The "1 Drop Rule" explained and how it's tied to AfroAmerican identity

[IllmaticDelta]

In light of the thread, President of NAACP chapter in Spokane is a white woman wearing blackface and various other threads/comments on the American, One Drop Rule, I felt this this topic needed to better explained and how it can't be separated from AfroAmerican identity.

One of the most hilarious things I keep seeing is that a black person is a c00n if they suport the one drop or consider mixed/fair skinned people as "black". This is very idiotic because even though the rule that eventually came to be "One Drop" came from a white supremist POV, in America, there were fair skinned people of African descent identifying as "Black/Afram" long before the rule even existed.

Robert Purvis (August 4, 1810 – April 15, 1898)

was an African-American abolitionist in the United States. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, educated at Amherst College in Massachusetts, and lived most of his life in Philadelphia. In 1833 he helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society there and the Library Company of Colored People. From 1845-1850 he served as president of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and also traveled to England to gain support for the movement.


The other thing is that by definition, most Aframs are AfroEuropean, meaning they're going to descend from biracial people. One cant separate mulattos/fair skined Aframs from their darker kin....it's like saying this woman isn't black

Robyn Smith

Robyn has been researching her family and others for 17 years. An engineer by day, Robyn applies those research and problem-solving skills to the field of genealogy. She specializes in Maryland research, African-American and slave research and court records. Robyn has a strong interest in promoting the documentation of families and communities, and emphasizing the use of proper genealogical standards in our research. Robyn teaches an Advanced African-American Genealogy class part-time at Howard Community College in Columbia, MD, lectures locally and publishes articles in local genealogy journals. She is also the author of a genealogy blog called "Reclaiming Kin" which can be viewed at http://msualumni.wordpress.com.

http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/homepage/html/festival_lecture.html

..because she has fair skinned black ancestors who look like...

http://www.reclaimingkin.com/maternal-ancestors/

http://www.reclaimingkin.com/criminals-in-the-family-joseph-harbour/

I guess Tupac isn't black

because he has white/mulatto ancestors

The Ancestors of Tupac Shakur (1971-1996)

http://www.wargs.com/other/shakur.html

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Hardcore One Drop rule didn't really exist until the 1900's.

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Hypodescent

The American practice of applying a rule of hypodescent began its development in the colonies, as slavery was established. But, it developed in its most strict legal definitions and application after the end of slavery in the early 20th century. After the Reconstruction era, white Democrats regained power in southern states and reasserted white political supremacy through the passage of disfranchising legislation and constitutional amendments, as well as Jim Crow laws, including racial segregation. States followed this with more stringent laws classifying more persons as black based on traceable or any ancestry. For example, in 1822 Virginia, a person was considered legally white with up to one-fourth African ancestry (equivalent to one grandparent). Under its Racial Integrity Act of 1924, Virginia defined as black a person with any known African ancestry, no matter how many generations in the past. It also established a binary classification system for vital records, assigning persons to white or black categories (the latter was essentially all other, into which Native Americans were included.)

The Southern author Mary Chesnut wrote in her famous A Diary from Dixie of the Civil War-era about the hypocrisy of a woman's recognizing white men's children among the slaves in every household but her own. Fanny Kemble, the British actress who married an American slaveholder, wrote about her observations of slavery as well, including the way white men used slave women and left their mixed-race children enslaved.

Sometimes the white fathers freed the children and/or their mothers, or provided education or apprenticeship, or settled property on them in a significant transfer of social capital. Notable antebellum examples were the fathers of Charles Henry Langston and John Mercer Langston and the father of the Healy family of Georgia. Other mixed-race children were left enslaved; some were sold away by their fathers.[2]

Research by historians and genealogists has shown that unlike the above examples, most African Americans free in Virginia and nearby states in the colonial period were descended from relationships between white women, indentured servant or free, and African or African-American men, indentured servant, free or slave. This reflected the fluid nature of relationships among the working classes before slave rules were made strict. Because the mothers were white, the children were free born. By the turn of the nineteenth century, many free African Americans, along with European-American neighbors, migrated to frontier areas of Virginia, North Carolina, and then further west. Such families sometimes settled in insular groups and were the origin of some isolated settlements, which have long claimed or were said to be of American Indian or Portuguese ancestry.[3]

