After first census, the naturalization act says only free whites can be naturalized as citizens. Another big boulder in that wall was the insistence that most mixed race people with african ancestry be defined as black. The infamous one drop rule didn't become law until the early twentieth century. But much earlier, states limited the amount of africans a person could have and still be considered white.
Chattel slavery in the United States, with its distinctive – and strikingly cruel – laws and structures, took shape over many decades in colonial America. The innovations that built American slavery are inseparable from the construction of Whiteness as we know it today. By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.
Key sources for this episode:
The Racial Equity Institute
Ibram Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning
Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People