude, as skin color
entitled “Origins of the Southern Labor System,” some became a convenient marker of service that made run-
historians have argued that blacks were originally inden- ning away all the more difficult. As servitude became in-
tured servants, and were awarded with the same rights of creasingly racialized and lifelong, prejudice toward
liberty as Europeans once their indentures were com- African Americans developed because they had become
pleted. Only over time, as the needs and circumstances of associated with the lowest possible economic status.
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RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 3

Critics of this interpretation have argued instead that Though European colonists had initially distinguished
racial prejudice preceded and facilitated slavery, contend- themselves from Africans and Native Americans on the
ing that white and black indentured servants were treated basis of religious and cultural differences, it soon became
differently from the onset, with blacks subjected to longer clear that organizing society around differences that
terms of service and punished more harshly when they at- could be surmounted would not allow them to maintain
tempted to run away. However, evidence of color preju- their own power, authority, and dominance. People could
dice from the onset does not fully explain the adoption of convert, cultures could adapt; the colonists needed an-
chattel slavery in the colonies. Ultimately, economic in- other basis for conferring status, one that was immutable
terests would fuel the transition from indenture to slav- and easily apparent. Color gradually became the basis
ery, as it became the most profitable source of labor. through which difference was constructed and main-
tained. The colonists constructed themselves no longer as
Slavery and Nation-Building Anglo Christians, distinguished from the heathens in
Economic imperatives would also ensure that slavery their mix, but over time as “white,” an amorphous and in-
would become an institution reserved specifically for choate category that was defined not so much by what it
those of African descent, rather than other groups also was as by what it was not—African or Native. It was also
distinguishable from Europeans by skin color or customs. a category to which they increasingly attached the rights
One counter to the argument that the enslavement of and privileges of citizenship, as they were being defined
Africans in the American colonies derived from en- in a soon-to-be nation headed ever closer to war and in-
trenched aversion amongst Europeans to black physical- dependence.
ity is the fact that the colonists also attempted to enslave The rhetoric of the American Revolution, with its lan-
Native Americans, for whom they held no long-estab- guage of equality, protection from tyranny, and the “rights
lished distaste that predated the colonial context and of man,” seems to conflict with the reality of a slave society,
whom they often portrayed as physically attractive in but many historians have argued that when envisioning a
travel narratives and diaries. Native American slavery democratic society, the Founding Fathers had really in-
failed because it was unsuccessful rather than unpopular. tended that ideal to apply only to white, propertied men.
The Native Americans, predominantly from hunter-gath- Thomas Jefferson, who wrote so eloquently about the ideals
erer societies, proved ill-suited to agricultural labor and of democracy in the Declaration of Independence, was him-
all too susceptible to European diseases, which deci- self a slave owner, and proposed in his widely read text,
mated Native populations. By contrast, African slavery Notes on the State of Virginia, written in the 1780s, that
flourished for economic reasons. The British entrance blacks were most likely naturally and irreconcilably infe-
into the trans-Atlantic slave trade ensured a never ending rior. One of the most poignant ironies of American history
supply of slaves, and better living conditions that in- is that the development of democracy coincided and coex-
creased the lifespan of slaves in the colonies made the en- isted with the expansion and entrenchment of chattel slav-
slavement of Africans very profitable indeed. ery. It was not an irony lost on African Americans during
In the mid-seventeenth century, Virginia gradually codi- and after the Revolutionary period. Throughout American
fied slavery into law. By 1670, Virginia had passed acts of history, black intellectuals and activists would continue to
legislation that declared all black women tithable as land invoke the language of the Revolution to demand their
laborers, and determined that all children born to black rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
women would inherit their mother’s status, which was
more and more likely to be “slave” as the century drew to a Scientific Racism
close. This law of inheriting slave status through the While slavery had been in place for over a century by the
mother did not only implicitly condone the sexual exploita- Revolution, and implicit beliefs in black difference and
tion of black women at the hands of white men, it made it inferiority pervasive in American culture perhaps even
profitable by increasing the slave population. It also be- longer, it was not until the early nineteenth century that a
came clear that tolerance of miscegenation would only be number of influential scientists set out to “prove” that al-
one sided: legislation passed in 1691 declared that a white leged inferiority, often in the name of defending America’s
woman who bore an illegitimate mulatto child would be “peculiar institution.” During the nineteenth century, a
heavily fined, and that any white person who intermarried time period characterized by cultural conflict between re-
would be permanently banished from the colony, along ligion and science, racial thought and ideology increas-
with her black, mulatto, or Indian spouse. By the dawn of ingly drew upon science for legitimacy and authority.
the eighteenth century, African Americans and slaves had However, this shift to a scientific mode of racial discourse
become virtually synonymous under custom and law in Vir- represents a culmination of several broader trends in
ginia, with the other colonies soon following suit. Western culture that had been taking shape over the
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4 RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

previous century. The eighteenth century has often been the races. Scientists endlessly compared the physical fea-
characterized as the “Age of Reason,” a period also tures of the races and ranked them hierarchically. Not
known as the Enlightenment. This period in much of Eu- surprisingly, white scientists, even those who did not use
ropean and American culture was marked by a growing their findings specifically in the defense of slavery, con-
belief that the universe was governed not by the daily in- sistently ranked Caucasians at the top of the order, and
volvement of God in all aspects of life, but by natural laws those of African descent at the bottom. However, nine-
and universal truths, an understanding of which could be teenth-century racial discourse was by no means mono-
obtained through rational thought and science. People lithic or simple; it changed over time and there was
were increasingly cosmopolitan, moving away from a considerable debate and contestation among scientists.
