The Study of Racialism

"In some people's view, and the view of Mr. Westholz, Mrs. Phipps was very insistent to the point of obsession to change her birth certificate thereby receiving official blessing of her color."

"June 1983, a month after the Phipps case, the legislature repealed the 1970 one-thirty-second law and established a preponderance of the evidence as the burden of proof borne by someone who wanted to argue that information on a vital record should be changed."

SUSIE GUILLORY PHIPPS CASE


In 1977, at the age of 43, Susie Guillory Phipps applied for a passport. She hadn't needed one before, and she needed a copy of her birth certificate to obtain one. Susie Phipps went to New Orleans to obtain a copy of her birth certificate from the Division of Vital Records. The clerk took Mrs. Phipps aside and showed her that

her birth certificate showed the race of both parents as "Col." - colored. Mrs. Phipps responded with disbelief, shock and later said that "she was sick for 3 days."

Susie Guillory Phipps insisted that an error had been made and wanted
the birth certificate corrected. She contacted Jack Westholz Jr., state official, chief of the New Orleans section of the Office of the General Counsel of the Louisiana Department of Health and Human Resources.

This Division is the only office which is capable of correcting errors or changing a birth certificate.

Mr. Westholz asked Susie Guillory Phipps to provide the following information: Complete names of her parents; Place of birth of her brothers and sisters. After checking the records, Mr. Westholz informed
Mrs. Phipps that no errors had been made on her birth certificate.

The racial designations on her birth certificate were consistent with the information on the birth certificates of her brothers and sisters. None showed signs of tampering.

The State of Louisiana conclusion: Susie Guillory was correctly identified on her birth certificate as the child of two colored people.

Mrs. Phipps could have obtained her passport, which does not show racial designation.

After all, the legal separation of races system had been dismantled. The racial designations on her birth certificate hadn't affected her life for the previous 43 years. Susie Guillory Phipps had lived as a white woman, was recorded as white on her children's birth certificates and when her parents died, she had identified them as white on the death certificates. She had brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews who lived as white people. No one had challenged any of that. Virtually nobody even knew what her birth certificate said.

Instead, Mrs. Phipps refused to accept a copy of any birth certificate that identified her as black. She insisted that her birth certificate be changed to identify her as white.

In some people's view, and the view of Mr. Westholz, Mrs. Phipps was very insistent to the point of obsession to change her birth certificate thereby receiving official blessing of her color.

Mrs. Phipps maintains it's wasn't because she has anything against black people, she simply felt she had to stand up for what she believed in, that being that "she was white." She also stated that "if her birth certificate didn't get corrected, her descendants might come across it and think she was somebody she wasn't."

Mr. Westholz might have followed the course of least resistance and allowed her to change her birth certificate to whatever race she wanted. He could have fulfilled the obligations of his office in following the law by advising Mrs. Phipps to seek a court order to change the birth certificate, then opposing the order in only a token manner, which would allow Mrs. Phipps to achieve her goal of changing the certificate.

Mr. Westholz, partly out of a belief that a rare opportunity for a test case, which might result in needed administrative reforms regarding racial designation which the legislature was extremely reluctant to deal with. Mr. Westholz hoped a court might provide guidelines to his Department for settlement of disputed racial designations without the need for litigation. He even hoped that a court would get rid of the 1970 on-thirty-second law, which his Department considered unworkable and unconstitutional.

Mr. Westholz was also defending the integrity of his Department. The Department was in charge of the gathering and preserving of records.

The Dept. is also charged with prevention of anyone tampering with those records.

Mr. Westholz believed that the information on Mrs. Phipps birth certificate was correct. Of Mrs. Phipps certificate he stated "Mrs. Phipps birth certificate is a historical record. Let it be. We can't go back and change history."

The documents, which were available, were extensive and unaltered. Mr. Westholz commissioned a Genealogist, Ruth Robertson Fontenot to trace the Guillory family tree. Dozens of birth certificates, baptismal records, marriage contracts and other historical documents were gathered together. Documents such as "Copy of the Inventory from the 1764 Succession of Manon LaCaze," a copy of an "Agreement between Pierre Ricard and Francois Allain with Louis (Ricard) regarding renumeration for caring for cattle, dated November 8, 1762" were among those researched. Westholz tracked down people who were related to Susie Guillory Phipps. Two large cardboard boxes full of exhibits, depositions, a Genealogy going back to the Eighteenth Century, and a chart depicting the race of the Guillory family according to the "Robertson Fontenot System of Visual Percentage Analysis" were accumulated.

Susie Guillory Phipps most significant ancestor, Marguerite, was her great-great-great-great grandmother, a former slave.

Marguerite was a historical figure of prominence. In Spanish legal records the Spanish records always refers to Marguerite as "Margarita."

In the early 1780s when the Spanish controlled Louisiana, a noted legal battle took place in the Court of Alcalde Panis.

Marguerite was seeking to ensure the freedom of herself and her children.

Joseph Gregoire Guillory, known in the records as a French Planter, had a family of eight children by his white wife, Marie Jeanne LaCasse.

Marguerite had been his wife's slave. Just before Joseph Gregoire was to move his family and possessions to Old Opelousas Post, (what is now Opelousas, located in what is now Acadian Parish, Louisiana) Marie Jeanne LaCasse died.

Joseph Gregoire Guillory moved his family and their possessions to Old Opelousas Post in Louisiana. There he had four children by Marguerite.

Shortly after, his son-in-laws from Old Mobile filed suit in Dupont vs Guillory for their (their wives) share of Marie Jeanne LaCasse's property. This legal dispute resulted in a valuation of property assets of Joseph Gregoire Guillory, which were owned by Marie LaCasse Guillory. Marguerite and her children are listed in the valuation as property.

Joseph Gregoire Guillory was forced to turn over Marguerite and her children to his white children as their share of their mother's property.

Joseph Gregoire Guillory went to his eldest son's home (Jean Baptiste Guillory) with a knife and kidnapped Marguerite from his children.

Joseph Gregoire Guillory accomplished for Marguerite and her children, a manumission freeing them on condition Marguerite stayed with him until his death. Marguerite did so.

After Joseph Gregoire Guillory's death, his white children disputed Marguerite and her children's freedom and filed in court to have them returned to their control.

Marguerite sued in court, presenting her case and won. Although her children would have to work for their half-siblings for a period of time to pay back a certain amount of money, they indeed had their freedom.

One son of Joseph Gregoire Guillory & Marguerite married a Free Person of Color, named Eloise Meuillon. This Guillory genealogical tree was studded with people described in various documents with words such
as "quadroon" and "marabout" and the line led straight down to Susie Guillory's birth in 1934.

Mr. Westholz went to the area where Joseph Gregoire Guillory had settled over a hundred and fifty years before. Elderly people who still living in the old Frey Community where Susie Guillory Phipps grew up remembered the Guillory family. Many in nearby towns were related in one way or another to Susie Guillory Phipps. He obtained school records, census field reports. Documents and interviews were all consistent. The Guillorys in the area were known as mulattoes.

All of the documents amassed showed that Susie Guillory Phipps racial designation on the birth certificate was indeed correct.

Mr. Westholz showed the information to Mrs. Phipps New Orleans lawyer, Brian Begue, expecting him to drop the case. The alternative was a major challenge in court of state law.

