Mixed-race status shamed as paternal lack justified forced indenture into adulthood

Evidence

And yet the unstable status of the mixed is revealed in the fact that those of mixed descent could be indentured as apprentices to masters until they turned 25. The category “capturing” this status is revealing: Ingeboekte Bastaard Hottentoten, literally, registered persons (or apprentices) of mixed (“mongrel” or “debased”) background lacking recognized paternity. Those of mixed parentage, especially in cases where the white father remained anonymous, were more or less automatically considered debased and as such easy targets of indenture. This presumption lingered long: in 1950s and 1960s South Africa, the term “bastard” continued to have the presumptive connotation of a person (usually a man) lacking paternity. Class debasement approaching the implication of racial defilement; and emasculation in a society in which manliness was the presumptive measure of all things human. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1336

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Dutch colonial term Ingeboekte Bastaard Hottentoten and its literal meaning of registered mixed-race apprentices lacking recognized paternity.
• CANDY: The brutal irony of a legal category literally registering mixed kin as ‘debased bastards lacking paternity’ is a striking, tellable fragment.