strictly agrarian society and clustering more and more in Starting in the early nineteenth century, arguments
towns and cities, with more diverse populations living in about race often centered on the debate between mono-
closer proximity to one another. After centuries of feudal- genesis and polygenesis. The traditional belief in mono-
ism and monarchy, philosophers and intellectuals now genesis, or the single origin of the races, reflected both
pondered such questions as the natural rights of man, the scientific and religious views. The biblical story of Cre-
features of a just society, and emerging concepts of ation describes all mankind as descending from Adam
democracy. The concepts of reason and religion were by and Eve, and religious ideology was deeply entrenched in
no means mutually exclusive, but rather deeply inter- American culture, politics, and science. Samuel Stanhope
twined in the growing faith in a natural order, ordained Smith, an early and widely respected authority in the
by God and explicable through science. field, made a case for monogenesis in his Essay on
As European exploration, colonization, and interna- the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in
tional trade persisted, the West continued to encounter the Human Species, originally published in 1787 and
new peoples and previously unknown and seemingly limit- reprinted in an expanded version in 1810. He argued that
less species of plants and animals, resulting in an increas- all races of man were members of the same species and
ing interest in categorizing the natural world, including shared a common ancestry. Current physical differences
man. Swedish naturalist Carolus Linneaus developed a resulted from environmental factors, particularly climate,
system of categorizing organisms according to physical and the divergent lifestyles of “savagery” and “civiliza-
characteristics and similarities, introduced in his 1735 tion.” Like most of his contemporaries who subscribed to
text, Systema naturae. This system of Linnaean taxonomy, the theory of monogenesis, he argued that other races
elements of which are still taught and used by scientists had degenerated from the white, superior race—the
today, included man as a species that could be further di- human norm by which all others were defined as deviant
vided into four categories based primarily on geographic or deficient. Smith believed that blacks could become
origin: Homo europeaus, Homo asiaticus, Homo afer, and equal to whites, subject to the same environmental and
Homo americanus. Predating the concept of evolution by a lifestyle conditions, but only by literally turning white
century, Linnaeus seems to have intended merely to cata- through subsequent generations. For Smith, climate and
log plant, animal, and human variation, without necessar- environment could be used to explain both the physical
ily any implication of hierarchy or change among the and mental characteristics of man.
species over time. However, the issue of how and for what Smith’s theories went relatively unchallenged in Amer-
purpose to categorize human beings predominated racial ica until the publication of the book Thoughts on the Orig-
thought in the century to follow, and persisted even into inal Unity of the Human Race in 1830 by Dr. Charles
the early twenty-first century. Caldwell, who had begun to attack Smith’s argument in
Scientists—both professional and self-declared— essays dating back to 1811. Under the guise of scientific
throughout the nineteenth century continued to divide authority, Caldwell argued for polygenesis, or the sepa-
humanity into subcategories, the number of which varied rate creation of the races as distinct species, drawing on
over time and among different scientists. Ethnology biblical chronology and asserting that the “superior”
emerged as a field of scientific study that compared white intellect could not be due simply to differences in
groups of human beings according to a number of physi- environment, but rather must be an innate “gift of na-
cal and cultural characteristics, and extrapolated broadly ture.” While Caldwell attempted to disavow the use of his
about the character and abilities of each group on the work in defense of slavery, it made little difference and
basis of ostensibly objective findings. Over the course of the ethnologists who followed him rarely bothered to
the nineteenth century, various overlapping sciences of make such disclaimers. Ethnographic studies were fre-
race—including anthropology, ethnology, and compara- quently utilized in the debate over slavery, and they would
tive anatomy, among others—emerged and began to look remain an important “authority” on the “Negro question”
to the human body to reveal the true nature and fate of well past Emancipation and into the twentieth century.
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RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 5

The idea that the races had separate origins, which con- Nonetheless, Nott’s argument, as articulated in Types of
tradicted the Creation story central to Judeo-Christian reli- Mankind is representative of nineteenth century ethnology
gion, was widely considered heretical among American in its insistence on the “practical fact” of racial difference
religious leaders, much of the general population, and even and hierarchy regardless of how it originated, and the
other scientists who disagreed not with the notion of black firm belief that one’s moral character and intellectual abil-
inferiority but with how it had allegedly come to be. The ity could be read through careful study of the body.
middle decades of the nineteenth century marked the The 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of
emergence of the “American school of ethnology,” origi- Species, subtitled “The Preservation of Favoured Races in
nated by Dr. Samuel George Morton’s Crania Americana the Struggle for Life,” marked a significant turning point
and Crania Aegyptiaca (written in collaboration with an in ethnological study and scientific racism. While Dar-
Egyptologist, George R. Gliddon), which claimed to put an win’s original text was not primarily interested in ques-
end to speculation by relying instead on “empirical fact.” tions of race, it had obvious appeal and important
In his study of human skulls, he concluded that each race implications for those who were. Furthermore, Darwin
had changed little, if at all, in regards to physical charac- himself later applied his theory of “survival of the fittest”
teristics and, by implication, mental abilities. By his asser- to human beings, arguing in the 1871 text, Descent of
tion, blacks were and always would be inferior to whites, Man, that the extinction of “savage races” of man was no
and they had been created as a separate species most less inevitable or natural than the extinction of plant or
suited to a life of savagery in the wilds of Africa. Types of animal species that are somehow inferior or without pur-
Mankind, an 1854 anthology of writings within the “Amer- pose, predicting that the “savage” races would eventually
ican school,” declared ethnology to be “eminently a science die out or be exterminated by the “civilized.”
