The Colored Conventions Movement by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Cultural Studies, African-American Studies, History, Military, Political Science
ISBN: 9781469654270
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2021-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

Strife transformed the Reform Society’s antirace premise into its focus. Notwithstanding its array of measures, including recurring convention themes of morality, slavery, education, and public decorum, the group gained a reputation for one thing: the repudiation of color designations.23 Concerns about identifying Colored people as beneficiaries of reform obscured the conceptual basis and the stakes of objections to race designations. The AMRS position did not arise from questions about how to accurately identify objects of reform. Nor was it a pragmatic gesture about how to effectively implement reforms. It flowed from the same convictions about the unity of the human species that shaped the society’s critique of churches. In short, a common origin determined human relations and thus fixed the boundaries of obligation. Racial and color designations were incompatible with reform endeavors because they were flawed configurations of human difference that distorted conceptions of duty for American reformers. This logic of human equality paved the foundations of moral reform.

Overcoming false notions of difference was both a premise and a goal for moral reformers. Their call for Colored people to eschew racial constructs was noteworthy; yet it relied on familiar claims about the illogical and fallacious character of race that reformers used to condemn colonization efforts and discrimination. It was an attempt to hold them to standards of truth that they applied to others. Two examples illustrate the early reform practice of challenging race. In 1813, James Forten invoked the principle of species unity to challenge the legitimacy of differential treatment between white and Black Philadelphians. Writing as a “Man of Colour,” he issued a series of letters protesting a proposal to prohibit Colored people from migrating to Pennsylvania and to require existing Colored residents to register their presence. The injustice of the plan lay in its assumption that Black people were fundamentally different from white people. He condemned it, asking the question, “Has the God who made the white man and the black, left any record declaring us a different species?”24

In 1832, Forten collaborated with Robert Purvis and Whipper to oppose race categories in Pennsylvania’s plan to repeal protections for fugitive slaves and again attempt to bar free Colored people from migrating to the state. Their protest to the state legislature argued that the action against fugitives compromised Pennsylvania’s status as a free state. The proposed ban on migrants was worse. Its reliance on the arbitrary and dubious criteria of color differences violated the very principle of liberty. The attempt to regulate autonomy using “wavering and uncertain shades of white” placed freedom on unstable and illusory foundations.25

The AMRS tried to alter the terms of reform by calibrating initiatives to the nature of humanity. Skin complexion and color designations were of no moral consequence; they neither created nor defined obligations. The only valid categories for understanding human difference were “virtues and vices.”26 Whether viewed in terms of ethics or nature, a “color” was not something a person could be.

The rationale for challenging race extended beyond the obligations reformers associated with citizenship and a common humanity.

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