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A review by lpm100
New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (Revised) by Joel Williamson
challenging
informative
slow-paced
2.0
Book Review
"New People"
Joel Williamson
2/5 stars
"Oh, how the author could have used the talents of a James Michener or an Isabel Wilkerson"
*******
Of the book:
-4 chapters and 1-10 page epilogue
-187 pages of prose ≈47pps/chapter
-325 cited sources (≈1.7/page--well sourced)
-Originally published in 1980
This is probably one of the heaviest slogs that I've read this year. Difficult, boring reading is what I have come to expect from books published on University labels--and this book did not disappoint in that way.
I kept at it because:
1. I needed an alternative storyline to the done to death "systems of oppression" / "white privilege"/"white supremacy" arguments that have been thrashed out in these past couple of years.
2. There is good information here (provided you are willing to fish for it), but there's just no relatable narrative arc to pull it together. ("The Warmth of Other Suns," by Isabel Wilkerson, does just that but with a very interesting backstory.)
3. I paid good money for this book and I wanted my money's worth;
*******
I think that an overarching message is that: the situation with respect to miscegenation in the United States was so complicated that any narrative retroactively superimposed on the events of that time is just as likely to be false as true. (How many times have you heard some black person say that "the reason black people prefer to be light skinned is because house slaves were treated better than field ones?" OR how many times have you heard that the influx of white DNA into black Americans was because of coerced conjugal relations between white slave masters and black wenches.)
Reality was a lot more complicated--as it should/must be, given that the United States is 3.8 million square miles and was settled by different people at different times.
What reason would we have to assume that the slave society as practiced by the Spaniards would be identical to that practiced by the French, and then later the English? All of whom settled different parts of what are now the United States
In addition: I find that this book can be read as a cautionary tale of assuming that establishment scholars actually know what they're talking about *just* because they say they do.
Any number of people really used to believe the strangest things back in those days.
1. Mulattos were sterile after the third generation?
2. The electrical signals through black people's nerves ran in one direction, and those through white people ran in another direction and people who were mulattos with temperamentally confused because their electrical signals were running in two different directions?
3. There were three types of mulatto: Dominant. Balanced. Recessive.
4. Race mixing was going to make it such that people with majority African ancestry would just disappear.
5. (Carolina Bond Day, black anthropologist undertaking a study of mulatto elite): "... The abandon with which many ignorant negroes relinquish themselves to song and dance is...... since they are not intelligent enough to function on the psychological level of the majority of the [other black] people in Group I or Group II." (These were a couple of groups that she invented for purposes of her research. Kind of the same way that you could invent a group of people that have a longer second metatarsal-- but I don't know how valuable such a delineation is.)
I will say that Williamson's definition of "mulatto" was WAY too expansive for this book.
That term is traditionally understood to mean somebody that is half black and half white but it seems like Williamson used it to include ANY black person with ANY fraction of white blood--and that explains how he managed to:
1. Include people like Countee Cullen, who was as black as shoe polish. Also, his description of Langston Hughes as "very light";
2. Conclude that in America 10% were Negroes but more than 75% were mulattos (p.160);
3. Mix in a lot of people who might have had *some* black ancestry but did not actually marry other blacks (Walter White, Lena Horne, Jean Toomer)
I understand that Williamson felt a book needed to be written, but sometimes when you stretch your definitions a little bit too far......
*******
Chapter 1 (beginning-1850):
Due to different historical circumstances,The South is broken up into two parts, the first from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and the second from North Carolina down to the Gulf of Mexico. The miscegenation happened in waves, and the first one finished in the early part of the 18th century, with less of it after that time. Mulatto elite, for some reason, decided to fuse with the darker masses.
What do we learn?
1. Contrary to popular belief, most of the race mixing did not happen as a result of white planters and black slave women. It was actually impoverished servant whites and blacks.
2. The categories of these different classes of people were not born fully formed. There was a lot of churn in order to figure out who was who over a lot of varying time and space.
3. It seems that mulattos in the "Lower South" followed a different pattern to the "Upper South" because there were larger numbers of black slaves and the whites needed something like an intermediate buffer of people between them and the slaves. (This is similar to how South African Coloureds became a class between whites and a much larger number of blacks.)
4. Initially, Louisiana Creoles (think: Jelly Roll Morton) did not want any part of blacks as marriage partners, and they actually inbred intensively--although preferentially with whites when they married out.
