Thus, the building of an American civilization, including its future social and moral development, would be determined by its racial composition. Samuel Morton stated that his studies of skulls showed that Native Americans had a “deficiency of higher mental powers” and an “inaptitude for civilization,” making it impossible for Natives and Europeans to interact as equals. In his 1839 publication Crania Americana, Dr. Increasingly, the development and progress of American society was guided by the belief in the nation’s racial destiny. Once blood quantum became established as a mechanism for assessing inferiority, its use continued unabated into the nineteenth century. Slavery, evolved into a legal and social system that measured the extent of participation and privileges associated with full citizenship under the banner of “whiteness.” The growing body of laws, although originally rooted in the institution of chattel Following Virginia’s example, other colonies adopted similar laws, using blood quantum as a mechanism to determine the status, privilege, and rights of a free person or slave. Consequently, the descendants of “full blood” members of a race were defined as half-blood (“maroon”), quarter-blood (“quad-roon”) or eighth-blood (“octoroon”). The laws also applied to generations, defining children, grandchildren and great grandchildren as inferior members of society, based on their ancestry. In 1705 the Commonwealth of Virginia enacted a series of laws that denied certain civil liberties to any Negro, Mulatto, or American Indian. The notion of “blood quantum” was created to track racial ancestry and define legal rights. DEFINING “RACE”Ĭolor, as a demarcation of race (along with other phenotypic characteristics used to define racial and social inferiority) was supported by a growing body of philosophical and scientific literature holding that Africans, Native Americans, and Mulattos possessed inferior intellectual, moral, and social qualities, which stood in direct opposition to “whiteness” and its inherent qualities. The development of slavery encouraged the construction and separation of races in America on the basis of phenotype. Over the next four decades other colonies formalized slavery as a legal economic and social institution. By 1661 the institution of slavery had been formally recognized by Virginia. The origins of blood quantum are directly linked to the development of chattel slavery. Since its origin and institutional interjection into numerous federal policies concerning peoples of indigenous descent, it remains one of the most controversial and divisive issues afflicting contemporary Native North America. BLOOD QUANTUM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURYĪmong Native peoples, blood quantum is an ingrained fact of everyday existence.
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