To Trash:
American blacks are supposedly 14% – 20% white and this is surprising to me.
So many English colonists pulled their pants down and raped African girls in the Deep South?
Certainly there were violent sexual assaults by white men on black women but you need to look clearly at the early history of the US and slavery. Consider the following – no more than 388,000 black slaves (and some freemen) arrived on the US shores which led to the current 42 million black Americans which are predominantly derived from those slaves reproducing with each other, native Americans, whites, and Chinese plus later immigration from the Caribbean and Africa.
For the first 150 years of European immigration (and black slave importation) into the US blacks and whites could and did intermarry legally and FWIW the first slave owner was allegedly a black man. The color line (and laws to enforce such) became more rigorous after Bacon’s rebellion in the late 16th century. So with such a small population combined with loose rules for more than 100 years it’s not surprising that there were many voluntary unions between blacks and whites.
18% of the mtDNA of black women in the US is European in origin, meaning at some point these women had a white female ancestor which I doubt resulted from a white woman sexually assaulting a black man. Also there were multiple voluntary unions between blacks and whites after the civil war and blacks in Northern states, where slavery was banish before the civil war, have a higher percentage of ancestry than Southern blacks. If the British/US whites had the same sexual attitudes towards black women as say the Portuguese in Brazil, we’d probably have a “black” population that was majority white.
In fact, many of these unions were voluntary. Towards the end of the slavery era into the 1800’s, the plantation economy became so huge that the population of slaves was not large enough to do all the work. Many lower and working class salt of the Earth White types in the South began working in the fields alongside the Blacks. They were paid wages while the Blacks were slaves. Although one would expect these Whites to be brutally racist, in fact, they were a very downtrodden group themselves who had more in common with the slaves than with the rich Whites.
The atmosphere in the fields was congenial and White and Black workers worked side by side in harmony. As one might imagine, quite a bit of romance and sex grew out of this proximity and there were a large number of Black-White unions resulting in mulatto children, mostly from White male workers and Black female slaves. These unions were mostly consensual.
Also there was a lot more consensual sex between slaves and the master’s family and friends than you might believe. Many Black female slaves quickly figured out that sex with the master or his relatives was a great way to earn lots of nice privileges, including moving from the fields to the house and all sorts of other goodies, including possibly even freedom.
After Liberation, there was a lot of sex between Blacks and Whites in the South. White women were very puritanical and were expected to be virgins until marriage and White men were supposed to protect their honor. It became nearly a ritual for White men to lose their virginity on the wrong side of town with a Black woman. There were also quite a few more or less clandestine Black female-White male unions in the South on the wrong side of town, although generally Whites did not care much what young single White men did with their dicks on the other side of town.
Deep into this century, Black women often reported being groped, sexually harassed and propositioned by White men as they walked down the street or went about their business in town. This sort of thing occurred in broad daylight. Alpha told me that some of her relatives related that White men had expressed interest in them and that is was very common in the South of their time. Really no one much cared if White men had sex with Black women, as they were seen as loose, slutty, and fair game – basically free prostitutes. Perhaps the actual sex should be kept out of the public eye somewhat. Young White men often regaled each other with tales of sexual romps on the wrong side of town.
This was sort of an open secret in the South. Everyone knew about it, but you were not supposed to talk about it.
The only real taboo was children resulting from these White male-Black female unions. Any child born of these unions was simply lost to the Whites and White society. The White men would not raise such a child and marriage or living with the Black woman was a no-no. So she simply raised the child herself and the child was raised Black as a part of Black society.
With enough of this going on, you ended up with some awfully light-skinned “Blacks” over there on the wrong side of town and it became common for such folks to try to get a leg up by “passing” as White. Many were in fact able to pull this off (Black women perhaps more than Black men) and there have been a number of books written on this topic including some well regarded works of literature.
Those who “passed” could have sex with either Blacks or Whites in both cases of which the offspring would be light enough to pass for White. If “passers” or light-skinned Blacks had sex with Blacks, the result was lighter than the Blacker partner. Light-skinned Black men were often brighter, more educated and had more money and hence were sought out by Black women for social climbing. In addition, lighter skilled Black women with Whiter features have always been prized by Black men who selected for them to a high degree.
Recent studies show a convergence of Black and White skull phenotypes since the Civil War. It is almost as if we are merging towards a common single race.
