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*LONG THREAD* Really interesting to see people talk about mixed-raceness /colourism w/o any historical analysis that situates why some DSBW feel the way they do. Is this not generational? Class based? We need to read, I suggest CLR James, 'Black Jacobins.'
I am locating this thread on my own experiences and reading on Anglo / Franco phone Caribbean. This could also apply to parts of Africa where there were settler colonies that created "mixed-race" class - buffer group between Blacks and whites.
The push back on discourse about colourism, is really about wanting to maintain the racial equilibrium where everyone knows their place. Convos like this are age-old, by age old I mean as far back as chattel slavery.
The problem is ppl want to disconnect the impacts of the plantation on colourism & how this to affects British society. If we can accept the slavery made the UK into the wealthy country that it is. Surely, we can accept all of the other aspects of slavery had an impact too.
In the Caribbean, I know this from both French & English colonies. Some mixed-race people where immediately emancipated from slavery (mother often not) sent back to the metropole (i.e. London/Paris) to receive an upstanding education, many where "integrated" in to high society.
Most often married white women, this part is gendered, history tells us men benefited more from this than women. Mixed-race, often received settlement from their fathers, usually land, money and slave. In order to protect their positions both freed mixed race people married
each other, thus forming a bourgeoning middle class. In a lot of Caribbean islands this group did not have political power - often banned from voting, they did have soft financial power & would often lobby ruling whites for more power. This group was invested in maintaining
colonial society, some even had slaves & kept themselves separate from the Black majority. We know that plantation labouring functioned on whiteness i.e. those closer to whiteness worked in doors, those closer to Africanness worked on the field. This distinction is important.
The discourse of slavery: labelling Blacks 3/5 human is akin to the discourse of the enlightenment philosophy of the "human." Humanity is a concept based on white cis hetero male body, its an entirely white western imperialist concept. Pls read Sylvia Wynter.
The Black African body was used in direct contrast to the white body to prove its unhumanness, humanity is linked to feelings, intelligence. Eugenics forms another aspect here in how Black African body and associated phenotypes where used to prove its non-humaness.
Slavery was not seen as inhumane bc Black Africans along the line of "Science" and philosophy reinforced the idea we where not human. This has a huge impact not only on labour in plantation society, but class and treatment. What plantation society (&its legacy) shows us is closer
you are to whiteness (visibly/invisibly) the closer you are to being a human, thus afforded better treatment. We can think about treatment as people being "kind" but also as form of material reality: better jobs, education, wealth equity, social/ cultural capital etc.
The legacy of this is evident in the Caribbean (other settler colonial societies). But if we talk about most recent migration patterns of Caribbean people i.e. the windrush, then we would be belligerent to believe these ideologies do not impact how people married/ partnered.
Remember people have been colonised in to thinking whiteness & proximity to it reap rewards, they are correct. Thus it is no surprise to why Caribbean people (esp men) are more likely to have a white partner than any other ethnic/ racial group. The above makes sense within intra
community setting i.e. Blacks reproducing anti-blackness amongst each other. How might this affect white majority? Ideas of "human" is heavily ingrained in society along racial, gendered, class and able-ist lines. Idea of Black people being unintelligent is rooted in slavery &
colonial discourses. Also another troupe from slavery is the "exotic mulatto" again gendered. These troupes exist in literature that were read by white people. We see such representations in fine art paintings pre photography. The fetishising of this identity enters white spaces
even is such bodies are not physically present - the idea of their existence created by white supremacy is powerful to be true. What we see is entangled set of histories that has made it way into everyday social- pyscho relationships. It is why we saw for a long time on TV
mixed race people represent Black people (even if they see themselves of Black) most Black people esp those with W. African heritage don't look that way. Those of us from the MTV generation often only saw "exotic" or LSBW in rap videos all reinforces ideas of desirability.
What we are really talking about here (from my PoV) is whiteness as the default construct of humanity as being desirable the rewards it provides.
