A colonial official proposed legal recognition be restricted by physical European traits.

Evidence

It is my personal feeling … that in this district, for the overall European population, the situation is satisfactory … it is a known fact that most of [the needy] children are European only in name; as a rule, they were not well raised and grew up as natives. That such people would feel themselves much happier as native and would more easily make their livelihoods as natives, certainly needs no demonstration. One could … stipulate that only those [children] could be [legally] recognized who have typical characteristics of a European origin, namely … white, brown or light eyes, brown or blonde hair and more or less white skin. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 961

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how bureaucratic fixes for statistical gaps can harden into legal phenotype tests — an archival case of category-driven policy.
• SHARE: This Tegal official’s phenotype-based recognition proposal is a vivid primary quote worth sharing with anyone working on colonial racial law.