In its most extreme form in the United States, hypodescent was the basis of the "one drop rule", meaning that if an individual had any black ancestry, the person was classified as black. New laws were passed in southern states and others long after the end of slavery to define white and black, under associated laws for segregation. Tennessee adopted such a "one-drop" statute in 1910, and Louisiana soon followed. Then Texas and Arkansas in 1911, Mississippi in 1917, North Carolina in 1923, Virginia in 1924, Alabama and Georgia in 1927, and Oklahoma in 1931. During this same period, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Utah retained their old "blood fraction" statutes de jure, but amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirtysecond) to be equivalent to one-drop de facto.[4]

By 1924 there would have been many "white" people in Virginia who would have had some African and/or Native American ancestry. At the same time that Virginia was trying to harden racial caste, African Americans were organizing to overturn segregation and regain civil rights, that had been lost to Jim Crow laws and disfranchisement of the majority of the black community. Established in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead in filing lawsuits to overturn such provisions.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

One-drop rule

The one-drop rule was not adopted as law until the 20th century: first in Tennessee in 1910 and in Virginia under the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 (following the passage of similar laws in several other states).

Before and during the centuries of slavery, people had interracial relationships, both forced and voluntary formed. In the antebellum years, free people of mixed race (free people of color) were considered legally white if individuals had up to one-eighth or one-quarter African ancestry (depending on the state).[5] Many mixed-race people were absorbed into the majority culture based simply on appearance, associations and carrying out community responsibilities. These and community acceptance were the more important factors if a person's racial status were questioned, not his or her documented ancestry. Because of the social mobility of antebellum society in frontier areas, many people did not have documentation about their ancestors.

Based on DNA and historical evidence, Thomas Jefferson is widely believed to have fathered the six mixed-race children of his slave Sally Hemings; four survived to adulthood. Hemings was three-quarters white by ancestry and a half sister of the late Martha Wayles Jefferson.[quote 1] Their children were born into slavery because of her status; as they were seven-eighths European in ancestry, they were legally white under Virginia law of the time.[6] Jefferson allowed the two oldest to escape in 1822 (freeing them legally would have been a public action which he avoided); the two youngest he freed in his 1826 will. Three of the four entered white society as adults, and all their descendants identified as white.[6]

Legislation and practice

Both before and after the American Civil War, many people of mixed ancestry who "looked white" and were of mostly white ancestry were legally absorbed into the white majority. State laws established differing standards. For instance, 1822 Virginia law stated that to be defined as "mulatto" (that is, multi-racial), a person had to have at least one-quarter (equivalent to one grandparent) African ancestry.[quote 2] This was a looser definition than the state's 20th-century "one-drop rule" under the 1924 Racial Integrity Act. This defined a person as legally "colored" (black) for classification and legal purposes if the individual had any African ancestry. Social acceptance and identification were historically the key to classification.

Although the Virginia legislature increased restrictions on free blacks following the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831, it refrained from establishing a one-drop rule. When a proposal was made by Travis H. Eppes and debated in 1853, representatives realized that such a rule could adversely affect whites, as they were aware of generations of interracial relationships. During the debate, a person wrote to the Charlottesville newspaper:

[If a one-drop rule were adopted], I doubt not, if many who are reputed to be white, and are in fact so, do not in a very short time find themselves instead of being elevated, reduced by the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, to the level of a free negro.[5]:230

The state legislators agreed. No such law was passed until 1924, when people's historical memory appeared to have faded.

The Melungeons are a group of multiracial families of mostly European and African ancestry whose ancestors were free in colonial Virginia. They migrated to the frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee. Their descendants have been documented over the decades as having tended to marry persons classified as "white".[9] Their descendants became assimilated into the majority culture from the 19th into the 20th centuries.

