AH Challenge: U.S. institutes mestizaje and/or racial whitening

I don't know where the quote is from and pardon the language but this is a phrase I heard which touches upon this issue:

"What do you call someone who is 1/8th black in Montana? A white guy with a tan.
What do you call him in Alabama? A damn ______"
 
I don't know where the quote is from and pardon the language but this is a phrase I heard which touches upon this issue:

"What do you call someone who is 1/8th black in Montana? A white guy with a tan.
What do you call him in Alabama? A damn ______"

It is a shame the the bigotry damned many a tanned man in the South. :eek:
 
On a somewhat related note, sometime in the early 20th century a city in Virginia somewhere (can't remember which one) was going to pass an anti-miscegenation law defining anyone with non-European blood as non-white, until someone pointed out a large number of the city elite, including some of those considering the bill, were well known in local lore to be descendants of Pocahontas. The bill was quickly changed to define anyone with any African blood as black, but any white person with less than 1/16th Indian blood as white.

In the 1890s, South Carolina rewrote its constitution, adding provisions to de facto disfranchise all blacks.** (Despite Klan intimidation, there were still enough black voters in South Carolina to elect a U.S. Representative in 1892 and 1894, and even a few delegates to the constitutional convention.)

The original proposal included a strict 'one drop' rule. This was opposed by George Tillman, brother of Governor "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman. He famously commented that "We're all -------s to some extent."

** The 15th Amendment barred explicit racial limitation on the franchise, but South Carolina concocted a multipart rule which barred blacks while evading the Amendment.
 
This is especially a pickle when you consider that there were groups we see as 'white' today, branded as 'black/colored' in the past, like Italians or Greeks, and god forbid you were Irish.

Living in the South, my brother went on this tirade that maybe Southern racism culture was overblown, and it certainly wouldn't effect him - until I pointed out that he, since he was dating a girl of Italian ancestry and he himself having been sired by an immigrant, Norse immigrant not withstanding, would be viewed by the Dixiecrat/KKK crowd as a race traitor. Changed his turn real fast.

Reason I bring that up is that getting folks to even agree on what 'white' is would be the place to start.
 
This is especially a pickle when you consider that there were groups we see as 'white' today, branded as 'black/colored' in the past, like Italians or Greeks, and god forbid you were Irish.

Living in the South, my brother went on this tirade that maybe Southern racism culture was overblown, and it certainly wouldn't effect him - until I pointed out that he, since he was dating a girl of Italian ancestry and he himself having been sired by an immigrant, Norse immigrant not withstanding, would be viewed by the Dixiecrat/KKK crowd as a race traitor. Changed his turn real fast.

Reason I bring that up is that getting folks to even agree on what 'white' is would be the place to start.

Indeed, especially given that recent controversy over what a cable talkshow anchor said.
 
The only way this works, and it won't ever be an official policy, is that there is a really large male/female imbalance among the European/white population of the USA from a significant number of generations during colonial times. Nature being what it is, you'll have significant "interbreeding" between Native American and African American and white populations. While you may have slavery in the south, it will be harder to have the sort of sharp racial divide. In this case the older and more established your family is the more likely for you to have significant and non-deniable "red" or "black" or both ancestry.
 
From what I have read and heard, many of these older established Families had no problem with white washing their family trees.
 
Various eugenic programs were in place in OTL until, what even the early 1970s from some accounts so anything's possible.
 
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