One-drop rule
Encyclopedia
The one-drop rule is a historical colloquial term in the United States for the social classification as black
of individuals with any African ancestry; meaning any person with "one drop of black blood" was considered black. The principle was an example of hypodescent
, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status. The one-drop rule was not adopted as law until the twentieth century: first in Tennessee
in 1910 and in Virginia
under the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 (following the passage of similar laws in numerous other states).
Despite the strictures of slavery, in the antebellum
years, free people of mixed race could have up to one-eighth or one-quarter African ancestry (depending on the state) and be considered legally white. More were absorbed into the majority culture based simply on appearance, associations and carrying out community responsibilities. These and community acceptance were more important factors if a person's racial status were questioned, not his or her documented ancestry. The mobility of the society meant that many people did not have documentation about their ancestors. Thomas Jefferson
's four surviving "natural" children by his mixed-race slave Sally Hemings
were seven-eighths European in ancestry and thus legally white although they were born into slavery. Three of the four entered white society as adults, two married white persons, and all their descendants identified as white. Many of later generations of his mixed-race descendants also entered white society, according to their appearance.
In the United States, European Americans usually classified people of partial Native American
descent as Native American, in a similar example of hypodescent. In the early years of these types of unions and marriages, the fathers were usually European and the mothers Native American. Many Native American tribes had matrilineal descent systems, so within those communities, the children were considered by tradition to belong to the mother's clan
. It was tradition for the mother's eldest brother to play a major role in the life of all her children, more important than that of the father within the tribe, as the uncle looked out for the children within his clan
, the father belonging to a different clan. Among such tribes, mixed-race children could be absorbed into the culture, as had been the case traditionally with captives of any race who were adopted.
Among other tribes, such as the Omaha
, which was patrilineal, the full-bloods considered a half-breed
a "white man" if he had a white father, which was their application of hypodescent. Half-breeds could belong officially to the Omaha tribe only if they were adopted into it.
In the United States, the concept of the one-drop rule has been chiefly applied by European Americans to those of sub-Saharan black African ancestry in the aftermath of slavery, as they were trying to impose white supremacy. The poet
Langston Hughes
wrote in his 1940 memoir:
, many people of mixed ancestry who "looked white" and were of mostly white ancestry were legally absorbed into the white majority. State laws established differing standards. For instance, in 1822 Virginia law stated that to be defined as "mulatto
" (that is, multi-racial), a person had to have at least one-quarter (equivalent to one grandparent) African ancestry. This was a looser definition than the state's twentieth-century "one-drop rule" under the 1924 Racial Integrity Act. This defined a person as legally "colored" (black) for classification and legal purposes if the individual had any African ancestry.
The Melungeons are a group of multiracial families of mostly European and African ancestry whose ancestors were free in colonial Virginia. They migrated to the frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee. Their descendants have been documented over the decades as having tended to marry persons classified as "white". Their descendants became assimilated into the majority culture from the nineteenth into the twentieth centuries.
The one-drop rule was made law, chiefly in the U.S. South but also in other states, in the twentieth century – decades after the Civil War, emancipation
and Reconstruction, but following the restoration of white supremacy
in the South and the passage of Jim Crow racial segregation
laws. In the 20th century, it was also associated with the rise of eugenics
and ideas of racial purity. From the late 1870s on, white Democrats
regained political power in the former Confederate states and passed racial segregation
laws controlling public facilities, and laws and constitutions from 1890–1910 to achieve disfranchisement of most blacks. Many poor whites were also disfranchised in these years, by changes to voter registration rules that worked against them, such as literacy tests, longer residency requirements and poll taxes.
The first challenges to such state laws were overruled by US Supreme Court decisions that upheld state constitutions that effectively disfranchised many. White Democratic-dominated legislatures proceeded with passing Jim Crow laws
that instituted racial segregation in public places and accommodations, and passed other restrictive voting legislation. In Plessy v. Ferguson
, the US Supreme Court allowed racial segregation of public facilities, under its "separate but equal" doctrine.
Jim Crow laws reached their greatest influence during the decades from 1910–1930. Among them were hypodescent laws, defining as black anyone with any black ancestry, or with a very small portion of black ancestry. Tennessee
adopted such a "one-drop" statute in 1910, and Louisiana
soon followed. Then Texas
and Arkansas
in 1911, Mississippi
in 1917, North Carolina
in 1923, Virginia
in 1924, Alabama
and Georgia
in 1927, and Oklahoma
in 1931. During this same period, Florida
, Indiana
, Kentucky
, Maryland
, Missouri
, Nebraska
, North Dakota
, and Utah
retained their old "blood fraction" statutes de jure
, but amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirtysecond) to be equivalent to one-drop de facto
.
