Invention of the white race // 'inbreeding' and 'miscegenation'

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Carrol replies to Rakesh:
>I agree with James H that conflict was thus understood
>> in cultural/ethnic terms in the case  of European immigrants. They were
>> never racialized in the same way blacks were (subject to eugenic
>> regulation for the genetic health of the nation and subject to
>
>I'll have to reread Gould soon, but to the best of my memory he does cite
>specific evidence that the eugenics movement (and more particularly,
>racist understanding of intelligence) contributed importantly to the
>immigration act, and formal discussion in Congress would not necessarily
>be any indication one way or another.

Perhaps eugenics was applied to both blacks and marginal whites (immigrants
as well as 'white trash'), but it was applied differently in each case? I
think that Rakesh's argument that blacks were racialized while Euro
immigrants weren't still stands, with some modification.

Without the presence of racialized blacks, the fear of whites becoming
'like' blacks or even becoming black doesn't make sense. My reading of
literature of the application of eugenics to the invention of the 'white
trash' mythology makes me think that there was this constant fear that
'white blood' was becoming weak, enfeebled, diluted, exhibiting the
features of 'blackness,' etc. So I think that racialization of blacks
provided an overall framework for thinking about 'whites' on the margins of
whiteness, both marked by ethnicity and class.

Fear of 'inbreeding' and that of 'miscegenation,' I believe, are both sides
of the same racial coin.

Yoshie