Baptism, not race, originally determined who could marry at the Cape

Evidence

Marriage was quickly defined as a bond between those baptized into Christianity, restricting marriage thus to the free, though not sexual intercourse, of course. And men and women, once baptized, were free to enter into cross-racial conjugal relations, even where concubinage and out-ofwedlock intercourse were frowned upon, if more or less widely practiced. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1325

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the early Cape’s marriage criterion as Christian baptism rather than race — a key conceptual distinction.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1325