Evil Walter Plecker

The following article is from the Washington Post regarding Walter Ashby Plecker and how he wanted a racially divided society in Virginia during his reign as the Bureau of Vital Statistics registrar.  It's just like the orange hair guy who still wants to build the wall and to ban Muslims from coming to our country. A few days ago, the Republicans passed a bill to limit legal immigration and to give visas to mainly skilled English-speaking immigrants.  The similarities are frightening and sinister.  Here's the article:

Death of 'a devil'

                            The look of Hate:  Walter Ashby Plecker.  Making America "great"
                            again through racial repression and genocide of many peoples.  
                            Trump would be proud of that despicable piece of s**t.  


According to the Washington Post:

"He built his career on the systematic oppression of blacks and Native Americans, becoming one of the country’s most influential white supremacists. For more than three decades, from 1912 until 1946, Walter Ashby Plecker used his position as head of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics to champion policies designed to protect what he considered a master white race.
He was the father of the state’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which designated every person in the state as either white or “colored” and criminalized interracial marriage. Plecker insisted that any person with a single drop of “Negro” blood couldn’t be classified as white, and he refused to even acknowledge that Native Americans existed in the commonwealth, effectively erasing their legal identities."

He also tried to destroy the Melungeon people as well because he consider them as threats similar to the rhetoric of many Republicans used toward Black and Brown folks as well as Muslims, atheists, and other non-Christian groups in recent times.  His racist legacy did not die in 1947, it was taken up by race-baiting politicians such as Strom Thurmond, Richard "Law and Order" Nixon, Jesse Helms, Steve Scalese, David Duke, Steve King, and of course, Donald.

Here's an excerpt from The Richmond Afro-American in 1947:

Read more at the Washington Post and be sure to link and tweet that article before it disappears.

Did you know that he's the originator of the notoriously racist one-drop rule?  Here it is according to Wikipedia:

"Plecker lobbied the US Census Bureau to drop the category "mulatto" in the 1930 and later censuses. This deprived mixed-race people of recognition of their identity and it also contributed to a binary culture of hypodescent, in which mixed-race persons were often classified as part of the group with lower social status.^[5] Not until the 21st century did the federal census allow individuals to indicate more than one race or ethnic group in self-identification."

In other words, he's the father of racial profiling.  In fact, modern-day racial profiling originated with Plecker.  Whether we hear about police profiling, medical DNA, employment/education/housing discrimination, racial gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc., that deplorable racist was the originator.

He told the white mother regarding her newborn child.  What he told her was hateful and dehumanizing:

"This is to give you warning that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white. A new law passed by the last legislature says that if a child has one drop of negro blood in it, it cannot be counted as white. You will have to do something about this matter and see that the child is not allowed to mix with white children, it cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.

It is an awful thing."

So, this SOB called her child an "it" and "awful!  How evil and racist can he be!  Let's not forget that 45(Trump) is also an evil racist and an SOB. And shock jock Bob Dumas. And former NC Governor Pat McCrory.  The ghost of Plecker is alive and well and wants vengeance!  Be vigilant.  Stay woke!

Here's a past link to my 2016 post:

Father of Race Baiting- Walter Plecker

Also read my 2014 post:

Before Cohen, Bob Dumas had a Problem with Interracial Relationships

Links:

http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/lewisandclark/students/projects/monacans/Contemporary_Monacans/letter.html

https://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/the-black-and-white-world-of-walter-plecker/Content?oid=1381080

I'll keep writing about this POS because of the events in Charlottesville and the refusal on the part of Trump condemning white supremacist violence.

Walter Plecker- Father of Racial, Political, and Ethnic Divisiveness

Walter Plecker- An American Bigot

Walter Plecker by Abagond:

So-called president Donald Trump would have been so proud of him!

Plecker in 1935 at the Bureau of Vital Statistics (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Walter Plecker (1861-1947), a White American eugenicist, was the mastermind of the state of Virginia’s Act to Preserve Racial Integrity (1924). The law was an instrument of Jim Crow and did considerable damage to Native American tribes. It led to Loving v Virginia (1967), which made mixed-race marriages legal across the US.

Plecker was born the son of a slave owner ten days before the start of the Civil War. He became a country doctor, then a county public health officer and then, from 1912 to 1946, the head of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics.

He was a pioneer in public health. He cut infant mortality among Blacks nearly in half and reduced blindness among Blacks and Natives.

As a eugenicist he believed in “race improvement”, so his concern for public health extended to keeping the White race “pure”:

“Unless this can be done, we have little to hope for, but may expect in the future decline or complete destruction of our civilization.”

To that end he pushed for the Act to Preserve Racial Integrity:

“the most perfect expression of the white ideal, and the most important eugenic effort that has been made in 4,000 years.”

It was not completely overturned till 1974.

Under the law, his Bureau recorded the race of every person born in Virginia, as either “white” or “coloured”, using the One Drop Rule. When you got married, you had to go through the Bureau, which either knew your race already or required proof of it. This prevented mixed marriages, like the Lovings.

It went beyond marriage: you could not go to a good school or a good hospital unless you were White.

Plecker wrote to one White mother:

“This is to inform you that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white. You will have to do something about this matter and see that this child is not allowed to mix with white children. It cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.

“It is a horrible thing.”

He was a devout Christian:

“Let us turn a deaf ear to those who would interpret Christian brotherhood as racial equality.”

Because many Virginia lawmakers counted Pocahontas as an ancestor, they made an exception to his White ideal: you could be up to 1/16th Native and still count as White.

To close this loophole, Plecker said that all Natives were “mixed-blooded negroes,” that he could prove that with state records going back to 1830.

Because some Natives could pass for White, he made lists of common Native names, like Branham, public.

Families were torn apart: many Natives left Virginia to escape Plecker’s world.

Natives were recorded as “coloured” (Black) under Plecker. In part because they had disappeared from state records as Natives, the US government sees Virginia as having no tribes. So Virginian tribes do not receive the rights and money granted to other tribes.

It will take an act of Congress to undo the damage, something tribes have been pushing for.

– Abagond, 2015.

My take on Walter Plecker and his racist/fascist legacy he left:

He left a legacy of racial, ethnic, and class division not only in the commonwealth of Virginia, but also this nation.  He not only want to classify Native Americans as Black, but also many groups such as the Melungeons.  He strongly believed in white racial purity/racial hierarchy as well as eugenics to purge certain groups of people from the body politic of the nation.  Buck v Bell case comes to mind.  He thought young Miss Carrie Buck was a danger and a threat to American social order, so he favored her being sterilized over her family's objection.  

The real legacy of Mr. Plecker is that he wanted to see America  divided into two "races", "pure" white and nonwhite.  His evil racist/classist legacy lives on today in the right wing of the Republican Party. Just take a look at the demagoguery of Donald Trump and his followers, Steve King of Iowa, Ted Cruz(person of Color), etc., the HBD crowd, the American Renaissance crowd, talk radio and media hosts Bob Dumas and Richard Cohen, and the Tea Party Crowd.  Unfortunately, liberals as well.  They, too, imbibe the poison of Mr. Plecker by not recognizing American Indian tribes in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.

His legacy is alive and well in racial profiling by American government, the divisive political atmosphere of the Republican and Democratic parties, as well as ongoing systemic institutionalized racism.

The evil spirit of Walter Plecker is alive and well today and it's not going anywhere unless people push back against racial/ethnic divisiveness.- S.