Colonial racial membership was partly proven by the sentiments one expressed to whom

Evidence

Managed hearts were critical to colonialism’s political grammar. Imperial projects called upon specific sentiments, and assessed racial membership, in part by locating appropriate carriers and recipients of those feelings. To whom one expressed attachment as opposed to pity, contempt, indifference, or disdain provided both cultural and legal “proof” of who one was, where one ranked in the colonial order of things, and thus where one racially belonged. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 254

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how the colonial archive — police memos, court statements — preserved sentiment as evidence of racial identity and rank; who was recorded as feeling what toward whom.