Later in the 19th century following Reconstruction, southern states acted to impose racial segregation by law and restrict blacks, specifically passing laws to exclude them from politics and voting. From 1890 to 1908, all the former Confederate states passed such laws, and most preserved disfranchisement until after passage of federal civil rights laws in the 1960s. At the South Carolina constitutional convention in 1895, an anti-miscegenation law and changes that would disfranchise blacks were proposed. Delegates debated a proposal for a one-drop rule to include in these laws. George D. Tillman said the following in opposition:

If the law is made as it now stands respectable families in Aiken, Barnwell, Colleton, and Orangeburg will be denied the right to intermarry among people with whom they are now associated and identified. At least one hundred families would be affected to my knowledge. They have sent good soldiers to the Confederate Army, and are now landowners and taxpayers. Those men served creditably, and it would be unjust and disgraceful to embarrass them in this way. It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain mixture of... colored blood. The pure-blooded white has needed and received a certain infusion of darker blood to give him readiness and purpose. It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice, and greed; to statements on the witness stand that the father or grandfather or grandmother had said that A or B had Negro blood in their veins. Any man who is half a man would be ready to blow up half the world with dynamite to prevent or avenge attacks upon the honor of his mother in the legitimacy or purity of the blood of his father.[4][10]

In 1865, Florida passed an act that both outlawed miscegenation and defined the amount of Black ancestry needed to be legally defined as a "person of color". The act stated that "every person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood shall be deemed and held to be a person of color." (This was the equivalent of one great-grandparent.) Additionally, the act outlawed marriage, fornication, and the intermarrying of white females with men of color; however the act permitted the continuation of marriages between white persons and persons of color that were contracted before the law was enacted.[11]

The one-drop rule was made law, chiefly in the U.S. South but also in other states, in the 20th century—decades after the Civil War, emancipation and Reconstruction. It followed restoration of white supremacy in the South and the passage of Jim Crow racial segregation laws. In the 20th century, it was also associated with the rise of eugenics and ideas of racial purity. From the late 1870s on, white Democrats regained political power in the former Confederate states and passed racial segregation laws controlling public facilities, and laws and constitutions from 1890 to 1910 to achieve disfranchisement of most blacks. Many poor whites were also disfranchised in these years, by changes to voter registration rules that worked against them, such as literacy tests, longer residency requirements and poll taxes.

The first challenges to such state laws were overruled by Supreme Court decisions which upheld state constitutions that effectively disfranchised many. White Democratic-dominated legislatures proceeded with passing Jim Crow laws that instituted racial segregation in public places and accommodations, and passed other restrictive voting legislation. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court allowed racial segregation of public facilities, under the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Jim Crow laws reached their greatest influence during the decades from 1910 to 1930. Among them were hypodescent laws, defining as black anyone with any black ancestry, or with a very small portion of black ancestry.[3] Tennessee adopted such a "one-drop" statute in 1910, and Louisiana soon followed. Then Texas and Arkansas in 1911, Mississippi in 1917, North Carolina in 1923, Virginia in 1924, Alabama and Georgia in 1927, and Oklahoma in 1931. During this same period, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Utah retained their old "blood fraction" statutes de jure, but amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirty-second) to be equivalent to one-drop de facto.[12]

Before 1930, individuals of visible mixed European and African ancestry were usually classed as mulatto, or sometimes as black and sometimes as white, depending on appearance. Previously, most states had limited trying to define ancestry before "the fourth degree" (great-great-grandparents). But, in 1930, due to lobbying by southern legislators, the Census Bureau stopped using the classification of mulatto. Documentation of the long social recognition of mixed-race people was lost.

The binary world of the one-drop rule disregarded the self-identification both of people of mostly European ancestry who grew up in white communities, and of people who were of mixed race and identified as American Indian. In addition, Walter Plecker, Registrar of Statistics, ordered application of the 1924 Virginia law in such a way that vital records were changed or destroyed, family members were split on opposite sides of the color line, and there were losses of the documented continuity of people who identified as American Indian, as all people in Virginia had to be classified as white or black. Over the centuries, many Indian tribes in Virginia had absorbed people of other ethnicities through marriage or adoption, but maintained their cultures. Suspecting blacks of trying to "pass" as Indians, Plecker ordered records changed to classify people only as black or white, and ordered offices to reclassify certain family surnames from Indian to black.

Since the late 20th century, Virginia has officially recognized eight American Indian tribes and their members; the tribes are trying to gain federal recognition. They have had difficulty because decades of birth, marriage, and death records were misclassified under Plecker's application of the law. No one was classified as Indian, although many individuals and families identified that way and were preserving their cultures.

