Mixedness in an American context. The notion of ‘race’ mixing can be traced back to the plantations of the southern states of the USA29 when forced sex between white male owners and black slave labourers produced black/white offspring (Ifekwunigwe, 1999). In order to ensure that the ‘mixed race’ offspring became slave labourers, the ‘one drop rule’ was instigated. This meant that any known African ancestor made a person black so the offspring could be economically and sexually exploited by the white male owners (Xxxxxx and Phoenix, 2002). The one-drop rule, which literally means one known drop of African blood,30 has been an ‘efficient tool for racial clarity and racial domination’31 (Spickard, 2001, p. 77). In order to prevent racial mixing in the United States, interracial marriages were xxxxxxx00 in many states which included marriages between Europeans and ‘Mongolians’ (Xxxxxxxx, 1994 in Xxxxxxxx, 1996, p. 197). In 1913 the Alien Land Law was passed which prevented Japanese nationals from purchasing land in California (Xxxxxxxx, 1996). During this period Xxxxx Xxxxxx, a white minister was quoted as saying: Near my home is an eighty-acre tract of as fine land as there is in California. On that tract lives a Japanese. With that Japanese lives a white woman. In that woman’s arms is a baby. What is that baby? It isn’t white. It isn’t Japanese. It is a germ of the mightiest problem that ever faced this state; a problem that will make the black problem in the South look white (Spickard, 1989 p. 25, in Xxxxxxxx, 1996, p. 198}. 29 ‘Mixed race’ is linked to the notion of ‘race’, which was reified by the European scientific theories of race. Such theories were introduced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in order to justify economic and social policies such as plantation slavery and colonisation (Xxxxxx and Phoenix, 2002). They were based on biology and they maintained that black and white people belonged to different species (Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx, 0000; Banton, 2009). There was also a racial hierarchy, at the top of which were ‘White’ Europeans because it was the White Europeans who had created such theories (Xxxxxx and Phoenix, 2002). Non-whites were positioned on ‘intermediate rungs of this evolutionary ladder’ (Ifekwunigwe, 2004 9). In other words, whites were considered superior and blacks were considered inferior. The powerful black/white binary distinction was a commonsense way to easily distinguish between inferior blacks and superior whites.
