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".
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[edit] Origins
There are two classes of "Redbones" and are two separate ethnic people. The first ethnic group who were called "Redbones" were groups of multi-ethnic families with similar or the same English surnames who were labeled as Free Persons of Color, Mulatto or Indian by early American census takers. The term was used for these mixed race multi-ethnic groups of families in Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi and East Texas.
The ancestry is said to consist of a combination of two or more of the following ethnicities; Northern European, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Native American and African ancestry of various degrees and mixtures. The origin of this group is probably from Southern states, where many minorities freely mixed, in short multiracial and some not.
The Native American tribes in these groups may include the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Coushatta, Cheraw, Tuscarora, Nansemond and members of the Powhatan Confederation.
A specific brown-to-reddish skinned people of Louisiana with dark eyes and straight, frizzy or curly hair. They are often thought of as a tri-racial people of Native American, African and some form of Eastern or Western European heritage. Redbones are not necessarily Creole or Cajun, nor mixed with any other heritage-they traditionally speak English.
"Redbone" is seemingly a term common in the Neutral Zone and East Texas among nineteenth century era Euro-Americans and African Americans who thought they were referencing people of multi-ethnic genetics. Later generations of these two ethnicities seemingly continued to reference the descendants of these racially obscure people to the extent that some of these descendants seemingly began to think of themselves as "redbone." A usage is also claimed for an isolated enclave in South Carolina whose complexions confounded their neighbors. Close scrutiny reveals only vaguely distinct differences between the culture of the referenced people and the culture of the dominant Euro-Americans surrounding them wherever the epithet is used.
"Melungeon" is simply another epithet seemingly used in similar fashion with evidenced history to about the same era which produced the terms "redbone", "moor", "brass ankle", etc. All these terms have been associated with many of the same surnames. The term "melungeon" was seemingly common among Euro Americans and African Americans in Tennessee and Kentucky before its usages was recently expanded through tourism promotions and genealogy marketers.
[edit] Redbones in literature
- Will D. Campbell, The Glad River (http://www.helwys.com/bookexcerpts/gladriverexcerpt.html excerpt)
[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]"
