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African American equality evolution into the economic mainstream is fraught with efforts by slave owners and white racists dehumanizing blacks to chattel. The nonhuman stature of blacks was legitimated in the infamous 1857 US Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott case that said blacks were property with no rights to sue as human beings.
“In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's territories.”
In 1896, following the end of slavery the US Supreme Court in the Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling offered a second iteration at attempting to dehumanize black Americans; this time freed blacks and it was by legitimating racial segregation with the infamous “separate but equal ruling.” This case saw the prominent role of America’s biracial community in aiding African American upward mobility.
“The committees strategy was to have someone with mixed blood violate the law, which would allow Tourgée to question the law's arbitrariness. Homer Plessy, a native of south Louisiana who could "pass" as white, agreed to be the test case.”
In losing the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, Black America saw the infrastructure for the dawn of Jim Crow Laws get incarnated. Key worries for white segregationists, yearning for a return of the antebellum epoch, were keeping blacks ignorant and avoid race mixing. However, black women could be bed-wenches for white males to exploit sexually. The late US Senator Strom Thurmond even ran for President of the United States of America knowing he had impregnated a 16 year old black girl some years back.
In 1954, the US Supreme Court started to rectify it past blatant anti-black rulings in knocking down the separate but equal undergirding of racial segregation by opening public schools to everyone. This was a nightmare for racial segregationists who were heretofore taking solace in efforts like the State of Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924 in defining who was not Caucasian.
“It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian. For the purpose of this act, the term "white person" shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons. All laws heretofore passed and now in effect regarding the intermarriage of white and colored persons shall apply to marriages prohibited by this act.”
This Racial Integrity mindset was a boon to the civil rights movement because it defined nonwhites of African heritage colored people thus guaranteeing that people worked together. A late friend, I guesstimate was a quadroon or octoroon shared how he would get food for civil rights workers from white restaurants during the civil rights epoch. He also said they set up the first African American radio station in Atlanta and they would hand the microphone down between floors for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak to the black community.
The 1954 US Supreme Court ruling had offered an opportunity for young whites to share an education system with young blacks offering the potential of interracial relationships to start. The white racists knew that interracial children would be forthcoming, so in his 1963 Inaugural Address racial demagogue Alabama Governor George Wallace declared, “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.”
President Barack Obama was born in 1961 to a white American mother and a native African father. His mother committed two mortal of sins in the eyes of the racial segregationists. She married a native African. She also taught her son to think mainstream without the civil rights baggage mainstream Black Americans might be shouldering. Her white parents completed Obama’s mainstream acculturation making him able to operate freely in the economic mainstream.
The white racists were dealt another major setback by the 1967 US Supreme Court Ruling in their effort to maintain racial integrity with a law justifying prison sentences for interracial marriage. “Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court, by a 9-0 vote, declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.”
The paradigm shift in who could marry or date who meant that black males lynching for love affairs with white females was no longer an automatic death sentence carried out by the Ku Klux Klan should these interracial love birds get discovered. President Barack Obama was now a legitimate child in his youth where his white parentage showing their proudness of him in public was no longer considered the exception.
Tea Party Movement (KKK) tried racist antics to turn back the antebellum clock to where the President was relegated to be nothing more than modern day chattel. These Tea Party juggernauts failed to realize it takes about 30 years for a mainstream paradigm shift to become the norm. Hence, today the Tea Party (KKK) finds themselves within the Age of the Multiracial with nonwhites and whites marrying then committing heresy by living in the old Confederacy with their mixed race children.
The last major step in the US racial evolution of nonwhite equality in the economic mainstream is the acceptance of multiracial children by both white and nonwhite parentages; thereby, allowing interracial family activities to become the national norm. These children ought to be free to learn both cultures without the worry of some group complaining that African American parentage children cannot be raised or adopted by whites. President Obama’s childhood experience indicates that his white parentage was a major asset in his upbringing.