By this time, the Department of Health and human Resources had passed new regulations which would have allowed Susie Phipps to acquire a copy of the birth certificate in short form, which included nothing about race.

Mrs. Phipps belief that she was white didn't seem to be affected by the information presented about her family genealogy. She continued to insist that her racial designation was a mistake.

Although Mrs. Phipps continued to insist that she was white, she stated in a 1983 interview "she came to believe that Margarita had been dark rather than black." Rarely did she acknowledge the existence of the tri-racial society that existed during Marguerite's time.

After many delays, Mrs. Phipps case came to trial in New Orleans District Court, 5 years after she had applied for her birth certificate. Although some of her relatives joined her suit, many others dropped out of the suit.

Throughout the legal wrangling, the issue of race, or designation of race, how a person was designated as a certain race by "traceable amount of black ancestry" dominated the trial.

Mrs. Phipps lawyer Brian Begue tried the case in the court of public opinion, through the newspapers. Articles appeared which tended to leave an impression that the state was trying to designate a white person as black via a bizarre 1970s law.

Mr. Westholz insisted that the State merely preserves information by its residents. He further insisted that his Department had been hoping to get rid of the 1970 law for years.

Louisiana had adopted the policy that other states follow in determining racial designations on birth certificates - "the race is whatever the new born baby's parents say it is." The blank is filled in with the cooperation of the parents.

In the trial, it was stated "Race information is needed on birth certificates, for example, sickle cell anemia is found almost exclusively among blacks, while phenlketonuria, a genetic defect that can cause mental retardation unless treated early, is found almost exclusively in whites. A person seeking their birth certificate in order to find their parents for medical purposes would need racial designation in order to determine possible medical history or potential problems.

Scientists testified by deposition and on the witness stand that modern science didn't offer any better way than that of determining race - the child is the race of whatever the parents say.

Mr. Westholz stated "I know you can't scientifically ascertain race, I knew that before the trial."

Mr. Westholz view was that the Judge had to decide whether Susie Guillory Phipps could prove beyond any doubt that the information on her birth certificate was incorrect.

Mr. Begue tried to demonstrate that partly because of imprecise use of terms inherited from Colonial days, genealogical records could not reflect racial ancestry with mathematical certainty. The State had the burden of proving that it could legally classify Mrs. Phipps as black because of the one-thirty-second law.

Begue didn't refute the genealogical evidence, but argued that if any racial classification had to be done, it should be based on the "self image" of the classified.

Begue maintained that people who think of themselves as white, their neighbors think they are white, should not have to prove in court that they are white.

Colored relatives disputed Mrs. Phipps claim that "she was raised white. I am white. I am all white. I was raised as a white child. I went to a white school. I married white twice."

May 1983, the Court found that the State Vital Statistics Law

"clearly places the burden of proving the propriety of an alteration on the person seeking to have it made. The plaintiff's contention that because they appear to be white, the State must prove otherwise was without legal foundation."

In his decision, the Judge stated "it was clear that the plaintiff's have the appearance of "white people", having fair skins and in some cases blue eyes and blond hair. It is also entirely clear that they are of mixed white and Negro blood."

Mrs. Westholz considered the verdict a bittersweet victory, since the court did not alter the burden of proof and did not offer any guidelines for the future. He stated, "he hoped Mrs. Phipps would appeal."

June 1983, a month after the Phipps case, the legislature repealed the 1970 one-thirty-second law and established a preponderance of the evidence as the burden of proof borne by someone who wanted to argue that information on a vital record should be changed.

Mrs. Phipps appealed the verdict in her case. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the original verdict.

The Court pointing out that it was Mrs. Phipps parents racial designations that Mrs. Phipps would have to change, stated "We do not believe that an individual may change the racial designation of another person, whether his parent or anyone else. That appellants might today describe themselves as white does not prove error in a document, which designates their parents as colored. This anomaly shows the subjective
nature of racial perceptions but does not give appellants a cause of action to alter it."

The Appeals Court further stated" Individual racial designations are purely social and cultural perceptions, and the evidence conclusively proves those subjective perceptions were correctly recorded at the time appellants' birth certificates were issued."

Mrs. Phipps lawyer, Begue applied for a hearing before the Louisiana Supreme Court. By a vote of 5 to 2, the Supreme Court of Louisiana denied the application.

Begue argues that when it comes to racial designation, "Susie Guillory Phipps should not be bound by the racist notions of 1934, but by the same policy that is in effect for someone today in filling out a birth certificate application in a New Orleans Hospital, you are whatever race you think you are."

Mr. Westholz argues "history is history; he doesn't quarrel with Mrs. Phipps calling her children white, but he doesn't think there is anything she can do about her parents' being colored. The birth certificates were filled out by the plaintiff's parents, who apparently listed their children's race as black because that is what the parents' own birth certificates read. It's our position that the plaintiffs are asserting that there's something wrong with records that their parents submitted, in which case the burden of proof is upon them."

Mrs. Phipps after the original court verdict stated, "if she lost in Louisiana, she would go to the Supreme Court of the United States. If she lost there, she would go to the President. She would ask him if he thought she was colored."


RESOURCES:

Lake Charles American Press Sept 15, 1982

Lake Charles American Press Sept. 16, 1982

Monroe Newspaper Oct 19, 1985

The New Yorker Magazine Article "American Chronicles Black or White"

1986

REARGUING THE PHIPPS CASE

by Liam Martin

<i>If injustice is real, then it can be shown to violate universal principles of justice.</i>

1. The one drop of blood rule
2. <i>Plessy v. Ferguson</i> parallels
3. <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> example
4. The Phipps challenge
- - Discriminatory nature of the one-drop rule
……..<i>Reality of multiracial heritage</i>
……..<i>History of the one-drop rule</i>
……..<i>Denial of multiracial heritage</i>
- - Unconstitutionality of the one-drop rule
……..<i>The first amendment</i>
……..<i>The fourth and fifth
amendments</i>
……..<i>The fourteenth amendment</i>
- - Summary of reargument
5. Conclusion


1. The one drop of blood rule

The account of the <a href=http://backintyme.com/ODR/viewtopic.php?p=5577#5577>Susie Guillory Phipps case</a> <i>(Jane Doe v. the State of Louisiana, 1983)</i> never fails to move me. How is it that I see a social injustice done, but others see an unflattering bid for prestige? Even the U.S. Supreme Court saw the case as trivial, not having “a substantial federal question.”

The Phipps case was the motivation for the second essay in my latest book, <a href=http://backintyme.com/ODR/viewtopic.php?t=512><i>A Brief History of Social Identity: From Kinship to Multirace.</i></a> This essay, entitled “Racism and multirace,” is in general a rearguing of this case. It is difficult for a multiracial identified person not to see the Phipps case as also trying a multiracial identity. Mrs. Phipps’ desire that her white racial descent be duly noted on a document that recorded racial data, had to contend with the same ideology --the one-drop (of blood) rule--that a multiracial identity must in seeking to gain legitimacy.


2. <i>Plessy v. Ferguson</i> parallels

One may see the Phipps case as doing for the multiracial community what the 1896 <i>Plessy v. Ferguson</i> did for the black community. The <i>Plessy</i> case legalized “separate but equal” treatment in public accommodations. The Phipps case legalized the segregation of white and black ancestries in individuals. Just as the intention of segregation was to deny access to white used accommodations by blacks, so the point of the one-drop rule is to deny access to white ancestry by multiracials with black ancestry.

