One-drop theory

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The one-drop theory (or one-drop rule) is a historical colloquial term in the United States that holds that a person with any trace of sub-Saharan ancestry (however small or invisible) can not be considered white[1] and so unless said person has an alternative non-white ancestry they can claim, such as Native American, Asian, Arab, Australian aboriginal, they must be considered black.

This notion of invisible/intangible membership in a "racial" group has seldom been applied to people of Native American ancestry (see Race in the United States for details). The notion has been largely applied to those of black African ancestry. Langston Hughes wrote, "You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the word 'Negro' is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all Negro, therefore black. I am brown."[2]

During the Black Pride era of the Civil Rights Movement, the stigma associated with sub-Saharan ancestry was claimed as a socio-political advantage.[3] As the 2008 U.S. presidential election approached, Orlando Patterson acknowledged the change in a Time magazine essay on potential candidate Barack Obama's "black" identity:

This is the infamous one-drop rule, invented and imposed by white racists until the middle of the 20th century. As with so many other areas of ethno-racial relations, African Americans turned this racist doctrine to their own ends. What to racist whites was a stain of impurity became a badge of pride. More significantly, what for whites was a means of exclusion was transformed by blacks into a glorious principle of inclusion. The absurdity of defining someone as black who to all appearances was white was turned on its head by blacks who used the one-drop rule to enlarge both the black group and its leadership with light-skinned persons who, elsewhere in the Americas, would never dream of identifying with blacks.[4]

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Beginnings

In the slave-holding South, racial membership was essentially the reverse of the 20th-century one-drop rule. A person of any visible European ancestry was presumed to be free.

The court cases Gobu v. Gobu, 1802 North Carolina,[5] Hudgins v. Wrights, 1806 Virginia,[6] and Adelle v. Beauregard, 1810 Louisiana[7] established the U.S. caselaw that if a person had any discernible European ancestry at all, that person was presumed to be free, and the burden was on the alleged slave owner to prove that he or she was legally a slave through matrilineal descent. This law was then followed in hundreds of court cases without exception until U.S. slavery was ended by the 13th Amendment.[8]

[edit] Legislation

The 1910–19 decade was the zenith of the Jim Crow era by most measures. However, the one-drop rule was made law as early as 1705 in Virginia. Such laws would continue to be enacted into the 20th Century. Tennessee led the parade by adopting a one-drop statute in 1910. It was followed by Louisiana the same year, 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.[9] By 1925, almost every state had a one-drop law on the books, or something equivalent. These were the laws that gave power to bureaucrats like Walter Plecker of Virginia,[10] Naomi Drake of Louisiana,[11] and similar people around the country — people whose mission was to hunt down any families of mixed ancestry and shove them to the Black side of the color line.

Before 1930, individuals of mixed European and African ancestry had usually been classed as mulattoes, sometimes as black and sometimes as white. The main purpose of the one-drop rule was to prevent interracial relationships and thus keep whites "pure." In 1924 Plecker wrote, "Two races as materially divergent as the white and negro, in morals, mental powers, and cultural fitness, cannot live in close contact without injury to the higher." In line with this concept was also the assumption that Blacks would somehow be "improved" through white intermixture.

Walter Plecker had been preceded by Madison Grant who had written in his book The Passing of the Great Race: "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."[12]

In the case of Native American admixture with whites the one-drop rule was extended only as far as those with one-quarter Indian blood due to what was known as the "Pocahontas exception." The "Pocahontas exception" existed because many influential Virginia families claimed descent from Pocahontas. To avoid classifying them as non-white the Virginia General Assembly declared that a person could be considered white long as they had no more than one-sixteenth Indian blood.

In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court, in its ruling on the case of Loving v. Virginia, conclusively invalidated Plecker's Virginia Racial Integrity Act, along with its key component, the one-drop rule, as unconstitutional. Despite this holding, the one-drop theory is still influential in U.S. society. Multiracial individuals with visible mixed European and African and/or Native American ancestry are often still considered non-white, unless they explicitly declare themselves white or Anglo, and are typically identified instead as mixed-race, mulatto or mestizo, or Black or American Indian, for example. By contrast these standards are widely rejected by America's Latino community, the majority of whom are of mixed ancestry, but for whom their Latino cultural heritage is more important to their ethnic identities than "race." The one-drop rule is not generally applied to Latinos of mixed origin or to Arab-Americans.

