Colonial leaders were also doing something else; they were laying the basis for the invention of race and racial identities. They began to homogenize all Europeans, regardless of ethnicity, status, or social class, into a new category. The first time the term White, rather than Christian or their ethnic names (English, Irish, Scots, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Swede) appeared in the public record was seen in a law passed in 1691 that prohibited the marriage of Europeans with Negroes, Indians, and mulattoes (Smedley 2007, 118). A clearly separated category of Negroes as slaves allowed newly freed European servants opportunities to realize their ambitions and to identify common interests with the wealthy and powerful. Laws were passed offering material advantages and social privileges to poor whites. In this way, colony leaders consciously contrived a social control mechanism to prevent the unification of the working poor (Allen 1997). Physical features became markers of racial (social) status, as Virginias governor William Gooch asserted, the assembly sought to fix a perpetual Brand upon Free Negroes and Mulattos (Allen 1997, 242).