for American culture.” This form of applied anthropology Initial resistance to evolutionary theory stemmed from
could thus be utilized in justifying the institution of slavery the conflicts among ethnologists over mono- or poly-
as a “benevolent” institution that actually “improved” the genist origins of race. The American school of ethnology
physical and moral conditions of African Americans, at first found Darwinism, with its insistence on species
through their proximity to and containment within white deriving from a common ancestor, to be incompatible
civilization, representing the highest level of development with its own prevailingly polygenist beliefs. However,
that could be expected from this “primitive” and “inferior” while Darwinism may not have advocated the belief that
race. After Morton’s death, Dr. Josiah C. Nott of Alabama Africans were created as a distinct and inferior race, it did
became the most enthusiastic, vocal, and venomous advo- not deny the possibility that over the course of human
cate of the new American ethnology. In an excerpt from his history, they had progressed more slowly than their Euro-
work included in Types of Mankind, he naturalizes the pean counterparts and thus evolved as inferior in their
racial status quo as something unchangeable by human capacity for rule or even survival. In other words, the
laws or charity, and describes the world as the eminent do- “practical fact” of black inferiority remained unchal-
main of the white race, which was destined and sanctioned lenged by Social Darwinist thought, as the application of
by God to conquer and rule. The popularity and wide- evolutionary theory to human beings and society has be-
spread acceptance of Nott’s pseudoscientific theories sheds come known among scholars. Races were ranked along a
important light on the culture in which it was so readily re- scale of evolutionary progress, with the “civilized” Anglo-
ceived. Rather than simply a debate among scientists, the Saxons on one end of the spectrum, and “savage,” “prim-
racist theories Nott and other ethnologists espoused were itive” races on the other. This hierarchical ranking of
pervasive in various forms throughout American culture bodies according to physical characteristics provided the
writ large and codified in law and public policy. framework for “proving” social inferiority and the denial
of legal rights on that basis. These racial rankings long
Evolution and Social Darwinism outlived their original ideological function in defense of
The theory of polygenesis was never universally accepted, slavery. They continued to be utilized throughout the Re-
however. Blacks themselves challenged such negative as- construction period to justify the ongoing oppression of
sessments, especially the notion of different origins of the the newly freed slaves, who were considered so low on the
races, and continually evoked the biblical story of the Cre- evolutionary scale that they were incapable of exercising
ation in defense of their place in the human family. More- the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
over, many white northerners and southerners alike, Race and gender were deeply intertwined in evolution-
despite their overwhelming acceptance of Nott’s claim re- ary theory, which argued that both women and Africans
garding black inferiority, continued to object to his hereti- represented an earlier stage of evolution than white men,
cal tendencies, though it rarely stopped them from citing the pinnacle of human evolution. According to this theory,
his findings in defense of slavery and racial inequality. women and African Americans were at the same stage of
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6 RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

development as white male children. The latter, however, Franz Boas, himself a recent immigrant to the United
would progress and grow over the course of their lifetime, States. Beginning in the 1890s, the founder of modern
but women and blacks would remain stunted in intellec- cultural anthropology argued that science had not proven
tual and emotional childhood. Gender and sex had another any clear link between race and intellectual abilities. In
essential role in the ranking of races according to evolu- the following decades, Boas and his supporters further
tionary progress: sexual differentiation was seen as a sign argued against the existence of any innate differences be-
of a race’s status on the evolutionary scale. Ethnologists tween groups of people, and amassed considerable evi-
perceived Caucasian races to be more sexually differenti- dence in support of his claim. Through careful study, he
ated in both body and social gender roles, and thus were concluded that physical traits varied greatly across gener-
more highly evolved—physically and morally—than black ations and among peoples considered the same “race.”
men and women, who were, in an inherently contradictory Moreover, he emphasized the importance of culture and
sense, often viewed as hypermasculine or hyperfeminine, environmental factors in describing human variation,
respectively, and yet also nearly indistinguishable from rather than innate characteristics that marked entire
each other in regards to sex. groups as irrevocably inferior.
Though the work of Boas and other cultural anthropol-
Challenging Scientific Racism ogists presented a real challenge to scientific racism, it
Though it has often been portrayed as such by earlier his- did not die overnight, nor did it ever disappear com-
torical scholarship, the debate over the character and abil- pletely. Scientists continued their attempts to identify
ities of the races that characterized ethnology was not quantifiable differences between the races throughout the
simply a one-sided discussion. Rather than simply the twentieth century, with social scientists joining the fray
subject of racial discourse, African Americans actively with comparative studies in every conceivable category,
participated in defining themselves as possessing unique from intelligence to sexual behavior. The December 2003
qualities and talents, while also arguing for the shared ori- issue of Scientific American took up the issue in its cover
gins of the races. In attempting to defend the black race article, the title of which queried “Does Race Exist?,” and
from pervasive racist ideology, they literally had to defend declared, not unlike ethnologists a century ago, “Science
their humanity in a society determined to portray and Has the Answer.” While science has not given up the issue
treat them as animals. Moreover, black ethnologists com- of race, more and more scientists have come to conclude
pletely turned the attacks against them back upon their at- there is no biological basis for the concept of race itself.