In the case of mixed-race American Indian and European descendants, the one-drop rule in Virginia was extended only so far as those with more than one-sixteenth Indian blood. This was due to what was known as the "Pocahontas exception". Since many influential First Families of Virginia (FFV) claimed descent from the American Indian Pocahontas and her husband John Rolfe of the colonial era, the Virginia General Assembly declared that an individual could be considered white if having no more than one-sixteenth Indian "blood" (the equivalent of one great-great-grandparent).

The eugenicist Madison Grant of New York wrote in his book, The Passing of the Great Race (1916): "The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew."[13] As noted above, Native American tribes such as the Omaha, which had patrilineal descent and inheritance, used hypodescent to classify the children of white men and Native American women as white.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Now,to bring this into modern times..Just speaking in the Afram context, how people of African descent identify isn't soley based on "genetic reality" or "biological race". The only prerequisite dealing with genetics/biological race is that the African part is there...after that, how non-African you are doesn't really matter to most. As far as these pred white and/or other heavily mixed types go, how they identify can be influenced from how they were raised to identify, how they're percieved by others to obviously how they personally see themselves. Some examples below..

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The first guy was a white american but the example helps put all of the types below into more context and proves that the One Drop Rule doesn't apply to people who are of African descent but look mixed but people of African descent who look "white".

Why did a well known and successful white man pretend to be black in the late 1800s --- only to reveal the truth on his deathbed?

Photograph taken in Washington DC., at the time of the sitting he was 27yrs old.
U.S. Dept of Interior

[1842 - 1901]

Clarence King was a blond blue blood from Newport who distinguished himself at an early age. He traveled West in the 1860s, found work with the California State Geological Survey, helped to map the Sierra and became geologist in charge of the United States Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel in 1867, when he was 25. He then became a familiar luminary in both New York and Washington. But his early years of roaming were just a prelude to what seems to have been a permanently rootless state.

Or so it seemed to his friends, who became used to his unexpected absences and thought of him as a perennial bachelor. What they did not know was that when Clarence was not living in various clubs and hotels, he was married and the father of five children.

He was deeply devoted to his wife, (Ada Copeland), a black woman 19 years his junior. This blue-eyed man, descended from signers of the Magna Carta, had successfully cultivated the impression that he was black, too.

The existence of Ada and their children became publicly known only in 1933, at a trial in which Ada tried to recover the trust fund Clarence had promised her.

He had been dead for more than 30 years, so the shock waves generated by the trial were considerable. Most dramatic, is the way that revisionists demoted Clarence from hero to "tragic hero," not to mention "the most lavishly overpraised man of his time," upon discovering that he had been married to a former slave. This was typical of the sickening headlines surrounding the trial: "Mammy Bares Life as Wife of Scientist."

All of this has long been a matter of record. The fact that King went further than merely marrying Ada and concealing her existence from his friends and family. He also adopted the name James Todd, under which he married Ada, and claimed to be a Pullman Porter, a job held exclusively by black workers. Employment on a train helped explain to Ada why he was so well traveled and so frequently absent from home. (Later he would claim to be a clerk and a steelworker too.)

Clarence's wife Ada came from Georgia, was born pre-Emancipation and traveled to New York City to live as a domestic and children's nursemaid. In other words, she went from one set of strictures to another, and only with King did she achieve some kind of autonomy in a middle-class household.

Todd family members were variously designated "white," "negro" or "mulatto," based not on evidence but on context. Ada and Clarence's sons were deemed black when seen with their dark-skinned mother. But their two daughters married white men and effectively turned themselves into white women.

"Civilization so narrows the gamut!" King once wrote to Hay. "Respectability lets the human pendulum swing over such a pitiful little arc." But in rebelling against that notion, King created an arc wider than anything he might have imagined and lived a more profound lie than dissemblers about race or gender usually can.

The book 'Passing Strange' by Martha A. Sandweiss offers a fine, mesmerizing account of how one extremely secretive man, "acting from a complicated mix of loyalty and self-interest, reckless desire and social conservatism," could encapsulate his country's shifting ideas about race in the course of one family's anything but black-and-white history.

