Redbone (ethnicity)

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"Redbone" is a term used to describe certain racially mixed ethnic groups in the Americas. Many use the term "redbone" for African Americans with light skin. This still seems to cause controversy and confusion among people. A related term is "yellowbone". The two terms tend to blur when one can say someone is "so light that you can see the red blood flowing though their bones".

Contents

[edit] Origins

Redbone" is a term once common and still used in the area of western Louisiana formerly known as the Sabine Free State or Neutral Ground and adjacent areas of southeast Texas, for the ethnicity of certain families who were early settlers there. "Redbone" is not considered a polite term; it is an epithet depending on the manner used. However, there is no "politically correct" term for the group in question, and some who identify with it have embraced the term "redbone" and have established family surname, genetic, and historical websites to collect and trace their common heritage. Locally, and especially in the twentieth century, they had the collective reputation of being clannish, staunchly independent citizens and fierce fighters. They are considered a contributing element historically and sociologically to the "culture of lawlessness" that once prevailed in the so-called Neutral Ground.

The Hill Brothers Official State Map of Louisiana shows, in a side map titled "French Louisiana and Cultural Enclaves of Louisiana," two pink-colored areas marked "Endogamous Community." The noncommital name reflects the impoliteness of the usual term and the unresolved issues of classification, but these are the Louisiana redbone areas. The larger of the two blotches is an ellipse from the southwest, where it apparently (and in fact) extends across the Sabine River into Orange County, Texas, and takes in the east bank towns of Vinton, Louisiana and Starks, Louisiana, both in Calcasieu Parish. The other such area corresponds roughly to the community of Singer, Louisiana and environs in Beauregard Parish. The town of DeQuincy, Louisiana, which is near Starks and Singer but larger than both combined, is also often associated with redbones, and was moreso during the twentieth century.

The Melungeon ethnicity of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina were long thought to be connected to the Sabine River area redbones. In both areas, the ethnicity is associated with certain common surnames and families typically having members with dark complexions and straight or wavy blue-black hair. Traditionally, these families were English speakers of Protestant Christian religious denominations. They were traditionally thought to have both, or all, Caucasian and Native American and/or African ancestry. Modern DNA ancestry studies, the results of which are available online, have borne out the racial origin traditions in both the Gulf and Eastern Seaboard groups, as well as the connection between the two. Some such studies profess to specify Native American tribes contributing to the genetic group.

Notwithstanding the so-called "one drop rule" of racial classifications during the Jim Crow era of public school segregation in Louisiana, and despite the fact that they were racially discriminated against in some respects during that time, the redbones were not classified as either "Negro" or "Indian," and their children attended the "white" schools. Today most members of this group would identify officially as "Caucasian," though some may elect other classifications or reject them altogether.

[edit] Redbones in literature

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Marler D. C.,Louisiana Redbones presented at the First Union, a meeting of Melungeons, at Clinch Valley College in Wise, Va. July 1997
  • Horner, Chris, "[1]"

[edit] External links