tackers, whose ideology robbed African Americans of their In particular, developments in DNA research have shown
past and attempted to justify denying them a future as full there to be more genetic variation within the traditionally
U.S. citizens. To counter the charge by white ethnologists constructed racial groups than between them, and that
that blacks had no history worthy of mention, black eth- nothing beyond superficial physical traits such as hair or
nologists presented an alternative narrative of a glorious eye color can be genetically linked to those groups. At the
black past and pointed to the accomplishments of early turn of the twentieth century, however, science was grad-
black societies such as Ethiopia. Black ethnologists also ually losing authority over the question of race, which
argued that the white race was generally angry and ag- increasingly would become a matter for the courts. As sci-
gressive, turning the very “illustrious” history to which entific theories of inferiority died out, they nonetheless
whites often pointed to assert their natural dominance remained imbedded in popular culture and codified into
and superiority on its head to argue instead that whites law.
were barbarous, bloodthirsty warmongers. Against the
“Angry Saxon” they constructed blacks as peaceful, Cultural Representations
artistic, and religious. And while still using masculinist From the antebellum period through the early twentieth
rhetoric to assert their manhood rights, they often left century, the assessments of African American character
black women out of the equation entirely. Ethnology, in and abilities espoused by racist pseudoscientists were
many ways, literally became a debate over the “rights of also reflected in American popular culture, in which
man,” and who exactly should count as a man. Though blacks were often reduced to several pervasive caricatures
black ethnologists and intellectuals faced a Herculean task or stereotypes. Advertising, editorial cartoons, magazine
in attempting to develop a logical argument to refute the illustrations, popular literature, and, later, films provided
entirely illogical racist rhetoric of the day, they often fell a visual counterpart to the image of African Americans
prey to the same racial essentialism as their adversaries, painted in ethnology. Like most stereotypes, rather than
and ended up reifying the category of race itself. reflecting real black life and experience, these tropes rep-
Another major, and ultimately quite successful, chal- resented a convenient and self-serving means for white
lenge to the tenets of ethnology came from anthropologist elites to justify and naturalize existing inequalities by
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RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 7

either denigrating blacks as deserving of nothing better or or asexual Mammies. At issue in each of these competing—
representing them as content with their lot in life. Black though intertwined and mutually reinforcing—tropes were
men in the antebellum era and beyond were often repre- black women’s femininity and sexuality. The “Mammy”
sented as subservient, docile, lazy, and childlike. The flip stereotype was invoked to some extent during the antebel-
side to this “Sambo” character was the “black brute” lum period as a justification for slavery, by presenting fe-
stereotype, which gained particular currency around the male house slaves as happy and fulfilled in their caretaker
turn of the century as black men, now emancipated from roles. It reached the height of its popularity after Emanci-
institutional slavery, sought their rights as citizens, pation through the 1940s as a nostalgic symbol of a time
thereby challenging white male dominance by their very when white elites could expect to have their every whim
presence in public and political life. Racist scientists and attended to by an ever-present, eager to please Mammy.
politicians alike promoted the idea that, freed from the Though she may or may not have had children of her own,
supposedly civilizing bonds of slavery, the black man was it was her benevolent white employers who were her real
reverting back to his “natural” state of savagery and li- family, on whom she doted, and who in turn loved their
centiousness. Black masculinity was both denied by an loyal servant. The selfless, resourceful, and maternal
anxious white patriarchy through infantalizing language, Mammy figure, epitomized by Hattie McDaniel’s role in
cultural representation, and treatment, and simultane- the popular 1939 film, Gone With the Wind, was usually
ously feared as an animalistic, unrestrained, and savage represented as older, obese, and most often very dark-
lust that must be controlled. skinned. More than likely this was a deliberate attempt to
At a time when “manhood rights” and citizenship were desexualize “Mammy” by presenting her as the opposite of
synonymous and implicitly white, the increasing eco- mainstream standards of beauty and thus unappealing to
nomic and electoral power of enfranchised black men white men who, in reality, were all too prone to preying
during Reconstruction threatened to undermine the sexually on black female domestics.
deeply entrenched white patriarchal power structure in To the extent that Mammy was represented as asexual,
place for centuries. That political threat became highly the Jezebel stereotype of black womanhood was charac-
sexualized in political and cultural discourse. Black men terized as innately promiscuous, hypersexual, and lewd.
were impugned as savage beasts driven to rape white The Jezebel character was portrayed as dangerous, for
women as a means of intimidation to keep them out of she was wildly seductive and capable of manipulating
the voting booths and from obtaining full citizenship even the most “upstanding” men. Like the Mammy char-
rights. The trope of the “black beast rapist” was also used acter, the Jezebel stereotype was largely a white invention
to justify lynching, which peaked in number around the to obscure or justify the sexual exploitation of black
turn of the century but continued well into the twentieth. women. Whereas Mammy was created as an asexual ma-
However, even during that time, black journalist and anti- ternal figure that no white man would ever desire to
lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett pointed out that counter the all too real appearance of house slaves often
many of the black men who were lynched were never chosen for the position for their likeness to white
even accused of rape, let alone convicted of it. She also standards of beauty, the Jezebel was created as a hyper-
exposed the sexual double standards along racial lines in sexual temptress who could not be raped because it was
which white men had for centuries raped black women she who did the seducing. Black women were portrayed
with impunity, yet a black man could be tortured and as so degraded, that they deserved neither protection nor
killed for merely looking at a white woman or having a respect. The Jezebel stereotype conveniently explained
consensual relationship with her. Moreover, white women the preponderance of light-skinned slave children as the
were put on pedestals as objects needing careful protec- product not of rape or exploitation, but of willing seduc-
tion at any cost, yet black women were afforded no such tion by calculating black women seeking status, lighter
protection of their bodies or reputations no matter how work, or material reward through their intimate relations
respectable their behavior. with white men.
