Word: octoroons
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Race has long been a muddled matter: 1890 classifications included mulatto, quadroon and octoroon, Chinese and Japanese. In 1930, Mexican was listed. The 2010 survey has caused a stir with the inclusion of Negro in addition to black and African American...
...Census, in 1790, explicitly asked about only one race: white. Blacks, for the most part, fell into the slave category. Race was about civil status. In the 19th century, concerns about keeping the white race pure led to the addition of the "mulatto" category in 1850 (and "quadroon" and "octoroon" in 1890), a process traced by Harvard political scientist Melissa Nobles in her book Shades of Citizenship. With rising immigration, Chinese and Japanese were added as categories - but not Irish or Italian - underscoring that somehow Asians were more fundamentally different...
...black artists deserve to be on Lilith's bill. Lilith organizers say they tried to reach out; Erykah Badu was offered a slot on the tour but turned it down. On the other hand, Laura Love, a black, folk-tinged, Seattle-based singer-songwriter with a fine new album, Octoroon, asked to be part of Lilith and was passed over (the organizers say that with 584 submissions, they couldn't take everybody...
Love, 37, is both a newcomer and a veteran: a well-known figure in the Seattle music scene, she's released three albums on her own, as well as a compilation on the independent label Putumayo World Music; her mostly affable new CD Octoroon (Mercury), due out May 13, is her major-label debut. Love has a voice rich with dark shadings and rural twang. She calls her music Afro/Celtic, but it's mostly front-porch folk with a few twists. One song, Simple, offers up a mix of blues harmonica and funky guitar. Her topics are very coffeehouse--there...
...than one-sixteenth "Negro blood," then despite the state's definition of a Negro he may be regarded as an Indian on the reservation. Once he leaves the reservation, however, he undergoes a legal metamorphosis and becomes a Negro. Of course he can then move to Mississippi, where the "octoroon" requirement prevails, and thus become a Caucasian...