He’s universally regarded as having been Black.
However, I’ve read a number of times something to the effect “well, we don’t really know–he might have been, but he might have also been (American) Indian, mulatto, or some other combination.”
Why is there ambiguity in some writings, but certitude in others?
You are dealing with information from 1770 about an area of the world that was reasonably remote and farflung from most of the places where records were being kept.
Also, there weren’t people keeping detailed histories of people in vital records departments.
So with Attucks, it was probably a case where the people who saw the Boston Massacre said to themselves, “Hey, that Attucks guy, just where is he from?”
That’s an interesting question. I’ve always heard him described as black, but in American racialism tends treat someone with any black heritage as just plain “black”. So a mulatto, or a quadroon, or an octaroon or whoever was treated no differently than someone straight off the ship from Angola. (Quite different from the many racial distinctions made in South Africa, which included “colored” as a catch-all for mixed-race people.)
So, he was probably of mixed descent, with African and European ancestors, which of course made him subject to all sorts of prejudice like any other “black” person (oooh, my memory is fuzzy … was he a slave? an indentured servant?) As to the question of him having aboriginal American blood … I hadn’t heard anything about that, but it could be true.
GOD!! I am sick of everyone always assuming American society is racist! There maybe some isolated groups in the deep south that are, but most regular people today are not racist yet so many things make people “play the race card”. Get over it, mistakes were made in the past but no one today can be held repsonsible for them!
Very nice rant, dude. What’s it got to do with the OP or anything discussed in thie thread?
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The answer is that the only things that anybody knows about Crispus Attucks are that he was a young man who worked on the Boston waterfront in 1770, he was dark-skinned and so was probably not a “full-blooded European-American”, he was one of the people at the front of the mob baiting British troops in Boston’s King Street (now State Street) on March 5, 1770, and when the British troops fired on the mob he was one of the five killed in what immediately became known as the Boston Massacre.
I checked the American history books that I have lying around and only one, Howard Zinn’s, explicitly identifies Attucks by race (Zinn calls him a mulatto).
How did Attucks become identified as black? First, in the US, the one-drop rule holds for racial identification–that is, a person who has any black ancestry at all is considered to be black. I’m not saying that this is a good thing, I’m saying that this is the way it is. Second, unfortunately, because of America’s racist history, few black people were able to play any kind of prominent role until comparatively recent times. I can’t think of any other blacks identified with the American Revolution in a prominent role. Not that Attucks’s role was all that prominent–what he did was get himself killed in a street fight. So when recent historians were looking around for minority group members in history to shine a light on, about the best they could do for the American Revolution was Crispus Attucks; because of the one-drop rule, which American blacks and whites both observe, I bet that he’s generally identified in textbooks as black.
Sorry, when I first read it it seemed more in the present, but now that I reread it I see there talking about the past, when all that stuff was pretty much going on. Sorry.
Lawrence, your use of the present tense here makes me suspect that your grammar checker is a victim of the Y2K bug–this sentence may be applicable for 1900, but isn’t it rather dubious for 2000?
DHR
Why must I feel like that/Why must I chase the cat?/Nothin’ but the dog in me.–George Clinton
Crispus Attucks was black. My high school history textbook showed a picture of a colonial newsletter describing the Boston Massacre. It listed the five guys killed. Crispus J. Attucks was described as a “negro” (remember, this is the 18th century). I don’t remember if it mentioned his station (slave, indentured servant, or freeman) He could have been of mixed-race, but then wouldn’t the newsletter have described him as a “mulatto”?
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
AvenueB Dude - glad you re-read. Perhaps a clarification tho - “racialism” was the term used. That is a socity that operates on racial terms - whether those be discriminatory or totally fair. It is, in itself a non-judgemental term. However, some see ANY society as obsessed with race (many anthropologists think it is a false concept, notable Sir Ashley Montague as far back as the 1920’s) as we are to be “racialist” (not racist) to a degree that is “bad”.
As far as the issue of restitution, it is relevant and many feel justified. “It’s about the Money”.
How many people do you know who call themselves “white” unless there’s absolutely no visible hint whatsoever of anything else, especially now that “Hispanic” has become a “race”?
We may be more egalitarian these days, but “White” is still defined as “pure European”, while “non-White” is still defined as “bearing any visible non-European characteristic whatever”.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
http://www.dasd-ew.org/massacrepic.html
The confusion about Crispus Attuck’s race probably stems from Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the incident. Attucks is the white man bleeding from the head, closest to the soldiers.
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On the issue of certain people of varied racial backgrounds being universally labeled as black,' I think it's useful to remind anyone who's forgotten that other people of varied racial backgrounds are universally labeled as white.’ I can see how it’s tempting to assume that over-generalization about race is racist, but how specific do you really want to get?
Right or wrong, the only reason you need to know a person’s race is to make judgements about that person’s character. If someone tells you he’s irish-italian, you form a lot of associations and what this person is like. And in fact anyone who tells you that much does so hoping you’ll make a host of assumptions. If we ask if Crispus Attucks is black, we don’t ask it in the spirit of trivia, as though we were asking about the concavity of his belly button. We are asking because it is assumed to be relevant in judging his character.