*Dying of tuberculosis he would eventually reveal his secret to his wife and children. His wife (Ada Copeland) assumed her husband to be a 'mulatto.' *

"PASSING STRANGE"
A Gilded Age Tale
of Love and Deception
Across the Color Line
By Martha A. Sandweiss
Penguin Press

 

[IllmaticDelta]

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The bolded part is very important

Sandweiss unearths a compelling tale of secret racial identity

For three decades, history professor Martha Sandweiss had wondered about a little-noticed detail in the life of Clarence King, a well-known figure in the history of the American West. King, a 19th-century geologist and author, was a leading surveyor who mapped the West after the Civil War.

Back in graduate school, Sandweiss had read a 500-page biography of King that devoted just five pages to a secret, 13-year relationship that King, who was white, had with a black woman.

"Thirteen years, five pages? It just didn't seem right to me," said Sandweiss, a historian of the American West who joined the Princeton faculty last year.

A few years ago, Sandweiss decided it was time to investigate. Poring through census documents that were available online, she was able to discover in a matter of minutes that King, who was blond and blue eyed, had been leading a double life as a white man passing as a black man.

"Once I uncovered that, I knew I had to try to unravel the story," she said.

The result is "Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line," published earlier this year by The Penguin Press.

The book uncovers a secret double life -- King, a well-regarded explorer from a prominent Newport, R.I., family, also lived as James Todd, who professed to be a Pullman porter and steelworker. At gentleman's clubs and elite residential hotels in New York City, he was the witty white scientist and author who was called "the best and brightest of his generation" by Secretary of State John Hay. At 48 N. Prince St. in Flushing, Queens, he was the black common-law husband of Ada Copeland, who had been born into slavery in Georgia during the Civil War, and the father of their five children.

Why did King live this way? The only logical explanation, according to Sandweiss, is that he was in love.

"He could have had a mistress, and he didn't," Sandweiss said. "He gave this woman and these children his name -- OK, it wasn't his real name -- but he provided for them. He hired piano teachers and tutors for the children, he found them homes, and it came at a tremendous personal cost." King was deeply in debt for years, and at one point he suffered a nervous breakdown.

Sandweiss pieced together King's secret life with extensive research, following the few clues that were available. After unearthing the census documents -- in which Ada falsely reported that her husband, whom she knew as James Todd, had been born in the West Indies -- Sandweiss studied birth and medical records, old streetcar routes, maps of Brooklyn and letters King sent to his wife.


Untangling a hidden life

The New York Times' book critic Janet Maslin named "Passing Strange" one of the top 10 books of the year, calling it "a fine, mesmerizing account of how one extremely secretive man … could encapsulate his country's shifting ideas about race." The film rights to the book have been optioned by HBO.

Born in 1842, Clarence King was raised in Newport by parents of old American stock and was educated at Yale University. He became famous in his 20s as the leader of the U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, which mapped the West. Later he was the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey, a close friend of historian Henry Adams and a much-admired dinner guest at society parties in New York.

At the age of 46, King married Ada Copeland, who was then working in New York as a children's nursemaid, in a religious ceremony at her aunt's house. (Since there was no civil ceremony, it is considered a common-law marriage.) Ada, 19 years his junior, lived with their children in Brooklyn and later Queens, attributing her husband's long absences to his job as a Pullman porter, a position held exclusively by black men. King kept his secret well hidden. Sandweiss never found a photo of the couple together or any photos of King with his children.

King's ability to conceal a black wife and children who lived in the same city was only possible because of New York's unique attributes, Sandweiss said.

"New York had segregated neighborhoods and excellent public transportation," she pointed out. King lived as a bachelor in all-white gentleman's clubs in Manhattan, and hopped on the streetcar when he wanted to visit his family in another borough.

But the most amazing part of King's story is that someone with fair hair and blue eyes was accepted as a black man. He managed it, Sandweiss said, because of the so-called "one-drop" laws passed in the South during Reconstruction, which declared that someone with one black great-grandparent was considered legally black.

"The laws were meant to make it very difficult to move from one racial category to the other," Sandweiss said. "Ironically, they made it very possible to do that, because you could claim an ancestry -- or more often hide an ancestry -- that was invisible in the color of your skin."

