Yet having populated North America for nearly four centuries, mixed-race people are far from being a recent phenomenon in the United States. |
Yet having populated North America for nearly four centuries, mixed-race people are far from being a recent phenomenon in the United States. Their early presence has been recorded to greater and lesser degrees in legal records, literature, and historical documentation. As far back as the 1630s and 1640s, colonial records attest to the punishment of interracial sexual unions and the regulation of mulattoes’ slave status (Williamson, 1980). Dictionaries chart 16th-century English usage of the word mulatow (Sollors, 2000), although the meaning of this term has varied over time (Forbes, 1993). Finally, mixed-race people have long populated American literature, particularly since the early 19th century (Sollors, 2000). In sum, the multiracial community is not a new, 20th century phenomenon but rather a long-standing element of American society.
Ann Morning, “New Faces, Old Faces: Counting the Multiracial Population Past and Present,” in New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century, ed. Loretta I. Winters and Herman L. DeBose (dd: SAGE Publication, 2002), 41.
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