That a black woman’s reputation could be impugned From the colonial period on, black women were asso-
so easily pointed to the fact that black women, like black ciated with labor. Often this association translated into
men, were also often stereotyped as wanton and lascivi- the belief that black women were more physically capa-
ous, and defined in large part by their sexuality. However, ble of and even divinely ordained for hard labor than
as was also the case with black men, black female sexu- their stereotypically delicate white counterparts. Even
ality in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ameri- though in reality white women often worked alongside
can racial and racist discourse was marked by paradox, black women on farms and plantations before and after
represented by contradictory stereotypes in which they the shift from a system of indenture to racialized slavery,
were either hypersexual seductresses, manly workhorses, only black women were taxed as laborers, reflecting the
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8 RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

belief that white women’s work was supplemental or “white.” Yet who exactly counted as “white” was a point
temporary, and black women’s labor expected or obliga- of near constant contestation and change during the late
tory. In a vicious Catch-22, black women were forced to nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How that cate-
labor either under slavery or by economic necessity re- gory came to be constructed and continually recon-
sulting from racial inequalities after Emancipation, then structed has generated a rich interdisciplinary field of
deemed manly or defeminized as a result. This charac- scholarship that has revealed important new insights into
terization of black women as manly gave rise to another the interplay of race, class, and power in America.
related stereotype, which historians have deemed Sap- Race and notions of “fitness for citizenship” had been
phire. Like Mammy, Sapphire is outspoken and tena- inseparable since the eighteenth century, when the coun-
cious, but whereas Mammy’s maternal role keeps her try’s first naturalization law in 1790 limited naturalized
within the bounds of Victorian gender ideals, Sapphire is citizenship to “free white persons.” However, as groups of
portrayed as both emasculating and masculinzed, nur- “undesirable” Europeans immigrated in larger numbers,
turing to neither white children nor her own kin. Sap- peaking from the 1840s to the 1920s, the very basis for
phire is fundamentally a usurper of male privilege. Like defining “race” came under intense political and scientific
the Jezebel character, Sapphire is represented as less debate. When the Irish arrived, for instance, they cer-
than a woman, and thus undeserving of the protections tainly appeared white, if skin color was the determining
afforded to proper ladies, yet not a man, despite her mas- factor of race, and thus of citizenship. Yet they arrived
culine persona, affording her none of the rights associ- amid a xenophobic political climate that already held
ated with (white) manhood. negative stereotypes of the group, and thus had to be con-
While seemingly contradictory, each of these stereo- structed as nonwhite in order to be denied full citizenship
types reinforced one another and served an important rights. Such would be the case with immigrants from
ideological function in naturalizing, justifying, and main- southern and eastern Europe as well.
taining white dominance and the sexual and economic At the same time that ethnologists were comparing
exploitation of black women. More importantly, though Anglo-Saxon and African races, they were also construct-
they were perhaps most explicit in the early to mid-twen- ing and comparing “races” within Europe, and assigning
tieth century, these stereotypes have not disappeared; character traits and value to those categories. Amid this
each persists in a slightly updated and arguably more scientific debate, the United States passed numerous nat-
coded fashion today. uralization laws. Each shifted the boundaries of who was
considered white, and thus eligible for citizenship. How-
Class, Appearance, and Identity ever, as each group assimilated into American culture,
In the last decade, historians have often focused on the and was gradually perceived as less different, it “became
turn-of-the-twentieth century as a period during which is- white,” with the full political rights afforded the name.
sues of class, gender, and race most acutely coalesced. “Whiteness,” and the political rights and social status as-
Known among scholars as the “cult of domesticity,” the sociated with it, is also fundamentally imbricated with
Victorian era idealized both the home and women’s sup- class. Over time the European-descended lower classes,
posedly natural place within it. The emphasis on main- with considerable encouragement from ruling elites who
taining separate spheres—public and private—along feared the revolutionary potential of interracial class soli-
gender lines was encoded in nearly every aspect of Ameri- darity, chose the tenuous status afforded them by race
can culture. It was a man’s duty to be a responsible citizen rather than align themselves with working class blacks in
and patriarch, protecting the virtue of white womanhood similar economic circumstances. In other words, with lit-
at any cost. Women were supposed to be weak, nurturing, tle assets or property to their name, the working classes
delicate, and pure, ensconced in the home where they could at least cling to their status as “white.”