Before 1930, individuals of visible mixed European and African ancestry were usually classed as mulatto
es, or sometimes as black and sometimes as white, depending on appearance. Previously, most states had limited trying to define ancestry before "the fourth degree" (great-great-grandparents). In 1930, the Census Bureau stopped using the classification of mulatto, so evidence of the long existence of mixed-race people was lost.
Not only did the one-drop rule disregard the self-identification of people of mostly European ancestry who grew up in white communities, but Virginia's application of the 1924 law under Walter Plecker, the state's registrar, who destroyed the records and documented historical continuity of mixed-race people who identified as Native American. Over the centuries, many Native American tribes in Virginia had absorbed people of other ethnicities through marriage or adoption, but maintained their cultures. Suspecting blacks of trying to "pass
" as Indians, Plecker ordered records changed to classify people only as black or white, and ordered offices to reclassify certain family surnames as black. Since the late twentieth century, Virginia has officially recognized eight American Indian tribes; they are trying to gain federal recognition. They have had difficulty because decades of birth, marriage and death records were misclassified under Plecker's application of the law. No one was classified as Indian, although many individuals and families identified that way and were preserving their cultures.
In the case of mixed-race Native American
and European descendants, the one-drop rule in Virginia was extended only so far as those with more than one-sixteenth Indian blood. This was due to what was known as the "Pocahontas
exception." Since many influential First Families of Virginia
(FFV) claimed descent from the American Indian Pocahontas
and her husband John Rolfe
of the colonial era, the Virginia General Assembly
declared that an individual could be considered white if having no more than one-sixteenth Indian "blood" (the equivalent of one great-great-grandparent).
The eugenicist Madison Grant
of New York wrote in his book, The Passing of the Great Race
(1916): "The cross between a white man and an Indian
is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu
is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew." As noted above, Native American tribes such as the Omaha, that had patrilineal descent and inheritance, classified the children of white men and Native American as white in the same way.
Through the 1940s, Walter Plecker of Virginia and Naomi Drake
of Louisiana
had an outsize influence. As the Registrar of Statistics, Plecker insisted on labeling mixed-race families of European-African ancestry as black. 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." A subtext was the assumption that Blacks were somehow "improved" through White admixture. In the 1930s and 1940s, Plecker directed offices under his authority to change vital records and reclassify certain families as colored (without notifying them) after Virginia established a binary system under its Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He also classified people who had formerly self-identified as Indian, as black. When the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed Virginia's ban on inter-racial marriage in Loving v. Virginia
(1967), it also declared Plecker's Virginia Racial Integrity Act
and the one-drop rule unconstitutional.
Many people in the US, among various ethnic groups, continue to have their own concepts related to the one-drop ideas. They may still consider multiracial
individuals with any African ancestry to be black, or at least non-white (if the person has other minority ancestry), unless the person explicitly identifies as white. Today's ideas have also been influenced by the Black Power Movement and leaders within the black community, who have claimed as black those persons with any African ancestry, regardless of how they self-identified. In the late 20th and early 21st century, writers such as A.D. Powell, who is multiracial, considers such "claiming" to be another kind of one-drop rule, which ignores people's life experiences, their community, and how they choose to identify themselves.
, emancipation
of slaves, and Reconstruction. In the late nineteenth century, Southern whites regained political power and restored white supremacy
, passing Jim Crow laws and establishing racial segregation
by law. By constitutional amendments and voter registration rules, they disfranchised most of the blacks, maintaining white political power in most Southern states, even those that were majority black, into the 1960s.
In the twentieth century, during the Black Power Movement, leaders claimed all people of any African ancestry as black in a reverse way, to establish political power. People in many other countries have tended to treat race less rigidly, both in their self-identification and how they regard others. 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 Brazil
, even if mixed race.
In colonial Spanish America
, many soldiers and explorers took indigenous
women as wives, and although in time men were able to bring Spanish women to the colonies, these were always a minority. The colonists developed an elaborate classification and caste system
that identified the combinations of black, Amerindian and white by different names, related to appearance and known ancestry. Racial caste not only depended on ancestry or skin color, but also could be raised or lowered by the person's financial status or class.
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
('Boston Public
' and 'The Office') and Lena Horne
are identified as black in the United States."
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."