[edit] Future

There are different ways of trying to assess the future of the one-drop rule in the United States. Some of them include how interracial parents label their children on the decennial U.S. census, scholarly opinions, and trends in affirmative action court cases.[13]

From Reconstruction until about 1930, the children of black/white interracial parents and of mulatto parents were usually identified as mulatto. It is becoming increasingly common for people to identify themselves as multi-racial, mulatto, or mixed rather than as black or white. That the fraction of mixed children census-labeled as solely black dropped from 62% in 1990 to 31% in 2000 (when multiple "races" were first allowed) suggests that the one-drop theory and denying one's European ancestry is no longer accepted the way it used to be.

Despite the one-drop rule being illegal (ever since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 overturned the Virginia Racial Integrity Act), as recently as 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the ODR to stand by refusing to hear a case against Louisiana’s "racial" classification criteria as applied to Susie Phipps (479 U.S. 1002). In addition, several authors and journalists have found it very profitable to "out" as black famous historical mulattoes and whites, who were regarded as white in their society, who self-identified as such, and who were culturally European-American, merely because they acknowledged having (often slight) African ancestry (Anatole Boyard, Patrick Francis Healy, Michael Morris Healy, Jr., Sir Peter Ustinov, Calvin Clark Davis, John James Audubon, Mother Henriette Delille — a Louisiana Creole).

Many scholars publishing on this topic today (including Naomi Zack, Neil Gotanda, Michael L. Blakey, Julie C. Lythcott-Haims, Christine Hickman, David A. Hollinger, Thomas E. Skidmore, G. Reginald Daniel, F. James Davis, Joe R. Feagin, Ian F. Haney-Lopez, Barbara Fields, Dinesh D'Souza, Joel Williamson, Mary C. Waters, Debra J. Dickerson) affirm that the one-drop rule is still strong in American popular culture. Affirmative action court cases on the other hand (when an apparently white person claims invisible Black ancestry and claims federal entitlements and/or EEOC enforcement) are mixed. In some cases, such as 1985 Boston firefighters Philip and Paul Malone, courts have held that such claimants are guilty of "racial fraud" despite their claim of a Black grandparent. In other instances, such as the 1988 Denver case of schoolteacher Mary Walker — a person of fair complexion, green eyes, light brown hair, and no documented Black ancestry — courts have ordered employers to accept claimants as Black for EEOC purposes. And other claimants, such as 1997 Detroit businessman Mostafa Hefny, a Black-looking immigrant actually from Africa (Egypt), are denied benefits because North Africans are considered to be White.

[edit] Latin America rejects the one drop rule

The one drop rule does not apply outside of the United States. Many other countries treat race much less formally, and when they do self-identify racially, they often do so in ways that surprise Americans. Just as a person with physically recognizable sub-Saharan ancestry can claim to be black in the United States, someone with recognizable Caucasian ancestry may be considered white in Latin America.

In December, 2002 the Washington Post ran a story on the one drop theory. In the reporter's opinion: "Someone with Sidney Poitier's deep chocolate complexion would be considered white if his hair were straight and he made a living in a profession. That might not seem so odd, Brazilians say, when you consider that the fair-complexioned actresses Rashida Jones of the television show "Boston Public" and Lena Horne are identified as black in the United States."[14]

According to Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington, in the United States, "if you are not quite white, then you are black." However, in Brazil, "If you are not quite black, then you are white." Neinstein recalls talking with a man of Poitier's complexion when in Brazil: "We were discussing ethnicity, and I asked him, 'What do you think about this from your perspective as a black man?' He turned his head to me and said, 'I'm not black,' . . . It simply paralyzed me. I couldn't ask another question."[14] It must be said that precisely what the gentleman considered himself — white, brown or other — the story doesn't say.

The Washington Post story also described a Brazilian-born woman who for 30 years before immigrating to the United States considered herself a morena. Her skin had a caramel color that is roughly equated with whiteness in Brazil and some other Latin American countries. "I didn't realize I was black until I came here," she explained.[14] "'Where are you from?' they ask me. I say I'm from Brazil. They say, 'No, you are from Africa.' They make me feel like I am denying who I am."