would derive great pleasure and fulfillment in their roles Meanwhile, the turn of the century also saw a growing
as wives and mothers. White women were increasingly and increasingly visible black middle class, though it is a
idealized, constructed in opposition to the negative por- term they themselves never used. This group of African
trayals of black women in American culture, and in need Americans adopted middle-class behaviors and ideals,
of protection from the perceived threat of black male and encouraged other blacks to do so, largely out of an
sexuality. abiding faith that they could prove through their accom-
The gendered ideology of domesticity was both pro- plishments and respectability that they deserved equal
foundly racialized and classed. White men responded to treatment. Central to both black and white middle-class
black emancipation and enfranchisement, and the surge identity was the performance of gender. Whereas the Vic-
in immigration from “less desirable” regions of Europe, torian ideology of domesticity demanded that women be
by constructing manhood and citizenship as inherently “angels of the house,” and avoid the taint of the public
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RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 9

N EGRO OFFICERS OF THE W OMEN ’ S L EAGUE , Newport,

Rhode Island, c. 1899. This photograph is said to have debate among historians as to whether they were adopt-
been displayed at the Paris Exposition Universelle of ing “white” values or constructing something else entirely.
1900. (Library of Congress.) Having been denied power within their own families
under slavery, after Emancipation many black men
sought to claim their manhood rights, as constructed by
sphere (the male preserve), many middle-class black elites, by acting the part of the patriarch. This often in-
women were very involved in activism on behalf of both cluded attempting to assert authority over their wives,
their race and gender, and commanded a degree of influ- some of whom actively resisted the role of helpmeet, oth-
ence and respect within their communities. Though they ers adopting it willingly as the position of “proper” ladies.
asserted their moral respectability in the terms and lan- Some black men insisted that their wives not work out-
guage of domesticity, they also saw themselves as the ar- side the home, some out of a desire to protect the women
biters of racial uplift, through both their activism and from the sexual exploitation they often faced working for
example, a role that necessitated their presence in the whites or to save them from the backbreaking toil they
public sphere. Education, a privilege denied them under had performed under slavery, others to assert their man-
slavery, became extremely important and valued among hood by maintaining a traditional, patriarchal household.
both African American men and women. Among whites, Some women found this a welcome relief, whereas others
however, higher education for women was still consid- found it limiting or unrealistic and instead continued to
ered largely unnecessary. work, with or against their husbands’ wishes. The perfor-
Other middle-class black families modeled themselves mance of Victorian gender roles was irrevocably wrapped
along more traditional gender lines, though there is some up in the performance of class, and the black middle class
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10 RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

saw themselves as uplifting the entire race, which often Americans often promoted and celebrated leaders of
brought them into conflict not just with whites, but also darker countenance.
with the black working class. However, even those black They also celebrated their African heritage and African
women who did compose the emergent black middle American culture. Throughout much of his career in the
class all too often found that their class status and adher- public spotlight, Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican-born black
ence to the tenets of domesticity did not protect them nationalist leader, preached that blacks needed to have
from attacks against their character or bodies. pride in their African heritage and, convinced they would
The black middle class that emerged during this period never find justice in America, encouraged them to emi-
has been the subject of disagreement among scholars. grate back to their ancestral homeland. The 1920s also
Some argue that the self-declared “better” class of African saw a boom in black literature and the arts, known as the
Americans was adopting “white” gender norms, values, Harlem Renaissance, which also drew heavily on and cel-
and standards of beauty. Others have maintained that ebrated African culture. Whites were often fascinated by
they were constructing a positive and distinct black iden- these highly visible black artistic forms, such as jazz, and
tity to counter the negative assessments of blackness per- participated in Harlem nightlife as a signifier of the “ex-
vasive in American culture, and truly believed that their otic” and cosmopolitan.
example of success and “moral” behavior could bring Only a very few whites, however, were so inclined—
about racial equality. The class issues among African most wanted no part of blackness. The “one-drop rule,”
Americans that began to manifest during the early twen- which mandated that no matter what one’s appearance,
tieth century were representative of a larger cultural con- any “drop” of African ancestry made a person black, was
flict over assimilation and black identity. Standards of designed to literally keep the races apart. The implica-
beauty, hair styles, and attitudes toward skin color have tions of the one-drop rule were often reflected in popular
also reflected the complexities of black identity and its re- culture through the trope of the “tragic mulatto” charac-
lationship to both African and American culture. ter that was found in many early to mid-twentieth cen-
Skin color has been a source of some discussion and tury films and novels. The “tragic mulatto” could be
conflict throughout African American history. Lighter either male or female, though perhaps more often the lat-
skinned slaves, often the illegitimate offspring of their ter, and in novels written by both blacks and whites, they
white masters, were frequently put to work in the Big were represented as conflicted, even suicidal, figures that
House, which saved them from the drudgery of field labor did not truly fit in either the black or white world.
but also placed them under the constant scrutiny of Though they sometimes tried to “pass” as white, they
whites and made them especially susceptible to sexual ex- could never escape the “taint” of their blackness, as it had
ploitation by the master and his male relatives. As a been constructed in racist discourse. Passing was a fre-
closer approximation to white standards of beauty, yet quent theme in film and African American literature,
still maintaining the stereotype of licentiousness associ- which poignantly reflected both the rigidity of the Ameri-
ated with blackness in general, light skinned black can racial system and the effects it had on the psyches of
women were often sold specifically as prostitutes or con- blacks. In one of the most famous examples of the genre,
cubines in the slave market. Moreover, they were often Passing, by Nella Larsen, the main character eloquently
the object of hatred and abuse at the hands of the planta- recounts the turmoil passing represented:
tion mistress, who saw in them a living reminder of her
husband’s infidelity. To the slave population, mulatto Irene Redfield wished, for the first time in her life, that she
slaves were a constant reminder of the sexual exploitation had not been born a Negro. For the first time she suffered and
rebelled because she was unable to disregard the burden of
of slave women and of the one-way acceptance of misce-
race. It was, she cried silently, enough to suffer as a woman, an
genation among whites, who generally publicly decried
individual, on one’s own account, without having to suffer for
race mixture but tacitly accepted white rape of, or even to the race as well. It was a brutality, and undeserved.
some extent consensual relationships with, black women, (Larsen, Quicksand and Passing, p. 225)
though never between white women and black men.