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. "'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 many are not considered black in their homelands, they have often been considered black in US society. According to the Washington Post, their refusal to accept the United States' definition of black has left many feeling attacked from all directions. At times, white Americans might discriminate against them for their darker skin; African Americans might believe that Afro-Latino
immigrants are denying their blackness; and they think lighter-skinned Latinos
dominate Spanish-language television and media. A majority of Latin Americans
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 having to transform 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."
Professor J.B. Bird has said that Latin America is not alone in rejecting the historical United States' notion that 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." This shows that the perception of race, particularly concerning people of African heritage, is relative to different societies and individuals.
An interesting anecdote to consider was that during this whole period, Puerto Rico
had laws like the Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar where a person of black ancestry could be considered legally white so long as they could prove that at least one person per generation in the last four generations had also been legally white. Therefore people of black ancestry with known white lineage were classified as white, the opposite of the "one-drop rule" in the United States.
. The specialists summarized United States population figures this way:
Mark D. Shriver
, a molecular anthropologist at Penn State University, has studied population with a team of researchers. In 2002 they published results of a study regarding the racial admixture of Americans who identified as white or black. They recorded the individual's self-identification and analyzed the genetic make-up of their chromosomes. Their results are estimates and might not be completely accurate. Other researchers have also done population studies.
Shriver surveyed a 3,000-person sample from 25 locations in the United States and tested subjects for genetic make-up. Among those who self-identified as white, the black racial admixture was about 0.7%; which is the equivalent of having 1 black and 127 white ancestors among one's 128 5xgreat-grandparents. Nationwide, Shriver estimates that 70% of white Americans have no African ancestors (in part because of the greatly increased immigration from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Among the 30% who do have African ancestry, Shriver estimates their black racial admixture is 2.3%; the equivalent of having had 3 black ancestors among their 128 5xgreat-grandparents.
Blacks are more racially mixed than whites, reflecting historical experience in the United States, including the close living and working conditions among colonial indentured servants, both black and white, and slaves, when many married or formed unions. Most of the free African-American families in Virginia in colonial years were the descendants of white women and African men. After the American Revolutionary War
, their descendants migrated to nearby states along with other Virginia pioneers. The admixture also reflects conditions under slavery, when white planters or their sons, or overseers, often took sexual advantage of African women. There were also freely chosen relationships among individuals of different or mixed races.
Shriver's study is not complete. In his study, of those persons who identified as black, their total ancestry reveals 18% white ancestry, the equivalent of having 22 white ancestors among the 128 5xgreat-grandparents. About 10% of blacks have more than 50% white ancestors. Population studies by researchers other than Shriver have found that in general, blacks had an average white ancestry of 25–30%.
Shriver points out that his survey found different admixture rates by region, which would also reflect historic patterns of settlement and change, both in terms of populations who migrated and their descendants' marriages. For example, the black populations with the highest average white ancestry lived in California and Seattle, both destinations during the Great Migration
of 1940-1970. Blacks sampled in those two locations had more than 25% white European ancestry on average.
, who was of mixed race and grew up in the North, wrote stories and novels about the issues of mixed-race people in southern society in the aftermath of the Civil War.
The one-drop rule and its consequences have been the subject of numerous works of popular culture. In the musical Show Boat
, Steve, a white man who is married to a mixed-race woman (considered black), is pursued by a Southern sheriff, who is going to arrest Steve and charge him with miscegenation
. Steve pricks his wife's finger and swallows some of her blood. When the sheriff arrives, Steve asks him whether he would consider a man to be white if he had "negro blood" in him. The sheriff replies that "one drop of Negro blood makes you a Negro in these parts". Steve tells the sheriff that he has "more than a drop of negro blood in me". After being assured by others that Steve is telling the truth, the sheriff leaves without arresting Steve.
, it became evident that the concept of "race" is not reflected in the human genetic makeup. Although genetic variation reflects genetic ancestry and patterns of human migration, an individual's race cannot be determined by analysis of their DNA. They develop a sense of identity by their family and the community with which they identify. If an individual grows up in an African-American community, he or she is likely to identify with that; and similarly for European-American or Native American cultures. Therefore, while the concept of race exists as a social construct, on a genetic level "race" does not exist:
According to J. Phillipe Rushton who is a major proponent of the distinctiveness of races:
According to Michael Levin
:
Meanwhile, the company DNAPrint Genomics
, while in business until 2009, analyzed DNA to estimate the 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:
Negro
The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...
of individuals with any African ancestry; meaning any person with "one drop of black blood" was considered black. The principle was an example of hypodescent
Hypodescent
In societies that regard some races of people as dominant or superior and others as subordinate or inferior, hypodescent is the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups or ethnic groups to the subordinate group...
, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status. The one-drop rule was not adopted as law until the twentieth century: first in Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
in 1910 and in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
under the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 (following the passage of similar laws in numerous other states).
Despite the strictures of slavery, in the antebellum
History of the United States (1789–1849)
With the election of George Washington as the first president in 1789, the new government acted quickly to rebuild the nation's financial structure. Enacting the program of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the government assumed the Revolutionary war debts of the state and the national...
years, free people of mixed race could have up to one-eighth or one-quarter African ancestry (depending on the state) and be considered legally white. More were absorbed into the majority culture based simply on appearance, associations and carrying out community responsibilities. These and community acceptance were more important factors if a person's racial status were questioned, not his or her documented ancestry. The mobility of the society meant that many people did not have documentation about their ancestors. Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
's four surviving "natural" children by his mixed-race slave Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings
Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...
were seven-eighths European in ancestry and thus legally white although they were born into slavery. Three of the four entered white society as adults, two married white persons, and all their descendants identified as white. Many of later generations of his mixed-race descendants also entered white society, according to their appearance.
In the United States, European Americans usually classified people of partial Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
descent as Native American, in a similar example of hypodescent. In the early years of these types of unions and marriages, the fathers were usually European and the mothers Native American. Many Native American tribes had matrilineal descent systems, so within those communities, the children were considered by tradition to belong to the mother's clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
. It was tradition for the mother's eldest brother to play a major role in the life of all her children, more important than that of the father within the tribe, as the uncle looked out for the children within his clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
, the father belonging to a different clan. Among such tribes, mixed-race children could be absorbed into the culture, as had been the case traditionally with captives of any race who were adopted.
Among other tribes, such as the Omaha
Omaha
Omaha may refer to:*Omaha , a Native American tribe that currently resides in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Nebraska-Places:United States* Omaha, Nebraska* Omaha, Arkansas* Omaha, Georgia* Omaha, Illinois* Omaha, Texas...
, which was patrilineal, the full-bloods considered a half-breed
Half-breed
Half-breed is an historic term used to describe anyone who is mixed Native American and white European parentage...
a "white man" if he had a white father, which was their application of hypodescent. Half-breeds could belong officially to the Omaha tribe only if they were adopted into it.
In the United States, the concept of the one-drop rule has been chiefly applied by European Americans to those of sub-Saharan black African ancestry in the aftermath of slavery, as they were trying to impose white supremacy. The poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
wrote in his 1940 memoir:
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.
Legislation and practice
Both before and after the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, many people of mixed ancestry who "looked white" and were of mostly white ancestry were legally absorbed into the white majority. State laws established differing standards. For instance, in 1822 Virginia law stated that to be defined as "mulatto
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
" (that is, multi-racial), a person had to have at least one-quarter (equivalent to one grandparent) African ancestry. This was a looser definition than the state's twentieth-century "one-drop rule" under the 1924 Racial Integrity Act. This defined a person as legally "colored" (black) for classification and legal purposes if the individual had any African ancestry.
The Melungeons are a group of multiracial families of mostly European and African ancestry whose ancestors were free in colonial Virginia. They migrated to the frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee. Their descendants have been documented over the decades as having tended to marry persons classified as "white". Their descendants became assimilated into the majority culture from the nineteenth into the twentieth centuries.
The one-drop rule was made law, chiefly in the U.S. South but also in other states, in the twentieth century – decades after the Civil War, emancipation
Emancipation
Emancipation means the act of setting an individual or social group free or making equal to citizens in a political society.Emancipation may also refer to:* Emancipation , a champion Australian thoroughbred racehorse foaled in 1979...
and Reconstruction, but following the restoration of white supremacy
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
in the South and the passage of Jim Crow racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
laws. In the 20th century, it was also associated with the rise of eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
and ideas of racial purity. From the late 1870s on, white Democrats
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
regained political power in the former Confederate states and passed racial segregation
Racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...
laws controlling public facilities, and laws and constitutions from 1890–1910 to achieve disfranchisement of most blacks. Many poor whites were also disfranchised in these years, by changes to voter registration rules that worked against them, such as literacy tests, longer residency requirements and poll taxes.