AT LEFT: This 1879 photo of Clarence King was taken while he served as director of the United States Geological Survey. (Photo: Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library) AT RIGHT Ada Copeland King, pictured in 1933, is accompanied by her son, Wallace, whose father was Clarence King. (Photo: Courtesy of the New York Daily News)

King finally confessed to his wife and family by letter in 1901 from Arizona, where he died of tuberculosis. Ada, who died in 1964 at the age of 103, was one of the last living former slaves in the United States.

Sandweiss' research led her to a living relative of Ada's who had known her well -- her great-granddaughter, Patricia Chacon, who shared memories and photos of Ada.

Anxiety about race continued to play a significant role in the lives of the couple's descendants. Their two daughters married as white, each vouching for the other's racial identity at city hall, "which meant they had to leave their mother at home, because she was dark-complected," Sandweiss said. Their granddaughter, Thelma, whom Ada raised, married a white man who, according to Sandweiss' book, "hinted that her mixed racial heritage should remain a secret. ... Anxious about what her own children might look like, Thelma adopted two white infants in the 1950s."

"The vexing problem of race stalked this family for many years," Sandweiss said.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/10/73G58/index.xml?section=featured

Clarence King (shown on far right)

http://face2face.si.edu/my_weblog/2010/08/clarence-king-man-of-maps-mines-and-mystery.html

 

[IllmaticDelta]

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Now take this "black/Afram" identified woman who looks white for example,

Danzy Senna

Before all of this radical ambiguity, I was a black girl. I fear even saying this. The political strong arm of the multiracial movement, affectionately known as the Mulatto Nation (just "M.N." for those in the know), decreed just yesterday that those who refuse to comply with orders to embrace their many heritages will be sent on the first plane to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where, the M.N.'s minister of defense said, "they might learn the true meaning of mestizo power."

But, with all due respect to the multiracial movement, I cannot tell a lie. I was a black girl. Not your ordinary black girl, if such a thing exists. But rather, a black girl with a Wasp mother and a black-Mexican father, and a face that harkens to Andalusia, not Africa. I was born in 1970, when "black" described a people bonded not by shared complexion or hair texture but by shared history.

Not only was I black (and here I go out on a limb), but I was an enemy of the people. The mulatto people, that is. I sneered at those byproducts of miscegenation who chose to identify as mixed, not black. I thought it wishy-washy, an act of flagrant assimilation, treason, passing even.

It was my parents who made me this way. In Boston circa 1975, mixed wasn't really an option. The words "A fight, a fight, a nikka and a white!" could be heard echoing from schoolyards during recess. You were either white or black. No checking "Other." No halvsies. No in-between. Black people, being the bottom of the social totem pole in Boston, were inevitably the most accepting of difference; they were the only race to come in all colors, and so there I found myself. Sure, I found myself. Sure, I received some strange reactions from all quarters when I called myself black. But black people usually got over their initial surprise and welcomed me into the ranks. It was white folks who grew the most uncomfortable with the dissonance between the face they saw and the race they didn't. Upon learning who I was, they grew paralyzed with fear that they might have "slipped up" in my presence, that is, said something racist, not knowing there was a negro in their midst. Often, they had.

Let it be clear -- my parents' decision to raise us as black wasn't based on any one-drop rule from the days of slavery, and it certainly wasn't based on our appearance, that crude reasoning many black-identified mixed people use: if the world sees me as black, I must be black. If it had been based on appearance, my sister would have been black, my brother Mexican, and me Jewish. Instead, my parents' decision arose out of the rising black power movement, which made identifying as black not a pseudoscientific rule but a conscious choice. You told us all along that we had to call ourselves black because of this so-called one drop. Now that we don't have to anymore, we choose to. Because black is beautiful. Because black is not a burden, but a privilege.

http://www.salon.com/1998/07/24/24feature_10/

 

[IllmaticDelta]

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^^the woman above could easily be "white" if she wanted to because her phenotype allows her to but she doesn't and not because of the "1 drop rule" or her phenotype but because of the way she was raised and her identifying with the shared history of other blacks..

now contrast the above with Halle. In her own words:

It has been asked:

It seems like you don't identify with the white side of your heritage...why is that?