Both the Plessy and Phipps case had argued on the grounds of white racial status for multiracial individuals. One of the arguments used in <i>Plessy</i> was that being seven-eighths white, the plaintiff Plessy should be treated as white in public accommodations which then segregated blacks. Similarly, the Phipps case had argued that Mrs. Phipps, being twenty-nine thirty-seconds white, should have her and her parents’ racial designation changed to white on a re-issued birth certificate.

The Phipps case marked the point at which the one-drop rule became literally true. It was the motivation for removing one legal version of Louisiana’s one-drop rule--the “one thirty-second” statute--which had defined discretely how much black ancestry was needed to deny one a white identity, and saw established in its stead another and more stringent.

With the one thirty-second statute there was a point at which the traced amount of black ancestry, though real, became immaterial, a point at which it was seen to lose its believed properties of essence and determinism. Now, if it is shown that one’s black ancestry is less than one thirty-second, one would not be able to change a “colored” designation on a birth certificate--as Mrs. Phipps desired--since by law there is no point at which whiteness escapes blackness.

The “preponderance of the evidence” now “required” to change a racial designation on a birth certificate was not a new legal criterion. What was new was the rule that this evidence applied to. Before, this was the one thirty-second statute, which allowed one to possess known black ancestry less than one thirty-second and still change to “white” a “colored” designation on a birth certificate. Now, with the removal of the one thirty-second statute, the rule that the evidence is applied to is, by default, the literal one drop of blood rule.

Paradoxically, removing the one thirty-second statute from the books brought the one-drop rule to its logical extreme. The defense had expressed “embarrassment” at the one thirty-second statute, suspecting it to be “unconstitutional” and wishing it removed, yet in victory merely restated and reinforced the one-drop rule. Clearly, the embarrassment was not at the literal one-drop rule, but at the little extent to which the one thirty-second statute had <i>rejected</i> the one-drop rule. In other words, what embarrassed the defense was a recognition of mixed race, as muted as it was, in the one thirty-second statute.


3. <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> example

Both Plessy and Phipps lost their case. But not quite sixty years after the <i>Plessy</i> decision, <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> struck down the “separate but equal” ruling of 1896. The <i>Brown</i> decision did not argue for rights on the basis of racial status, but sought to show an inherent inequality in the “separate but equal” policy, thereby to prove that the <i>Plessy</i> decision was in violation of the equal protection requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment. Importantly, the inequality demonstrated was an “intangible” one, specifically a “sense of inferiority,” the same sense of inferiority which in 1896 the <i>Plessy</i> decision had denied was caused by segregation. <i>Brown</i> had challenged segregation on the same Fourteenth Amendment that <i>Plessy</i> had, so what had changed to justify desegregation?

For us today, the <i>Plessy</i> decision may seem intuitively wrong, yet in overturning it many critics agree that a convincing legal argument was not given. The <i>Plessy</i> decision was difficult to argue against because it did grant equality to blacks. Inequality could be shown in any particular instance, but the state could always achieve equality by improving school facilities and faculty. To prove inequality one needed to escape this cycle of particulars, and so the <i>Brown</i> decision took an imaginative leap to social science. It cited a study which showed that black children more frequently chose a white doll as beautiful over a black doll. <i>Brown</i> lamented the “sense of inferiority” that this implied and claimed that the underlying cause was segregation. This turned out to be flawed because the study had shown that in the North, which did not have the history of segregation that the South did, the percentage of white dolls chosen as more beautiful was greater. It is also true that for the age group studied, segregation would have had the least impact. The real reason for the children’s alienation and contradiction of themselves was, of course, the one-drop rule which claims that blacks come in all colors, including white. None could bring themselves to admit this because the black community had inculcated this rule--more so in the North--and so were equally guilty of the self-contradiction and self-alienation observed in the children.

The <i>Plessy</i> decision did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment because it did not deny blacks equal protection of the law. The <i>Brown</i> decision, however, was myopic in insisting that it was inequality that had to be proved. <i>Brown</i> also assumed that the amendments specifically written with blacks in mind were the ones that would naturally apply. In hindsight, we can see that the failure in <i>Plessy</i> to bring a successful legal argument against segregation forced the framers of the <i>Brown</i> decision to adopt non-legal arguments. What the framers of this decision did not know was that <i>Brown’s</i> handicap was the particular amendment on which it challenged segregation. It turns out that the <i>Plessy</i> decision was so impenetrable because it violated an amendment which historically had nothing to do with race: the First Amendment.

The logical choice of amendments in challenging the <i>Plessy</i> decision--not looking through the prism of race--would have been one that dealt with assemblage. As it happens, this is the First Amendment. Freedom of association underpins the First Amendment, and it was freedom of association that the <i>Plessy</i> decision restricted. This decision had come out of a dispute over travel accommodations which then required separate train cars for blacks and whites. One can imagine the legal challenge being set up as two clergymen of the same congregation--one white, one mixed race--traveling through Louisiana on church related work, and demanding to sit in the same car. Or two lawyers of the same firm--again one white and one mixed race--traveling through Louisiana on casework, and also demanding to sit in the same car. The first scenario would rely on the freedom of association that was indispensable to the freedom of worship. The second would rely on the more secular concerns of the First Amendment which allows “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This approach would mirror the 1967 <i>Loving v. Virginia</i> case which legalized interracial marriage and which had argued for marriage as a fundamental personal right. In this challenge to the <i>Plessy</i> decision, the fundamental right would be the freedom of association that is intrinsic to the First Amendment.

The First Amendment is concerned with the right of groups--both religious and secular--to exist, their right to have a voice, and the right of individuals to dissent from groups, in other words, with a free marketplace of alliances. The free exercise of religion presupposes alliances of individuals in longstanding groups. So too does the right to assemble and petition. If individuals were able only to assemble in momentary alliances, the right to petition the government would be of little value. The right to form long lasting alliances is fundamental to the First Amendment which recognizes that humans are social beings, that society itself is an alliance of individuals, and that the interests of individuals are often best served in groups, especially in transactions with their government, which is, after society itself, the most important alliance. And so the First Amendment expressly prohibits the government from impeding individuals in their forming of alliances and groups.

Because the First Amendment guarantees a free marketplace of alliances, segregation is automatically precluded. On the other hand, since in principle separation will preserve equality, the Fourteenth Amendment, which grants equality, is on its own a weak--even futile--argument against segregation. The role of the Fourteenth Amendment in the argument against <i>Plessy</i> is to give blacks and multiracials access to the First Amendment through citizenship. Challenged on the Fourteenth Amendment, the <i>Plessy</i> decision confidently rejected the charge that it was denying equality. Challenged on the First Amendment it would not have been able to deny that it was restricting the right to form associations, but would have had to say why it needed to curtail a constitutional right. The answer, and the primary argument in <i>Plessy</i>, was that legislation was helpless in the face of social prejudice and could only accommodate to it.

To reject this argument is not to impose personal morality (as the Plessy decision asserted), but to uphold the First Amendment. The public space is a neutral meeting ground, and to allow within it freedom of association does not amount to “enforced commingling.” Norms of civil conduct and respect for each individual’s person are incumbent on everyone. When these are breached then one may resort to the police power of the state, but to universally deny a constitutional right before any legal violation has occurred cannot be justified. It was irrelevant, as the <i>Plessy</i> decision insisted, that whites (and blacks) did not want the association. Equal denial of a fundamental right may not violate the equal protection requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment, but (as <i>Loving v. Virginia</i> would indicate) it does deny the root of the Fourteenth Amendment which grants these rights on the sole condition of citizenship.