The first challenges to such state laws were overruled by US Supreme Court decisions that upheld state constitutions that effectively disfranchised many. White Democratic-dominated legislatures proceeded with passing Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
that instituted racial segregation in public places and accommodations, and passed other restrictive voting legislation. In Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses , under the doctrine of "separate but equal".The decision was handed...
, the US Supreme Court allowed racial segregation of public facilities, under its "separate but equal" doctrine.
Jim Crow laws reached their greatest influence during the decades from 1910–1930. Among them were hypodescent laws, defining as black anyone with any black ancestry, or with a very small portion of black ancestry. Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
adopted such a "one-drop" statute in 1910, and Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
soon followed. Then Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
and Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
in 1911, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
in 1917, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
in 1923, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
in 1924, Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
and Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
in 1927, and Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
in 1931. During this same period, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
, North Dakota
North Dakota
North Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, along the Canadian border. The state is bordered by Canada to the north, Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west. North Dakota is the 19th-largest state by area in the U.S....
, and Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
retained their old "blood fraction" statutes de jure
De jure
De jure is an expression that means "concerning law", as contrasted with de facto, which means "concerning fact".De jure = 'Legally', De facto = 'In fact'....
, but amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirtysecond) to be equivalent to one-drop de facto
De facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
.
Before 1930, individuals of visible mixed European and African ancestry were usually classed as mulatto
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
es, or sometimes as black and sometimes as white, depending on appearance. Previously, most states had limited trying to define ancestry before "the fourth degree" (great-great-grandparents). In 1930, the Census Bureau stopped using the classification of mulatto, so evidence of the long existence of mixed-race people was lost.
Not only did the one-drop rule disregard the self-identification of people of mostly European ancestry who grew up in white communities, but Virginia's application of the 1924 law under Walter Plecker, the state's registrar, who destroyed the records and documented historical continuity of mixed-race people who identified as Native American. Over the centuries, many Native American tribes in Virginia had absorbed people of other ethnicities through marriage or adoption, but maintained their cultures. Suspecting blacks of trying to "pass
Passing (racial identity)
Racial passing refers to a person classified as a member of one racial group attempting to be accepted as a member of a different racial group...
" as Indians, Plecker ordered records changed to classify people only as black or white, and ordered offices to reclassify certain family surnames as black. Since the late twentieth century, Virginia has officially recognized eight American Indian tribes; they are trying to gain federal recognition. They have had difficulty because decades of birth, marriage and death records were misclassified under Plecker's application of the law. No one was classified as Indian, although many individuals and families identified that way and were preserving their cultures.
In the case of mixed-race Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
and European descendants, the one-drop rule in Virginia was extended only so far as those with more than one-sixteenth Indian blood. This was due to what was known as the "Pocahontas
Pocahontas
Pocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, the head of a network of tributary tribal nations in Tidewater Virginia...
exception." Since many influential First Families of Virginia
First Families of Virginia
First Families of Virginia were those families in Colonial Virginia who were socially prominent and wealthy, but not necessarily the earliest settlers. They originated with colonists from England who primarily settled at Jamestown, Williamsburg, and along the James River and other navigable waters...
(FFV) claimed descent from the American Indian Pocahontas
Pocahontas
Pocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, the head of a network of tributary tribal nations in Tidewater Virginia...
and her husband John Rolfe
John Rolfe
John Rolfe was one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia and is known as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederacy.In 1961, the Jamestown...
of the colonial era, the Virginia General Assembly
Virginia General Assembly
The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the oldest legislative body in the Western Hemisphere, established on July 30, 1619. The General Assembly is a bicameral body consisting of a lower house, the Virginia House of Delegates, with 100 members,...
declared that an individual could be considered white if having no more than one-sixteenth Indian "blood" (the equivalent of one great-great-grandparent).
The eugenicist Madison Grant
Madison Grant
Madison Grant was an American lawyer, historian and physical anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...
of New York wrote in his book, The Passing of the Great Race
The Passing of the Great Race
The Passing of The Great Race; or, The racial basis of European history was an influential book of scientific racism written by the American eugenicist, lawyer, and amateur anthropologist Madison Grant in 1916. The book was largely ignored when it first appeared but went through several revisions...
(1916): "The cross between a white man and an Indian
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu
Historical definitions of races in India
Various attempts have been made, under the British Raj and since, to classify the population of India according to a racial typology. After the independence, in pursuance of the Government's policy to discourage community distinctions based on race, the 1951 Census of India did away with racial...
is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew." As noted above, Native American tribes such as the Omaha, that had patrilineal descent and inheritance, classified the children of white men and Native American as white in the same way.