I do identify with my white heritage. I was raised by my white mother and every day of my life I have always been aware of the fact that I am bi-racial. However, growing up I was aware that even though my mother was white, I did not look or FEEL very white myself. When I went to school the other kids always assumed that I was totally black. Many times my classmates did not believe me when I said my mother was white. I soon grew tired of trying to prove that I was half black and half white and learned not to concern myself with what others thought. I began to relate to the other "all black kids" at my school more because quite simply...I looked more like them. I was certainly too dark to run around trying to say I was white (smile).

After having many talks with my mother about the issue, she reinforced what she had always taught me. She said that even though you are half black and half white, you will be discriminated against in this country as a black person. People will not know when they see you that you have a white mother unless you wear a sign on your forehead. And, even if they did, so many people believe that if you have an ounce of black blood in you then you are black. So, therefore, I decided to let folks categorize me however they needed to. I realized that my sense of self and my sense of worth was not determined by the color of my skin or what ethnic group I chose to be a part of. I decided to go about my life normally, be the individual I was and let the issue of my race be the issue of those who had a problem with it.

As I grew I began to feel a very natural connection to the black community. Although I was half white, I began to see that I was being discriminated against the same way my "ALL" black friends were...just as my mother once said. So, the fact that my mother was white, and her blood ran through my veins, made no difference in the face of the ignorance of racism.

So, the question should not be why does it seem like I don't identify with my white heritage, but the question should be, why should it matter what color anyone is or what heritage they identify with? If people would just learn to look at everyone equally and stop trying to label one another the issue of what we are all made of would be null and void. If the truth be told, we are all made of the same thing...flesh, blood and bones! We should all be able to relate and identify with each other. We are all members of the same race, the HUMAN RACE!

Finally, I believe we should all see one another as equal. However, I have evolved into a realist. I have learned to live with the fact that when one looks at me they usually view me as only black. I am not bitter, as I love both the black and white side of myself. In fact, I have realized that by being viewed as only BLACK I am in a wonderful position. I can continue to blaze a trail for black women in film and television and help open the minds of those who have been victims of the racist teachings of the past. If through my life I can help obliterate the negative images of black people and help to abolish the negative stereo types associated with black people...then when I die I will know my life had real purpose.

Sending you lots of love,
~ Halle

https://chancellorfiles.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/halle-on-being-a-person-of-bi-racial-heritage/

 

[IllmaticDelta]

^^In Halle's case, regardless of her "genetic reality" (she's by def, pred white) she was automatically "one dropped" based on her obvious African features. Her white mother was aware of this so she raised her accordingly. Halle doesn't have the same option(s) as Danzy Senna.


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Now lets compare Danzy Senna (white looking and never one drooped by phenotype but rasied to be black identified) and Halle (one dropped from the start based on phenotype but also raised with a black identity) with Quincy Jones daughters,

(Rashida)

(Kidada)

^^Here you have an example of 2 siblings who weren't raised towards any side of racial identification. As Quincy Jones said, he let them define themselves and how they defined themselves was based inpart on how they were percieved by others. While both have the genetic reality of being pred white (65% white 35% African), Kidada who does looks "blacker" than her sister Rashida, was one dropped by whites early on based on phenotype. In her eyes, she blended in with other people of African descent so she classified herself as "black" only. Rashida never was one dropped by whites or blacks so she took on as she puts it, a "floater-multiracial" identity where she identified with both her "white/jewish" and "black" sides.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

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Kidada was/is considered undeniably "black looking" by American society

....just like Obama is

Obama's true colors: Black, white ... or neither?

A perplexing new chapter is unfolding in Barack Obama's racial saga: Many people insist that "the first black president" is actually not black.

Debate over whether to call this son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan biracial, African-American, mixed-race, half-and-half, multiracial -- or, in Obama's own words, a "mutt" -- has reached a crescendo since Obama's election shattered assumptions about race.

Obama has said, "I identify as African-American -- that's how I'm treated and that's how I'm viewed. I'm proud of it." In other words, the world gave Obama no choice but to be black, and he was happy to oblige.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-12-13-1742849277_x.htm

In the word of a monoracial (as in non-biracial) Afram who happens to look "white"

GK Butterfield

But U.S. Rep. G. K. Butterfield, a black man who by all appearances is white, feels differently.

