racism – Before We Were White

Tiffany Trump (the less well-known “other” child), whose ancestry includes “non-white” Locklears of the Lumbee people

An Old Mix American is a person with many of their direct ancestral lines already present in the Americas by the 1600s.

Old Mix Americans are characterised by having multiple ancestral lines derived from non-European population groups – people who would have usually been considered “non-white” or “persons of color” under the British colonial (and later US American) racial caste system.

It is important to note that many of these “persons of color” also arrived from Europe. Many European Romani and Jewish people, for example, were often perceived by the dominant “white” caste as “non-white”.

The majority of Old Mix Americans are now found scattered throughout the USA and often choose to present as “white”, following decades of intermarriage with European-Americans.

Many population groups ancestral to Old Mix Americans still survive in rural places where the European-American influence has been less pronounced, and each community or extended kinship group has its own unique ethnic history.

The largest and most well-known Old Mix American groups include the Lumbee of North Carolina, the Redbones of Louisiana and Texas, and the Melungeons of Southern Appalachia.

Often described as “tri-racial isolate” communities under American “race” classifications (which traditionally only allowed for “white”, “black”, and “indigenous” categories), the ancestry of these groups can include people from a myriad of backgrounds – indigenous North American, indigenous South American, indigenous Caribbean, North African, sub-Saharan African, Jewish, Malagasi, Sami, Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, Romani, East Indian, and Asian.

The “Hollywood Protective Association” campaigned to “keep Hollywood white” [1923]

The executive order below was signed by Theodore Roosevelt, and came about through a concerted campaign and intense lobbying by the “Asiatic Exclusion League”. This organization was formed in 1905 by European immigrant labor leaders and so-called “white” Americans up and down the Pacific Coast of the USA, who blamed Asian immigrants (including those from India and China, as well as Japan and Korea) for their own economic difficulties.

Members of the Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) were explicit in their determination that the USA should remain “a white man’s country”.

Roosevelt was not the first, nor would he be the last US president, to use executive orders instead of legislation as a form of populist “display”.

Remember Executive Order 13769? From 2017?

There will be more on the way, if things turn out badly this November 5th…

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Executive Order 589 (1907) by President of the United States

Regulating the Entrance of Japanese or Korean Laborers into U.S. Territories

Whereas, by the act entitled ‘‘An Act to regulate the immigration of aliens into the United States,’’ approved February 20, 1907, whenever the President is satisfied that passports issued by any foreign government to its citizens to go to any country other than the United States or to any insular possession of the United States or to the Canal Zone, are being used for the purpose of enabling the holders to come to the continental territory of the United States to the detriment of labor conditions therein, it is made the duty of the President to refuse to permit such citizens of the country issuing such passports to enter the continental territory of the United States from such country or from such insular possession or from the Canal Zone;

And Whereas, upon sufficient evidence produced before me by the Department of Commerce and Labor, I am satisfied that passports issued by the Government of Japan to citizens of that country or Korea and who are laborers, skilled or unskilled, to go to Mexico, to Canada and to Hawaii, are being used for the purpose of enabling the holders thereof to come to the continental territory of the United States to the detriment of labor conditions therein;

I hereby order that such citizens of Japan or Korea, to-wit: Japanese or Korean laborers, skilled and unskilled, who have received passports to go to Mexico, Canada or Hawaii, and come therefrom, be refused permission to enter the continental territory of the United States.

It is further ordered that the Secretary of Commerce and Labor be, and he hereby is, directed to take, thru the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, such measures and to make and enforce such rules and regulations as may be necessary to carry this order into effect.

Theodore Roosevelt

The White House,

March 14, 1907.

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Old Mix Americans

Immigration and Executive Orders