Through the 1940s, Walter Plecker of Virginia and Naomi Drake
Naomi Drake
Naomi M. Drake was an American who became notable in mid-20th century Louisiana as the Registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics for the City of New Orleans , where she imposed strict racial classifications on people under a binary system that recognized only "white" and "black" She...
of Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
had an outsize influence. As the Registrar of Statistics, Plecker insisted on labeling mixed-race families of European-African ancestry as black. 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." A subtext was the assumption that Blacks were somehow "improved" through White admixture. In the 1930s and 1940s, Plecker directed offices under his authority to change vital records and reclassify certain families as colored (without notifying them) after Virginia established a binary system under its Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He also classified people who had formerly self-identified as Indian, as black. When the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed Virginia's ban on inter-racial marriage in Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia, , was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v...
(1967), it also declared Plecker's Virginia Racial Integrity Act
Racial Integrity Act of 1924
On March 20, 1924 the Virginia General Assembly passed two laws that had arisen out of contemporary concerns about eugenics and race: SB 219, entitled "The Racial Integrity Act" and SB 281, "An ACT to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions in certain cases",...
and the one-drop rule unconstitutional.
Many people in the US, among various ethnic groups, continue to have their own concepts related to the one-drop ideas. They may still consider multiracial
Multiracial
The terms multiracial and mixed-race describe people whose ancestries come from multiple races. Unlike the term biracial, which often is only used to refer to having parents or grandparents of two different races, the term multiracial may encompass biracial people but can also include people with...
individuals with any African ancestry to be black, or at least non-white (if the person has other minority ancestry), unless the person explicitly identifies as white. Today's ideas have also been influenced by the Black Power Movement and leaders within the black community, who have claimed as black those persons with any African ancestry, regardless of how they self-identified. In the late 20th and early 21st century, writers such as A.D. Powell, who is multiracial, considers such "claiming" to be another kind of one-drop rule, which ignores people's life experiences, their community, and how they choose to identify themselves.
Other countries of the Americas
Among the colonial slave societies, the United States was nearly unique in developing the one-drop rule; it derived both from the Southern slave culture (shared by other societies) and the aftermath of the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, emancipation
Emancipation
Emancipation means the act of setting an individual or social group free or making equal to citizens in a political society.Emancipation may also refer to:* Emancipation , a champion Australian thoroughbred racehorse foaled in 1979...
of slaves, and Reconstruction. In the late nineteenth century, Southern whites regained political power and restored white supremacy
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
, passing Jim Crow laws and establishing racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
by law. By constitutional amendments and voter registration rules, they disfranchised most of the blacks, maintaining white political power in most Southern states, even those that were majority black, into the 1960s.
In the twentieth century, during the Black Power Movement, leaders claimed all people of any African ancestry as black in a reverse way, to establish political power. People in many other countries have tended to treat race less rigidly, both in their self-identification and how they regard others. Just as a person with physically recognizable sub-Saharan ancestry can claim to be black in the United States, someone with recognizable Caucasian
Caucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...
ancestry may be considered white in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, even if mixed race.
In colonial Spanish America
Hispanic America
Hispanic America or Spanish America is the region comprising the American countries inhabited by Spanish-speaking populations.These countries have significant commonalities with each other and with Spain, whose colonies they formerly were...
, many soldiers and explorers took indigenous
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
women as wives, and although in time men were able to bring Spanish women to the colonies, these were always a minority. The colonists developed an elaborate classification and caste system
Casta
Casta is a Portuguese and Spanish term used in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly in Spanish America to describe as a whole the mixed-race people which appeared in the post-Conquest period...
that identified the combinations of black, Amerindian and white by different names, related to appearance and known ancestry. Racial caste not only depended on ancestry or skin color, but also could be raised or lowered by the person's financial status or class.
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
ran a story on the one-drop theory. In the reporter's opinion: "Someone with Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier
Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field...
'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
Rashida Jones
Rashida Leah Jones is an American film and television actress, comic book author, screenwriter and occasional singer. She played Louisa Fenn on Boston Public and Karen Filippelli on The Office as well as roles in the films I Love You, Man and The Social Network...
('Boston Public
Boston Public
Boston Public is an American drama television series created by David E. Kelley and broadcast on Fox. It centered on Winslow High School, a fictional public high school located in Boston, Massachusetts. The show was named for the real public school district in which it takes place...
' and 'The Office') and Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
are identified as black in the United States."