Butterfield, 61, grew up in a prominent black family in Wilson, N.C. Both of his parents had white forebears, "and those genes came together to produce me." He grew up on the black side of town, led civil rights marches as a young man, and to this day goes out of his way to inform people that he is certainly not white.

Butterfield has made his choice; he says let Obama do the same.

"Obama has chosen the heritage he feels comfortable with," he said. "His physical appearance is black. I don't know how he could have chosen to be any other race. Let's just say he decided to be white -- people would have laughed at him."

"You are a product of your experience. I'm a U.S. congressman, and I feel some degree of discomfort when I'm in an all-white group. We don't have the same view of the world, our experiences have been different."

The entire issue balances precariously on the "one-drop" rule, which sprang from the slaveowner habit of dropping by the slave quarters and producing brown babies. One drop of black blood meant that person, and his or her descendants, could never be a full citizen.

Today, the spectrum of skin tones among African-Americans -- even those with two black parents -- is evidence of widespread white ancestry. Also, since blacks were often light enough to pass for white, unknown numbers of white Americans today have blacks hidden in their family trees.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-12-13-1742849277_x.htm

 

[IllmaticDelta]

another thread that inspired me to make this thread-->So this "Mixed" girl got mad because I called her black on Tinder

The female in the op doesn't look black what-so-ever. You need glasses.

No glasses needed, In America, that chick is black



just like this guy is black (both of his parents are black) in america

Click here to view the original image of 724x485px.



Click here to view the original image of 686x1024px.







Carver Gayton

You nikkas need to stop being stupid. It's like you purposely pick people that would obviously not be considered black and then go and say that they would be out of some pent up spite. If that dude is considered black in America, then so is every Italian, Greek, and Jew.

I only speak the truth. The guy I posted is considered black in America even by phenotype.





dude looks nothing like those people/races. His parents



Bio--> [url]http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=4305

[/URL]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

..so yes, if you look white but are of recent-acknowledged African descent and have the shared experiences/struggles of your darker kin, I have no problem considering you black if that's how you see yourself.

 

[Barnett114]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

??

 

[Barnett114]

??

Just saying some I think some powerful knowledge has been dropped.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

"Blackness" in the USA isn't fully based on phenotype as I explained earlier. All you need is the African ancestry which is usually combined with shared experiences of other "black" people. Usually people will come from generations of acknowledged African descent or if they're biracial or something, recent African descent. You have to look at the concept of "Blackness" in the AfroAmerican way of seeing things in the way "Latino" is used in the USA but the difference being "Black" people in the USA will all have African ancestry regardless of phenotype whereas "Latino" might not have a common racial bond since you can be full blown Amerdindian, 100% AFro and/or 100% Euro from Latin America and all get grouped together.

but the kids still have that black blood, remember? what changes?

and how is this woman black? can you answer that question without bringing white people into your response?

Race is a social construct based on phenotypical traits. How many times have I said that to you? How many times have I pointed out that there are a lot of people classified as white who have black ancestry? Probably at least 10 times during our numerous exchanges. Yet, you insist that citing examples of people who have some black ancestry that isn't visible in their phenotypical traits somehow refutes my position. It's like you're mentally handicapped.

what black phenotypical traits?

chick looks mexican

keep it real. you have a white wife, and you still wanna feel pro-black with her and your biracial offspring. all this other bullshyt you spouting is a smoke screen

She isn't black nor does she have black kids but thats does mean she's not apart of the biracial experience.

you really cant answer a simple question. you know it would crumble your entire foundation of bullshyt. you gotta lie and claim i'm trolling by holding up your own rhetoric to the light of scrutiny.

dont respond back until you're ready to answer my very simplified question--WHAT RACE IS THIS WOMAN:

Again, fukk you and your question. All you can do is troll because you're too stupid to do anything else. I've already stated that blacks are defined as people who are visibly of African descent. You think that pointing out people who of African descent that isn't visible in their appearance somehow disproves that position. It doesn't dummy. "Is Rashida Jones black? How about Paula Patton's son? What about this random chic on the Internet who has a black dad? None of them look black are they black?" If you can't tell that a person of African descent by looking at them then they aren't black. It doesn't anymore simple than that. You really are a gotdamn idiot.