After Emancipation, light skin continued to be associ- By the dawn of the civil rights era, however, the passing
ated with power and privilege. Many of the original narrative had waned in popularity, replaced instead by a
beauty products marketed specifically to African Ameri- growing activist consciousness that demanded equal
cans at the turn-of-the-century were skin lightening rights for all blacks. The late 1960s saw a resurgence of
creams and hair straighteners, yet black leaders of the the Afrocentrism that began to take shape in the 1920s,
time represented every shade and hue. In fact, dismayed and by the 1970s, the “Black Is Beautiful” movement had
that the success and shrewdness of lighter skinned public pervaded American culture. Natural hair, afros, and
figures were often attributed to their white blood, African African-influenced clothing became symbols of the pride
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RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 11

among African Americans of all hues, and black leaders raised questions about the definitions of race versus
began to speak of and promote a specifically black iden- ethnicity, and what if any distinctions should be made be-
tity, which scholars have pointed out is itself also a cul- tween the two. One of the largest and most sustained cri-
tural construction, albeit a far more positive one than tiques came from individuals self-identified as bi- or
those that had been constructed by whites in the cen- multiracial, an identification not reflected in the existing
turies before. categories. In general, many organizations representing
multiracial Americans maintained that having to choose
(Re)Constructing Race in the Twenty-First Century one category alone was more indicative of the “one drop
While it has become almost universally accepted among rule” that characterized nineteenth century racial thought
scholars that race is socially constructed, undeniably race than current understandings of race. Some multiracial
still maintains considerable currency in American cul- organizations argued that census respondents should
ture, politics, and society. As scholars continue to exam- have the option of checking multiple boxes under the
ine and debate the implications of race as both a cultural heading of race to more accurately reflect their heritage,
construction and a sociopolitical reality in history and while others argued that there should be a separate “mul-
modern times, the subject has reached well beyond the tiracial” category.
walls of the academy, as exemplified by controversies sur- Ultimately, the OMB decided on several changes, which
rounding the 2000 U.S. census. While the census at first it announced to the public in 1997. It made “Native
glance appears only to count, in the most scientific sense, Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander” a separate racial cat-
it has actually proven instrumental in determining “who egory and changed the definition of “American Indian or
counts” and by what terms they are defined. Its ever- Alaskan native” to include people from South and Central
changing, always contested racial categories demonstrate America. The most significant change, however, was that
the arbitrary nature of race itself. Furthermore, the mod- in deciding against adding a separate “multiracial” cate-
ifications indicate that while the terminology and bound- gory, the OMB, for the first time in the long history of the
aries may have shifted over time, the need to categorize census, opted to allow respondents to select more than
human beings in some way persists, sometimes with pos- one race.
itive outcomes like increased visibility and a sense of And the U.S. census has had a long history indeed. The
community identity. census has both reflected and codified prevailing racial
In 1993, under significant pressure from various lobby- thought since its inception in 1790. In the eighteenth and
ing and political action groups, the Office of Management much of the nineteenth centuries, the census categorized
and Budget (OMB), a subset of the executive branch that people by both “color” and status as free or enslaved. By
manages the Census Bureau, began a comprehensive re- the mid-nineteenth century, the census included the cate-
view of the racial categories on the U.S. census. The five gories “Black” and “Mulatto.” The 1890 census, reflecting
standard categories they sought to review had been in the turn-of-the-century convention of categorizing African
place since 1977, and were defined as follows: American Americans by their percentage of Caucasian “blood,” ex-
Indian or Alaskan Native (a person having origins in any panded the racial classifications even further into eight
of the original peoples of North America, and who main- categories: “White,” “Black,” “Mulatto,” “Quadroon,” “Oc-
tains cultural identification through tribal affiliations or toroon,” “Chinese,” “Japanese,” and “Indian.” Significantly,
community recognition); Asian or Pacific Islander (a per- self-identification of race was not introduced until the
son having origins in any of the original peoples of the 1960 census, during a decade in which the census held
Far East, Southeast Asian, the Indian Subcontinent, or tremendous importance for civil rights activism. Prior to
the Pacific Islands); Black (a person having origins in any that date, census-takers were instructed to determine the
of the black racial groups of Africa); Hispanic (a person of race of respondents visually, and when necessary, ask ques-
Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South Ameri- tions for clarification, but ultimately the decision was left
can or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of to the enumerators. The racial categories on the U.S. cen-
race); and White (a person having origins in any of the sus, conducted every ten years, underwent some change
original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle between nearly every iteration. The story of those changes
East). reflects not only demographic and immigration trends, but
Critics lodged a variety of complaints against these cat- also the ever-shifting, variable nature of race itself. More-
egorizations. Some argued that the category of “White” over, the story of how race has been constructed and
should be further broken down, with Arab or Middle continually reconstructed is not peripheral to American
Easterner as a separate category, and distinctions made history, but rather, as historian Matthew Frye Jacobson as-
for various ethnicities or regions of Europe. Others serts, “Race and races are American history. . . . To write
expressed concern with the “Hispanic” category, which about race is to exclude virtually nothing.”
