![]() ![]() 108) complained that in ‘every country town, nay, in almost every village are to be seen a little race of mulattoes, mischievous as monkeys, and infinitely more dangerous.’ Furthermore, as the British Empire expanded, so too did the diversity of interraciality at home as abroad. 24), while in the following century the author Philip Thicknesse ( 1778, p. In 1694, for instance, the writer Charles Gildon noted that ‘xperience tells us there’s nothing more common than matches of this kind, where the whites and the blacks cohabit’ (cited in Kaufmann 2015, p. ![]() Across the centuries, contemporary sources repeatedly demonstrate not only the presence of racial mixing and mixedness but often its commonality. As scholars such as Habib ( 2008), Onyeka ( 2013) and Kaufmann ( 2017) have painstakingly revealed, mixed-race relationships, families and people in Britain are documented as early as the sixteenth century: 4 in 1578, for example, Captain George Best commented that he had ‘seen an Ethiopian as black as coal brought to England, who taking a fair English woman to wife, begat a son in all respects as black as the father’ (cited in Newman 1987, p. Yet, interraciality in Britain has much older, wider, and diverse roots. Within the range of views expressed on this topic-that include aversion and hostility as well as apathy and indifference-is a strand of thought that clearly positions Harry and Meghan’s relationship and the ‘growth’ of mixed-race couples and people on Britain’s streets as a ‘new’ normal that is as illustrative not only of modern Britain’s racial diversity but of its increased racial tolerance. Indeed, since the pair stepped into the public eye, a feverish analysis and dissection not only of the interracial royal couple but, by extension, of interraciality 2 in Britain generally has featured prominently in contemporary British public discourse. 1 Written in response to the engagement of Prince Harry, sixth in line to the British throne, to Meghan Markle, an American actress of mixed black and white racial heritage, the newspaper article’s headline is representative of the multitude of print and online articles, discussions and commentaries that have appeared in Britain-as well as internationally-in the wake of the couple’s relationship. ‘Mixed race relationships are no longer an exotic rarity but the new normal’ proclaimed The Daily Telegraph, Britain’s largest circulating newspaper broadsheet, in Nov 2017. In doing so, a more multidimensional picture of interracial family life than has frequently been assumed is depicted, one which challenges mainstream attitudes about conceptualisations of racial mixing both then and now. This article contributes to the foregrounding of this more complex history through focusing on accounts of interracial ‘ordinariness’-both presence and experiences-throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, a time when official concern about racial mixing featured prominently in public debate. While much of this history has been told through the perspectives of outsiders and frequently in the negative terms of the assumed ‘orthodoxy of the interracial experience’-marginality, conflict, rejection and confusion-first-hand accounts challenging these perceptions allow a contrasting picture to emerge. Yet, as scholars are increasingly discussing, interraciality in Britain has much deeper and diverse roots, with racial mixing and mixedness now a substantively documented presence at least as far back as the Tudor era. ![]() The popular conception of interraciality in Britain is one that frequently casts mixed racial relationships, people and families as being a modern phenomenon. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |