Virginia law invented racial categories while disguising them as natural inheritance

Evidence

The law also helped to invent the meaning of race. Although they clearly determined the status of Black women’s children for political and economic reasons, the Virginia legislators pretended slave status was a natural identity passed down through procreation. They constructed a racial-classification scheme but made it seem like an inherited condition. Though they imposed slavery by power, they cast Black women’s wombs as the producers of their children’s subjugated condition. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 210

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the reframing thesis in miniature: race as a constructed classification disguised as heredity.
• XREF: Core to the reader’s goal of distinguishing the reframing argument (race is invented, made to seem natural) from specific empirical claims.
• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that legislators deliberately built a classification scheme while preten-ding it was inherited condition is dense enough to sit with: the simultaneous act of construction and denial is a paradigm-shifting point about how race works.