The same racial culture shock has come to hundreds of thousands of dark-skinned immigrants to the United States from Brazil, Colombia, Panama and other Latin American nations. Although most lack the degree of African ancestry required to be considered black in Brazil, they have enough to be seen as black the second they set foot on U.S. soil. According to the Washington Post, their refusal to embrace the United States' definition of black has left many feeling attacked from all directions. Many African Americans believe the Afro-Latino immigrants are denying their blackness; white Americans discriminate against them as if they were black; and lighter-skinned Latinos dominate Spanish-language television, even though a majority of Latin American people possess some African or Native American ancestry. Many of these immigrants feel it is hard enough to accept a new language and culture without the additional burden of transforming from white to black. Yvette Modestin, a dark-skinned native of Panama who worked in Boston, said the situation was overwhelming: "There's not a day that I don't have to explain myself."[14]

Professor J.B. Bird has said that Latin America is not alone in rejecting the United States' notion than any visible African ancestry is enough to make one black: " In most countries of the Caribbean, Colin Powell would be described as a Creole, reflecting his mixed heritage. In Belize, he might further be described as a 'High Creole', because of his extremely light complexion."[15]

[edit] Most Americans reject the one drop rule

Many people in the United States are increasingly rejecting the one drop rule, and are questioning whether even as much as 50% black ancestry should be considered black. Although politician Barack Obama self-identifies as black, 55 percent of whites and 61 percent of Hispanics classified him as biracial instead of black after being told that his mother is white. Blacks were less likely to acknowledge a mulitiracial category, with 66% labelling Obama as black.[16] However when it came to Tiger Woods, only 42% of African-Americans described him as black, as did only 7% of White Americans.[17]


[edit] Some results of the one-drop rule

Mainly because of the one-drop rule there are many pale-skinned people that are considered black. In many of these instances the person can actually be more white than black, but be considered black. There are examples of how this could happen through the generations. During slavery, there could have been a mulatto person, who because of the one-drop rule, was considered black. If they then had a child with a white person, the child would have been considered one-quarter black, but still considered black. There are plenty of people through American history that have been more Caucasian than sub-Saharan (Black) but have been generally, or often, considered black. Examples of this would include Sally Hemings and G.K. Butterfield. However these people are the exception, not the rule. The average person who self-identifies as black in America has 83% of their ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa. Only 10% of Americans who self-identify as black are less than 50% sub-Saharan in ancestry, and thus can not be considered black at the genetic level.[18]

Another consequence of the one-drop rule is that multiracial children of Black and White couples are less likely to self-identify as White as children of Asian and White couples.[19]

[edit] One-drop rule in popular culture

  • Someone having literally one drop of black blood in him is a plot point in Show Boat.
  • In the Family Guy episode Peter Griffin: Husband, Father...Brother?, Peter discovers that he has a black ancestor from slave days. Despite being no more than one-sixteenth black, probably even less, he describes himself as black throughout the episode and attends events with a primarily African American audience.

[edit] One-drop of racial majority

The Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship only required applicants to be 25% Caucasian, mirroring "partial-bloodedness" requirements for minority scholarships.

[edit] Alternatives

[edit] Preponderance of ancestry

Increasing the one-drop rule and the reverse one-drop rule are being replaced by a more scientific methodology of deciding who is black and white. Rather than arbitrarily deciding that one drop of black blood makes one black or one drop of white blood makes one white, a persons race is increasingly being defined in terms of where most of their ancestors come from. Debra Dickerson writes that "easily one-third of blacks have white DNA" she wonders why, in light of this, so much of the focus on tracing ancestry in the black community has focused on finding a link back to a region in Africa. She holds that in ignoring their white ancestors African Americans are denying their fully articulated multi-racial identities.[20]


According to J. Phillipe Rushton who holds that gaps in IQ scores between races represent genetic differences between these races.:

Yes, to a certain extent all the races blend into each other. That is true in any biological classification system. However, most people can be clearly identified with one race or another. In both everyday life and evolutionary biology, a "Black" is anyone most of whose ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa. A "White" is anyone most of whose ancestors were born in Europe. And an "Oriental" is anyone most of whose ancestors were born in East Asia. Modern DNA studies give pretty much the same results.

[21]

According to Michael Levin:

Hybrid populations with multiple lines of descent are to be characterized in just those terms: as of multiple descent. Thus, American Negroids are individuals most of whose ancestors from 15 to 5000 generations ago were sub- Saharan African. Specifying 'most' more precisely in a way that captures ordinary usage may not be possible. '> 50%' seems too low a threshold; my sense is that ordinary attributions of race begin to stabilize at 75%.[22]

Meanwhile the company DNAPrint Genomics analyzes DNA to determine the exact percentage of Indo-European, sub-Saharan, East Asian, and Native American heritage someone has and assigns the person to the category White, Black, East Asian, Native American, or mixed race accordingly. According to U.S. sociologist Troy Duster and ethicist Pilar Ossorio:

Some percentage of people who look white will possess genetic markers indicating that a significant majority of their recent ancestors were African. Some percentage of people who look black will possess genetic markers indicating the majority of their recent ancestors were European.

