ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the way in which mixed-race children in Britain from the nineteenth into twentieth century were labelled handicapped and undesirable. The 1919 ‘race riots’ in nine British ports (in part instigated by white men's hatred of relationships between local white women and men of colour) led to an increased focus on racial mixing. Eugenicists' concern with the reduction or exclusion from the nation of the ‘unfit’ also informed their desire to investigate the progeny of mixed couples. Mixed-race children were deemed to be disharmonious, mentally defective and to have inherited genetically the proclivity to certain diseases from their fathers. Their upbringing was condemned as immoral and degraded. Mixed families were pathologised, and an association made between racial mixedness and disability or handicap. This chapter looks at how the pejorative labelling of mixed-race children contributed to regulation of mixture.
