Reading Response #2: Settler Colonialism and Jim Crow

Allison Brown HIST: 4340 - Women Dr. Hampton 9 March, 2023 Reading Response #2: Settler Colonialism and Jim Crow This week’s readings focus on the roles which white women, rather actively or passively, play in the creation of normative sexuality and family structures in the American West. Simply put, both Jacobs and Pascoe provide valuable historiographical contributions to the field of western women's history and help to expand our understanding of the role of women in colonial violence and the construction of race in the American West. To begin, Margaret D. Jacobs’ article Maternal Colonialism: White Women and Indigenous Child Removal in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940 (2005) analyzes the role of white women in the colonial project of child removal. Jacobs argues that white women played a significant, if not the most significant, role in the displacement of indigenous children from their families and communities, in both the American West and Australia, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jacobs’ analysis centers on her definition and the concept of “maternal colonialism,” which refers to the ways in which white women used their gendered roles as mothers to justify and participate in the removal of indigenous children from their families.1 Jacob’s work illuminates how white women were often involved in the administration of child welfare policies, working both publically and privately to develop and implement indigenous child removal programs. A historiographical intervention Jacobs’ presents is one along our imagined perception of white women in the American West, “An emphasis on white women as agents of colonial control in the American West may also be jarring in a field that has been so focused on western white women’s triumphs and tribulations. Yet failure to examine white women as more than hearty pioneers, innocent bystanders to colonial conquest, has left the 2 field of western women’s history.” Central to Jacobs’ argument are the ways in which white women’s views on parenting and child-rearing were used to justify the removal of indigenous children, with indigenous 3 parenting practices seen as “primitive” and in need of correction. Additionally, not dissimilar to other accounts or histories this course has encountered thus far, Jacobs’ also highlights how white women constructed indigenous women as morally or sexually deviant as a means to declare unfit motherhood, “White women reformers also commonly portrayed indigenous women as sexually immoral. In a typical comment, Amelia Stone Quinton, the WNIA's 1 Margaret D. Jacobs,Maternal “ Colonialism: White Women and Indigenous Child Removal in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940,” Western Historical Quarterly 36 no. 4 (Winter 2005): pg. 82 2 Margaret D. Jacobs,Maternal “ Colonialism: White Women and Indigenous Child Removal in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940,” Western Historical Quarterly 36 no. 4 (Winter 2005): pg. 455 3 Margaret D. Jacobs,Maternal “ Colonialism: White Women and Indigenous Child Removal in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940,” Western Historical Quarterly 36 no. 4 (Winter 2005): pg. 455 1 president, claimed that Navajo women were promiscuous and therefore “good morals are next to impossible. For children from such homes, the day school can do far less than the boarding school” Ernestine Hill, a journalist in Australia, asserted: “The black woman understands only sex, and that she understands fairly well. She is easy for the taking.” Hill added that an 4 Aboriginal woman ‘has no moral ethics whatever.’” This construction of indigenous women, both in the United States as well as Australia, was purposeful in constructed the narrative that only white women, in their non-deviant and promiscuous status, were fit to be mothers of children, regardless of the child’s race or heritage. More broadly, Jacobs’ work also argues that the displacement of indigenous children was part of a broader project of settler colonialism, in which white settlers sought to displace indigenous peoples from their lands and assimilate them into white-dominated societies. This notion is also not dissimilar to previous content in this course discussing how women utilized their positions in society, both colonial and un-colonial spheres, to assert power over other women deemed either morally deviant or of a different race. Ultimately in these accounts of white women in the United States and in Australia, white women’s gendered roles as mothers and nurturers were used for justification for their participation in colonial violence. Peggy Pascoe's chapter “Configuring Race in the American West,” in What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (2009) is an extensive analysis of the historical construction of race in the western region US. Pascoe highlights the role of legal and cultural frameworks in shaping racial identities and relationships in this region during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Additionally, Pascoe argues that the law played a significant role in constructing and reinforcing racial categories, particularly through the regulation of sexual relationships between different racial groups. Pascoe’s historiography is varied and complex in deriving a legal history which amounts to a complete legal micro-history of racial hierarchy and the institution of