The freedom of association that the First Amendment depends upon is unrestricted enough to extend across any racial divide--natural or man-made, and unrestricted enough to resist any coerced association within any race--natural or man-made. To let stand the <i>Plessy</i> decision is to deny to every citizen this first of personal freedoms. One may not preclude freedom of association for everyone. One cannot assume the personal prejudices of some or even many to be the lot of all. The <i>Plessy</i> decision made that choice not only for every Louisianan, but for every citizen of the United States who may travel to Louisiana, and for every generation of citizens. Where else may “the two races … meet upon terms of social equality, …the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals” except in the public space? Yet in the <i>Plessy</i> decision, the freedom of association is precluded everywhere and forever.

To separate the public space on so arbitrary a basis as ancestry that at times cannot even be discerned makes a mockery of that “unalienable liberty” so central to the Declaration of Independence and secured to every citizen by the Constitution, and made available by the Fourteenth Amendment to all who are born in this country. That the Fourteenth Amendment was passed by the same court which passed laws supporting segregation was never an argument in favor of segregation since it was the First Amendment, and not the Fourteenth, that segregation violated. It was just these laws supporting segregation that the <i>Plessy</i> decision would use as legal precedents. But these precedents were never grounded in first legal premises--the Constitution and the first intentions in the Declaration of Independence. Though any system of legal premises does not necessarily contain the justification for every social ideal, there is no doubt that the premise of the First Amendment justifies a nonsectarian public space.

As it is, the <i>Brown</i> decision seems gratuitous, not deriving (with any certainty) the inclusion of the one group from the general principles that define the humanity of the other group. Thirteen years later, <i>Loving v. Virginia</i> would show the confidence and directness that many would have liked to see in <i>Brown</i>. In resorting to social science, the <i>Brown</i> decision essentially sidestepped the issue of race that <i>Loving v. Virginia</i> looked squarely in the face with its verdict that racial classification is too unsupported a basis on which to deprive someone of so fundamental a right as marriage. The <i>Brown</i> decision--in resorting to social science--missed the opportunity to base all of the subsequent opening of the society (including the Civil Rights Act) directly on Constitutional law and legal precedent in a verdict as incontrovertible as that of <i>Loving</i>, namely that racial classification is too unsupported a basis on which to restrict the freedom of association so fundamental to the First Amendment.


4. The Phipps challenge

Segregation was the legacy of slavery. It had sought to preserve as much of the alienation of slavery as was possible. Segregation would find in the one-drop rule the means to achieving its goal. But strangely enough, as intolerant as the one-drop rule was, it did not come out of slavery or out of segregation, or even out of the South. It had come out of the abolitionist movement in the North.

Segregation was the central concern of the <i>Plessy</i> and <i>Brown</i> cases. <i>Plessy</i> had established it, <i>Briwn</i> had reversed it. With segregation removed, the one-drop rule was exposed. Where once this rule had been the means to an end, now it was seen to be an end in itself. It turned out that many saw it as necessary to a black identity, much as before many had seen segregation as necessary to a white identity. This strange bedfellow of segregation would be the central concern of the Phipps case. Thirty years after <i>Brown</i>, it would be challenged openly in court.

The Phipps case and its appeals occurred a generation ago (1983-1986). How would it be argued differently today, especially in light of <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> and the rise of the multiracial movement?

The demand of Mrs. Phipps was that her birth certificate be changed to show her parents’ and her race as white. It had been recorded as “colored” in 1934 when Mrs. Phipps was born.

The opposing argument was that Mrs. Phipps’ birth certificate was a historical record and as such could not be altered--<i>unless it was shown to have been in error.</i> The defense strategy was to investigate Mrs. Phipps’ genealogy and show that she did in fact have “Negro” ancestry--actually three thirty-seconds, which is more than the one thirty-second established by a 1970 Louisiana statute.

This rearguing of the Phipps case will prove error in the original designation by showing that the one-drop and one thirty-second rules are violations of constitutional freedoms.


Discriminatory nature of the one-drop rule

<i>Reality of multiracial heritage</i>

The major shortcoming in Mrs. Phipps’ counsel was not to see that her multiracial heritage was the foundation for her white identity; that she was a multiracial person with claims to a white identity, and not a white person who was denied a white identity.

The presiding judge had conceded that Mrs. Phipps was multiracial. This was an acknowledgement, though casual, of her white ancestry. Mrs. Phipps needed to have seized upon this concession and not let the court retreat from it. She needed to have built upon it--pursue the question, How did persons accepted by the court as multiracial acquire a black identity?

The genealogical record gathered by the defense did not prove that Mrs. Phipps was black, but that she was multiracial. Yet the one-drop rule dictates that a multiracial person can reclaim her racial integrity only through a black identity. How did this rule come about, and why?


<i>History of the one-drop rule</i>

With the slaves freed, and their humanity recognized, the status of blacks was thus raised. To preserve its own status, the former slave-owning class sought to create greater distance between itself and blacks. Social segregation was the result.

The goal of segregation could not be accomplished without a means of determining who exactly was to be segregated. The latter was important because of the existence of mixed individuals. Though the South had its own tradition of the color line, which was based largely on physical appearance, it would end up with a much more indiscriminate treatment of black ancestry: the one-drop rule.

The Phipps case is significant because it marked an instance where the one-drop rule replaced the color line. This struggle between the older color line and the one-drop rule had been going on since the end of slavery. The one-drop rule embraced the extent to which the color line had segregated black ancestry, but went much further. Where the color line--as its name suggests--was based largely on appearance, the one-drop rule--again, as its name suggests--demanded that even imperceptible amounts of black ancestry must alienate individuals forever from white ancestry. The color line had been enforced by whites, the one-drop rule would be enforced by blacks. The Phipps case marked, literally, a changing of the guards, the handing over of responsibility for racial segregation from whites to blacks.

This victory of the one-drop rule was an important milestone in the balance of power between blacks and whites. The two populations had been in conflict with each other since their fateful encounter. Each demonized the other’s ancestry, one socially, the other morally, producing two sides to the “one-drop rule.” On one end, whites viewed black ancestry as socially degrading. This is the traditional “one-drop rule” or color line. But there was a black backlash to complement this.

Blacks saw any acknowledgement of white ancestry as morally reprehensible. They could not help receiving the mixed race who were rejected by the color line, but they could denounce those who acknowledged white ancestry. In other words, blacks made a claim of moral superiority against the white claim of social superiority. It is this latter version, the black form of the “one-drop rule,” that would prevail, displacing the color line based on appearance that had been used by whites.

The color line was not a new invention of American slavery. Before the Civil War, the attitude in the New World toward blacks was similar to that toward other subjugated populations throughout history. Like Africans in Arab and Boer Africa, like aborigines in Australia, and like Dravidians in ancient India, black ancestry was accepted into the ruling class, but not blacks themselves.

What was unprecedented in history was the moral backlash to slavery that occurred in North America. The defense of the lowest level of society surpassed what had occurred earlier in Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. It would stamp black ancestry with a moral authority that has remained to this day, imbuing it with such moral force that, in essence, it gave it a soul. This moral authority would inspire one of the great military campaigns in history: the American Civil War. It would ride with the Union Army south, and be just as victorious.