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12 RACE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

BIBLIOGRAPHY Malcomson, Scott L. One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure

Baker, Lee D. From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
of Race, 1896–1954. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks
Barkan, Elazar. The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of in Western Popular Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars. Cam- 1992. Originally published in Dutch in 1990 by Koninklijk Institut
bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992. voor de Tropen, Amsterdam.
Bay, Mia. The White Image in the Black Mind: African American Ideas Roediger, David R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of
about White People 1830–1925. New York: Oxford University Press, the American Working Class. Rev. ed. London and New York: Verso,
2000. Shows how both black intellectuals and former slaves re- 1999. One of the foundational texts in the emerging field of white-
sponded to white racial ideology, and how African Americans in ness studies, this text examines the essential role of class in the
turn perceived the white race and constructed a more positive formation of white identity, focusing on how the white working
black identity. Also includes an extensive bibliography of writings class, rather than forging an interracial alliance to fight economic
in the “sciences of race” by both black and white ethnologists. oppression, constructed and relied upon their “whiteness” as a sta-
Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gen- tus signifier.
der and Race in the United States, 1880–1917. Chicago: University of Rogin, Michael. Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the
Chicago Press, 1995. An excellent and influential examination of the Hollywood Melting Pot. Berkeley: University of California Press,
intersections of race and gender in American cultural discourse, this 1996.
work also shows how white racial dominance, and challenges to Saxton, Alexander. The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Pol-
that ideology, were both often framed in terms of “civilization” and itics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. London and
the rights, responsibilities, and privileges of “manhood.” New York: Verso, 1990.
Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patri- Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a
archs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: Worldview. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.
University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Somerville, Siobhan B. Queering the Color Line: Race and the Inven-
Fischer, Kirsten. Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colo- tion of Homosexuality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke
nial North Carolina. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. University Press, 2000. While several chapters are primarily liter-
Fredrickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind: The De- ary criticism, this text still provides useful introduction for histori-
bate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (1971). ans into the emerging field of scholarship exploring the mutual,
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987. intertwined construction of race and homosexuality.
Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women Stanton, William. The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race
on Race and Sex in America. New York: William Morrow, 1984. in America, 1815–1959. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Sterling, Dorothy, ed. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nine-
Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920. Chapel teenth Century. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984. Like Lerner’s text
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. above, an edited collection of primary source documents by and
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton, about black women.
1981. A study of scientific racism before and after the rise of evo- Vaughan, Alden T. Roots of American Racism: Essays on the Colonial
lutionary theory. Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. See espe-
Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in cially chapter seven, “The Origins Debate: Slavery and Racism in
Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” pages 136–174, for a comprehen-
Haller, John S. Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial sive review of the historiography and major issues in the debate
Inferiority. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971. Like Gould’s among historians over whether slavery preceded and precipitated
text above, this explores Social Darwinism as a form of scientific racism or vice versa. Chapter one, “From White Man to Redskin:
racism in the late nineteenth century. Changing Anglo-American Perceptions of the American Indian,”
Hannaford, Ivan. Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Washing- pages 3–33, is also useful for an examination of the construction of
ton, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996. race as it pertains to Native Americans in particular.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Wallace, Michelle. Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman.
Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard New York: Dial, 1979.
University Press, 1998. This oft-cited book, which shows how var- Wallace-Sanders, Kimberley, ed. Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black
ious ethnic groups assimilated and “became” white in America, il- Female Body in American Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michi-
luminates the ever-changing meanings of race and the growing gan Press, 2002. For a fascinating examination of the construction
black/white racial binary in U.S. culture. of race and gender in early modern travel narratives, see “ ‘Some
Jordan, Winthrop D. White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Could Suckle over Their Shoulder’: Male Travelers, Female Bodies,
Negro, 1550–1812 (1968). New York: W.W. Norton, 1977. and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500–1770,” by Jennifer L.
Kertzer, David I., and Dominique Arel, eds. Census and Identity: The Pol- Morgan. Originally published in the William and Mary Quarterly,
itics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Census. Cambridge, 3rd Series, 54 (January 1997): 167–192.
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002. See especially “Racial Cate- White, Deborah Gray. Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Planta-
gorization and Censuses” by Melissa Nobles, pages 43–70. tion South (1985). Rev. ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. On the
Larsen, Nella. Quicksand and Passing. In American Women Writers, topics of the construction of race and racial stereotypes of black
edited by Deborah E. McDowell. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univer- women in particular, see chapter one, “Jezebel and Mammy: The
sity Press, 1986. Mythology of Female Slavery,” pages 27–61.
Lerner, Gerda, ed. Black Women in White America: A Documentary White, Deborah Gray. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of
History. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. An edited collection of Themselves, 1894–1994. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.
primary source documents by and about black women. Zack, Naomi, ed. Race/Sex: Their Sameness, Difference, and Interplay.
López, Ian F. Haney. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York and London: Routledge, 1997.
New York: New York University Press, 1996. —M ELISSA N. S TEIN