5. 1850 census of the US lists 406k mulatto out of 3.639K blacks, 11.2% of the black population and 1.8% of the national total. Free: 159k, slave: 247k. All 57K mulattoes in the North were free.
Chapter 2 (1850-1915--before the Civil War, through Reconstruction and up to the Harlem Renaissance):
At the beginning of this period, mulattos existed in some uncomfortable modus vivendi in the South. By the end of this era, white Southerners wanted a more pure bloodline (lower class whites needed to separate themselves from people that they had just been working in the same fields with last week), and so people who were mulatto became "blacker."
And hence, the "one drop rule." (Also, white people who had corrupt characteristics were thought to be black.)
What do we learn?
1. The one drop rule did not fall out of the sky, and it happened over a slow period of time in response to changing circumstances.
2. By the end of this period, 90% of blacks still lived in the South.
Chapter 3 (Brown America--fusion of mulatto and Black America):
What do we learn?
1. The number of mixed race who lived around blacks increased from 12% in 1870 to 15.2% in 1890 and then to 20.9% in 1910.
2. After 1928, the only census terms were "black" and "white," whereas before 1920 mulattos were terms. At this point, it becomes harder to keep track of the fraction of mulattos.
3.(p.117). It seems like mixed marriages were completely shut off by 1944. People like Carter Woodson suggested that "miscegenation was restricted to the weaker types of both races." And the infusion of white blood into black Americans came as a result of internal miscegenation (mulattos marrying blacks) rather than between blacks and whites.
4. "Strange Fruit" was initially a novel by Lillian Smith that featured a lynching, and only later became the popular Billie Holiday song.
Author tries to bring in some big names around this point in order to "keep it fresh." (Lena horne. Joe Lewis. Malcolm X. Ralph Ellison.)
Chapter 4 (Harlem Renaissance and after):
This is sending the context of the Harlem Renaissance and some period early in the start of the Great Migration.
What do we learn?
1. Harlem was an area of less than 2 square miles containing 200,000 blacks (as of 1930).
2. The leadership of this moment in history was small and number, and they were mulatto in large numbers: James Weldon Johnson, WEB DuBois, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Walter White.
3. There were "blue vein" societies up until around the 1920s. (To be admitted you had to be light enough to be able to show blue veins. A more modern version of this is the "paper bag test.")
4. The intellectual ferment of the Harlem Renaissance also attracted some white people. (Some remembered, such as George gershwin. Some forgotten, such as Carl VanVechten.) They took what they like, and repurposed it in other venues in a more "white-friendly" way.
Other thoughts:
I have a very hard time believing some of what this author says.
1. For example, Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt's claim to not being accepted because of being light skinned.
It just doesn't ring true in current times, and these events are not all that far back. All the black guys love the redbone girls, and they're more expensive both in the dating market AND for purposes of sex work.
He doubles down on the unlikeliness when he talks about having light skin females describe and security over their color.
Just, no.
2. Also, I don't think that there is any black American that does not know the term "colorstruck" or know about a relative/friend who will only consider a light skinned boyfriend/girlfriend. Not only does that very old word not show up even once in this book, the author asserts the opposite-- that black people are commonly ashamed of white ancestry.
Not hardly.
3. This book went on past the Harlem Renaissance, but even as I think back to the years that were roughly contemporaneous with BT Washington (I read his "Up From Slavery"), it seems like Washington paints a different picture - one that is more shot through with practical aspects of socializing people just recently out of slavery.
4. The Harlem Renaissance is a topic in its own right, and I think the reader might be better served by sorting through what is available about that topic and select for readability and other first person accounts. Also, a discerning reader might get more practical detail about the contributions of that time.
5. A lot of his opinions are quite clueless. "There has been relatively little mating between the races,... So small as to be practically inconsequential."(p.188).
Verdict: Weak recommendation.