The abolitionist movement made a claim of moral superiority against the white claim of social superiority. Just as at the time the Federal government was conscripting citizens to fight in the Union Army, so the abolitionist movement was conscripting multiracials by appealing to racial conscience. Here also was laid the foundation for the later popular literary theme of the “tragic mulatto” who always met with misfortune when identifying as white. The one-drop rule did not have an obscure origin, but came out of this very public sermonizing against slavery.

The one-drop rule was a claim of moral superiority because it demanded moral authority from all black ancestry without exception, and denied it to all white ancestry without exception. The result was that white ancestry was cast as so morally depraved, it could no longer hold its own in the proximity of black ancestry.

There is definitely a moral authority to the black struggle in America. That cannot be denied in itself, or as a reason why the one-drop rule gained nationwide acceptance. Black identity, even employing the one-drop rule, was as convinced of its rightness as white identity was convinced of its social superiority. Multiracials were drawn to it as much from appeal as from the fear of denouncement.

The one-drop rule was simply on the winning side of the Civil War. Before the war, multiracials were either black or white. But the war was fought to vindicate those whose black ancestry had assigned them the same fate as blacks. Those who carried a white identity were defeated. It is this victory of the black identified multiracial that lies at the foundation of the present day one-drop rule.

In legally implementing the one-drop rule, the South was surrendering to the North and accepting its conditions. Where before black ancestry had been impotent, now it had become the symbol of a great victory and a victorious army, and a reminder to the South of it’s defeat, a defeat it would not be able to live down for generations.

It was inevitable that the lines along which the South erected social segregation was the one-drop rule with which the North had enshrined black ancestry. The Union Army had pillaged and burned the South in the name of abolition. It was this which cowed the South into accepting the one-drop rule.

The one-drop rule was the conscience left behind by the Union Army when it retreated. It remained to spook the South, to have it purge itself of black ancestry (real and imagined), and thereby its compassion.

The South would stubbornly continue to resist the North’s integrationist demands. Even after <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> when segregation was removed, the one-drop rule did not disappear, but revealed its true home in the black community, and its motivation in claims of moral superiority.


<i>Denial of multiracial heritage</i>

In refusing to see Mrs. Phipps as a victim of Jim Crow, the defense was asserting that the one-drop rule was not a product of the tradition of white discrimination, but of the black liberation movement.

Unlike the color line which was based in social status considerations, the one-drop rule is based in moral considerations. But this does not redeem it. The commitment to the one-drop rule has made the black liberation movement intolerant of the very diversity it demands of the white tradition. Its use of the one-drop rule recalls the way Christians once imposed their identity on Jews during the Spanish Inquisition.

The fact that blacks think such intolerance of diversity is justifiable, shows the extent to which the black tradition has been democratized. While this and other minority traditions have demanded inclusion into the mainstream society--and so have forced democratization upon it--they themselves have not had to open up their own traditions.

Whites have been sensitized to diversity much more than blacks, and are more likely to refrain from applying the one-drop rule once it is pointed out to them. Those that continue to apply it, almost always do so in deference to blacks. Of course, those who readily become sensitized to the one-drop rule may be welcoming the lifting of the moral sanction that has been placed on white ancestry. But while whites have had to give ground on their traditional claims to social superiority, blacks have not had to similarly give ground on their own claims to moral superiority.

The one-drop rule is a claim of superiority as intolerant in the moral realm of white ancestry, as white claims of superiority was intolerant in the social realm of black ancestry. The result is that citizens of a modern democracy are compelled to obey the mores of a minority tradition that lacks the sensitivity and sensibility that come with a democratic heritage.


Unconstitutionality of the one-drop rule

The second major shortcoming of Mrs. Phipps’ counsel was not to identify a specific civil right or constitutional guarantee that was denied her. Without this, her counsel could level only the abstract charge of racism, rather than speak to actual discrimination.


<i>The First Amendment</i>

The First Amendment is not only the most logical choice on which to challenge segregation because both concern freedom of association, it is also the most logical choice on which to challenge the one-drop rule because both concern ideology--its imposition and the freedom from it.

The First Amendment grants to Mrs. Phipps the freedom to express the most basic social truths about herself--her heritage, her family and her body. Not even the U.S. Government may suppress such basic realities about a person, yet that is exactly what was done.

The original intent of the First Amendment is clear. It was because religion had a tendency to limit speech that congress was not allowed to endorse it. Religion itself limited speech because its truth was revealed, and did not allow the reason that doubt, debate and dissent brought, which was the way that congress was to arrive at its laws.

It was the irrational--embraced through faith and belief--that congress needed to avoid. This, however, is the nature of the one-drop rule. This rule makes claims that can only be embraced on faith. Not only is there no evidence for its claims that black ancestry exists as an essence, is incompatible with every other ancestry, and is deterministic in behavior and psychology, but all the evidence that science has accumulated positively disproves them.

The argument that race is social and cultural perceptions that need not be grounded in any evidence automatically qualifies it as an ideology akin to religious notions like creationism. The First Amendment is circumvented when the state seeks to pass off as factual truth what is so clearly moral allegiance to a belief system.

For the state to wield this distorting ideology means that ordinary citizens are hopelessly overruled in expressing primary truths about themselves and their society, and this can only be seen as an undue restriction on their First Amendment freedoms.

Mrs. Phipps’ counsel was right in that Mrs. Phipps’ race was what it appeared to be, white, and that it was the defense, who assumed it was something beyond appearances, who needed to prove otherwise; that what is seen does not have to be proven, but what is unseen and believed to exist that must be proven. It was the defense who needed to prove that this deep-race, which defied appearances, exists, and how it came to be through the one-drop rule, of which one version was the 1970 one thirty-second statute.

Whatever science may say about race, it is certain that the deep-race produced by the one-drop rule does not exist, that all its properties are false: that there is no genetic essence to any human population, that there is no incompatibility among human genetic inheritance, and that there is no determinism to this inheritance that differentiates human populations.

Multiracials are no more a part of the black race than they are a part of the white race. Social and cultural perceptions that deny basic realities, and the First Amendment guarantees to these realities, amount to a social program of disinformation, and must not be indulged in by any level of the government.

The actual original birth certificate is a historical record and should not be altered, but as such it belongs in a museum. For the state which gives Mrs. Phipps the right to express her conscience and preserve her person in so reasonable a way by designating herself as white, to then issue her a working document that undermines that right and continues the ignorance of a repudiated era, is a gross contradiction.


<i>The Fourth and Fifth Amendments</i>

The segregation of racial ancestries, or in other words, the one-drop rule, may seem trivial to many (including the U.S. Supreme Court), but they must remember that this segregation applies to real individuals, to people who must acknowledge it in themselves.

It is the neighborhood of one’s own body, the institution of one’s own family, and the society of one’s own heritage that one must suffer the indignity and even inhumanity of being evicted from because it is deemed too excusive, too high-born and too cultured. For such persons, Fourth and Fifth Amendments’ concerns of right to privacy cannot but become powerful and undeniable, for it is one’s own person, one’s very self that one is deprived of and made insecure in.

