Why antiracists misunderstand Hugh Davis "defiling his body in lying with a Negro" in 1630—or the New York Times gets it wrong again

I thought What if the Court in the Loving Case Had Declared Race a False Idea? - The New York Times makes an interesting argument, but Brent Staples bolsters it with a common shallow assumption. I read this: (In 1630, for example, a man named Hugh Davis was publicly whipped for “defiling his body in lying with a Negro.”) Colonial-era court records are filled with crimes related to interracial