Vocabulary:
quadroon ball (plaçage; white guy would go there to meet a quadroon that looked good to him and agreed to provide her a living allowance and support for any kids she bore him)
meamelouc (1/16th black)
sang-mele (1/64th black)
sambo (3/4 black)
mango (7/8 black)
mustee (1/8 black)
mulatto (1/2 black)
mestizo (European and Indian; Spanish / French origin word)
Carolina Bond Day
Gunnar Myrdal
Madison Grant
Asa Philip Randolph
juke/jook (guitar) joint
Arthur Schomburg Museum
"Shuffle Along"
"New People"
Joel Williamson
2/5 stars
"Oh, how the author could have used the talents of a James Michener or an Isabel Wilkerson"
*******
Of the book:
-4 chapters and 1-10 page epilogue
-187 pages of prose ≈47pps/chapter
-325 cited sources (≈1.7/page--well sourced)
-Originally published in 1980
This is probably one of the heaviest slogs that I've read this year. Difficult, boring reading is what I have come to expect from books published on University labels--and this book did not disappoint in that way.
I kept at it because:
1. I needed an alternative storyline to the done to death "systems of oppression" / "white privilege"/"white supremacy" arguments that have been thrashed out in these past couple of years.
2. There is good information here (provided you are willing to fish for it), but there's just no relatable narrative arc to pull it together. ("The Warmth of Other Suns," by Isabel Wilkerson, does just that but with a very interesting backstory.)
3. I paid good money for this book and I wanted my money's worth;
*******
I think that an overarching message is that: the situation with respect to miscegenation in the United States was so complicated that any narrative retroactively superimposed on the events of that time is just as likely to be false as true. (How many times have you heard some black person say that "the reason black people prefer to be light skinned is because house slaves were treated better than field ones?" OR how many times have you heard that the influx of white DNA into black Americans was because of coerced conjugal relations between white slave masters and black wenches.)
Reality was a lot more complicated--as it should/must be, given that the United States is 3.8 million square miles and was settled by different people at different times.
What reason would we have to assume that the slave society as practiced by the Spaniards would be identical to that practiced by the French, and then later the English? All of whom settled different parts of what are now the United States
In addition: I find that this book can be read as a cautionary tale of assuming that establishment scholars actually know what they're talking about *just* because they say they do.
Any number of people really used to believe the strangest things back in those days.
1. Mulattos were sterile after the third generation?
2. The electrical signals through black people's nerves ran in one direction, and those through white people ran in another direction and people who were mulattos with temperamentally confused because their electrical signals were running in two different directions?
3. There were three types of mulatto: Dominant. Balanced. Recessive.
4. Race mixing was going to make it such that people with majority African ancestry would just disappear.
5. (Carolina Bond Day, black anthropologist undertaking a study of mulatto elite): "... The abandon with which many ignorant negroes relinquish themselves to song and dance is...... since they are not intelligent enough to function on the psychological level of the majority of the [other black] people in Group I or Group II." (These were a couple of groups that she invented for purposes of her research. Kind of the same way that you could invent a group of people that have a longer second metatarsal-- but I don't know how valuable such a delineation is.)
I will say that Williamson's definition of "mulatto" was WAY too expansive for this book.
That term is traditionally understood to mean somebody that is half black and half white but it seems like Williamson used it to include ANY black person with ANY fraction of white blood--and that explains how he managed to:
1. Include people like Countee Cullen, who was as black as shoe polish. Also, his description of Langston Hughes as "very light";
2. Conclude that in America 10% were Negroes but more than 75% were mulattos (p.160);
3. Mix in a lot of people who might have had *some* black ancestry but did not actually marry other blacks (Walter White, Lena Horne, Jean Toomer)
I understand that Williamson felt a book needed to be written, but sometimes when you stretch your definitions a little bit too far......
*******
Chapter 1 (beginning-1850):
Due to different historical circumstances,The South is broken up into two parts, the first from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and the second from North Carolina down to the Gulf of Mexico. The miscegenation happened in waves, and the first one finished in the early part of the 18th century, with less of it after that time. Mulatto elite, for some reason, decided to fuse with the darker masses.
What do we learn?
1. Contrary to popular belief, most of the race mixing did not happen as a result of white planters and black slave women. It was actually impoverished servant whites and blacks.
2. The categories of these different classes of people were not born fully formed. There was a lot of churn in order to figure out who was who over a lot of varying time and space.
3. It seems that mulattos in the "Lower South" followed a different pattern to the "Upper South" because there were larger numbers of black slaves and the whites needed something like an intermediate buffer of people between them and the slaves. (This is similar to how South African Coloureds became a class between whites and a much larger number of blacks.)
4. Initially, Louisiana Creoles (think: Jelly Roll Morton) did not want any part of blacks as marriage partners, and they actually inbred intensively--although preferentially with whites when they married out.