How can you be secure in your person when nine-tenths of what you are are taken without permission and for no crime committed? How can you be secure in your papers when your very first paper, the one that recorded your birth, is a deliberate untruth? How can you be secure in your house when nine-tenths of your inheritance are taken because you are deemed by illegitimate birth to deserve only one-tenth? How can you be secure in your effects when nine-tenths of what you identify with are denied you, and you are told to compensate by loving the remaining one-tenth nine times as much? How is your person respected when you are compelled to alienate and contradict yourself?

One may object that these are ancestral considerations and do not pertain to the immediate context of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments--to one’s physical person, house and material possessions. The response must be that too much of what a person is, both physically and culturally, comes through ancestry to deny that ancestry is an inseparable part of one’s person; too much of what is termed “way of life” for any government to be contradicting and alienating ancestry.

There can be no doubt that it is one’s person that is invaded. There can be no doubt that it is one’s private possessions that are seized. And though these searches and seizures are psychological in nature, make no mistake about it, they are searches and seizures, and they are unreasonable, and no less destroy the security in one’s person.

The white parentage of the multiracial community is a simple fact. Denying it is the error recorded on the original birth certificate and that needed to be corrected. To claim that the racial character of the child is important enough to be recorded--that it is the clearest indicator of genetically determined medical conditions-- and then claim that that character is so whimsical (so “subjective”) that it can be alienated and contradicted is not only nonsensical, but injurious to the person of Mrs. Phipps. To claim to record the racial birth of a child on, of all things, a birth certificate, but to deny the child’s racial paternity is error of the first degree.

This contradiction in the defense argument concerning the central notion of race--that race is both real and not real, both objective and subjective--this alone must undermine the defense case. If the court wished to preserve racial data as a legitimate record, it could only do so on the basis of biological inheritance. In that case, a white identity for Mrs. Phipps and her parents on her birth certificate would have been appropriate.


<i>The Fourteenth Amendment</i>

The legal enforcement of the one-drop rule, as in the Phipps case, defers to black interests. What are the advantages for blacks in advocating the one-drop rule? First of all, the one-drop rule neutralizes a lot of whiteness that could potentially be used against blacks. And secondly, it gains a lot of human capital to promote and defend black interests. The problem with using the one-drop rule to gain these advantages is that it violates individual freedoms.

In the first instance--in neutralizing whiteness--you are using a methodology to combat discrimination in multiracials that is different from the one--the law--that is used to combat discrimination in whites; you are presuming multiracials guilty before they act. That is a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In the second instance--gaining human capital--you are deciding that some people, and not others, are obligated to support a particular cause. However noble the cause, this has no legal justification. In this instance it is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The designation “colored” denies and suppresses the reality of multiracial heritage. White identity reflected the greater truth of Mrs. Phipps and her parents’ social reality; and it made sense for purposes of tracing genetically determined medical conditions, white being their overwhelming genetic inheritance. This last would be lost to a medical researcher looking at birth records. It would lead to unequal access to medical treatment not because of personal bias on the part of medical practitioners but because of a policy of the state, thereby violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection requirement.

Even if one assumes the best of intentions on the part of the defense, that race denotes vulnerability to the discrimination that mere knowledge of an unseen ancestry can bring, that would not change the fact that First, Fourth and Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments freedoms are denied. In that case, one would be asking the multiracial person to give up some rights in order to gain others. It does not take much to see that that, also, runs contrary to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The problem of classification with respect to discrimination is not difficult at all to resolve. Because the one-drop rule denies constitutional freedoms, it cannot be used as a basis for classification. But there is no need to look any further than the term “multiracial.” This term would play the same role for Mrs. Phipps as any ethnic term does for whites (Irish, Italian, Semitic, etc.). Sub-sections of the white community are no strangers to discrimination from the mainstream, yet their ethnic ancestries (which are the reason for discrimination) are not seen as being incompatible with white identity, nor is it seen as the necessary basis for an identity that would ensure Fourteenth Amendment protection.


Summary of reargument

Error, then, has been shown as distortion and even outright denial of irrefutable realities, leading to the violation of as many as Four Amendments--the First, Fourth and Fifth, and Fourteenth--and three classes of rights: freedom of conscience and expression, the right to privacy, and equal protection and due process of the law.

Very specifically, there are three constitutional objections to the one-drop rule and the identities derived from it:

1) They define a demonstrably nonfactual ideology and violate the First Amendment’s requirement that, as such, they can only be voluntary.

2) They are an unreasonable invasion and expropriation of one’s person, denying the minimal independence and autonomy granted by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

3) They are a non-legal means to achieve legal ends--curtailing discrimination, and so violate the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

By falsifying biological inheritance they create unequal access to medical information and ultimately to medical treatment, thereby denying the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection of the laws.

None of these violations are any less an injury to an individual’s psychological constitution than the segregation from others of a different race that <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> asserted. Nor are these four Amendments any less critical to an individual’s success in our society than the education that was the subject of <i>Brown</i>. To be alienated from one’s own self, to be contradicted in the most intuitive understanding of one’s self, to be denied a coherent language of identity, all by the state--for all other groups this is seen as a serious injury to the individual’s sense of wholeness, and so to her success in life. Only with regard to multiracials does this alienation and contradiction of one’s self not elicit sympathy, but merely hardens the hearts of everyone. Yet, how could this not be rejected by the constitution’s guarantee of security in one’s person?


5. Conclusion

Four ideas were argued in this essay. 1) that the origins of the literal one-drop rule is in the black liberation movement, rather than the white tradition of discrimination; 2) that the ancestry segregation of the one-drop rule and social segregation are based equally in claims of superiority; 3) that the <i>Plessy</i> decision and social segregation are most convincingly rejected on the basis of the First Amendment; and 4) that the legal application of the one-drop rule is an explicit violation of constitutional freedoms, in particular the First Amendment.

This line of reasoning, I believe, would have allowed the court to see the discriminatory nature of the one-drop rule. Mrs. Phipps’ counsel did argue that the one-drop rule was racist, but this did not impress itself on the court. I believe that that is because the court instinctively understood the one-drop rule to be a product of the black liberation movement, while Mrs. Phipps counsel saw it as a product of the tradition of white discrimination.

The charge of racism held no weight with the court because racism is judged relative to blacks, and the court knew that the one-drop rule is endorsed by the black community. What Mrs. Phipps’ counsel needed to argue against was the general intolerance to multiracial heritage--exemplified by the “colored” designation on the birth certificate--and which is a violation of the freedom of conscience and freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment.


Notes

<a href=http://backintyme.com/ODR/viewtopic.php?t=512>A Brief History of Social Identity: From Kinship to Multirace (New York, iUniverse Inc., 2005).</a>

<a href=http://members.aol.com/rfraz34007/SusieGuilloryPhippsLegalCase.html> Phipps case article </a>

The section on the history of the one-drop rule was revised--to reflect the distinction between a color line and one-drop rule--after reading Frank W. Sweet’s essays <a href=http://backintyme.com/Essay060101.htm >”Why Did Virginia’s Rulers Invent a Color Line?” and “Why Did One-Drop Become Nationwide Tradition?”</a> The perspective expressed in this revision owes much to A. D. Powell’s--which I have been reading for many years now, that it is “liberals and blacks” who enforce the one-drop rule-- but projected back to an earlier and more formative period in the history of the one-drop rule. The debt to Frank W. Sweet is not only in the distinction between the color line and one-drop rule. Frank’s citing of Nat Turner’s rebellion and the fear it created in whites allowed me to cite the Civil War as a greater cause of that fear. In general, Frank’s essays forced me to refine my understanding of the one-drop rule. The result (somewhat contrary to the essays), is that I now find the ultimate origins of the one-drop rule in the fact that this rule is exactly a claim of moral superiority as intolerant of whiteness in the moral realm as white claims to social superiority was intolerant of blackness in the social realm.