However, there is no pure racial stock anywhere on the planet. Race, like paper money, has currency only because people believe in it. Everybody has mixed racial backgrounds at some point in their history. It’s impossible to get very specific, and impractical to get more than a little specific.
So, while the point is well taken that Crispus Attucks’ racial background may be more complicated than the term `black’ covers, so what? If I called Napoleon white, would you bitch that he might be part Gascon? Would you call me a racist for not disecting the race of a white person? No, I bet you wouldn’t.
Quote-
How many people do you know who call themselves “white” unless there’s absolutely no visible hint whatsoever of anything else, especially now that “Hispanic” has become a “race”?
Response-
lost me on the grammar, but I think I follow. I see people all the time when pressed (as in filling out forms) put “white” who might not 50 or 100 years ago, like Armenians, Italians and Greeks. Remember what the racist insult to Italians “guinee” means and why Italians hate it so much. It means (politely here) “African” - summing up where many Anglos thought Italians were positioned culturally.
Also many Hispanics are white. Cubans in Miami sued the school district to create the now ubiquitous comprimise, that actually didn’t affirm the European-origin Cuban’s whiteness - “White-non-hispanic”. At least it implied that “Whites” aren’t the only “whites” as they are only “White-non-hispanics”; there might still be “whites” that are hispanic, although this categorization doesn’t spell it out specifically. Sound stupid? It is and actually quite racist - Cubans were afraid of being labeled non-white (probably wise in America), but were relatively unconcerned with accuracy…where is the “Black-non-hispanic”; a large number of the current inhabitants of Cuba are Black by American terms…of course not as many of them made it here (or had to go?) as the “whites”.
Thus we see “race” is really a construct that is about politics and prejudice, not anthropology or science.
quote from above -
“We may be more egalitarian these days, but “White” is still defined as “pure European”, while “non-White” is still defined as “bearing any visible non-European characteristic whatever”.”
Response-
Not in Haiti - Black there is pure Black. White can be any bit of White at all.
“White” was evolved as a concept to replace the stricter and attestd “Anglo-”, and W.A.S.P. Before it was not enough to be Croation or Italian or Irish to get into an Ivy League school easily. “White” was developed to encompass previously discriminated against people of European origin. Ever heard of I.N.N.A. (Irish need not apply - that is “Irish” as opposed to “Anglo”, not “Irish” as opposed to “White”).
See “The Mis-Measure of Man” a seminal work on the (false) concept of racialism, and following it closely - racism.
I saw a TV spot in the 70s, mentioning Attucks; I didn’t look to see whether he was black or not. I did notice that the picture shown was of the so-called “Boston Massacre”; most serious historians will point out that the picture was an example of “Whig propaganda,” in that it indicates that seven people were killed; my eighth-grade (1963) teacher, an American History maven without peer, said only four were killed; and the picture shows a sign on a building, “Butchers’ Hall,” which was not really there. Whatever Attucks’ part in the Revolution or the “Boston Massacre” was, it seems to me the blame rests on journalists, then and now, who have played fast and loose with facts–in modern times, by even showing the “Bloody Massacre” picture with “Butchers’ Hall” on it. 
Dang! What dufus wrote that sentence? Yo, grammar police. Arrest that man!
Oh, right. It was me. Yes, RobRoy summed my point up correctly. It was the peculiarity of American racialism which regards mixed African/Europeans as black … Ralph Ellison pokes fun at this concept in Invisible Man, in which he likens the blood of his people to a bit of “the wrong” paint being mixed into a whitewash, and spoiling the whole batch no matter how much whitewash was used to dilute it.
And yes, as many people have pointed out, many other racialism, i.e. systems of viewing race, would treat a mixed black-white person as something else. Alexander Pushkin is considered “the greatest Russian poet”, not “the greatest African-Russian poet”, despite the fact that no one made any secret of his African ancestry (I think one-fourth black, although I could be wrong).
It’s just that, looking back, Attucks could be very “white-looking”, no big surprise for a mostly European mulatto, so that a casual observer would say, “Hey, that poor white guy got shot. Let’s clobber some Redcoats!” On closer inspection - and America got very good at close inspections of race in an era in which “All men are created equal” somehow didn’t apply to African-Americans - people would find that Attucks had enough African blood to be black. “Mulatto” isn’t a common word in English; “mestizo” is hardly ever heard; “colored” is interchangeable with “black” and is of dubious value these days anyway.
That’s the thing about race in the U.S. - we seem to want it to be “black and white” in both senses. We spend lots of time tearing our hair out about it. As RobRoy said, it’s not necessarily racist - people spend a lot of time on this stuff in some attempt to redress racial antagonism as much as to create it. I’m just saying, in the long run it’s going to be a waste of time. If you want to talk about ethnicity, hey, that’s great. Ethnicity isn’t everything, but it means a whole lot more than “race”. Plus, “going out for ethnic food” sounds a lot better than “going out for racial food”…
Waaa! Everybody ignores me 'cept the Republicans!