marriage. Pascoe writes, ““Images of deviant heterosexuality proved just as potent as images of sexual danger in fueling the sexualization of miscegenation laws, since both served to associate interracial relationships with illicit sex and to 5 distinguish them from legitimate marriage.” The chapter’s historical analysis and contribution is grounded in an examination of legal cases and legislative debates surrounding interracial marriage and miscegenation laws in the West. She argues that these laws reflected and reinforced the racial hierarchies that were prevalent in the region, particularly the belief in white supremacy and the marginalization of 4 Margaret D. Jacobs,Maternal “ Colonialism: White Women and Indigenous Child Removal in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940,” Western Historical Quarterly 36 no. 4 (Winter 2005): pg. 463 5 Peggy Pascoe, “Configuring Race in the American West,” in What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford University Press, 2009) pg. 83 2 people of color, “The wording of these laws grouped African Americans, Asian Americans, Indians, and native Hawaiians together in a manner that suggested equivalence between them, as if they were parallel threats to the virtuous White families who stood at the symbolic center of 6 the imagined community of post-Civil War America.” At the same time, Pascoe shows that these laws were not fixed or static, but were subject to negotiation and contestation over time. For example, she notes that miscegenation laws were often enforced selectively, with some mixed-race couples being prosecuted while others were able to circumvent the law such was the case with Indian women and White men, “But when the partners to an Indian custom marriage were a white man and an Indian women, recognizing the marriage slowly but surely brought couples under the jurisdiction of American state laws … 7 these decisions then used marriage to confirm the land and property of White husbands.” One of the strengths of Pascoe's analysis is her attention to the intersectionality of race and gender in the construction of racial categories in the West. She shows how the regulation of sexual relationships between different racial groups was often gendered, with women of color facing particular scrutiny and punishment for engaging in relationships with white men. Pascoe also highlights the ways in which white women were used as symbols of racial purity and used to justify the marginalization of people of color. Relating this chapter to this essay’s former analysis of Jacobs, Pascoe also highlights how constructions of deviant sexuality and threats to “normative” marriage (within the same race, heterosexual) were at risk through Chinese immigrants as well as later Asian immigrants more broadly. Pascoe refers to the “white women slavery scare”, a highly racialized moral panic that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, founded by fears that white women were being kidnapped and forced into prostitution by foreign “white slavers.” This panic had racialized overtones, with the perpetrators depicted as Asian men in particular, who were seen as a threat to white women's safety and virtue. More broadly as well, “the preservation of white purity through the protection of white womanhood” came into question with the depictions of these miscegenation laws, “the images that animated miscegenation dramas were also highly sexualized, but their special power to provoke turned on the notion that interracial sex might lead not to rape or prostitution but to marriage. In this sense, miscegenation drama functions by endangering marriage--and the respectability, property, and civilized values that were attached to 6 Peggy Pascoe, “Configuring Race in the American West,” in What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford University Press, 2009) pg. 80 7 Peggy Pascoe, “Configuring Race in the American West,” in What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford University Press, 2009) pgs. 95-96 3 it--using the race and gender pairing of white women with non-white men as lightning rods for 8 the entire social order.” Discussion Questions: 1. How does Jacobs' concept of “maternal colonialism” challenge our previous perceptions of white women in the American West? a. What does her analysis reveal about the ways in which white women used their gendered roles as mothers to participate in colonial violence? 2. Pascoe argues that legal frameworks played a significant role in shaping racial identities and relationships in the American West during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. a. How did miscegenation laws reflect and reinforce racial hierarchies in the region? b. In what ways were these laws subject to negotiation and contestation over time? 3. Both Jacobs and Pascoe's work highlight the ways in which white women played a role in the construction of normative sexuality and family structures in the American West. How did white women's views on parenting and child-rearing, as well as their constructions of indigenous women as morally or sexually deviant, contribute to the displacement of indigenous children? a. How did these constructions of race and gender intersect with the regulation of sexual relationships between different racial groups in the West? 8 Peggy Pascoe, “Configuring Race in the American West,” in What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford University Press, 2009) pg. 86 4