I had previously known that Vice President Curtis as American Indian, in the sense that Barack Obama is black (both being racially admixed). I had not realized that Vice President Johnson (the least famous one) openly lived with an octoroon who acted both as his common law wife and business manager.

Barack Obama less represents a “post-racial America” than an America waking up from a weird historical period where race was considered a central organizational principle. Race was not so privileged during the Revolution — the bill of rights is clearly a set of laws for the monied and/or landed — and is not so now.

Related: Sino-American Miscegenation in Shanghai (1936).