The First Amendment--
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for
a redress of grievances.

The Fourth Amendment--
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Fifth Amendment--
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The Thirteenth Amendment--
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The Fourteenth Amendment--
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The “fractional” statement of the constitution--
Article I, Section 2.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, <u>three fifths of all other Persons</u>.

<a href=http://www.thisnation.com/library/plessy.html><i>Plessy v. Ferguson</i></a>

<a href=http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/36.htm><i>Brown v. Board of Education</i></a>

<i>Brown</i> criticisms:

<a href=http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/brown.html> The <i>Brown</i> Decision
by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton </a>

<a href=http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/summer2004/uhlmann.html> The Road Not Taken: <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> at 50
By Michael M. Uhlmann </a>

<a href=http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0408b.asp> How <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> Throttled Black Schooling
by Sheldon Richman, Posted November 17, 2004</a>

<a href=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html><i>Loving v. Virginia</i></a>

<a href=http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/6.htm> Constitution of the United States (including Bill of Rights and Amendments)</a>

<a href=http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/demo.htm> Basic Readings in U.S. Democracy </a>

The following statement show a great deal of hypocrisy. No one says that Mexican Americans were "obsessed" when they insisted on getting racially classified from "Mexican" to "white" (despite the fact that most of them had FAR less white ancestry than Ms. Phipps.

her birth certificate showed the race of both parents as "Col." - colored. Mrs. Phipps responded with disbelief, shock and later said that "she was sick for 3 days.

I might also add that Southerners are traditionally raised with the idea that "white race" and "honor" and one and the same. I'm sure Mr. Westholz would have been equally "obsessed" if someone had identified him or his family as "colored" or "black."..........................
I also dispute the nonsense that the state had proved that Ms. Phipps' birth certificate was "correct." Westholz admitted that the state had no interest in changing other documents that identified Mr. Phipps and her children and siblings as "white," so that in itself was an admission that "white" is not as "pure" as the Louisiana statute claimed.

I also note that Ms. Phipps' and her courage should be given credit for embarassing the Louisiana legislature into eliminating its "1/32 black" statute:

If the blacks and mulattoes in Louisiana had supported Ms. Phipps, she would have won instead of being made to defend herself against charges as ridiculous as those faced by part-Jews during the Third Reich.
However, they were too dense to realize how the statute degraded them and proclaimed their blood too "inferior" to mix with whites (as opposed to American Indian blood, for example). Frankly, too many may enjoy the idea of seeing a Susie Guillory Phipps and other mixed whites pulled down instead of raising themselves up and proclaiming their genetic equality with whites.

How is it that I see a social injustice done, but others see an unflattering bid for prestige?

*sigh*

Once again A.D powell finds some way to degrade blacks; implying that they're just too "dense" to know any better and support Ms. Phipps case.

Nobody with any sense, that didnt have something better to do, would care about Ms. Phipps trivial case.... it was hardly of any social importance, or relevance.

The Phipps case went down as "trivial," as a states' rights vital stats detail with no justiciable federal question recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, because Black community "leaders" evidently shared Phil345's attitude.

I can see Ms. Powell's logic. Mexican-Americans in the 1930s-1950s and also Jews after the end of World War II obviously realized Powell's point too. The former even rejected their own "Mexican" racial designation in 1940. Jews, after the War used their leverage not to solidify an "aggrieved Jewish race" (albeit that's happened some since Multiculturalism), but instead they put to rest once-and-for-all the allegations they were "not white," or even "non-Aryan." If "black leaders" were serious about racial inequality they would seize on every case, such as Mrs. Phipps's, to break up the idea the African-ancestry Americans are any different from any other Americans.

What Phil345 and "black leaders" seem unable to grasp is that our U.S. "different races," endogamous "color line" paradigm is stigmatizing. It is a damnable caste-system. One does not effectively rebut its slanders by "uplifting" the "black caste" (least of all on European "blood"). However, this seems all these "leaders" think about. The whole idea behind our U.S. "different races" is the inequality elevating "whites" and casting down "blacks" on each compared measure. (Hunting for "inequality" is part of this game, of course.) Why "black leaders" struggle to elevate "black" for matching as an "equal-different" "race" (or separate-but-equal?) is a question with but two answers by my logic: (1) Powell's suggestion, they are "too dense" to see logic plain to (earlier) Mexicans and Jews; (2) (my sad theory) they are too full of hate -- they hate "whites" so much, also are so filled with self-hatred for their own darkness & features (i.e., I think they gulped down some KKK-slanders of themselves; & what's this ghoulish craving for "white blood" that's hypodescent/ODR?) -- "leaders" are too full of themselves or of black racism to move ahead with racial integration. This is not smart. It evokes Powell's "too dense" to let go of their hate or do what is best for their own as a mistakenly "classified" people.
George

After all, the legal separation of races system had been dismantled. The racial designations on her birth certificate hadn't affected her life for the previous 43 years. Susie Guillory Phipps had lived as a white woman, was recorded as white on her children's birth certificates and when her parents died, she had identified them as white on the death certificates. She had brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews who lived as white people. No one had challenged any of that. Virtually nobody even knew what her birth certificate said.

The Appeals Court further stated" Individual racial designations are purely social and cultural perceptions, and the evidence conclusively proves those subjective perceptions were correctly recorded at the time appellants' birth certificates were issued."

Why "black leaders" struggle to elevate "black" for matching as an "equal-different" "race" (or separate-but-equal?) is a question with but two answers by my logic: (1) Powell's suggestion, they are "too dense" to see logic plain to (earlier) Mexicans and Jews; (2) (my sad theory) they are too full of hate -- they hate "whites" so much, also are so filled with self-hatred for their own darkness & features (i.e., I think they gulped down some KKK-slanders of themselves) -- "leaders" are too full of themselves or of black racism to move ahead with racial integration. This is not smart. It evokes Powell's "too dense" to let go of their hate or do what is best for their own as a mistakenly "classified" people.

I must say that X has quite a fixation on hispanics.
Once again X finds some way to degrade blacks
Y completely overlooks the real issue at hand, only to digress (like X) into vilifying assertions of black "self hatred" --- which is by the way, very transparent.
I do, however, compliment the creativity of said posters, who are able to find ways to connect any topic - no matter how unrelated, to the recurring theme here in the ODR forum, that is the problem of blacks.

Is any adult in the U.S. really dense enough to think that the "historical documents" known as birth certificates are NOT changed every day in this country to correct errors of fact?

Read White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana, by Virginia R Dominguez, 1986 -- Rutgers University Press. Dominguez relates how Naomi Drake (Louisiana's answer to Walter Plecker of Virginia), continually CHANGED birth certificates that had listed people as "white" to "Negro." This was based on a list kept by the state of Louisiana of white people suspected of having "Negro blood." She resisted even when courts ordered her to change the racial classification back to "white."

I have also read biographies and autobiographies of black-identified folks insisting that relatives' birth and death certificates be changed from "white" to "black." The authorities usually changed documents upon the relatives' insistence.

