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1. What exactly is the one-drop rule?
The one-drop rule is a U.S. folkloric belief in the notion of invisible Blackness. It is the conviction that “an utterly European-looking Black person” is a meaningful concept in the physical world. It is the belief that anyone with even “one drop” of African ancestry is secretly Black, although they may look completely European.
2. Was the one-drop rule invented by slave-owners?
No. The one-drop rule arose a half-century after American slavery ended. Some Americans began to adopt this belief informally in the 1840s in the North, the 1870s in the upper South, and the 1890s in the lower South. But it was not legislated into law in any state until the 1910s (Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi) and the 1920s (North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Utah).
3. Does any other country have a one-drop rule?
No. The idea that someone who looks utterly European can be secretly Black in some intangible way because he or she has invisible or slight African ancestry has never appeared anywhere on earth except in the United States since the mid-19th century. Many prior famous people were proud of having slight African ancestry, including Alessandro de Medici, Queen Charlotte, Alexander Pushkin, Alexandre Dumas, and John James Audubon. Yet, no one in Italy, England, Russia, France, or the United States respectively, labeled them “Black.” (Although Dumas was sometimes referred to as mixed.) Even the authorities in apartheid South Africa considered the child of a Coloured parent to be White if that person looked fully European.
4. Is one-drop still the law in the United States?
No. Although some states still have their old one-drop laws on the books, these laws are no longer enforced against European-looking people with slight African ancestry. This is because the laws that such definitions were designed to support (segregation in public facilities, school segregation, FHA redlining, laws against intermarriage) were either repealed or ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1960s and 1970s.
5. How is a person’s “race” legally defined in the United States today?
“Racial” definition in the United States is presently in a state of confusion and change. “Race” on the federal census is set by whoever fills in the form. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations (for non-Hispanics and non-Indians) apply only to pureblooded Africans and pureblooded Europeans. EEOC regulations cannot contemplate mixed people. Affirmative action claims and counter-claims often hinge on whether someone is “really” Black (or not). But Congress refuses to legislate racial membership definitions for federal programs, despite strong pleas for such standards from those who must litigate claims.
6. Is the one-drop rule still the unwritten custom in the United States?
Yes. It may be stronger in the public mind today than ever before. For example, consider columnist reviews of the Miramax film The Human Stain. Some 237 published reviews of this film are available at a movie-survey web site. Virtually all describe Anthony Hopkins’s character as a light-skinned Black man who pretended to be White. The movie is fiction of course, but columnists are real people who earn a living writing for real readers. Those who lose touch with the popular culture of their readers see their columns dropped from publication. The public expects invisible-blackness rhetoric, so movie review columnists write invisible-blackness rhetoric: “a light-skinned Black man passing for White.” They do this so unconsciously, so naturally, and so off-handedly, that most Americans do not even notice it until someone points it out to them. To someone from another country, it reminds of a building with an odd smell, to which its residents have become so accustomed that they deny its very existence.
7. How many Americans could potentially be affected by the one-drop rule?
About 110,000,000 Americans are of recently mixed Euro-African biological ancestry. Of these, about 74,000,000 check off “White” on the census. How many of these are affected by the the one-drop rule? It may depend on their awareness of their own ancestry. Every year, between 0.10 and 0.14 percent of formerly Black-labeled youngsters switch to calling themselves Hispanic or White after high school. This comes to between 35,000 and 50,000 individuals who switch “race” every year. It means that just over 2,000,000 White American adults alive today started life as Black children. Add up the numbers since 1850, and about 9,000,000 Americans took this step over the past century and a half. Their 74,000,000 White descendants, on average, have the genetic equivalent of one pureblooded African ancestor within the past 120 years. The vast majority of them are completely unaware of this, of course.
8. Is “race” real?
It depends on what you mean by “race.”
The idea of “race” is real. It is as real as the ideas of the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny and is far more socially powerful and widespread. Whether the idea of race is harmful or beneficial to U.S. society is a question best asked online.
Biological “races,” in the same sense as breeds of dogs or varieties of apple, are not real. That human traits fall into biological clusters was disproved over a century ago and no reputable biologist or anthropologist familiar with molecular genetics supports this notion today. Such traits as nose width, lip thickness, hair curliness, and complexion darkness do not statistically appear together in Africa or anywhere else. Each such trait varies independently around the world. U.S. society, however, classifies people as Black or White on the basis of such traits.
Socio-political group membership in the United States is real. Whether you belong to the White endogamous group or the Black endogamous group is real, often painfully real to many Americans.
Genetic admixture is real. Whether most of your ancestors came from Europe or Africa (or Asia or Native America) is real. It can be determined by observation or in your DNA. Specifically, the percentage of your genes that came from each continent is easily measured.
How you label yourself is real to some people but unreal to others. Some people consider their self-identity so important and so real that they get upset when their “racial” membership is challenged. Others consider self-labeling a bad joke that only fools participate in.
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Last modified: 20 May 2009, 18:53:20.