[23]

[edit] The Pencil test

During the system of apartheid in South Africa, one drop of sub-Saharan blood was nowhere near enough to be black. South African law maintained a major distinction between those who were black and those who were coloured. When it was unclear from a person's physical appearance which racial classification he/she belonged to, the pencil test was employed. This involved inserting a pencil in a person's hair to determine if the hair was kinky enough for the pencil to get stuck.[24]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ [[1]]
  2. ^ Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, an Autobiography (New York: Knopf, 1940).
  3. ^ (1981) "Civil Rights", in ed. W. Augustus Low, Virgil A. Clift: Encyclopedia of Black America. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 243-244. ISBN 0-306-80221-X. 
  4. ^ Patterson, Orlando (2007-02-19), "The New Black Nativism", Time: 44
  5. ^ The Gobu v. Gobu court record is available in any U.S. law library under the index "1 N.C. 188."
  6. ^ The Hudgins v. Wrights court record is available in any U.S. law library under the index "11 Va. 134."
  7. ^ The Adelle v. Beauregard court record is available in any U.S. law library under the index "1 Mart o.s. 183."
  8. ^ For a discussion of this, see Paul Finkelman, "The Color of Law," Northwestern University Law Review, 87 (no. 3, 1993), 937-91, 952-54; Daniel J. Sharfstein, "The Secret History of Race in the United States," Yale Law Journal, 112 (no. 6, 2003), 1473-509, 1478; Adrienne D. Davis, "Identity Notes Part One: Playing in the Light," American University Law Review, 45 (1996), 695-720, 702-17; Ariela J. Gross, "Litigating Whiteness: Trials of Racial Determination in the Nineteenth-Century South," Yale Law Journal, 108 (no. 1, 1998), 109-88, 129-30; Ian F. Haney-Lopez, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York, 1996), 1-5; and Leon A. Higginbotham, Jr. and Barbara K. Kopytoff, "Racial Purity and Interracial Sex in the Law of Colonial and Antebellum Virginia," Georgetown Law Journal, 77 (no. 6, August 1989), 1967-2029, 1985-87.
  9. ^ Pauli Murray, ed. States’ Laws on Race and Color (Athens, 1997), 428, 173, 443, 37, 237, 330, 463, 22, 39, 358, 77, 150, 164, 207, 254, 263, 459.
  10. ^ For the Plecker story, see J. Douglas Smith, “The Campaign for Racial Purity and the Erosion of Paternalism in Virginia, 1922-1930: 'Nominally White, Biologically Mixed, and Legally Negro',” Journal of Southern History 68, no. 1 (2002): 65-106
  11. ^ For Drake, see Virginia R. Dominguez, White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University, 1986)
  12. ^ Madison Grant, The Passing of The Great Race, 1916
  13. ^ For detailed sources and citations for this paragraph and the three following paragraphs, see "Chapter 14. Features of Today's One-Drop Rule" of the book, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0-939479-23-0. A summary of this chapter, with endnotes, is also available online at Features of Today’s One-Drop Rule.
  14. ^ a b c d http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38089-2002Dec25?language=printer
  15. ^ http://www.johnhorse.com/black-seminoles/faq-black-seminoles.htm
  16. ^ http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20061222014017231
  17. ^ [2]
  18. ^ http://www.isteve.com/2002_How_White_Are_Blacks.htm
  19. ^ [[3]]
  20. ^ The End of Blackness by Debra Dikerson.
  21. ^ Rushton J. P. (2000) Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, Charles Darwin Research Inst. Pr; 3rd edition (ISBN 0965683613). Abstract available here
  22. ^ Levin M. The Race Concept: A Defense, Behavior and Philosophy, 30, 21-42 (2002)
  23. ^ http://www.racesci.org/in_media/canadian_police.htm
  24. ^ [[4]]

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

  • Davis, James F., Who is Black?: One Nation's Definition. University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-271-02172-1
  • Guterl, Matthew Press, The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01012-4
  • Moran, Rachel F., Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race & Romance, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN 0-226-53663-7
  • Romano, Renee Christine, Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Post-War America. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-674-01033-7
  • Yancey, George, Just Don't Marry One: Interracial Dating, Marriage & Parenting. Judson Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8170-1439-X
  • Daniel, G. Reginald. More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2002. ISBN 1-56639-909-2
  • Daniel, G. Reginald. Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths?. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-271-02883-1

[edit] External links

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