GWS 200 Lecture 13: Racial Categories
26 Feb 2018
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Document Summary
Racial categories in the 18th and 19th century. Systematically measured and described people by describing differences among people. Put them into a hierarchy with whiteness as the center norm/baseline. This research was used as a theory to explain and justify the violence and colonizing of non-white people by white people. Writers into the constitution; black slaves were quantified as 3/5ths of a person for the purposes of representation. Thus, the paradox of u. s. history that the ideals of freedom is historically rooted in the institution of slavery and the two inextricable racialized (wander, martin and nakayama, p. 31) Slave owners were small, but very powerful. Some slave owning plantation mistresses reflected on how the men own and control both them and the slaves. Some white southerners objected to slavery and some white northerners opposed abolition. Cannot quality as white if you have one drop of non-white in your veins.