5. 1850 census of the US lists 406k mulatto out of 3.639K blacks, 11.2% of the black population and 1.8% of the national total. Free: 159k, slave: 247k. All 57K mulattoes in the North were free.
Chapter 2 (1850-1915--before the Civil War, through Reconstruction and up to the Harlem Renaissance):
At the beginning of this period, mulattos existed in some uncomfortable modus vivendi in the South. By the end of this era, white Southerners wanted a more pure bloodline (lower class whites needed to separate themselves from people that they had just been working in the same fields with last week), and so people who were mulatto became "blacker."
And hence, the "one drop rule." (Also, white people who had corrupt characteristics were thought to be black.)
What do we learn?
1. The one drop rule did not fall out of the sky, and it happened over a slow period of time in response to changing circumstances.
2. By the end of this period, 90% of blacks still lived in the South.
Chapter 3 (Brown America--fusion of mulatto and Black America):
What do we learn?
1. The number of mixed race who lived around blacks increased from 12% in 1870 to 15.2% in 1890 and then to 20.9% in 1910.
2. After 1928, the only census terms were "black" and "white," whereas before 1920 mulattos were terms. At this point, it becomes harder to keep track of the fraction of mulattos.
3.(p.117). It seems like mixed marriages were completely shut off by 1944. People like Carter Woodson suggested that "miscegenation was restricted to the weaker types of both races." And the infusion of white blood into black Americans came as a result of internal miscegenation (mulattos marrying blacks) rather than between blacks and whites.
4. "Strange Fruit" was initially a novel by Lillian Smith that featured a lynching, and only later became the popular Billie Holiday song.
Author tries to bring in some big names around this point in order to "keep it fresh." (Lena horne. Joe Lewis. Malcolm X. Ralph Ellison.)
Chapter 4 (Harlem Renaissance and after):
This is sending the context of the Harlem Renaissance and some period early in the start of the Great Migration.
What do we learn?
1. Harlem was an area of less than 2 square miles containing 200,000 blacks (as of 1930).
2. The leadership of this moment in history was small and number, and they were mulatto in large numbers: James Weldon Johnson, WEB DuBois, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Walter White.
3. There were "blue vein" societies up until around the 1920s. (To be admitted you had to be light enough to be able to show blue veins. A more modern version of this is the "paper bag test.")
4. The intellectual ferment of the Harlem Renaissance also attracted some white people. (Some remembered, such as George gershwin. Some forgotten, such as Carl VanVechten.) They took what they like, and repurposed it in other venues in a more "white-friendly" way.
Other thoughts:
I have a very hard time believing some of what this author says.
1. For example, Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt's claim to not being accepted because of being light skinned.
It just doesn't ring true in current times, and these events are not all that far back. All the black guys love the redbone girls, and they're more expensive both in the dating market AND for purposes of sex work.
He doubles down on the unlikeliness when he talks about having light skin females describe and security over their color.
Just, no.
2. Also, I don't think that there is any black American that does not know the term "colorstruck" or know about a relative/friend who will only consider a light skinned boyfriend/girlfriend. Not only does that very old word not show up even once in this book, the author asserts the opposite-- that black people are commonly ashamed of white ancestry.
Not hardly.
3. This book went on past the Harlem Renaissance, but even as I think back to the years that were roughly contemporaneous with BT Washington (I read his "Up From Slavery"), it seems like Washington paints a different picture - one that is more shot through with practical aspects of socializing people just recently out of slavery.
4. The Harlem Renaissance is a topic in its own right, and I think the reader might be better served by sorting through what is available about that topic and select for readability and other first person accounts. Also, a discerning reader might get more practical detail about the contributions of that time.
5. A lot of his opinions are quite clueless. "There has been relatively little mating between the races,... So small as to be practically inconsequential."(p.188).
Verdict: Weak recommendation.
Vocabulary:
quadroon ball (plaçage; white guy would go there to meet a quadroon that looked good to him and agreed to provide her a living allowance and support for any kids she bore him)
meamelouc (1/16th black)
sang-mele (1/64th black)
sambo (3/4 black)
mango (7/8 black)
mustee (1/8 black)
mulatto (1/2 black)
mestizo (European and Indian; Spanish / French origin word)
Carolina Bond Day
Gunnar Myrdal
Madison Grant
Asa Philip Randolph
juke/jook (guitar) joint
Arthur Schomburg Museum
"Shuffle Along"