As the children of parents from two different racial groups , they would encounter great prejudice , being rejected by both the racial groups that their parents had belonged to .
Mankind spent 2 or 3 million years evolving on the African plains , and part of that evolutionary baggage are our own strong inbuilt instincts for xenophobia , for disapproving of others mating with
" Other " groups , and so on .
That humans often DO mate " outside the group " is paradoxically frequent and seems to be a personal desirable behaviour .
Perhaps we can conjecture that a second evolutionary imperative is at work here , the inbuilt imperative to widen the gene pool and beget the maximum number of " Your own " offspring .
These are difficult topics because we are dealing with human sexual behaviour , an area which is riddled with our own personal prejudices , orientations , conditionings and general " hang-ups " .
In many of the societies where the opportunity for cross-race relationships was freely available , these were often Colonies of the old European powers , where such relationships were frowned upon by the White rulers and their establishments and institutions such as the colonial government administration , colonial technical professions , services , and the church .
In South Africa , under the Apartheid regime , the people descended from migrants from the Indian sub-continent who had been brought there in colonial times to staff the junior jobs in the colony were given their own racial category , the " Cape Coloureds ".
Again , you see the seperation from the White Rulers , but also from the True Native Africans .
Naturally the descendants of mixed race relationships , while often aspiring to the status of the ruling elite and often imitating as far as possible their rulers lifestyles , would be denied entrance to that status .
Economically , the mulatto group would be confined to the lower levels , clerks , postal srvice staff , shopkeepers , railway , harbour , telegraph and forestry service employees , nurses , medical orderlies ,and the like .
Socially they would usually be limited to their own group , generally being refused an entree into European social situations , unless the geographical locality contained few non-natives .
Little changed until recently .
The " 'Breed "--" Injun Joe " who Mark Twain demonises as a bad character in Tom Sawyer BECAUSE OF HIS MIXED RACE , circa 1860 ,
is unchanged in 1900 Britain in the adventure story for boys " with Kitchener in the Sudan " where the Bad guy , of Egyptian-English parentage , is dismissed as " If a man isn't white , he's black ! " and is equally demonised .
In my own experience , about 1990 , I worked in an organisation with a man called Menezes , descendant of some Portugese-Indian ancestors . I was astonished to hear him dismissed as " Portugese ! Why , he's as black as your hat ! " -- this by a "lady" who had been brought up in an English milieu and who could have only been a child during WW2 .
The attitude that this man was somehow a lesser , inferior less worthy person was so ingrained there .
Currently , cross-race relationships in Northern Europe appear to be frequent , and the attitude that their children are somehow inferior beings tends to be confined to some among the elderly , and within the lunatic rightwing racist fringe .
Answered By: CMV - 8/14/2011 |