According to Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American
Brazilian American
Brazilian Americans are Americans of Brazilian origin. There were an estimated 351,914 Brazilian Americans as of 2008, according to the United States Census Bureau. Another source gives an estimate of some 800,000 Brazilians living in the U.S...
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."
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. "'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
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, and other Latin American nations. Although many are not considered black in their homelands, they have often been considered black in US society. According to the Washington Post, their refusal to accept the United States' definition of black has left many feeling attacked from all directions. At times, white Americans might discriminate against them for their darker skin; African Americans might believe that Afro-Latino
Afro-Latin American
An Afro-Latin American is a Latin American person of at least partial Black African ancestry; the term may also refer to historical or cultural elements in Latin America thought to emanate from this community...
immigrants are denying their blackness; and they think lighter-skinned Latinos
White Hispanic and Latino Americans
White Hispanic and Latino Americans are citizens and residents of the United States who are racially White and ethnically Hispanic or Latino.White American, itself an official U.S...
dominate Spanish-language television and media. A majority of Latin Americans
Latin Americans
Latin Americans are the citizens of the Latin American countries and dependencies. Latin American countries are multi-ethnic, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds. As a result, some Latin Americans don't take their nationality as an ethnicity, but identify themselves with...
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 having to transform from white to black. Yvette Modestin, a dark-skinned native of Panama who worked in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, said the situation was overwhelming: "There's not a day that I don't have to explain myself."
Professor J.B. Bird has said that Latin America is not alone in rejecting the historical United States' notion that any visible African ancestry is enough to make one black: "In most countries of the Caribbean, Colin Powell
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...
would be described as a Creole, reflecting his mixed heritage. In Belize
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...
, he might further be described as a 'High Creole', because of his extremely light complexion." This shows that the perception of race, particularly concerning people of African heritage, is relative to different societies and individuals.
An interesting anecdote to consider was that during this whole period, Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
had laws like the Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar where a person of black ancestry could be considered legally white so long as they could prove that at least one person per generation in the last four generations had also been legally white. Therefore people of black ancestry with known white lineage were classified as white, the opposite of the "one-drop rule" in the United States.
Racial mixtures of blacks and whites in modern America
Given the intense interest in ethnicity, genetic genealogists and other scientists have studied population groups. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. publicized such genetic studies on his two series African American Lives, shown on PBSPublic Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
. The specialists summarized United States population figures this way:
- 58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one great-grandparent);
- 19.6 percent of African Americans have at least 25 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one grandparent);
- 1 percent of African Americans have at least 50 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one parent) (Gates is one of those, he discovered); and
- 5 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5 percent Native American ancestry (equivalent to one great-grandparent).
Mark D. Shriver
Mark D. Shriver
Mark D. Shriver is an American population geneticist. His research is focused on admixture mapping, signatures of natural selection, and phenotypic variability in common trait variation. A major goal of his work is to apply these methods and understanding of genomic variation to studies of common...
, a molecular anthropologist at Penn State University, has studied population with a team of researchers. In 2002 they published results of a study regarding the racial admixture of Americans who identified as white or black. They recorded the individual's self-identification and analyzed the genetic make-up of their chromosomes. Their results are estimates and might not be completely accurate. Other researchers have also done population studies.
Shriver surveyed a 3,000-person sample from 25 locations in the United States and tested subjects for genetic make-up. Among those who self-identified as white, the black racial admixture was about 0.7%; which is the equivalent of having 1 black and 127 white ancestors among one's 128 5xgreat-grandparents. Nationwide, Shriver estimates that 70% of white Americans have no African ancestors (in part because of the greatly increased immigration from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Among the 30% who do have African ancestry, Shriver estimates their black racial admixture is 2.3%; the equivalent of having had 3 black ancestors among their 128 5xgreat-grandparents.
Blacks are more racially mixed than whites, reflecting historical experience in the United States, including the close living and working conditions among colonial indentured servants, both black and white, and slaves, when many married or formed unions. Most of the free African-American families in Virginia in colonial years were the descendants of white women and African men. After the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
, their descendants migrated to nearby states along with other Virginia pioneers. The admixture also reflects conditions under slavery, when white planters or their sons, or overseers, often took sexual advantage of African women. There were also freely chosen relationships among individuals of different or mixed races.
Shriver's study is not complete. In his study, of those persons who identified as black, their total ancestry reveals 18% white ancestry, the equivalent of having 22 white ancestors among the 128 5xgreat-grandparents. About 10% of blacks have more than 50% white ancestors. Population studies by researchers other than Shriver have found that in general, blacks had an average white ancestry of 25–30%.