Hispanics are the proof that the real problem of the "one drop rule" in this country is not "white racism" or fear of contamination from "black blood." If you truly believe that "black blood" destroys whiteness, why should you care whether said "inferior" blood come via the American South, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Peru or the Dominican Republic?

I might question the "obsession" of Hispanics and American blacks who are so dedicated to protecting Hispanics from the stigma of the "black race" in whose equality they CLAIM to believe.

Willaim Javier Nelson often wrote about the hypocrisy of American blacks and Latinos on this issue:

http://www.interracialvoice.com/nelson2.html

http://www.interracialvoice.com/javier10.html

http://www.interracialvoice.com/javier12.html

Winwinkel completely overlooks the real issue at hand regarding Ms. Phipps case, only to digress (like A.D Powell) into vilifying assertions of black "self hatred" --- which is by the way, very transparent.

Individual racial designations are purely social and cultural perceptions ....

I fail to see how Mrs. Phipps case was of any social importance, was not trivial, and why "black leaders" (or anybody) should care."

social injustice??!!

<i>If injustice is real, then it can be shown to violate universal principles of justice.</i>

Summary of reargument.

Error, then, has been shown as distortion and even outright denial of irrefutable realities, leading to the violation of as many as Four Amendments--the First, Fourth and Fifth, and Fourteenth--and three classes of rights: freedom of conscience and expression, the right to privacy, and equal protection of the law.

Very specifically, there are three constitutional objections to the one-drop rule and the identities derived from it:

1) They define a demonstrably nonfactual ideology and violate the First Amendment’s requirement that, as such, they can only be voluntary.

2) They are an unreasonable invasion and expropriation of one’s person, denying the minimal independence and autonomy granted by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

3) By falsifying biological inheritance they create unequal access to medical information and ultimately to medical treatment, thereby denying the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection of the laws.

The Phipps case is significant because it marked a final sealing of the color line, the point at which the one-drop rule became literally true. With the one thirty-second statute there was a point at which the traced amount of black ancestry, though real, became immaterial, a point at which it was seen to lose its believed properties of essence and determinism. Now, if it is shown that one’s black ancestry is less than one thirty second, one would not be able to change a “colored” designation on a birth certificate, as Mrs. Phipps desired, since by law there is no point at which whiteness escapes blackness.

Segregation was the legacy of slavery. It had sought to preserve as much of the alienation of slavery as was possible. Segregation, too, would have its legacy--the one-drop rule--which now seeks to preserve as much of the alienation of segregation as is possible.

Segregation was the central concern of the <i>Plessy</i> and <i>Brown</i> cases. Both these cases, however, would leave unfinished business. The <i>Plessy</i> decision had admitted that the question of the identity of the plaintiff Plessy--who was of mixed race, but by the one-drop rule was classified as “colored”--was an important one, and may have undermined its own argument, but was improperly put, not being the central concern of the plaintiff. <i>Brown</i> would avoid this question entirely. It would be the central concern of the Phipps case.

I myself am not saying that anyone <i>should</i> care. What I say (in “Rearguing the Phipps Case”, above) is that the Phipps case is <i>historically</i> significant.

Read White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana, by Virginia R Dominguez, 1986 -- Rutgers University Press. Dominguez relates how Naomi Drake (Louisiana's answer to Walter Plecker of Virginia), continually CHANGED birth certificates that had listed people as "white" to "Negro." This was based on a list kept by the state of Louisiana of white people suspected of having "Negro blood." She resisted even when courts ordered her to change the racial classification back to "white."

I have also read biographies and autobiographies of black-identified folks insisting that relatives' birth and death certificates be changed from "white" to "black." The authorities usually changed documents upon the relatives' insistence.

Rest assured that certain people don't give a damn about changing "historical documents" as long as those changes don't elevate NON-HISPANIC MULTIRACIAL WHITES above the "black" category.

Hispanics are the proof that the real problem of the "one drop rule" in this country is not "white racism" or fear of contamination from "black blood." If you truly believe that "black blood" destroys whiteness, why should you care whether said "inferior" blood come via the American South, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Peru or the Dominican Republic?

I would not want to get Phil345 wrong. Is "black 'self hatred' --- which is ... very transparent" Phil345's agreeing that this self-hatred problem is true?

However, I would not say Phipps hadn't a leg to stand on, as Phil345 implies. First, she was petitioning to correct her own birth certificate, not her parents' certificates or anyone else's.

She had standing (a key legal prerequisite). She doubtless had supportive precedent in birth certificate error-correction law -- other cases, other states.

Phil345 characterizes Phipps's petition "trivial." But Mrs. Phipps testified it was important to her. Who does Phil345 think ought to have superior standing whereby to dispute Susie Guillory Phipps's about this dubious-truth detail on her own birth certificate?
I cannot think of anyone in the world "outranking" her interest, regardless right or wrong about a "race" abbreviation.

If Phil345 thinks state interest in historically correct "races" or bean-counts of them supersedes Ms. Phipps's choice on this vital record of her own "race," on her own birth certificate, I will leave to Phil345 to try to explain it?

Our complaint is the "black leaders" never see any opportunity to break out of the pariah caste of attributed "differentness" that is "Black" in the U.S.A. A better legal-social lever than Phipps's case may come one day. But "black leadership" can be counted on to pull the wrong way every time! Moreover, Phipps's case had possibilities. If one can find the courage to combat the chimera of racism where it lives, then what better start than this "white" woman stigmatized by having a few drops of African "blood" in her veins; her feeling understandably tainted by the ODR?

The facts of Phipps's case clearly show that "black blood" is stigmatizing, hated (even trace amounts!), only because the biasing hypodescent/ODR, an atrocious Jim Crow relic, makes it involuntary.

The state did not act in the interest of preserving correct "races". The court plainly states that "Individual racial designations are purely social and cultural perceptions"; nobody is telling Ms Phipps that she is "black". The issue was that Ms Phipps wanted to change information on a historical record, and needed to show that there was an error made to do so. The evidence showed that the information was correctly recorded at the time the birth certificate was issued, by her parents, in accordance with the "social and cultural perceptions" at the time.

I only wish they would have told her in the court room to her face that she is white; and that nobody is denying that.

This excerpt typifies the inconsistencies riddling Phil345's latest response. He alternately insists that the Phipps birth certificate (i.e. her "black"-endogamous group classification on it) was a correct racial-historical record -- the Louisiana courts shared his view -- alternately Phil345 argues that Phipps "is white." (His emphasis.) Phipps obviously agreed with Phil345. That was why she tried earnestly to correct the plain error on her birth certificate to show "she is white."

Phil345 again shows his inconsistency, reciting "The court plainly states that 'Individual racial designations are purely social and cultural perceptions'; [and] nobody is telling Ms Phipps that she is 'black.'" When Phil345 is not insisting the Phipps birth certificate was a vital racial-factual record, he makes plain here that the court had no true interest in stopping Phipps from correcting her erroneous birth certificate, because as Phil345 proclaims, "she is white."

After all, wasn't the designation "purely social and cultural perception," as Phil345 bold-emphasized?

But Susie Phipps clearly demonstrated the ODR fallacy of mislabeling "black" people as if they come in all colors of people, including some who are "white."
The ODR amounts to a sentence to "blackness." [/i]