Notes on Black & White: The Idea of Racial Purity

I'm just taking some notes from the radio program Black & White: The Idea of Racial Purity.


The woman said something that stuck out to me. That people just assumed that black people that were slaves could not consent to sex, that they were just at the will of the master, and how she doesn't agree with that.

Just because someone is black, does that mean that they want to marry a black person necessarily? How do we know what people dream or desire? Why is it more acceptable for a white person to marry a black person but we can't really think of black people marrying white people? We see them in our minds as married to their own race.

The woman in the program encouraged people to think about race as people thought about race back then.... but why? That is something that is puzzling me just a bit. I think I'll spend more time thinking about that concept.

A man brought up class a little bit, and talked that people found each other across the racial divide in the interest of romance. He believes that when slavery ended, the white man became obsessed with "race mixing". White men believed that their women felt the same way about black men as the white man felt about the black women and now that they were all free the white man began to feel threatened. That's sort of interesting. He kept saying, "They wanted to police their race" it just seemed so strange. Like a boys club that doesn't want girls in... you police your fort keeping the girls out. But what happens when the day that the girls don't seem so "icky" anymore comes? When the girls start to come in the club. Is it really so bad? I don't know if that makes any sense... but that's how I see it.


My brain is getting pretty full after listening to lots of these radio programs. I'm going to take a break and hopefully not be to mentally exhausted for class.