Dear Charles W. Chesnutt,
I found
it very interesting to read your article entitled “What is a White Man?” that
was published in 1889. And this is an
interesting question indeed that needed to be raised and clarified during this
year. The variance between states on the
laws dictating who may and may not be classified as white seems ridiculous and
a bit confusing. I wonder how easily,
someone without access to your article, would be able to find such information. Was each state so proud of these laws that
their legislatures or judges put forward that they were widely published and
advertised? Surely someone living within
a state would be well aware of these mandated color lines. They would be unable to avoid these
definitions, especially a person with some amount of color in their blood. A man living in Georgia, for example, with
more than an eighth of Negro or mulatto blood would be well aware of this law
declaring him as a colored man because it would mandate how he was able to live
his life. But would a man with an eighth
or more of “colored” blood living elsewhere and interested in moving to Georgia
be made aware of this information before he moved into this new state?
If such
information was made publicly and easily available to people living in all
states, it seems that there would have been a mass influx of people of color to
the states with the more lenient color line laws and an outflow of people with
some dangerous amount of color in their lineage to the states with more loose
color line laws. Perhaps this was the
case to some degree? You explain it at
least did happen in South Carolina some.
This idea of racial status changing simply by crossing a state border
seems ludicrous to me and perhaps many other people who may read your article
now, but we must not forget that this phenomenon does still happen today in
certain forms. Race is something that is
constructed by social context and interaction.
The classification of white vs. colored was obviously much more clear
cut and mandated by law in 1889, but in 2013 race is still decided by others
and varies within certain geographical and social locations.
Your
hope that these laws delineating the classification of a person into a certain
racial category “will be at best landmarks by which to measure the progress of
the nation” is partly true. We have made
great progress in this nation and today you will find no written law in any
state that gives a formula to decide who will be discriminated against purely
because of their heritage. However, the practice
does still exist. Perhaps it is a habit
that has been ingrained into the practices of our society since your time. A person with dark skin coming from the
Dominican Republic is not labeled as a “black person” until they step foot in
the United States. So crossing borders
can still change identities and qualities of life, though it has in fact
changed and improved since the time you were alive.
Best,
Nicole
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