Shriver points out that his survey found different admixture rates by region, which would also reflect historic patterns of settlement and change, both in terms of populations who migrated and their descendants' marriages. For example, the black populations with the highest average white ancestry lived in California and Seattle, both destinations during the Great Migration
Great Migration (African American)
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...
of 1940-1970. Blacks sampled in those two locations had more than 25% white European ancestry on average.
Allusions
Charles W. ChesnuttCharles W. Chesnutt
Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an American author, essayist, political activist and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South, where the legacy of slavery and interracial relations had resulted in many free...
, who was of mixed race and grew up in the North, wrote stories and novels about the issues of mixed-race people in southern society in the aftermath of the Civil War.
The one-drop rule and its consequences have been the subject of numerous works of popular culture. In the musical Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
, Steve, a white man who is married to a mixed-race woman (considered black), is pursued by a Southern sheriff, who is going to arrest Steve and charge him with miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
. Steve pricks his wife's finger and swallows some of her blood. When the sheriff arrives, Steve asks him whether he would consider a man to be white if he had "negro blood" in him. The sheriff replies that "one drop of Negro blood makes you a Negro in these parts". Steve tells the sheriff that he has "more than a drop of negro blood in me". After being assured by others that Steve is telling the truth, the sheriff leaves without arresting Steve.
Preponderance of ancestry
Increasingly, the one-drop rule and the reverse one-drop rule are being replaced by another methodology of deciding who is black and white. In this definition, a person's race is expressed in terms of where most of their ancestors come from. After the completion of the Human Genome ProjectHuman Genome Project
The Human Genome Project is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional...
, it became evident that the concept of "race" is not reflected in the human genetic makeup. Although genetic variation reflects genetic ancestry and patterns of human migration, an individual's race cannot be determined by analysis of their DNA. They develop a sense of identity by their family and the community with which they identify. If an individual grows up in an African-American community, he or she is likely to identify with that; and similarly for European-American or Native American cultures. Therefore, while the concept of race exists as a social construct, on a genetic level "race" does not exist:
According to J. Phillipe Rushton who is a major proponent of the distinctiveness of races:
According to Michael Levin
Michael Levin
Michael Levin is a philosophy professor at City University of New York. He has published on metaphysics, epistemology, race, homosexuality, animal rights, the philosophy of archaeology, the philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science.Levin's central research interests...
:
Meanwhile, the company DNAPrint Genomics
DNAPrint Genomics
DNAPrint Genomics was a genetics company with a wide range of products related to genetic profiling. They provided forensic and consumer products, mostly based around finding "Ancestry Informative Markers" in DNA samples that they claimed enabled them to correctly identify the ancestry of a human...
, while in business until 2009, analyzed DNA to estimate the 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:
See also
- Cherokee Freedmen
- Hispanic and Latino AmericansHispanic and Latino AmericansHispanic or Latino Americans are Americans with origins in the Hispanic countries of Latin America or in Spain, and in general all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino.1990 Census of Population and Housing: A self-designated classification for people whose origins...
- List of topics related to Black and African people
- Mestee
- MestizoMestizoMestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...
- MischlingMischlingMischling was the German term used during the Third Reich to denote persons deemed to have only partial Aryan ancestry. The word has essentially the same origin as mestee in English, mestizo in Spanish and métis in French...
- Mixed Race DayMixed Race DayMixed Race Day is celebrated on June 27 in Brazil as a reference to the twenty-seven mixed-race representatives elected during the 1st Conference for the Promotion of Racial Equality, which occurred in the city of Manaus, State of Amazonas, Brazil, from April 7 to 9, 2005...
Further reading
- 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
- 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
- Savy, Pierre, « Transmission, identité, corruption. Réflexions sur trois cas d’hypodescendance », L’homme. Revue française d’anthropologie, 182, 2007 (« Racisme, antiracisme et sociétés »), p. 53-80
- Yancey, George, Just Don't Marry One: Interracial Dating, Marriage & Parenting. Judson Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8170-1439-X
External links
- New Life for the "One Drop" Rule
- PBS – Multiracial America – Who is black? One nation's definition
- PBS – Brazil in Black and White
- "Battles in Red, Black, and White: Virginia's Racial Integrity Law of 1924", University of Virginia
- Lawrence Wright, "One Drop of Blood", The New Yorker, July 24, 1994
- John Terrence A. Rosenthal, "Batson Revisited in America’s 'New Era' of Multiracial Persons", Law Review 33:1, Seton Hall University